Table of Contents

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 1.

Luke 2.

Luke 3.

Luke 4.

Luke 5.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 6.

Luke 7.

Luke 8.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 9.

Luke 10.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 11.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 13.

Luke 14.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 15, 16.

Luke 17.

Luke 18.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

Luke 20.

Luke 22.

Luke 23.

Luke 24.

On the Gospel of Luke

Luke 4, 5

Luke 12.

Luke 13.

On the Gospel according to John

On the Gospel according to John

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 1.

Acts 2.

THE COMING OF THE HOLY GHOST.

Acts 4.

Acts 5.

Acts 6, 7.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 8.

Acts 9.

Acts 10.

Acts 11.

Acts 12.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 14.

Acts 16.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 18

Acts 19.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

Acts 22.

Acts 24.

Acts 28.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL. 4.]

Outline of the Epistle to the Romans

Introduction

Romans 2 - 4.

Outline of the Epistle to the Romans

Romans 5.

CHAPTER 6.

CHAPTER 7.

Outline of the Epistle to the Romans

Romans 8.

Romans 9-11.

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans

Romans 1.

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans

Notes on the Epistle to the Colossians

Notes on the beginning of Colossians

Reconciliation

Colossians 1.

All in Christ and Christ All: a word on spoilings and beguilings

Colossians 2

Dead with Christ, Risen with Christ

Colossians 2: 20; 3: 1.

Notes on the Epistles to the Thessalonians

1 Thessalonians

2 Thessalonians

"I will come again"

Notes on 1 and 2 Timothy

Notes of a discourse on 1 Timothy 1

Propitiation and Substitution

1 Timothy 2: 6.

On Rule

1 Timothy 5: 17.

Fragmentary Remarks

2 Timothy 2.

Notes of lecture on Titus 2: 11-14

Notes from lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews

Hebrews 1.

Hebrews 2.

Hebrews 3.

Hebrews 4.

Hebrews 5.

Hebrews 6.

Hebrews 7.

Notes from lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews

Hebrews 8.

Hebrews 9.

Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 12.

Hebrews 13.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL.6.]

A Brief Outline of the Books of the Bible

Preface.

GENESIS.

EXODUS.

LEVITICUS

4 NUMBERS

DEUTERONOMY.

JOSHUA.

JUDGES.

RUTH.

5 1 SAMUEL.

2 SAMUEL.

6 1 AND 2 KINGS.

1 AND 2 CHRONICLES

7 EZRA.

NEHEMIAH.

ESTHER.

JOB.

PSALMS.

8 PROVERBS.

ECCLESIASTES

CANTICLES.

_______

9 THE PROPHETS.

ISAIAH.

10 JEREMIAH.

LAMENTATIONS.

EZEKIEL

DANIEL

HOSEA.

11 JOEL.

AMOS.

OBADIAH

JONAH

12 MICAH.

NAHUM.

HABAKKUK

13 ZEPHANIAH.

HAGGAI

ZECHARIAH

MALACHI.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

15 MATTHEW.

16 MARK.

LUKE.

JOHN.

28 ACTS.

31 ROMANS.

33 1 CORINTHIANS

34 2 CORINTHIANS

35 GALATIANS

EPHESIANS.

PHILIPPIANS

38 COLOSSIANS.

39 1 THESSALONIANS.

2 THESSALONIANS.

40 1 TIMOTHY

2 TIMOTHY.

41 TITUS.

PHILEMON

THE HEBREWS,

44 JAMES.

1 PETER.

2 PETER.

1 JOHN

2 JOHN

49 3 JOHN,

JUDE.

THE REVELATION.

Hints on the Book of Genesis:

Being the substance of remarks at a Scripture reading.

The First Man and the Second

Genesis 3.

Genesis 3

Abram

Genesis 12.

History of Abram

Lot's Choice: a word on Present Advantage

Genesis 19.

Outline of the Book of Genesis

CHAPTER 1.

CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER 3.

CHAPTER 4.

CHAPTER 5.

CHAPTERS 6-9.

152 CHAPTERS 10, 11.

CHAPTER 12.

CHAPTER 13.

CHAPTER 14.

CHAPTER 15.

CHAPTER 16.

153 CHAPTER 17.

CHAPTERS 18, 19.

CHAPTER 20.

CHAPTER 21.

CHAPTER 22.

154 CHAPTER 23.

CHAPTER 24.

CHAPTER 25.

CHAPTER 26.

155 CHAPTERS 27-31.

CHAPTERS 32-34.

156 CHAPTER 35.

CHAPTER 36.

CHAPTERS 37-48.

157 CHAPTER 49.

CHAPTER 50.

The Passover and the Red Sea

Exodus 12-14.

The Red Sea and the Wilderness

Exodus 15.

Priesthood

Exodus 28.

Exodus 2.9.

"Show me now thy way"

Exodus 33, 34

Hints on the Tabernacle

Exodus 25-34.

Hints on the Sacrifices in Leviticus

Leviticus 1-3.

On the Offerings, and the Consecration of the Priesthood

CHAPTER 1.

CHAPTER 2.

226 CHAPTER 3.

231 CHAPTER 4.

CHAPTER 6.

CHAPTER 8.

Hints on the Day of Atonement

The Day of Atonement

Leviticus 16.

Hints on the Feasts of Jehovah

On the covering of the Holy Vessels

Numbers 4.

The Feasts

Leviticus 23.

The Pleasant Land despised

Numbers 13, 14.

Numbers 15 - Notes of a Lecture

Law and Priestly Grace

Numbers 17, 20.

The Red Heifer

The Faithfulness of God seen in His ways with Balaam

Numbers 22.

Numbers 23

Deuteronomy 8: 3

Joshua 1 - 13.

Joshua 1

Christ as our Food

Joshua 5.

Joshua 5

_______

Sketch of Joshua

Joshua 1.

Joshua 2.

Joshua 4.

Joshua 5.

Joshua 6.

Joshua 9.

Joshua 10.

Joshua 12.

Joshua 13.

Joshua 14.

Joshua 15.

Joshua 16, 17.

Joshua 18, 19.

Joshua 20.

Joshua 22.

Joshua 23.

Joshua 24.

Gideon - God's Mighty Man of Valour

________

Thoughts on Ruth

Thoughts on 1 Samuel

Jonathan: a word on Working with God

1 Samuel 14.

Thoughts on 2 Samuel

The Gospel according to Matthew

Matthew 13

Appendix

Note.

Matthew 14

Matthew 15

Matthew 16

Matthew 17

Matthew 18

Matthew 19

The Gospel according to Matthew

Matthew 20

Matthew 21

Matthew 22

Matthew 23

Matthew 24, 25

Matthew 26, 27

Matthew 28

On the Gospel of Matthew

CHAPTERS 14, 15.

Matthew's Gospel

Matthew's Gospel

Matthew 24 and 25

Mark's Gospel

Introduction

Mark 1

Mark 2

Mark 3

Mark 4

Mark's Gospel

Mark 5

Mark 6

Mark 7

Mark 8

Mark's Gospel

Mark 9

Mark 10

Mark 11

Mark 12

Mark's Gospel

Mark 13

Mark 14

Mark 15

Mark 16

Compared view of the First Three gospels, etc.

Part 1.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOLUME 3.]

Compared View of the First Three Gospels, etc

Notes of Readings on 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 1.

1 Corinthians 3.

1 Corinthians 4.

1 Corinthians 5.

1 Corinthians 6.

1 Corinthians 7.

1 Corinthians 9.

Notes of Readings on 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 12.

1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 15.

Notes of Readings on 2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 1.

2 Corinthians 2.

2 Corinthians 4.

2 Corinthians 5.

2 Corinthians 7.

2 Corinthians 10.

2 Corinthians 11.

2 Corinthians 12.

What Death is to the Christian

2 Corinthians 5

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL. 5.]

Galatians

Notes on the Epistle to the Ephesians

Ephesians 1.

Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 5.

Substance of a Reading on Ephesians

Comparison of the Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians

Comparison of Epistles

What God is to us in Christ

Ephesians 1.

The Prayers in Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Ephesians 3: 14-21

"Not of the world"

Ephesians 1

Elect of God, Holy and Beloved

Ephesians 1: 4-14

Ephesians 1: 9

The power that works in us

Ephesians 3: 16-21

Grace and Government

Ephesians 4.

Thoughts on Ephesians 4

Growing up in Christ

Ephesians 4: 1-16.

The Christian Walk

"Christ loved the church"

Ephesians 5: 22, 23.

Conflict in Heavenly Places

Ephesians 6: 10-18.

Brief Notes on the Epistle to the Philippians

178 REMARKS.

The Book of Experience

Philippians 1.

Philippians 2.

Philippians 3: 1-14.

Philippians 3: 15-21; 4: 1-7.

Philippians 4: 8-23.

Thoughts on Philippians 2

The Effect of Christ down here

Philippians 2.

The Effect of Christ in glory

Philippians 3

Thoughts on Philippians 4

The Superiority of Christ over circumstances

Philippians 4: 8.

Notes on the Epistle to the Hebrews

Hebrews 1.

Hebrews 2.

Hebrews 3.

Hebrews 4.

Hebrews 5.

Hebrews 6.

Hebrews 7.

Hebrews 8.

Hebrews 9.

Hebrews 10.

Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 12.

Hebrews 13.

All of One

Hebrews 2

"What is man?"

Hebrews 2: 5-18

Perfection

Hebrews 6

Christ's Work and its consequences

Christ's Coming, Faith's Crowning

Hebrews 9: 27, 28

Faith

Hebrews 11

Burning and Eating the Sacrifices

Hebrews 13: 7-19

Obedience: the Saint's Liberty

Hebrews 13: 17-25

Brief Exposition of the Epistle of James

Introduction

James 1.

James 2.

James 3.

James 4.

Notes on the Epistle of James

James 1.

James 2.

James 4.

James 5.

Reading on 1 Peter 1 and 2

Sanctified, Purged, and Kept

1 Peter 1: 1-9

Our Pilgrimage, Priesthood, and Suffering

1 Peter 2

Are you brought to God?

1 Peter 3: 10-18

Grace and Government

2 Peter 1

Partaker of the Divine Nature

2 Peter 1: 4

Notes on the First Epistle of John

1 John 1.

1 John 2.

1 John 4.

1 John 5.

Notes on the Second Epistle of John

Notes on the Third Epistle of John

Fellowship with the Father and the Son

1 John 1

The Positiveness of Life in Christ

1 John 3: 1-10

The Love of God, the Love of Saints, and Overcoming the World.

1 John 5.

The Three Who are Witnessing: "The Spirit, and the water, and the blood."

1 John 5: 6-21

Notes on the First Epistle of John

1 John 1.

Note.

Epistle of Jude

On the Apocalypse

337 Ephesus

Smyrna

338 Pergamos

Thyatira

Sardis

342 Philadelphia

Laodicea

Outline of the Revelation

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL. 7.]

A few words on Elijah

1 Kings 17-20.

Brief Thoughts on 1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles 11-17

1 Chronicles 11.

1 Chronicles 12.

1 Chronicles 13.

1 Chronicles 14.

1 Chronicles 15.

1 Chronicles 16.

1 Chronicles 17.

Notes on 1 Chronicles 13-17

Notes on 2 Chronicles 18-20

The Work of the House of God and the Workmen therein

Ezra 3.

How the Lord accepted Job

Job 42.

Christ's Association of Himself with His People on Earth

Psalm 16.

Thoughts on Psalm 16

Psalm 25

Psalm 40

Psalms 42-72

Book 2

Especially Psalms 45 and 68

Psalm 63

Psalm 72

Psalm 84

Thoughts on Psalms 91 and 102

Psalm 93

God's Comforts - the Stay of the Soul

Psalm 94.

On the Psalms, especially 110

Heads of Psalms

Practical Reflections on the Proverbs

Proverbs 7.

Song of Solomon

General Remarks on the Prophetic Word

2. NEW TESTAMENT.

Remarks on the Prophetic Word

JEREMIAH

LAMENTATIONS.

EZEKIEL.

242 DANIEL.

HOSEA.

JOEL.

AMOS.

243 OBADIAH.

JONAH.

MICAH.

NAHUM.

HABAKKUK.

244 ZEPHANIAH

HAGGAI.

ZECHARIAH.

250 MALACHI.

Thoughts on Isaiah the Prophet

Isaiah 1.

Isaiah 2.

Isaiah 3.

Isaiah 4.

Isaiah 5.

Isaiah 7.

Isaiah 8.

Isaiah 9, 10

Isaiah 11.

Isaiah 12.

Isaiah 15, 16.

Isaiah 17.

Isaiah 21, 22.

Isaiah 23.

Isaiah 27.

Isaiah 28.

Isaiah 29.

Isaiah 30.

Isaiah 31.

Isaiah 34.

Isaiah 35.

Isaiah 36-39.

Notes on the Gospel of Matthew

Matthew 16.

Matthew 18.

Matthew 20.

Matthew 21.

Matthew 22.

Matthew 23.

Matthew 28.

Thoughts on the Revelation

Thoughts on the Revelation

Thoughts on the Revelation

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOLUME 2.]

The Psalms

Introduction

BOOK 1. - PSALMS 1-41.

Psalm 4

Psalm 8

JND - Expository

Expository [1]

J. N. Darby

This document may be found online at www.stempublishing.com

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

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

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25003E> 37

Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 1.

The Saviour is presented to us in Luke in His character as Son of man, displaying the power of Jehovah in grace in the midst of men. At first, doubtless, we find Him in relationship with Israel, to whom He had been promised; but afterwards moral principles are brought out, which apply to man, as such, wherever he might be. And indeed what characterises Luke's account of our Lord, and gives special interest to his Gospel, is that it presents to us Christ Himself, and not His official glory as in Matthew, nor His mission or service as in Mark, nor the peculiar revelation of His divine nature as in John. It is Himself, such as He was, a man upon the earth, moving among men day by day.

Verses 1-4. Many had undertaken to give an account of what was historically received amongst Christians, as it had been related to them by the eye-witnesses. However well intended this might be, yet it was a work undertaken and executed by men. Luke had an exact and intimate knowledge of all from the beginning, and he found it good to write in order to Theophilus, that he might know the certainty of the things he had been instructed in. It is thus that God has provided for the whole church by the teaching contained in the living picture of Jesus that we owe to this man of God. For Luke, although he might be personally moved by Christian motives, was of course none the less inspired by the Holy Ghost to write.

Verses 5-17. The history brings us into the midst of Jewish institutions, feelings, and expectations. First, we have a priest of Abia (one of the twenty-four classes: 1 Chr. 24), with his wife who was of the daughters of Aaron. "They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." All with them was in accordance with God's law Jewishly; but they did not enjoy the blessing so earnestly desired by every Jew; they were childless. Yet it was according to the ways of God to accomplish His work of blessing while manifesting the weakness of the instrument which He was using. But now this long-prayed-for blessing was to be withheld no longer; and when Zacharias draws near to offer the incense, the angel of Jehovah appears to him. At the sight of so glorious a being Zacharias is troubled; but the angel says to him, "Fear not, thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John," that is, "the favour of Jehovah." And not only should the hearts of many rejoice in him, but he should be great in the sight of the Lord and be filled with the Holy Ghost. "Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias . . . to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." The "spirit of Elias" was a firm and ardent zeal for the glory of Jehovah and for the re-establishment, through repentance, of Israel's relations with Him. The heart of John clung to this link of the people with God, and it is in the moral force of his call to repentance that John is here compared to Elias.

38 Verses 18-23. But Zacharias's faith, as is alas! so often the case, was not equal to the greatness of his request. He knows not how to walk in the steps of Abraham, and he asks again how such a thing can be. God's goodness turns the unbelief of His servant into a chastening that was profitable for him, and that served, at the same time, as a proof to the people that he had been visited from on high. Zacharias remains dumb until the word of Jehovah is accomplished.

Verses 24, 25. Elizabeth, with feelings so suitable to a holy woman, remembering what had been a shame to her in Israel (the traces of which were only made the more marked by the supernatural blessing now granted to her), hides herself, whilst at the same time she owns the Lord's goodness to her. But what may conceal us from the eyes of men has great value before God.

Verses 26-38. And now the scene changes, in order to introduce the Lord Himself into this marvellous scene that is unfolding itself before our eyes. In Nazareth, that despised place, there was found a young virgin, unknown by the world, whose name was Mary. She was espoused to Joseph, who was of the house of David; but so out of order was everything in Israel, that this descendant of the king was a carpenter. But what is this to God? Mary was a chosen vessel; she had found favour in the eyes of God.

We must remark that the subject here is the birth of the child Jesus as born of Mary. It is not so much His divine nature as the Word which was God and which was made flesh (though, of course, it is the same precious Saviour presented here as in John's Gospel); but it is Jesus as really and truly man - born of a virgin. His name was to be Jesus, that is, Jehovah the Saviour. "He shall be called the Son of the highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David" - still looking at Him as man born into the world. But He was God as well as man. Holy by His birth, conceived by the power of God, this blessed One, who even as born of Mary is spoken of as "that holy thing," was to be called "the Son of God."

39 The angel then tells Mary of the blessing God had bestowed upon Elizabeth. The wonderful intervention of God had rendered Mary humble instead of lifting her up: she had seen God and not herself in what had happened. Self was hidden from her because God had been brought so near, and she bows to His holy will. "Be it unto me according to thy word."

Verses 39-45. Afterwards we find that Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, for her heart loves to see and acknowledge the goodness of the Lord. Elizabeth, speaking by the Spirit, acknowledges Mary as the mother of her Lord, and announces the accomplishment of God's promise. "Blessed is she that believed," etc.

Verse 46. The heart of Mary is filled with joy, and she breaks forth into a song of praise. She acknowledges God her Saviour in the grace that has filled her with such joy, whilst, at the same time, she owns her utter littleness. For whatever might be the holiness of the instrument that God might employ, and that was found really in Mary, yet she was only great so long as she hid herself; for then God was everything. By making something of herself she would have lost her place; but this she did not. God kept her in order that His grace might be fully manifested.

The character of the thoughts that fill the heart of Mary is Jewish. It reminds us of Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2, which speaks prophetically of this same blessed intervention of God. But Mary goes back to the promises made to the fathers, and takes in the whole of Israel.

Verse 56. After remaining three months with Elizabeth, she returns to her house humbly to follow her own path, in order that God's ways may be accomplished. Nothing is more beautiful in its way than this account of the conversations of these holy women, unknown to the world, but who were the instruments of God's grace to accomplish His glorious designs. They moved in a scene where nothing entered but piety and grace. But God was there Himself, no better known to the world than were these poor women, but preparing and accomplishing what the angels would desire to look into.

40 Verses 57-59. But what is only known in secret by faith is at last to be accomplished before all men. The son of Zacharias and Elizabeth is born, and Zacharias, no longer dumb, pronounces the blessed prophecy we have in verses 69-80. The visitation of Israel by Jehovah, which he speaks of, embraces all the happiness of the millennium, connected with the presence of Jesus upon the earth. All the promises are Yea and Amen in Him. All the prophecies encircle Him with the glory which will be then realised. We know that, since He has been rejected and while He is now absent, the accomplishment of these things is necessarily put off till His return.

Luke 2.

When God is pleased to occupy Himself with the world, and to take a part in what passes therein, it is marvellous to see how He acts and the instruction He gives. There is no agreement, but a total opposition between His ways and those of men. The emperor and his decree are but insignificant instruments. Caesar Augustus acts in view of his subjects; yet he is, without knowing it, the means of accomplishing the prophecy that Jesus should be born in Bethlehem. The entire course of the world is outside the current of God's thoughts. The capital fact for Him and for His kingdom here is the babe's birth at Bethlehem; but the emperor has no thought about it. The decree puts the world in motion, and God makes good His thoughts here below. How wondrous! All the world is in movement to bring about this event, needed to fulfil prophecy, that the poor carpenter, with Mary, his espoused wife, should be in the city of David, and David's heir should be born there and then. And this is the more striking, for the census itself was first made some years afterwards, when Cyrenius was governor of Syria: God is accomplishing His purpose of love. But man was blind to it. Who cared to notice the poor Jew, though he might be of the house and lineage of David? The things that are perfectly indifferent to man fill the heart and eye of God.

41 Still we are in Jewish atmosphere. Promises are being accomplished; the babe must be born in Bethlehem. "The city of David" is nothing to the Christian as such, save as shewing prophecy fulfilled: to us the Son comes from heaven. On earth the babe is the object of God's counsels; angels and all heaven are occupied with His birth; but there is no place in the world for Him! Go where the great world registers every individual, go to the little world of an inn, where each is measured by the servant's knowing eye, and place is accordingly awarded from the garret to the first floor; but there is no room for Jesus! And the manger led, in due time, to the lowest place - to the cross.

What a lesson for us as to this world! What a difference, too, between giving up the world and the world giving us up! We may do the one with comparative ease; but when we feel the world despises us as Christ was despised, we shall discover, unless He fills and satisfies the heart, that we had a value for its esteem that we were not aware of. When obedience is as important to us in our measure, as obeying was to Christ, we shall go right on whatever be before us, without regarding the world: not that we shall be insensible, but when Christ is the object we shall only be occupied with Him.

All intelligence of the things of God comes from His revelation, and not from the reasonings of men. Hence, the simple go farther in spiritual understanding than the wise and prudent of the earth. God acts here so as to set aside all appearance of human wisdom. Happy he who has so seized the intention of God as to be identified with it, and to want none but God! This was the case with the shepherds. They little entered into the great intent of the registration; but it was to them, and not to the prudent, that God revealed Himself. Our true wisdom is through what God reveals. But we never get God's fullest blessings till we are where the flesh is brought down and destroyed - I speak as regards walk. We cannot get into the simple joy and power of God, till we accept the place of lowliness and humiliation - till the heart is emptied of what is contrary to the lowliness of Christ. These shepherds were in the quiet fulfilment of their humble duty; and that is the place of blessing. Whoever is keeping on terms with the world is not walking with God; for God is not walking with you there. From the manger to the cross all in Christ was simple obedience. How unlike a Theudas, who boasted himself to be somebody! Christ did all in God's way; and not only so, but we must come so too.

42 The glory of the Lord shines round about the shepherds, the angel speaks to them, the sign is given; and what a sign! "Ye shall find the babe wrapped up in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God" - and for what? "The mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh." The hope of Israel is revealed to them - glad tidings of great joy to all the people. For Jesus is the pivot of all God s counsels in grace. Adam himself was but a figure of Him who was to come. Christ was ever in the mind of God. Such displays of glory are not shewn to mortal eyes every day; but God sets them before us in His word, and we must every day follow the sign given - follow Jesus the babe in the manger. If He filled the eye, the ear, the heart, how we should see the effects in person, spirit, conversation, dress, house, money, etc.

Such, then, is the sign of God's accomplishment of promise and of His presence in the world - "a babe in a manger" - the least and lowest thing. But God is found there, though these things are beyond man, who cannot walk with God, nor understand His moral glory. But God's sign is within the reach of faith. It is the token of perfect weakness; a little infant who can only weep! Such, born into this world is Christ the Lord. Such is the place God chose - the low degree. God's intervention is recognised by a sign like this. Man would not have sought that. The heavenly host praise God and say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward [in] men." Nothing higher nor more astonishing (save the cross) for those who have the mind of heaven. The choir above see God in it - God manifested in flesh, and praise God in the highest. They rejoice that His delights are with the sons of men. Of old God had displayed Himself to Moses in a flame of fire, without consuming the bush, and here, still more marvellously, in the feeblest thing on earth; infinite thought morally, though despicable in the eye of the world! How hard it is to receive that the work of God and of His Christ is always in weakness! the rulers of the people saw in Peter and John unlearned and ignorant men. Paul's weakness at Corinth was the trial of his friends, the taunt of his enemies, the boast of himself. The Lord's strength is made perfect in weakness. The thorn in the flesh made Paul despised, and he conceived it would be better if that were gone. He had need of the lesson, "My grace is sufficient for thee." It is God's rule of action, if we may so say, to choose the weak things. Everything must rest on God's power, otherwise God's work cannot be done according to His mind. One can hardly believe that one must be feeble to do the work of God: but Christ was crucified in weakness, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For the work of God we must be weak, that the strength may be of God; and that work will last when all the earth shall be moved away.

43 Verse 21-38. But besides the additional testimony rendered by the offering of His mother to the circumstances in this world, in which the Lord of glory was born, we may see that, while God all through the Gospel is settling man in his new place with Himself, He did not forget His ancient people. He shews us here that He met every thought in every heart that was touched by grace in Israel. His heart was especially toward those who sorrowed over the sins and desolation of His people; and who, withal, waited for redemption, crying from the darkness, "How long, O Lord?" God will accomplish in power that wherein man has failed in responsibility. Should we therefore be content if God's people do not glorify Him? No; faith is not hard; it will sorrow, but it will wait for God, and God's time too; for faithful is He who hath promised, who also will do it. He will bring about His own purposes.

Verse 25. Thus was Simeon "waiting for the consolation of Israel." Thus Anna departed not from the temple, but served with fastings and prayers night and day; thus all that had looked for redemption in Jerusalem. There were those who watched, and Anna knew and spake to them. The rest doubtless were occupied with Roman oppression; but these few waited for Him, bowing before His hand in judgment of evil, but looking for His deliverance.

I believe there was something more in Simeon's soul than the joy of holding in his arms the babe, the expected Messiah; Simeon felt he had God, and was satisfied. So he says, without even looking on to the glory, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word." In Romans 5: 11 the apostle, after speaking of rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, says, "and not only so." What could be more than that hope? Yes, there is more: "we also have joy in God." The eyes of Simeon have seen God's salvation, and he begs of the sovereign Lord that he may go.

44 We often see something like this in dying saints, who deeply joy in the Lord's love to His own, and in the nearness of His coming for them. Why, one might say, what is His near coming to those who are dying and departing to Him? Just this - the nearer we are to God, the more precious is all the truth of God, and everything which is near to His heart. So in verses 30-32 Simeon rejoices as he surveys the extent of the divine deliverance. It was for the revelation of the Gentiles, who had been till now hidden in the dark of idolatry and ungodliness, as well as for the glory of Israel. But his soul is satisfied possessing Christ, and anticipating the effect of His presence in the whole world: he has all in Him, and desires to depart. If a man walks with God and has finished his course, he knows that his work is done and is conscious of the Lord's time being come. He has a companionship and communion with the Lord he has walked with. If simply brought to a bed of sickness, he is not then ready to go; not that he fears, but God is teaching him something else. But when God's time is come, all is joy and readiness. He feels like Simeon, Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.

But, further, when Simeon blessed Joseph and Mary, the Spirit gives him to disclose the more immediate results of the babe's presence in Israel. He should be the touchstone of many hearts, an occasion for the fall as well as the rise of many; He should be a sign spoken against, a rejected Messiah; and Mary's heart should be pierced through, whatever the present joy or the future glory.

Israel was low indeed, but did not know it; Israel must be made to know it, and Christians too; for Christ had to descend to the grave and rise again. The thoughts of the heart must be revealed, whatever the outward garb. But then He is the one who brings out God's thoughts too. If He is the Christ, the glory of God's people, He is also the one who will abase the flesh, and meet and humble man in his pride; He is the one who will make you know whether His rejection is more precious than all beside.

Verse 39. When all was done according to the law, they returned to Galilee to Nazareth. Jesus would not be the Christ we need, if He had taken any glory from Jerusalem. His place is among the poor of the flock - His place all through in Israel.

45 Verse 40. "And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him." Luke gives us more of the reality of His childhood than the other Gospels. He was not made man full-formed like Adam.

If one only reads the account without comment, how the soul feels it unspeakably precious! When we see who it was, we see human nature in Him filled with God, so to speak. It is not official distinction, but the heart feels God brought nigh. The blessedness of the child's intrinsic loveliness fills the heart. Deeply instructive too is the incident recorded in connection with the passover when He was twelve years old. His true character comes out, though He was not yet to act upon it. He came to be a Nazarene - to be about His Father's business. This is here stated distinctly before He enters upon His public ministry, that it might be seen to be connected with His person, and not to depend merely upon His office. He was the Pastor of the flock in spirit and character. It belonged to Him. He was the Son of the Father, though abiding God's time for shewing it.

Verse 51. Nevertheless "He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them." What a majesty in His whole life! His being God secured His perfection as a child and man here below. He had ever the blessed consciousness of His relationship to His Father - an obedient child, but conscious also of a glory unconnected in itself with subjection to human parentage. He belonged to Mary and even Joseph; in another sense He was not theirs. His divine sonship was as well known to Him, as His obedience to His parents was in due season absolutely right.

Verse 52. "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." His human intelligence being developed, He, though ever perfect, became so in a full way - the perfect man. The lovely plant grew up and unfolded before God and man.

Luke 3.

The two preceding chapters have given the general character; they have shewn the going out of the thoughts of God to man. Accordingly we find that the Gospel, as a whole, is particularly occupied with what is not Jewish. Still the Jewish part is given at first with considerable detail, inasmuch as Israel, because of their unbelief and moral worthlessness, are to be set aside, in order to make way for new relationships, founded on what God reveals Himself to be for man in Jesus, the true and only mediator. But if chapter I disclosed the faithfulness of God to the Abrahamic promises, to His covenant and His oath, chapter 2 puts us in the presence of the actual government of the world and of the Lord's land and people under the fourth beast, the Roman empire. What confusion does not sin create? The Jews are subject to the Gentiles; Joseph and Mary, of David's royal house, go up to be taxed. Nevertheless the ways of God shine so much the brighter for the darkness that surrounded them: He was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. Israel, however, would be put to a new moral test by His presentation of Himself. Alas! it would soon appear that, if they had not kept the law, they hated grace. "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel: and for a sign which shall be spoken against."

46 In chapter 3 we have the ministry of God coming in by a prophet as of old by Samuel. "The word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness." It is not without object that the Spirit mentions the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, etc. All the earth was seemingly at rest under its heathen lord; the word of God found its suited sphere in the wilderness. The law and the prophets were until John: and where should he be in such a state of things but the wilderness? Could he morally own it? God will not have His messenger in Jerusalem.

Prophecy is the sovereign means whereby God can communicate with His people when they are ruined and departed from Him. John understands this, and preaches the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And such was the place assigned him, many centuries before, by Esaias the prophet. It was vain for Israel to plead their privileges and rights. All was wrong, and the Judge was at the door. John's work was not to lead the people back to the law: he was preparing the way of the Lord. Herein he differed from the prophets as well as the law, or rather he went farther; for God's time was come for a step in advance. The prophets led back to Horeb: John says not a word of this, though his father was a priest, and himself, of course, an Aaronite. He does not try to set up again what was closed; he announces the kingdom. He may not introduce the church, nor even the glad tidings of God's grace (both awaited the accomplishment of the work of redemption), but he drops the law, and shews that God's purpose is the kingdom.

47 The quotation from Esaias sets aside Israel - not the Gentiles merely but Israel - as grass, withered grass, without a green blade left. Yet the word of the Lord endureth for ever, and this when all hope for man was gone. Israel may have failed, but the word of the Lord shall stand. Moreover, since it was the Lord who was coming, every valley should be filled, etc. Not the Jews alone, but all flesh, should see God's deliverance. If sin plunges all in indiscriminate ruin and a common judgment, God can meet man thus ruined, but His glory will not be shut up in the narrow limits of Israel.

Verses 7-14. But, to be blessed, man must repent. God would have realities, and not a mere nominal people; He must have fruits answering to hearts which felt and judged their moral condition, and which therefore turned from themselves to God. Ordinances, formal claims, etc., which should have been means of blessing, would be no shelter against the coming wrath; nor would God permit them to hinder His creating true children of the promise, if this generation were but Ishmael over again. Judgment must begin at the house of God.

In fact, as we know, John was beheaded, and the Lord was crucified, and the kingdom, presented in Him, and by Him, was rejected by Israel. By-and-by it will be set up visibly and in power.* Meanwhile the church is set up, because the kingdom is not set up in this manifested way. And those who now take their place with the Lord share His rejection. They are members of His body, the church. They shall share His glory, but it will be heavenly, and not earthly, glory. In another sense we are in the kingdom now. To faith heaven rules now, and we own it, and know it; but Satan is actually prince and god of this world; and hence those who are made kings to God (for that is our true place) are called to suffer. Therefore Paul went everywhere preaching the kingdom of God, as well as Christ and the church. We have that by virtue of which we shall reign with Christ; but even that is not our best portion. To be one with Christ - His body and bride - is far more blessed. If your mind only rests on the person of Christ, there is no difficulty in seeing that when He is cut off, all must cease as regards the earth. He is the centre of all; and when rejected, what prophecy spoke of, and what seemed about to be accomplished, breaks off. Thereupon Christ ascends, and takes up a glory above the heavens, and there now the saints find their place with Him. Compare Psalms 2 and 8.

{*Observe, that Matthew only uses the expression, "kingdom of heaven." It is often, in a general sense, capable of being interchanged with "kingdom of God," as we see by comparing Luke. Notwithstanding, the two phrases cannot always replace each other, and Matthew uses "kingdom of God" in a few passages where "kingdom of heaven" could not be used (Matt. 6: 33; 12: 28; 21: 43). Thus "the kingdom of God" was there when Christ the King was there; "the kingdom of heaven" began with Christ going to heaven. By-and-by, when Satan ceases to rule, it will be the "kingdom of heaven" (and "of God" too, of course), not in a mystery, but in manifestation. "The kingdom of God" has also a moral force which "kingdom of heaven" has not; and in this way it is frequently used by Paul, and was peculiarly suitable to the Spirit's design in Luke.}

48 John Baptist, then, addresses himself to the Jews, demanding repentance, and righteousness as its fruit; shews them that, if they were nearer to God outwardly as Jews, they must expect judgment the sooner. If the Lord was coming, He must have what became the Lord. The axe was even then lying at the root of the trees; if there was not good fruit on the trees, every one must be hewn down and burnt. Repentance or wrath - which? The Lord would allow no plea of descent from Abraham, if their ways belied Abraham; He must have righteousness. It is the Lord that is just at hand, and He must have a people fit for Him, or He would out of the very stones make a suited people for Himself.

Evidently John's word is not a voice of mercy to the poor sinner. God is presented in the way of judgment, not of sovereign mercy. He does not say, "Come unto me." John could not say it, because he was not Christ, and none but He could say, "Come unto me." John came in righteousness.

In verses 10-14 moral testimony is given, and that in detail. John deals with the practical iniquity of each set of people. So even when the question of the Christ is raised (v. 15-18), "one mightier than I cometh," says he. It is of His power specially he thinks - His power morally as outwardly. "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." It is the power of the Holy Ghost and His consuming judgment. He could not speak of the grace of the gospel which we know now. He proclaims One who was coming after him, not a present salvation. Whatever would not stand the fire was to be burnt up. For His fan "is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner, but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable." (Compare Isa. 21: 10, etc.) God's floor was Israel; there He was getting His wheat, if any were to be found. But His fan is in His hand; He is going to make short work. Titus finally set aside God's floor upon the earth; Israel's sin had lost it morally when they rejected Christ, but at the destruction of Jerusalem it was done with thoroughly for the present.

49 Verses 19, etc. - Luke's method of instruction is to be noticed in passing. He shews that John had preached and exhorted moral truth, and then disposes of him, putting him, as it were, out of the scene, in order to bring Christ in. It was not that historically John was imprisoned at that juncture by Herod the tetrarch; it took place long after. But it is a sample of Luke's manner, who returns to the Lord's taking His place amongst the remnant of Israel. For the Lord does not identify Himself with the nation; but, directly there is a poor remnant, He identifies Himself with it.

This history opens with verse 21, and how wonderful and full of grace! "Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended, in a bodily shape like a dove, upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." One may have looked and listened mournfully, as one reads of John Baptist and his testimony. We might have asked, as the dying record of men passed before us, What is man? But now my eye rests on Jesus: I find the Lord from heaven a man. All is to begin again. Do I ask again, What is man? At once Christ comes out. Do I look at myself? at all around? What do I see? Enough to break my heart, if there is a heart to be broken. The only thing which prevents people being utterly broken down is that they have not a heart to feel things as they are.

But a rest is here! I have got a man now who satisfied God - this blessed man on earth in the presence of God, looking to God, and an object to God! not Messiah purging His floor, but Him in whom God's thoughts and purposes are all folded up - not man perishing before the moth, but Jesus the Son of man, not merely coming down from Abraham and David, but traced up, "which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God" - the second Man, the last Adam, the quickening Spirit. What a relief; for what is man? What one's self when the heart's sin is known - giving up God for an apple from the beginning hitherto! But now a man, a blessed man, appears, "and praying." We are not told this elsewhere, and why here? Because Luke presents man in his perfection - the dependent man; for dependence is the essence of a perfect man. Truly we see God shining all through, but yet in Jesus the dependent man, in the place and condition of perfectness as man. The root of sin in us is self-will, independence. Here my heart has rest! A dependent man in the midst of sorrow, but perfectly with God in all. See Luke's account of the transfiguration also: in humiliation or in glory, it makes no difference as to this; the perfect is ever the dependent one.

50 And when that blessed heart thus expressed its dependence, did He get no answer? "The heaven was opened." Does heaven open thus on me? It is open to me indeed, no doubt, but I pray because it is open; it opened because He prayed. I come and look up because the heavens were opened on Him.

It is, indeed, a lovely picture of grace, and we may be bold to say that the Father loved to look on - to look down, in the midst of all sin, on His beloved Son. Nothing but what was divine could thus awaken God's heart; and yet it was the lowly perfect man. He takes not the place of His eternal glory, as the Creator, the Son of God. He stoops and is baptized (Psalm 16). He says, "in thee do I trust." He says to Jehovah, "Thou art the Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee." He says to the godly remnant in Israel, "To the saints that are on the earth, and to the excellent . . . In them is all my delight." He needed no repentance, yet is He baptized with them; just as when, later on, He puts forth His sheep, He goes before them. He identifies Himself in grace with Israel, even with such as were of a clean heart. And the Holy Ghost descends like a dove on Him - fit emblem of that spotless man! - fit resting place for the Spirit in the deluge of this world! And how sweet, too, that Jesus is pointed out to us as God's object. I know the way the Father feels about Him. I am made His intimate, and admitted to hear Him expressing His affection for His Son, to see the links reformed between God and man. Heaven is opened, not on something above, but upon a man on the earth. Thus I get rest, and my heart finds communion with God in His beloved Son. It is only the believer who enjoys it, but the link is there. And if I have that in and about me which distresses the soul, I have that in Him which is unfailing joy and comfort.

51 The genealogy quite falls in with the thought that God is shewing grace in man and to man. Jesus, the beloved Son of God, is traced up to Adam and to God. Jesus is Son of man; He is heir in this sense. He takes up the inheritance God gave to man. O what a truth! Where could one's heart turn for rest, if it had not Jesus to rest in? With Him, let heaven and earth be turned upside down, and still I have a rest. What blessedness for the heart to have the object God Himself is occupied with! May our hearts also be more and more occupied with Him!

Luke 4.

We saw the Lord taking His place of servant with the excellent in Israel, and thereon the heavens opened, and Himself owned by the Father as His beloved Son. His delights were with the sons of men, and He is traced up, not to Abraham only, the root and depositary of Jewish promises, but to Adam and God Himself. Independently of His proper divine glory as Son of the Father, Jesus should be called the Son of the Highest, the Son of God. As man on earth, He was sealed with the Holy Ghost. He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. His entire perfectness now was to fulfil, as a servant, the will of Him who sent Him; for a servant doing his own will is a bad servant. Dependence, waiting, and obedience, were the characteristics of this place, and they are found in Him to the uttermost. Hence, as in the Psalms, "I waited patiently for the Lord." He would not ask for power, but waits on God. "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" Put thoroughly to the test, He would do nothing but His Father's will. He was to learn obedience. Having taken the place, He would go through it wholly, not in one act, but experiencing the force of that expression, learning obedience, without one comfort here, with enemies around, bulls of Bashan besetting, dogs compassing. He had to learn obedience where obedience was always suffering, even to the yielding up of life. Every single step was humiliation till the close came in the cross, where the wrath of God was borne in love to us. No doubt He found, in His rejection, fields white for harvest, and so shall we, in our measure, when walking in the same path. But the cross was always before Him, - everything that could stop a man. Nevertheless He went on, patiently waiting, and not asking for deliverances. Thus He presented perfect God to man, and perfect man to God.

52 Verse 1. In this chapter He begins the walk of suffering obedience publicly. And the first thing to be remarked is that, being full of the Holy Ghost, He is led by Him into the wilderness, where He is tempted by the devil. There are two ways in which the enemy has power; first by allurements, and secondly by terror. In the one he works upon us through our lusts, presenting what is calculated to attract, and so he rules over us naturally. In the other he has the power of death. Thus, Judas being a covetous man and without the faith which purifies the heart, Satan suggested the occasion and gets him. He has no right to rule over men, but he acquires dominion through the lusts of the flesh. Another way is through the terror of death. In both he assailed the Lord, but found nothing in Him.

Here, then, we have the devil meeting man in the power of the Spirit of God - man tempted, not in paradise, but in the wilderness. Jesus does not say, "I am God, and you are Satan; go away." That would not have glorified God, nor have helped us. But as the Lord was led into the wilderness, not by lust (God forbid the thought!) but by the Holy Ghost, so in His blessed grace He puts Himself in the place where man was. He has help from none, not even from John the Baptist. There was all that might have stumbled rather, had it been possible; through all He goes as man. He must be tempted, and must overcome where man not only had failed, but was lying under the power of wickedness.

Verses 2, 3. There was no harm in hunger: it was no sin. He could have commanded stones to be made bread, but to do so, save at His Father's word, would have been doing His own will, and then He had not been the perfect man. Satan tries to introduce into His heart a desire which was not in the word of God; He succeeded in insinuating a lust into the heart of Adam; he fails with Jesus, though He was for forty days exposed to his presence and power. Jesus had to know by experience what it was to have working at Him, without a single support, without a friend, in solitary dreariness (save indeed the wild beasts) with the devil! Thus He measured the power of Satan. The strong man was there, putting forth all his weapons, but the stronger than he overcame: Jesus binds the strong man. He was abstracted from human condition for forty days, not like Moses to be only with God, but as the one who was always with God, to be exposed to Satan. None other man needs to be abstracted in order to be tempted, he has only to go along with men. In this case, this extraordinary separation was to be with the devil. To be with God He did not need anything out of His every-day path, for it was His natural place; but to be with Satan, He needed it. Others were strangers to God, and at home with Satan. He, in the most adverse things, is a stranger to Satan, and dwells in the bosom of the Father. But He emptied Himself as God to become a servant as man, and there He waits in dependence on the word of Him whom He served. The living Father had sent Him, and He lived by the Father. He was as man under His authority, and His meat was to do His will. "By the words of thy lips, I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer."

53 Verse 4. It is the written word He ever uses, and Satan is powerless! What amazing importance Jesus gives the scriptures! God now acts by the word, and Satan is resisted morally in this way. A man cannot be touched by Satan while the word is simply used in obedience. "He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." It was not as an exercise of divine authority He dismissed Satan, but the enemy is proved unable to grapple with obedience to the word of God. If he cannot take out of the path of obedience, he has no power. What more simple? Every child of God has the Holy Ghost acting by the word to keep him.

Jesus does not reason with Satan. A single text silences when used in the power of the Spirit. The whole secret of strength in conflict is using the word of God in the right way. One may say, I am not like this perfect Man: it might be so with Christ, but how can I expect the same result? True, we are ignorant, and the flesh is in us; but God is always behind, and He is faithful, and will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able. Temptation may be simply a trial of our obedience, as in Abraham's case, not a snare to lead us astray. Satan presents what has no appearance of evil. The evil would be - doing one's own will. Now it solves every difficulty to ask - not, what harm is there in doing this or that? - but, why am I doing it? Is it for God or myself? What! am I to be always under this restraint? Ah! there the secret of our nature comes out; we do not like the restraint of doing what God will approve. It is restraint to do God's will! We want to do our own will. To act merely because one must is law, and not the guidance of the Spirit. The word of God was the motive of Christ, and such is Christ's guidance. Not fencing the old man, but the new man living on the word is defence against Satan.

54 Verses 3-13. The first temptation is an appeal to the need of the body. The second in Luke (not in Matthew) is the inducement of the world's glory. The third in our Gospel is the religious temptation through the word of God, and therefore morally the hardest of all to one who values that word. And this is the reason why Luke departs from the actual order of the events, in order to group them morally, as is the habit of this evangelist elsewhere also. Thus we have the tempter assailing the Lord Jesus, first, as to man's life; second, as to the power given to man; and third, as to the promises made to Christ Himself.

The Lord might have argued with the devil, but He does not even tell him that the dominion of the world would be His by-and-by. He takes His stand on that which settles everything, and is a perfect example for us. He stands to God's word, and God's worship. He awaits His word, He worships Him, He serves Him only. How simple and how blessed! It was the immediate link of an obedient heart with God. The question was one of relationship to God. So of old, Eliezer receives blessing, but before he begins to enjoy it, he gives thanks. He had the word first, then the blessing-and what follows forthwith? He bows his head and worships. God is the first thought of his heart. And so still more fully with the Lord here. The last and subtlest temptation was grounded on the promises to Messiah (v. 9-11). If thou art the Son of God, why not try? But why should He try, who KNEW that God was for Him? Why should He be like presumptuous Israel of old, who would go up the hill in disobedience, to prove whether the Lord was among them? Not even when Lazarus was sick would He stir, till it was the Father's will, though all nature would have moved: and He knew well the sorrow of that house which was His refuge; for "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus."

55 The Lord did not listen. Who would? you say. But you do listen to Satan, every day of your lives that you seek a very little bit of the world. But was there not a promise? Doubtless there was; yet why should He throw Himself down to see whether God would be as good as His word? Did He not know that God was with Him? And so with us: let us only have the word behind us, no matter what may be before us. Never should we raise a question whether God is with us. If He does not send, let us not move, but let us never question His presence. If we are in the simple path of His will, the Holy Ghost will act in us to guide, and not merely on us to correct.

Thus then, in the order of Luke, which, as we have seen, is not historical, but moral, we have the progressive exercises of a man. First, natural lusts; secondly, worldly lusts;* and lastly, spiritual temptations. The Lord Jesus was tempted here, not in Eden, but in the great system where we are. He put Himself, by the will and wisdom of God, in the place of our difficulty in the world, where man is. He has gone through all the difficulties a saint is in. Who wants His help? Not a sinner, for he wants salvation: but a saint needs help and sympathy in his path. We have practically to keep our first estate, as renewed. Satan cannot touch the new man, but he tries to entice us out of the path of godliness. We want the succour to walk as obedient ones where Christ walked.

{*Satan's saying in Luke 4: 6 ("All this power," etc.) was false as to right, but true in fact, through men's lusts. So far as these go, he gives the power; but God, after all, is above him, and governs in providence.}

Verse 14. "And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee; and he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all." In all things His obedience is shewn. Untouched by Satan, He goes forth in unhindered power: as we shall in a measure, if like Him we pass through temptation, so as not to be touched by Satan.

56 Verse 16. "And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up" - the low, despised place, but just the place where spiritual power is found. Was it not ever thus? When was it [power] found allied to the great things of this world?

Verse 18. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor," etc. It was the characteristic of grace to come to such. The great business of Christ was to preach, that is to present God. The Holy Ghost gives the right word at the right time, and in the right way. "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears," v. 21. The Lord does not reason; He says, Here it is. The way of God is to present what we want. You want salvation, there it is; you want mercy, and there it is. God alone can thus come, by grace, into the place of a sinner. They wonder, for His were precious words, but soon they ask, Is not this Joseph's son? Was He ashamed of being the carpenter? Grace goes down to the lowest need. But man will take occasion to despise grace, because it is clothed in humiliation: he cannot but see God, but he steps aside to look at the humiliation, and so shew out the hatred of his heart. God's grace is despised and His sovereignty is hated. God did not despise Nazareth, but man despises Jesus because He came out of Nazareth. Even the guileless Nathaniel asks, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" How little appreciation of the way of grace there is even in the godly! Christ comes into man's misery, and finds him where he is. Could an angel? No: he stays in his proper position, doing the Lord's commandments, and hearkening to the voice of His word. An angel ought not to come down to me in my sins: God only can in His grace. And man despised the lowliness to which grace brought Him - wretched man!

But Israel ever resisted grace, and yet it was ever the way of God's delight. Witness the widow of Sarepta in Sidon, and Naaman the Syrian leper. Grace overleaped the bounds of Israel (v. 25-27) They might be enraged, but grace does over-step their limits. They rose up to thrust down Him who had denied their privileges, but He passed through (v. 30) to renew the work of grace elsewhere (v. 31, 32). This does not move Jesus; it tries Him and breaks His heart, but it does not move Him. The reproach of man turns Him to God. His comfort in His rejection is His Father's will: "Even so, Father." It was perfectness in the scene of grace, as before in the scene of temptation.

57 There was also the manifestation of power, and not merely promise. There was the accomplishment of promise for the deliverance of man in power as well as grace: and this remains true for us, who know Him as a man risen, and at the right hand of God. Mere promise does not give a centre for the affections: Christ Himself is that - Christ to whom promise pointed. He awakens divine feelings and thoughts in us, which find no response or satisfaction from anything in this world. It is the special character of Christ: when He presents Himself, it is perfect peace and grace; and in fellowship with Him, the soul can praise and rejoice in what He is.

This grace adapts itself to all difficulties, so as to bring man into peace with God. The very demons knew who He was; man alone was dull and blind. The demon held captive, but a single word of Jesus sets the captive free. He was there, not a promise merely, but power accomplishing, the living power of the Lord Himself among men, the power of God in man overcoming Satan. Such was Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum, dealing with the unclean spirit (v. 33-37). And it is the same when He goes out and enters Simon's house. Disease disappears, the weak is made strong. He ministers unto Simon's wife's mother, as she lay taken in a great fever, "and immediately she arose and ministered unto them" (v. 38, 39). What can resist this delivering power in the person of the Lord Jesus? "Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases, brought them unto him, and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them; and demons also came out of many." He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. Therefore when men stayed Him that He should not depart, He pleads His mission to preach elsewhere also. He is ever the obedient One.

Luke 5.

It is interesting to know the progressive power of the word of God. The Lord was preaching, as related at the close of chapter 4, and in so doing, as well as in the miracles He wrought, He was manifesting the power of goodness. Thus, in performing miracles, two purposes had to be accomplished - confirmation of the testimony given, and present deliverance from the power of Satan. But His great business was preaching the kingdom of God. He will set up the kingdom in power by-and-by, but His great object then was (and is) to bring the heart into contact with God; and the word does this more than miracles.

58 Verse 1. In a measure even the unconverted are sensible of the presence of God. Adam was, when he tried to hide himself. When the gospel is preached with power, crowds are gathered together by it, touched, perhaps, by something new, but without fruit. So it was with the Lord's preaching and miracles. We know their motives were selfish often, yet He went on all the same. Come for the blessing of man, He would associate others with Himself in this work of grace; but He calls them in such a way as leaves no glory to man. He "saw two ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would launch out a little from the land; and he sat down and taught the multitudes out of the ship. Now when he had left off speaking, he said to Simon, Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught" (v. 2-4). The word had authority in the conscience. Peter and Andrew had seen Jesus before, but had not yet staid with Him; there had not been sufficient power in their faith to attach them to Christ. There are many now, as ever, who own the authority of the word, and yet not attached by its power to His person - many absorbed by their every-day pursuits, the word not having laid hold of their souls so as to make them walk thoroughly with Christ. It is one thing simply to hear His word when spoken to them; quite a different thing when the word reaches them, and becomes the spring and motive of all their ways. So, here, these men had spent a little time with Jesus, had heard Him speak, and owned Him as Messiah; so, now also, we see obedience to His word when it comes to them. They launch out at His word, and at His word they let down their nets.

The miracle which the Lord wrought was one every way suited to act on those concerned. Their own powerlessness was confessed. "Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing." Man could do nothing in such a case: if Jesus could, it was because everything was at His disposal. "At thy word I will let down the net" (v. 5).

59 Verses 6-8. "And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes, and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners . . . and they came and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink." There was not even strength to receive of themselves. "When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." If the word of Jesus had not reached Peter's heart, he would merely have obeyed it as a means of temporal help; but he owns Him as Lord, hearing far more in the words spoken. His conscience was reached. The Lord Himself is revealed to Peter, and that shews Peter himself. When the eye of God is consciously upon us, we see in ourselves what He saw. This was Peter's case. He, when brought into God's presence, feels that he has been deceiving himself.

Grace begins here, but we have not the end yet. So Paul was blind three days, and his soul so wrought on that he could neither eat nor drink. Here Peter falls down at Jesus' knees. So with us: when brought really into His presence, there is the discovery of our sinfulness. The means used to bring us there may be various - circumstances of life, providential occurrences (with Luther, a thunder-storm). But when we are there, there is the revelation of Christ Himself, and wherever He is, He takes His right place in the soul. It is not only that a man then has salvation, but he cannot longer be content without God having His due place before him.

Peter does not fly away from the Lord, like Adam hiding himself: he is attracted to Him. At the same time he is there a judged, convicted, sinful man in his own conscience, which takes the part of Christ against itself. "Depart from me," he says, but he says it at Jesus' knees. This might seem like a contradiction. It was really love to the Lord and care for His honour, because His word had become the revelation of Christ to him. His heart has not perfect peace, but Christ has got possession of it. Grace draws to Christ, but there is withal the sense of unfitness till His work is known in all its peace-giving consequences. God sees the thoughts and intents of the heart, and we are made to see these as He sees them. Righteousness is planted in the conscience; God and man are brought together. It was not that Peter could be happy anywhere but at the knees of Jesus, but he felt all the while how unfit he was to be in such company.

60 But the Lord deals in perfect grace. He does not leave Simon Peter. He knew all his sin before He went into the ship, and says to him, "Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men." Jesus went into the ship to shew Peter that he had nothing to fear. Truly "perfect love casteth out fear." Fear has torment till grace is fully revealed; and now it was, with as much authority as that miracle-working word, "Let down your nets for a draught." It was the word of Christ to his heart. If he trusted it for the fish, why not for his fears? Peter had said, "Depart," but instead of that, Christ had already come, knowing all he was better than Peter. He was come as a Saviour; nay, more, He intimates to Peter that He was going to make him an instrument in gathering others. Everyone who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart becomes a vessel of living grace himself: not the source, but the river flows through him, so that people may come and drink. Recipients of grace, we are associated with Christ in the activity of love. Outward gift is not meant here, but that, as members of His body, there is living fellowship with the Head in the testimony of His grace and power.

We see in these disciples the effect of all. They are absorbed with Christ now. They not only look to Him for salvation, but they think of nothing else for life, speaking now generally and apart from any particular failure. "They forsook all and followed him." Christ becomes their life. It is a new line altogether - not merely obedience to an express command, with the reserve of thinking and saying, perhaps, "there is no harm in this or that." Christ pleased not Himself. His reason for action was His Father's will, and not the absence of a prohibition. And we are sanctified unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. "They forsook all," and where Christ went they went. They are associated with their Lord in His love to souls, and in the walk of life. This is liberty. May we, having Christ our life, have Him as our one motive! detached from all to Him, yet channels for all the blessing and grace we have ourselves tasted in Him! There is power to attract out of every corruption around, and to gather the soul into the thoughts and ways of God, by the revelation of Christ Himself.

61 Verse 12. Christ was the manifestation on earth of God's power and character - of grace. Of this the leper's case which follows is a striking witness; for leprosy was an evil which none but God could remove. But God was there in grace. Leprosy presented sin in the aspect of uncleanness. A man full of it on seeing Jesus, fell on his face, and besought Him, saying, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." There is the recognition of divine power in Jesus, but He has not full confidence in His grace. He seems disheartened by misery; and almost in despair says, "If thou wilt," etc. But He who alone on earth had the title so to say, says, "I will." It was God only - not in heaven, but come down in man and among men. Christ was there, who could touch the leper and the leprosy without being touched by it. Divine power was needed, doubtless, and the very priests could not but attest the results of its intervention, but there was divine and perfect love in His touch, while it was the touch of a man, a man who acknowledged the ordinances of God, as one who had been born under law. Thus this "turned for a testimony." For the leper must go to the priest, and what could he think? Why, who has been here? Jehovah must have been to heal the man.

Verse 16. And what next? Jesus "withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed." Let the power exercised be ever so great, and manifestly divine, He is the dependent man; and this is just where we fail.

Verse 18. Here we have another thing - not the power of Satan, as in chapter 4, nor the uncleanness of sin, typified by leprosy, but the guilt of sin. They brought the man, because they felt the need; and there was the perseverance of faith, which would not be put off till another day. And Jesus brings forgiveness of sins, as well as cleansing from defilement. This is what appears in the instance of the palsied man. The first and grand point is that Jesus pronounces his sins forgiven. Authority to pardon was come in the Person of the Son of man on earth, whatever scribes and Pharisees might think. It was God, the Lord Jehovah, but the Son of man withal, having on earth power to forgive sins, and using it. It is in this way Israel is to be forgiven by-and-by (compare Psalm 103: 3); and accordingly, the Lord here gives the proof of that authority to forgive by the healing the disease of the paralytic. "That ye may know," etc. (v. 14). The man was to know in his relationship to God, that his guilt was gone. Through infinite grace, we are entitled to more than even this; for we have the righteousness of the accepted man in God's presence. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. This palsied man was a sample of what will be, in the future day, Israel's portion. Jesus was forgiving iniquities and healing diseases. He had shewn the power to do the one; now He would shew that He could do the other also. It is God's delight to do it all. You may not believe that you can have such a boon, but it is ours in Christ. The perfect Man has come with perfect title in His Person. God wrought there, but it was also as a man filled with the Holy Ghost. The believer walks, too, a proof not to himself so much as to others that God is there. The man ought not to say, "I wonder if I can walk"; if he has faith, he will get up and do it.

62 Two things are here present. First, the exceeding blessed grace that the Lord is come, the power of God within the sphere of human misery, which, extreme as it may be, does but make that power evident. If I look around as a man, I am lost. I cannot unriddle the history of the world - abominations committed in the name of Christ, Himself rejected by His people Israel, and crucified by those Gentiles to whom God had entrusted the government of the world, Mohammedanism, heathenism; what kind of a God have you, says the reasoning heart, when it is such a world! But here I have the Lord come down into all the wretchedness, sickness, sin; and my heart is drawn away from pleasure and sorrow to Him. How beautiful to see heart after heart brought around this One, the only true centre, soon to be the risen head of the new creation, Himself the object drawing out feelings and affections of which He alone is worthy; He who by His excellency, gives excellency, and by His gracious thoughts towards us produces and draws out gracious thoughts in us. Next, our hearts are fixed just so far as we have an object-fixed according to God, when we have Christ Himself before us. How can I love if I have nothing to love? A man is what he feels, and likes and thinks. If my soul lives and feeds upon that which is most excellent - Christ the bread of God, Christ becomes, in a practical sense, formed in the heart. In Him, the man Christ Jesus, God has had all His delight, and the display of it too.

Remark further, that in the accounts we have seen, divine power in the person of Jesus, the Son of man, is exercised in the midst of Israel. First, chapter 4: 31-41, its triumph over the enemy's power in sicknesses and in demoniacal possessions, and the testimony of the kingdom, when all such effects of Satan's work should disappear. This last opens the way for the more positive and deeper blessing of souls, being put in relationship to God. Hence from chapter 5: 1-26 (the call of Peter, the cleansing of the leper, and the pardon of the palsied man), it is a question of the state of the soul (whatever the outward accompaniments might be), of the authority of the word of the heart, of faith, and of Christ's personal glory. Still it was grace in operation towards Israel; grace, if one may so speak, in government. To Israel God had said that He would not put upon them the plagues of Egypt, save for their sin. They were an outwardly elect, redeemed people, but they were under God's government; and hence chastening came, of which the leprosy and the palsy were peculiar samples. Jesus shews Himself to be "Jehovah that healeth thee," in the midst of Israel, though He was passing away from them into a wider display of power and goodness. He could have healed every one, leprous or paralytic; He could have removed all the diseases, now, alas! brought on the Israelites; but in these cases it is where they come to Him in quest of healing, that is, it is in answer to faith that He works. He was there, shewing divine power and grace in healing.

63 Verse 27, etc. But this grace, being of God and sovereign, could not be bounded by human circumstances. Wherever a want appeared to Him, could He gainsay His power or His love? Now, see how that connects itself with what follows. There was full deliverance for all who trusted in Israel, but He could not, and would not limit His grace. The law limited, but when Himself, the God who gave it, came, everybody who needs Him is welcome; His house is a house of prayer for all nations. Hence He calls a publican, a Jew indeed, but detested by the Israelites, and in a sense rightly, when viewed as the mark of their servitude nationally. A publican was one who profited by their Gentile masters, to extort money from Israel, and therefore naturally regarded with horror. But Jesus calls one named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom - calls him to be an apostle! Grace must act according to its own rights. If God has been good to you and me, does that hinder His mercy and love to another? Grace creates the instrument it wants to act by; and it will flow farther than the publican yet, even to the most distant Gentile. True, Israel had the promises, the Gentile, strictly speaking, had none; but for that very reason it was more purely grace; and grace would act towards the Gentiles. The Lord Himself, God, was there, and Israel could not be the centre, nor the temple, when He was there, the despised Lord of both. He is the door, the new centre and turning-point of blessing; not a mere branch of the old vine, but Himself the true vine. As a Jew, He was subject to ordinances, but as the Lord, He is above them, and He breaks out beyond all the old restrictions.

64 "Levi made him a great feast in his own house, and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them; but their scribes and Pharisees murmured." It was a terrible sight and blow to such. But Jesus answers, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." They mistook the Lord altogether: He came to shew how grace could deal with those who had no righteousness.

Verse 33, etc. He is now breaking, as it were, out of the old thing. He is faithful to Israel, but breaking up that order of things. How could they fast who owned the presence of the divine husband of Israel, the Messiah! The time was coming when the cross must be taken; but when the Bridegroom is there, fasting was out of place and season.

Verses 36-39. Further, the old garment cannot be patched with new cloth. Jesus would do no such thing as tack on Christianity to Judaism. Flesh and law go together, but grace and law, God's righteousness and man's, will never mix. Neither can the new wine, the power of the Spirit, be put into the old legal ordinances without loss on all sides. A man accustomed to forms, human arrangement, fathers' religion, etc., never likes the new principle and power of the kingdom; he says, The old is better. Such is nature; grace is offensive to it. Nor does man improve in divine things. He can degrade himself and give up what his heart never relished. And this goes on rapidly today.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25008E> 64

Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 6.

Here we have a most weighty thing spoken of - the sabbath. It is a question that often agitates the minds of men, and it was then specially important as closing Jewish relations. And this, it will be borne in mind, was just where the Lord had morally arrived at the close of the preceding chapter. The rights of His person and His grace, now becoming more rejected by the religionists, of Israel, reach out beyond the narrow bounds of that proud people. God thereon, by degrees, intimates the coming purpose of His mercy; His salvation in due time shall be sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear if the Jew judges himself unworthy of everlasting life. God will have His own joy of saving souls somewhere.

65 Now it is very evident that the incident of the cornfield (v 1-5), "on the second sabbath after the first," thoroughly falls in with the object of the Spirit in hand. "The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath." His person entitles Him to supremacy over that which was the sign of the covenant of the law. In the next case (v. 6-10) He asserts the right to do good on the sabbath-days, as His adversaries on the same day shew their disposition to destroy.

The sabbath, in any real sense, man had entirely lost; indeed he had never entered into God's thoughts of rest. It was His rest, and had not sin spoiled all, man should have enjoyed that which was the result not of his own, but of God's labour. This is the proper character of that rest which belongs to man distinctively; but sin having come in, the necessity has arisen that God should work afresh, if man is ever to share the rest of God (Heb. 4). Meanwhile Christ has appeared and finished the work which God gave Him to do. Hence, we who believe, find rest in Christ, as does God Himself. In Him, by virtue of the accomplished and accepted work of redemption, we have our sabbath spiritually.

The day was set apart and hallowed from the beginning (Gen. 2). Afterwards it came in, first in grace to Israel, marked by the cessation of the manna, and a double portion to provide for that holy day (Ex. 16): and, secondly, as a part of the law of Sinai, and incorporated with every new and special dealing of Jehovah (chap. 20). (See also chap. 31: 13, 14; 33: 14; 34: 21; and 35: 2.) It was a memorial thenceforward of the deliverance out of Egypt (Deut. 5: 15). Accordingly, the prophets expressly treat it as a sign of Israel's separation from all other nations unto God, and God's covenant with them (Ezek. 20: 12-20; 22: 8; 23: 38; 44: 24; Isa. 56, 58; Jer. 17: 21-27.) But then, in the past, Israel, a sinful people, had the sabbath as a legal ordinance, and consequently are condemned by it as by all else.

66 Where is this covenant with Israel? All gone because of their iniquity. Hence they were thrown into the hands of the Gentiles, and became slaves. "Behold we are servants this day; and for the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it; and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us, because of our sins: also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle at their pleasure, and we are in great distress" (Neh. 9: 36, 37). If they had a temple after the captivity, it was only at the mercy of their Persian masters. The outward emblem lingered on, no doubt, and was especially made much to dishonour Him, of whom and whose work it was so significant; but where was its reality when Jesus was on earth? Alas! He lies in the grave all the day which His murderers kept as a day holy to Jehovah ("for that sabbath was a high day!"): awful testimony to the Jews of their position. Their own Messiah slain by His own people: such was the truth which that sabbath-day uttered to him who had ears to hear. Israel never had the rest of God. If Joshua had given them rest, etc. (Heb. 4). There remaineth therefore a rest. They must own Jesus first.

But the rejected Jesus was Son of man, and the Son of man was Lord of the sabbath (v. 5) - a truth of the utmost gravity, to be asserted with all strength. Those who confound the Lord's day with the sabbath are in danger of forgetting this. It was the very point here in controversy with the Jews who maintained that the sabbath was superior to the Lord. But He shews that another new principle had come in, which wholly overleaped the old, and that to remain in the old was to have no deliverance. For there is no possibility for a lustful creature to be under a commandment that condemns lust, without being condemned. Grace, however, has entered through a rejected Christ, and now there is rest for us who believe - not for those who are on the ground of law.

This is the reason why Christians keep the first day of the week, and not the seventh or sabbath day. The rest was acquired by the power of Christ's redemption, and the first day, when He arose from the dead, was that which proclaimed it to faith, spite of man's guilt and ruin. The seventh day will be the rest of man on earth; the first day celebrates Christ's taking us in Him to heaven. Then was life from the dead, life more abundantly, liberty from the law and every consequence of sin - in a word, the victory of grace. The Christian therefore has the first day distinctively, because it belongs to and witnesses of the perfected work of Christ, and consequently introduces heavenly rest. The first day is in contrast with the seventh, which appertained to the round of man's labour in nature and of the Jew's under the law, in which Adam and Israel utterly broke down. It is the Lord's day emphatically, and thus testifies of the triumph of Christ's word and the glory of His person - not the day which guilty unbelief would have perverted into the proof and means of His inferiority. It is positive, direct blessing to him who owns and honours it - not because it is the close of legal toil, but the commencement of Christian hope - the resurrection-day when we begin our spiritual life; and look on for what will crown so precious a pledge.

67 Here, however, the grand thing is the maintenance of the rights and the authority of the Son of man. You never can, according to God, raise up the title of the sabbath against the Lord of the sabbath.

Verses 3-5. What did David, the anointed of the Lord, when Saul persecuted him and sought his life? Was it of God, then, to uphold the ritual and so starve the man after His heart? No; the foundations were out of course, and everything became common in Israel when the chosen king was thus iniquitously rejected. But a greater One, and a graver sin, were now in their midst. The Son indeed, but the Root of David, God Himself was there; He who instituted the sabbath, its Lord, was there in the person of the Son of man.

Verses 6-10. But if God was there, would He deny His own goodness or restrain His power in presence of human misery, because "the scribes and Pharisees watched him whether he would heal on the sabbath-day?" Divine love must act and heal the withered hand, even if wretched man should seek to find therein an accusation. And they were filled with madness and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus (v. 11); but Jesus in those days retired to a mountain to pray. He drew near to God, to commune with Him what He was to do for them (v. 12). His was the activity of grace - of love displaying itself holily and mightily in the midst of evil.

68 Verses 13-16. "And when it was day he called his disciples," etc. In this call He proves that He was the only One who could empower others to bear this testimony also: and yet here, as in all that passed before, He is the lowly dependent One - perfect man, as well as God. He was in perfect unbroken communion with His God and Father, though Himself God manifest in the flesh. How blessedly near us this brings Him, though so infinitely above us! What He did, we should aim at, whatever our measure and our little sphere. In Him we see man perfect in that place of power wherein He came.

He knew whom He chose. He knew that one of them had a devil, but He sent them out. Twelve He chose specially, whom also He called apostles, "sent ones." It was an important and significant word, as quite a distinct thing from both law and promises. No one was sent out by law. Now God is active; He is sending His Son, and the Son is sending out apostles. The love of God is active in gathering souls. This first sent One is a man, really and truly. God's work of His grace must be done by His Son: not by angels, but by His own Son, as the Man Christ Jesus, and He sends men out from Himself. The gathering point is Man - Himself of course. To Man God has committed all things. While it must be God who shews grace, the Son of man it is who comes on the mission of love, and sends out men to men.

Verses 17-19. Whatever He attracts by, He gathers round Himself to worship, surrounds Himself with them, and then comes down and stands in the plain. The great multitude are attracted by His miracles and their wants, coming to hear and be healed. The company of the disciples were an inner circle. "The whole multitude sought to touch him." It is not said that they were converted, which is another thing; but living power went out of Him, healing their bodily misery and delivering from the power of Satan.

Verse 20, etc. He now lifts up His eyes on His disciples and speaks to them, not as in Matthew 5, etc., giving them the developed principles of the kingdom; but distinguishing those before Him as the remnant. Hence it is "ye" here. He puts seal and stamp on those actually gathered round Himself. They are to be like Him. He is at once their centre and their pattern. He was God, but the fulness of the Holy Ghost dwelt in Him as man also; and so He could say, "I do always those things which please him." So should it be with those around Him.

69 Verses 20-26. "Blessed [are] ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed [are] ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed [are] ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you," etc. These words of the Saviour give the contrast of those He pronounces blessed with all that are in ease in this world. Those who, if in this life only they had hope in Christ, would be of all men the most miserable, are the only happy few; they are severed from all others, and put in relationship with Him the source of blessing, to be blessed. If you can make yourselves happy and comfortable in this world which has rejected Jesus, count not on His blessing.

It is the poor, the despised with Jesus, who shall have the kingdom. He says, if we may so speak, "I am distinguishing you" (for there is no enunciation of abstract principles, as in the beginning of Matthew 5, but a speaking to the hearts of those gathered around Him). "I am come as the centre of power and active love. There is but one sole place of blessing on earth. With Me you are blessed." Others may be gay and cheerful where Christ has no place; but it is a time when a true spiritual soul can get no good save with Christ. It is a definite distinction of, and address to, the disciples who attached themselves to Him. This is made clear in verse 22, where the persecution for righteousness, which Matthew carefully records, is omitted. Here it is only a question of suffering "for the Son of man's sake."

In the midst of a world of misery and selfishness there came One who displayed not law nor judgment, but grace. But the light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Like the adder that hears nothing, the world goes on as deaf as it is blind. No; you who are "full," now Jesus has no charm for you; but you, disciples, are weeping now - the sorrow and the sin of man distress your spirit: you shall rejoice. When God has His way, you, who cannot be satisfied with the husks, shall be filled. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven; for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. You have your portion with Christ here, you shall have it with Christ in heaven. You suffer with the suffering One, you shall have glory with the glorified One. But the others! - they shall have what they seek. For the full there shall be a famine by-and-by, for they have lost God. If you can laugh in such a world as this, you shall weep when God's time for blessing comes. They are of the world, and the world loves its own. "So did their fathers to the false prophets." Are the times altered? Is Christ's character changed? It is not a whit more agreeable to the flesh. And if you can find your joy, ease, and pleasure in the world, Christ could not, and you have not His Spirit. He that will be its friend is the enemy of God. Can the disciples of Jesus be merry and gay in a world which has sin wrapped up in it? There is communion with Jesus, joy in the Spirit, while patient in tribulation; but this is quite another thing. It is a serious joy, though very real and blessed.

70 From verse 27 He shews what must be the conduct of the disciples as such. They were to manifest God, to be the unfolding of what was displayed in Him. Grace which was in Him in fulness and perfection should be reproduced in them, sadly as we all fail in this - the principle of our path. "Love your enemies," etc. God loved us when we were His enemies, and we have now to shew practically what God is. Verse 29 brings us into entirely human circumstances, patiently learning in them: or, as in 1 Peter 2, doing well, suffering for it, and taking it patiently. This may seem poor comfort. But Jesus did so, and love must so manifest itself in an evil world. The time comes when God will judge, instead of bearing long as now; but now, at whatever cost to self, shew love as Christ did. Flesh can love for love (v. 32, 33), but the disciples of Christ are called to imitate God, and walk in love. "Love ye your enemies, and do good and lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest; for he is kind to the unthankful and to the evil."

What a blessed character of God comes out here! It is not righteousness, though surely there was that; but in the world where God had to do with the unthankful and evil, He shews grace. For the angels He has not grace, but love: but Christ in this world of sin is grace (that is, love to those who deserve it not). "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." It is not "with" but "as your Father." As He loves His enemies, so do you; He is merciful, be ye also merciful. In all this, God's character is displayed - perfect love in a world of sinners. It must cost us something; it cost the life of Christ. His love was a stream, which, if it met with hindrances in its way, only went on flowing over, and leaving them behind till it reached the cross.

71 Verse 37. This is not certain things required in order to get life, but the result of certain conduct shewn. "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged," etc. As though He had said, You will find the consequences of your conduct as Christ did. He took the lowest place, but He has got the highest now. He humbled Himself; "wherefore God also hath highly exalted him," etc. He came not to judge, and now "all judgment is committed to the Son." Thus we not only have the display of grace, but divine character meeting its consequences. It is a question of government - of walking with the Lord; it must cost a great deal in the path, but in the end it will be "full measure, pressed down," etc. There will be God's blessing too in the way; though self is mortified. Grace will abound according to God's way.

Verse 39. See the contrast of those who are utter blindness, and the blind leading the blind. You must let them alone; leave them to go on their own way; but you have to take your place with Me; and the disciple is not above his master, but you shall be as your Master. If your Master suffers, you suffer; if it has cost your Master much, it may cost you much. If Christ teaches you, it is to make you possess the divine learning that He has Himself. And see what a place He gives us! When He gives, what does He give? The very same that He has Himself. "As he is, so are we in this world." "Not as the world giveth," which, if it gives a little, reserves the chief for itself; but as though He said, "I am putting you in the very same learning that is in My nature: the grace that I have you are to have." But people do not like to do those things that Jesus did.

Why is there so much argument about that one passage, "resist not evil"? It is because you like to resist evil. Your will is touched, your conscience is reached; for it is given you as matter-of-fact exhortation; but you do not like it, and you will rid of it if you can. These things are given as tests for the conscience; they judge the eye, not the path only. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." The object is wrong, if you have not light for the step. There may be difficulties in going up a steep hill, but if the object before you is clear, you get over them as quickly as you can. This is what is meant by the expression, "This one thing I do," Phil. 3: 13. It is having one object, and the mind intent on accomplishing it. If it is so with you, there will be sure to be light in the path - light, not for ten years hence, but for this one step that is before you, and then for the next. It was said to Moses, "Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward"; and when they were out in the wilderness, the pillar was given to be their constant guide. So with us; we are called out to go after Christ on the principle of obedience, and this puts us into connection with Him in the revelation of His will, not giving us to see all the path onwards. A man may see a wall, and say, "I cannot go that way: there is a wall," while, if he but takes a single step, he will find that there is a path all down by the side of the wall.

72 Verse 44. "Every tree is known by his own fruit." Not only bearing fruit, but fruit that Christ produces should be ours. There is fruit that an upright nature produces, such as that of the young man who came to Jesus, but this was not divine fruit - "its own fruit"; and where Christ is the root and the stock, it is Christian fruit, that is, fruit that will remain (John 15: 16). Two men may go together up to a certain point, and then some test for Christ comes; one goes on with Him, and the other turns aside. "Its own fruit" - fruit shews itself, springs of itself. There will not be the question of, What harm in this or that? What harm in being rich? as a person once asked me. If it shuts you out of heaven, is there any harm in that? Oh, I did not think of that! But the secret is, that you like the things. The evil is not the things themselves dug out of the earth, but the love in the heart for them. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." An impatient word betrays the heart. A blow I may restrain and yet utter the word.

Verse 47. In the hearing of all the multitude the Lord speaks now about the house built upon the rock, etc. This is not a question about building upon Christ, the Rock, for the salvation of the sinner. It is the path of the saint. But where Christ's word does connect with Himself, see the result. The very thing people are called upon to do is to follow Him; and when I follow, it proves that the Master's words have taken such hold upon my soul that they have power to carry me over the difficulties. "My soul followeth hard after thee." A man's affections, heart, will, are taken and connected with Christ, instead of with himself. Is Christ sufficiently precious to make me leave all beside and follow Him, to do those things that please Him?" If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, but shall have the light of life." "As when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light." Keeping close to Christ, the light shines upon us. If we have to get into the light, we may be dazzled by it. Thus He has gathered round Himself in light and love, set out in those words, those whom He will have to enjoy Himself, and be as their Master, at length to be conformed to His image in glory.

73

Luke 7.

We have seen the Lord, rejected by Israel, gradually, in virtue of His person and rights, breaking out beyond the ancient limits, and gathering the remnant round Himself, the new and only just object of God, the source of a mission in grace, and the full development and exemplification of holy love in an evil world; for, whatever the principles laid down in chapter 6, they are but the expression of God's character in grace, as displayed in Christ here below.

In accordance with this, we have now (v. 1-10) the case of the centurion, and a very full and striking one it is. It is not merely an act of grace, but grace to a Gentile. Nor is this all. The principle on which the apostle rests this question is brought out. "It is of faith, that it might be by grace, that the promise might be sure to all the seed." Faith, as the great turning-point, is introduced. It was no mere theory; it was living faith, and such faith as had not been seen in Israel. Neither was there presumption, but, on the contrary, remarkable humility. He recognised the honour God had put upon His people; he sees, holds to it, owns and acts upon it, spite of their low and debased, and, in every other respect, unworthy condition. Despised and failing as they might be, he loved the Jews as God's people, and for His sake, and he had built them a synagogue. Unfeigned lowliness was his, though (yea, rather, for) his faith was far beyond those he honoured. Consequently he had a very high apprehension of the power and glory of the person of Christ as divine, reaching out beyond Jewish thoughts altogether. He does not refer to the Lord as Messiah, but recognised in Him the power of God in love. This was blessed faith, which forgets itself in the exaltation of its object. He had not seen Jesus, it would seem, but assuredly gathered from what he "heard," that diseases were nothing to Him but occasions wherein to display His absolute authority and His sovereign mercy. He was a stranger, and the Jews were God's people; must not they or their elders be the fittest to bring this wonderful person? For he confided in His mercy as well as His power, and his servant, "dear unto him," was sick and ready to die. He needed Jesus.

74 "Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself; for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof; wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee; but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed." There was surely the deepest personal respect and affection. Untaught as he might be in other things, he strongly felt the excellency of Christ's person, and here again with humility correspondent to the measure in which His glory was seen. This message of the centurion's friends admirably depicts his character and feeling. He told nothing to Jesus of his service to the Jews, spoke of nothing personal save his unworthiness, and this so consistently, that he begged Jesus not to come to his house, as unworthy to receive Him. There was in this soul the exact opposite of doing Christ an honour, by believing on Him, and far from him was the pretence of receiving Christ to set himself up; both alas! found often elsewhere. The simplicity of his heart is as apparent as his strong faith. There was none such in Israel, and yet it was in one who loved Israel. It was a lesson of grace, in every way, for the crowd that followed Jesus - for us too most surely.

Along with grace to the Gentiles came the evidence of power to raise the dead, but here it was manifested in human sympathies, in witness that God had visited His people (v. 11-17). It was the power of resurrection, a power which was yet to be shewn more gloriously, and to be the source of that which is new for man according to God - the God who raiseth the dead. It was another and wondrous proof that He is here going, in the character of His action, without the sphere of the law and its ordinances. "For the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth": what can it avail for one who is dead? "But what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh," Rom. 8: 3. It was grace, indeed, and divine energy, but withal displayed in One who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. And how astonishingly all the details bring this out! The dead man was "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." "And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.... And he that was dead sat up and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother." How exquisitely human, and withal how unmistakably divine!

75 It is manifest that these two cases illustrate the change which the Spirit is attesting in this part of Luke. Nor is it otherwise with the scene that follows, which brings out in fact the hinge of the dispensation. The Lord bears witness to John Baptist, not John to the Lord. John sends two of his disciples, on the report of the Lord's miracles, to learn from Himself who He is. Are we surprised? He had preached and baptized in the confession of sins and in faith of the coming Messiah. But now all was changed. John was in prison, not delivered, and it was no longer a people preparing for the Lord. Was it not strange? At any rate John sought a plain answer, and well could he trust the word of One who did such mighty and holy works. But what a comment upon the marvellous change was this very inquiry! It was a sort of turning over the disciples of John to the Lord. "And in the same hour he cured many of their infirmities, and plagues, and evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way and tell John," etc. At the same time, if He receives no longer testimony from John, He bears it to him, owning John and his work. But they were owned from a higher ground where the Lord in grace and resurrection power had placed Himself; and this was based on entire rejection in and by the world, so that, though He was doing all good, still it was "blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." Hence in the very verse where the Lord recognises in the fullest way John the Baptist, He marks the change about to take place - "he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." Happy they who justified God in being baptized of John - wretched the self-righteous who rejected His counsel against themselves. Wisdom is justified of all her children. They understand the ways of God, whether in the servant or the Lord. The ways are quite different, but understood in grace. This generation alas! understands none, finds fault with all. John is too righteous for them, Jesus is too gracious. The mourning of the one and the piping of the other are utterly distasteful. Such is man's wisdom before the ways of God. But the children of wisdom justify wisdom notwithstanding.

76 And in spite of the perverseness of men, our Lord did not stop manifesting Himself to the world. Accordingly a tale follows (v. 36-50) which shews how God's wisdom is justified by and in those who own it in Jesus. It is a tale of grace,. of pure, plenary, pardoning grace, which rests not till its object is dismissed in perfect peace. Jesus is in the Pharisee's house, who failed entirely in the essential point: Simon perceived not the glory of Christ. In this the Lord meets him, and shews, in contrast with the woman "which was a sinner," the point where this Pharisee was exercising judgment to be precisely that wherein he failed. God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways as our ways. What if the despised Jesus were not a prophet only, but a Saviour of poor lost sinners? Ah, God was unknown - that was the secret. The converted soul sees the glory of the Lord as grace towards itself; he who is unconvinced, however interested humanly, judges according to his own thoughts, and therefore necessarily fails to see the glory which is not according to these thoughts. Man's judgment of the gospel must be wrong therefore; his reception of it, as grace, is alone right, and alone the way of coming to the knowledge of it.

This was, then, a direct and distinct example of God's ways. It was a forgiving of sins in grace, sovereignly and freely, to any poor sinner, manifesting and producing love in the forgiven, who loves God, because God is love, and this in respect of his sins, in Jesus the Lord. It was proper grace - the ground on which any one, a Gentile or not, would be received, and God manifested not in requirement from man (and so making man in the flesh of importance) but making God all, and His character in sovereign grace, so bringing in blessing and its blessed effect upon the heart, developing the fruits of grace in a heart restored to confidence in God by the sense of His goodness.

What a blessed picture! Goodness known not only in the act, but in Him who did it. The discernment of guilt in its gross forms by man was one thing, but the grace of God which could blot out and forgive all was quite another. It was not Christ there to judge, and to sanction Pharisees, but love to a sinner, manifesting God in this new character of grace, producing thankful holy love to God, and a blessed relationship, sovereign and beyond the reach of man. But how has God always to prove Himself right in His goodness to man! so hard is man's heart. But the Lord identifies Himself with the believer, and vindicates him against the haughty world, and this gives assurance. Perfectly regardless of comments, He applies Himself, not to unbelief, which were useless, but to those who have faith, and having communicated forgiveness, shews the soul his uprightness, that is, the right thoughts of God and self which faith has. The last word settles the whole question. The soul's love was a ground of evidence and reasoning - not, of course, the cause. "Thy faith hath saved thee, said the Lord to the woman, Go in peace." All is discharged from the conscience, and the heart finds itself infinitely and everlastingly a debtor to the continual fountain of all grace.

77

Luke 8.

We have seen, in what has preceded, the Lord presenting Himself, by His words and His work, as a new centre, to which and round which His people were gathered. Before this, Jehovah had been the centre, when Israel was the gathering point; for Jehovah was among the Jews, and the temple the place where He met with the people. But now the Son is here, "God manifest in the flesh," and He must be the centre of everything. But Israel would not be gathered, as the Lord Himself said in Matthew 23: 37, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . but ye would not." Again in Isaiah 65: 2, "I have spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people."

Israel could not have the blessing, for the flesh could not hold it. The flesh, simply looked at as such, is "as grass" (Isaiah 40). "All flesh is grass." We have these two great principles running through the latter chapters of Isaiah; first that flesh, as flesh, could not hold the blessing, and be the depository for the promises. For when all grace came, in the person of the Lord, the people to whom He was sent He found withered down like grass. "Surely the people is grass: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand for ever." But God was not going to give up His purpose. Therefore in chapter 49 we find Jehovah says unto Christ, "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Then Christ says, If God is to be glorified in Israel, "I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought, and in vain, yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my reward with my God." Then saith Jehovah, "Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorified in the eyes of Jehovah. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth."

78 This is what Christ is becoming in Luke's Gospel - "a light to lighten the Gentiles," etc. And afterwards we find Paul quoting, with the perfect accuracy of the Spirit, this very scripture, so exactly fitted for them, to the Jews at Antioch. "It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken unto you, but seeing ye judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo! we turn to the Gentiles," etc. (Acts 13: 46, 47: and again, Acts 28: 28). Israel will be gathered afterwards, for Christ will hereafter raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the preserved of Israel; but before this He turns to the Gentiles. All this the Lord pictures to us in Luke. In chapter 7 we see Israel refused both John the Baptist and Christ; but "wisdom is justified of her children." The Pharisees and lawyers did not justify God at all, for they saw no beauty in Jesus, whereas the publicans did; and thus the poor woman, "who was a sinner," whose heart was touched by the grace of God, is the true child of wisdom, and is brought in here as an illustration of Christ being the new centre of blessing, "though Israel be not gathered."

The Lord then goes on with His testimony, gathering by the word, first, by parables, as in chapter 8, and then in chapter 9 sending forth His disciples to preach, with this commission, to shake off the dust from their feet, if they are not received, a token of the last testimony being rendered, when they are given up.

Here are two classes of persons gathered round Christ. First, the twelve apostles were public witnesses, fitted by divine grace to be the vessels of testimony, manifesting the electing power of God in calling them, and sending them forth in all the energy of ministry; Christ's apostles, sent out by Himself - "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you" - His chosen ones. "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," etc. Then, secondly, there were others who were gathered by affection round Him, having no place of office in the church, but those whose hearts were touched and drawn round Him, not sent out like the first class, but not less devoted in heart than the apostles, for they followed Him and ministered to Him of their substance.

79 In verses 4-8 we have the parable of the sower; and here, as previously remarked, it is not the kingdom brought out as in Matthew, but the testimony as to what and whom Christ was gathering, and not as to the form the kingdom would take afterwards. The very fact of Christ coming as the sower proved that Israel was set aside; for had it been now to Israel as His vineyard, He must have come seeking fruit from the vine He had long before planted. He had come to Israel previously, seeking fruit and finding none. He now comes in the new character of the sower, which is quite another thing. He comes into a waste world, where there was nothing, and He begins a fresh work. God is not now looking for fruit from man in one sense, because man has been proved to be a bad tree: and the more you dig about and dung a bad tree, the more bad fruit it produces. "A tree is known by its fruits." Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. God is now going to produce the fruit He requires. He is not now looking for man to produce anything, for John the Baptist said, "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." Therefore the Lord now comes as sower? not looking for fruit, but doing that which will produce it.

He then goes on to describe the character and effect of the sowing, and the disciples ask the meaning of the parable (v. 9-15). Israel, as such, had forfeited its place, and therefore was "a people of no understanding" (Isa. 27: 11). Long patience had waited on Israel. Seven hundred years had passed since the word was given to Isaiah, "Go tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not." As individuals they might be drawn round the person of the Lord, but as a nation they were blinded. The disciples had an explanation of the parable, but as a nation the Lord speaks to them in parables (see v. 10), thus fulfilling to the nation the very words spoken by the prophet so long before. Now the testimony is closed as to Israel, though not as to God's final purpose respecting them.

80 The seed is sown indiscriminately, and although man rejects it, because his will is opposed, nevertheless it is sown in his heart; for this parable shews how the word of God is perfectly adapted to the need of man, meeting his conscience and heart. "Never man spake like this man." Christ's word came with a power that reached the heart and affections; the will is corrupt and therefore resists it. It is not abstract grace here, but the condition of man that is recognised; therefore we find the word so perfectly suited to the need, not claiming righteousness from man, but coming in with power to shew him that he is a sinner, and laying open the thoughts and intents of the heart. When the heart is thus detected, the word comes, with all gentleness and comfort, for healing and rest, because there is grace to meet a soul in whatever state it may be found. The heart is spoken to, and therefore the gospel leaves man without excuse.

Some too received the word with joy (v. 13). This was a proof that the conscience was untouched; for when that is reached it is anything but joy, until forgiveness is known. The feelings may be moved for a time, and the word be listened to with a joy which will give place to sorrow. The reason truth is thus flippantly taken up with joy is because there is no root, and so it is received in joy, and given up in trouble.

Another class is where thorns spring up and choke the word. The understanding may be convinced and receive the truth; but the cares, pleasures, and riches of this world come in and choke the word. Now these "cares" are most subtle things, because they enter as necessary duties, and there is no sin in doing one's duty. Nay, it is right that a man should do his duty in his daily calling. But if these duties choke the word, and a man loses his soul through it, what then? The natural tendency of the heart often needs to be met with that word, "Take heed and beware of covetousness" (chap. 12). It is the love of possession. One came to the Lord, saying, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." The heart wanted to keep it. If love of the world or covetousness gets in amongst the saints, it is an insidious thing and most difficult to meet, because it is often not open to discipline; and yet, if covetousness slips into the heart, it checks the power of Christ over the soul and conscience, and eats out the practical life of the Christian, and his soul is withered, withered, withered. It may be checked by the - power of God coming in; but this covetous care about earthy things is so subtle that, while there is nothing on which to lay the hand, the practical power of Christian life in the soul is gone, though of course, I need hardly say, eternal life can never be lost in those who once had it.

81 "That on the good ground are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience." They may seem to the world to be fruits bright and blessed, but if people have not got Christ they tire. There will be no enduring, unless Christ has possession of the soul; but if He has, there will be an abiding motive, and people will go on, and "bring forth fruit with patience." They that hear and keep it go steadily on, having their motive for action in the Lord. Trouble may come in, in the church; disappointment may arise, even from brethren; but they go on just the same, because they have got Christ before them: for the word they have heard and keep connects them with Christ, and He is more than anything else.

This is a question, not of eternal salvation, but of the practical effect of the word as seen in this world (v. 16-18) - the growth of the word in the soul, and that will not be hidden under a bushel. "Ye are the light of the world" and "the salt of the earth." In those who only appear to be Christians it soon comes to nothing. "Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." But those in whom the word works effectually are to be as a "candle" set on a candlestick. Israel being set aside for a season, God sets up a new light in the world; a light lit up by God because of the world's darkness. When Christ was here He was the light of the world, because of its darkness, and now we should be a light in the world, as we are "light in the Lord." The light is here set up by Christ's word, and people are responsible for the word received. Suppose you have heard the word and bring forth no fruit, it will all come out, by-and-by, that you have heard the word and lost it, and the spiritual power accompanying it. For, even if you are saints, all that you have heard without fruit or power resulting there from, it will come out; for nothing is hid that shall not be known or come abroad. "Take heed how ye hear."

82 Christ is looking for the results of His sowing. There must be not only the hearing, but the possessing, and in this rests the responsibility; for if you keep the word which you have heard, more shall be given you. If, on hearing, I possess that which I hear, not merely have joy in receiving it, but possess it as my own, then it becomes a part of the substance of my soul, and I shall get more; for when the truth has become a substance in my soul, there is a capacity for receiving more. Suppose, for example, you hear the truth of the Lord's second coming and see your portion in the bride of Christ, and you do not lay hold of it practically, so as to possess it (have communion with God about it, which is possession); you will presently lose the expectation of His coming and forget your place of separation from the world, and the truth will gradually slip away, because you are not holding it in your soul before God. Consequently your soul becomes dead and dull, and you lose the very truth you have received.

Thus, if one lives daily as waiting for the Lord from heaven, there will be no planning for the future, no laying up for the morrow; such a man will learn more and more, as other truths will open round this one grand central one, and he will be kept in the truth. If, on the other hand, he drops this centre truth by saying, "He cannot come yet; so many things must happen first," then is the progress of such an one's communion with God hindered, for, as we have said, it is according to what a man has heard and holds with God that there can be any growth; for what is the use of teaching me that the Lord may come to-morrow, if I am going on living as though He were not coming for a hundred years? Or where is the comfort and blessedness of the truth to my soul, if I am saying in my heart, "My Lord delayeth his coming?" Though I cannot lose my eternal life, yet if I am losing the truth and light I have had, I shall be merely floating on in the current of life, half world and half Christ, and all power of Christian life will be dimmed in my soul. If the truth is held in communion with God, it separates to Himself. Truth is to produce fruit, and you have no truth that does not bear fruit. Truth must build up the soul. "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." Christ becomes precious in and by the truth that I learn; and if it has not that power, it all drops out, comes to nothing, and is taken away. If Christ is precious to me, I shall be waiting for Him with affection, and if it is not so, the bare truth will soon be given up.

83 Verses 19-21. Here He closes up His connection with Israel after the flesh, for the relations of mother and brethren put Him into connection with Israel after the flesh. Observe, He here distinguishes the remnant by the word "these," as He did in chapter 6 by the word "ye." His mother and His brethren came to Him on the ground of natural relationship only; and there was all natural affection in the Lord, as on the cross we find Him remembering His mother, and commending her to the care of John. But He replies here, as much as to say, "I am not on that ground now - my mother and my brethren are these, which hear the word of God and do it." Israel was now given up as to that position, the Lord owning and acknowledging only those to be His relations on whose hearts and consciences the word of God had taken effect. It was not what was found in nature, but what was produced by grace, and, being thus produced by power through the word, the principle is hereby established, that it might go out to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews, although not fully brought out until after His resurrection. In these three verses we have a judicial sentence on Israel, which closes in verse 21.

In verses 22-26 it is a parabolical display of what we may expect if we follow the Lord, and the opening out of what the Lord would be to those tried by such circumstances. The consequence of being the disciples and companions of Jesus is that they get into jeopardy every hour - they are not on terra firma, but are tossed about on the troubled sea, and Christ Himself absent ("asleep"). There came down a storm of wind on the lake, the ship was filled with water, and they filled with fear were in jeopardy. But the fact was, Christ was in the same boat with them. He who made the worlds, the Son of God, was with them, and yet they are afraid! and cry out, "we perish"; as though He could be drowned, thus shewing they had no sense of who He was that was with them in the boat. To us, now calmly reading the circumstances, what absurdity there seems in such unbelief; when alas! is it not just the same with ourselves, spiritually? Have we no sense of jeopardy, when tossed about, and trouble is in the church? In truth we have, for there is many a heart saying, "Who will shew us any good?" forgetting what God is acting and doing, though man is battling to all appearance against God's purposes; but God is not baffled, and He is calmly carrying on His purposes, through all the storms of men's or devils' raising. In John 16 we find the disciples sorrowing because Jesus was going away; and the Lord had said to them (chap. 14), "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father." In chapter 16 Jesus says, "Now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? but because I have said these things, sorrow hath filled your hearts." God was accomplishing His blessed purposes in redemption by Christ's going. You forget that God is acting in all this, for you cannot suppose that God is so baffled as to give up His purpose. The disciples thought, when Jesus was crucified, that all their hopes were disappointed; they say, "we thought it had been he that should have redeemed Israel." In fact, in that very act and at that very moment, all was being accomplished for them. Where is the Lord going? should have been their question. It is not now that there seems no jeopardy, no confusion, no sorrow; but faith looks at and through it all to God, and asks, What is the Lord doing? Where is the Lord going?

84 In and through all the trouble the Lord has not turned a hair's-breadth out of His way. We may be in distress, but faith will not say the Lord is far away, but will know Him nigh at hand. The Lord let them be in jeopardy, the ship filled with water, and Himself asleep, on purpose to put their faith to the test, to prove if they were really trusting Him; and that it might be seen if such foolish thoughts would arise, when they were put into jeopardy. They say, "Lord, we perish"; but they were in the ship with Christ, and could they be drowned? He said to them, Where is your faith? Well might He say thus to them, for though the water was in the boat, He was there too, and could sleep through it all. It was not so much of Him they were thinking as of themselves. "We perish" (said they), and it is just the same now; for the fact of being in danger with Christ in the boat is the same at one time as at another - just as impossible now as then; and in truth Christ is much more with us now, being more perfectly revealed to us, and we are united to Him, one with Him, so that He is with us every moment in the power of the Spirit.

85 However high the waves may rise, there is no drowning His love and thoughts towards us. The test is to our faith. The question is, Have we that faith which so realises Christ's presence as to keep us as calm and composed in the rough sea as the smooth? It was not really a question of the rough or the smooth sea, when Peter was sinking in the water, for he would have sunk without Christ, just as much in the smooth as in the rough sea. The fact was, the eye was off Jesus on the wave, and that made him sink. If we go on with Christ, we shall get into all kinds of difficulty, many a boisterous sea; but being one with Him, His safety is ours. The eye should be off events, although they be ever so solemn, and surely they are so at this present time, and I feel them to be so; for none perhaps has a deeper sense than I of the growth of evil, and of the solemn state of things; but I know all is as settled and secure as if the whole world were favourable. I quite dread the way many dear saints are looking at events, and not looking at Christ and for Christ. The Lord Himself is the security of His people, and, let the world go on as it may, no events can touch Christ. We are safe on the sea if only we have the eye off the waves, with the heart concentrated on Christ and on the interests of Christ. Then the devil himself cannot touch us.

Verse 26. We have a solemn picture of the consequence of Christ's rejection by the world! Christ comes and finds them utterly under the power of the devil. A man of the Gadarenes was possessed, but He delivers him, thus shewing that the Lord had complete power over the enemy. With a word from Christ the demons were off. "The Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil." What was the effect of His thus casting out Satan? Why, the whole multitude of the country round about "besought him [Christ] to depart from them." These Gadarenes, who had borne with the demons because they could not help it, will not bear with Christ, and they beg Him to depart! Man would be glad to bind Legion if he could, for he does not like the effects of the devil's power; but man's will is against Christ; he has a deliberate determined hatred to Christ. The Lord came to the world full of love and power, to deliver from the consequences of sin; but man rejected Him, cast Him out; and God will not stay where the will is determined against Him. When the Gadarenes request Christ to depart, He immediately went up into a ship and returned back again. And mark, the world in which we live is just going on as having quietly rejected Christ. But does God give them up, though Christ is gone away for a season? No, He did not give them up, but sent amongst them this man, whom He had healed, to tell them what great things God had done for him. This is what the disciples did in the world, and the delivered remnant also are to tell the world what great things God has done for them.

86 The swine appear to represent the state of the Jews after their rejection of Christ. The Lord, doubtless, permitted the demons to enter the swine (as the swine having no passions of their own, it was their being possessed with these demons which made them run violently to destruction), shewing it was not merely the evil passions in the men, but their being possessed by wicked spirits, which hurried them on to destruction. And we know historically, from Josephus and others, that one can hardly conceive the infatuation with which the Jews rushed on to their own destruction, when those Gentile powers went and ploughed up the holy city. This is just a consequence of Israel's rejecting the Lord.

Then the Lord gives us two other pictures, through the medium of real events, of His dealings in deliverance. In verse 41 we have Jairus' daughter, who lay a-dying; and here is a picture (dispensationally) of Israel. The Lord was going to heal Israel, who was just like one dying, but while in the way the people throng Him. What He came to do He did, for the world crowded Him while on the way to heal the sick "daughter of my people"; whosoever could touch Him by faith got healing, the activities of grace going forth from Him.

Jairus' daughter "lay a-dying." Man was not pronounced to be dead until Christ was killed. Before Christ came, there was no healing for man. Abraham longed for the day of Christ. There were prophets who spoke of Christ as a healer, blessing was promised, but there was no physician. "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" There was none; for no physician could be found to heal man's condition until Christ came, and Him they put to death. In Him there was living power, for when the people thronged Him, a woman does but touch the border of His garment, and virtue goes out of Him to heal her. Healing depended not on the condition of those who were healed, but in the power of the healer. Physicians might apply remedy after remedy, but it is of no avail, until One came who could impart life; then the case was changed.

87 When the multitude press upon Him, and He recognises the touch of one to have been the touch of faith, He says, "somebody has touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." And now, before the Lord comes forth in resurrection power and glory, to bring life from the dead in Israel, there is perfect healing where there is faith; for the Lord is always alive to the exercise of faith. The woman hid herself, for there was shame in her, because of the consciousness she felt of the disease which had needed to be healed. "But she could not be hid." The heart always shrinks from opening itself, when within itself; but when it looks at Christ, it is opened to Him; for that is always the effect of being in the presence of Jesus. Shame, reputation, character, all give way before the sense of what He is. When grace gets to the bottom of the heart, all else is easily set aside. A link was formed between this woman's soul and Christ. "Thy faith hath made thee whole: go in peace." He brings perfect peace and comfort into her heart, for His way is not only to heal, but to make Himself known. She is not only to be cured, but to have the assurance of peace from His own mouth.

Meanwhile they come, saying that Jairus' daughter was dead; "Trouble not the master." They thought He might possibly heal her, while she was living; but now she is dead, they supposed He could do nothing. This is a picture of Israel, who are dead before God (as are Gentiles too, of course). But Jesus encourages them, and says, "Only believe and she shall be made whole." When He came to the house, He suffered no man to go in, save Peter and James and John (the pillars of the future glory, when He will come forth as the resurrection and the life to the dead nation), and the father and the mother of the maiden.

In this chapter we get a picture of what was then doing, and what will come to pass. We have the seed, the word sown, and the effect of it, the use man made of it. We have God's explanation of all that was going on, as being all known and settled in His mind; and if a storm arise, and if Christ appear asleep and insensible to the danger - though "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep" - as disciples we are in the same boat with Him. The Lord gives us to rest on that with undivided undistracted hearts: for Christ is in the boat, as well as the water. Only let the eye of faith rest on Christ, then come what may, we shall say, "Who shall separate us," etc. - nay, in all, "more than conquerors." Then the more the trouble, the more the blessing, because of the exercise of faith.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25011E> 88

Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 9.

After the Lord had given a picture, as it were, of all that was going on in chapter 8, He raises the question in chapter 9 as to who He was, and He tells His disciples some should see His glory; for the mount of transfiguration shews what the glory of the kingdom would be. Peter speaks of the power and coming, "when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory . . . when we were with him in the holy mount." But it is a closing testimony at that time, though the glory would come; and as a signal that it was, the disciples were to shake off the dust from their feet, when they were not received. It is interesting to mark all the circumstances which bring out the fact of its being the Lord Himself there, and a test to Israel. He worked miracles, and could confer on others the power, as we have seen. Now we find another thing - He is committing the power to several together, giving to those men, a number of them together, power and authority over the demons, and not only entrusting it to whom He pleases individually.

Three things we have noticed in connection with the testimony of the Son of man; I, the testimony of God to Him; 2, the misery of man set aside by Him; and 3, demons cast out, so proving that it was really the Lord visiting this world in grace and power. There will be the display of power by-and-by; but He was bringing in, in His own person, the manifestation of that which will be then full and perfect, so being an earnest of the powers of the world to come, alluded to in Hebrews. This was not redemption, but the exercise of power in dealing with the enmity of man against Himself, and they would not have Him in this way.

Verse 3, etc. He is sending out His disciples, and in so doing He disposes of all their circumstances. While He was with them, He supplied them with everything - they lacked nothing. The power of the Lord was there to take care of them, wherever they were. Afterwards, when He was going to leave them, He tells them to take a sword. They would have to shift for themselves, as it were: but while He was with them He was their shelter, etc. As in the demand for the ass to ride into Jerusalem, He proves His authority royal and divine altogether - "the Lord hath need of him." The disciples depart, preaching the gospel, and healing everywhere. Then comes the question of who He was: He would have the conscience awakened about Him. There are two things in man brought out by the question - curiosity is excited on the one hand, and perplexity and dismay on the other. Verses 7-9. He goes on, and wherever there is an ear to hear, He ministers to them according to the grace of the kingdom.

89 Verses 11,12. The disciples ask Him to send the multitude away. Let them go and get lodging. No, says the Lord, "give ye them to eat." He does not now say He would feed them, but He is committing to others the same power as He had Himself, and He would exercise their faith in what He could do by them. This applies to the church now. Faith uses the power that is in the Head. "Give ye them to eat." What He expected was for faith to exercise His divine power, that which they saw in Him. We should be so reckoning on the power in the Head. The Lord was trying their faith in Him, "Give ye them to eat." But no; they had no faith; they began to reckon on their resources - "We have no more but five loaves and two fishes." So it is with us. No faith! Memory is not faith. "He smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? "He gave us water, but can He give us food? We know He has done that one thing, but can He do this other thing today? We want to count on the energy of the Lord's love, and expect Him to be interested for us. When He said, "Give ye them to eat," they should have expected He would give them the power. Jehovah was amongst them, exercising His own power; but we see in their answer the horrid principle of unbelief. Unbelief shuts out God, and limits itself to what it sees - "except we go and buy meat," etc. "He made them all sit down by fifties in a company. And they did eat and were filled." It was said in Psalm 132, "I will satisfy her poor with bread," and here He was doing it. This was said of their King, and He had chosen Zion; He had desired it for His habitation. He was here giving a sign that He was the One to accomplish this blessing, for He was feeding their poor with bread. He was not only sending out the power through His disciples, but Himself among them; not only as a man, a messenger, but as it is said in Hebrews, "the word began to be spoken by the Lord." He was the Apostle. There were others sent afterwards, but He Himself was there first as their Apostle. It is a solemn thing to think that the Lord has really visited this world! He has come and presented Himself first to His people Israel, but they would not have Him. It shews us what the world is we are in. God is now dealing with it in grace, though His Son has been rejected. "Twelve baskets of fragments." Just observe, in passing, that the number twelve is significant of power exercised in the way of government - twelve apostles, twelve gates to the city in Revelation.

90 Hitherto we have been looking at Christ presenting Himself among the people as Jehovah, the Messiah; we now see Him as the dependent man praying. He was Immanuel, God with us; Son of David; Son of man. He was to be all. Then the question is started among the disciples, who He was. Some said one thing, and some another; but Peter said, "the Christ of God." Upon this, He charges them to tell no man that thing. There was faith, however feeble, dictating this answer, and therefore there is no thinking about it. With perfect certainty, Peter says, "The Christ of God." So it always is with faith. When the Spirit of God brings home the truth with power, there is no uncertainty about it. A man may not doubt whether Christ is the Son of God, or not; but the mind may work upon it, and think perhaps, I do not love Him enough to be saved? then there is uncertainty. But when the Spirit, with power, shews whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him; then I believe it, and I see that my sins and my iniquities He will "remember no more." It may set a man thinking about the consequences of a truth.

Verse 22. He now passes by the thing that has been already brought out, and He presents Himself to them as the Son of man, and He is going to suffer - to be crucified. They must therefore be content to take up their cross. A new thing was coming in; He was going to be rejected, and to be slain, and the third day rise again. It is no longer Messianic ground, but in another sphere altogether beyond this their hopes must lie. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily." "Daily" - this is the trial. A man might heroically do it once for all, and he would have plenty of people to honour him, and have books written about him; but it is terribly difficult to go on every day denying oneself, and no one knowing anything about it. It came to this that, if you spare the flesh in this life, you will lose your life in the next; and what if a man gain the whole world and lose his own soul; what should a man give in exchange for his soul? It is not a question of bringing life down to the flesh; but if you lose your life here, you will get it elsewhere-above and beyond this world: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it." It is giving up the world for eternal life, or for eternal misery, that is the real question. "What is a man advantaged?" You must give it up; you cannot keep it.

91 There is the glory of the kingdom; there is the manifestation of glory coming. Those tastes and dispositions which are attracted by Jesus cannot find their portion here. "They declare plainly that they seek a country; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God," etc. "Whosoever shall be ashamed of me," etc., "of him shall the Son of man be ashamed," when He comes in the display of His own glory. (See Dan. 7: 13.) One like to the Son of man came to the Ancient of days, etc., and there was given Him dominion, etc. Then He comes too in the glory of the Son of God - His Father's glory, and in the glory of the angels. The angels are waiting upon Him who created them, for they were created for Him as well as by Him, and thus give glory to Him as Son of man; giving Him His proper glory, for He has not lost a tittle of His glory; "Thou hast set him over the works of thy hands." "Let all the angels of God worship him." There was the same thing at Sinai. "The law was ordained by angels." "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels" (Psalm 68).

We are now finding the displayed glory in this triple character spoken of (v. 26?. It is that glory when He appears; and it is a question of His being ashamed of those who have been ashamed of Him; they could not deny themselves present advantage. I do not here allude to the Father's house, which of course has another character. Here it is the kingdom manifested in its glory to the earth.

92 Verse 28. "He went . . . to pray." This is not mentioned in the other Gospels. He was going to shew His disciples His glory, to give the declaration of His power and coming. From the other Gospels we find that, a week after this, He went up to Jerusalem where He was to be crucified. "The fashion of his countenance was changed." An entire change of things is here. He talks of His decease, which He should accomplish at Jerusalem, where He ought to have been crowned; but there He is going to be crucified. There, where this horn of David was to bud, shall this root of David be taken, and by wicked hands be crucified and slain. This is the deep centre of all the change.

"There talked two men with him, Moses and Elias." This we may look at in two ways; dispensationally, as representing the law and the prophets; and in this way Moses held a very peculiar place, for it was through Him the law was given; Elijah had nearly as important a place also, for though the Jews were in a right position, they had failed in it, and he goes back to Horeb. The other prophets were never called to work miracles. Except the account of the dial of Ahaz, we hear of no miracle in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Habakkuk, etc. Those prophets, sent of God, gave proof that He was caring for Israel; but there was nothing like the calling back in Elijah, who stood as the maintainer of the law, when the people had departed from it most grossly, though all the prophets, even to Malachi, called back to law.

Moses and Elias were taken away, and Jesus is left alone. Law was gone, prophecy gone, and Christ is alone, and He was going to be crucified. All the fabric built up by law and prophets (not the testimony given by them, but law as given to man in the flesh) is broken up, because man ended by killing the Lord come in the flesh; therefore all is gone. Peter would have had the three established together, taken all alike, "Let us build three tabernacles," etc. But that moment Moses and Elias disappear, and the voice is heard, "This is my beloved Son, hear him." It is now the righteousness of God, without law, in Jesus. Law did not send Christ. What law could have been put upon God to do it? Nothing but divine love could have originated such a thought. "Grace reigns through righteousness." The law was good and perfect, but Christ was far beyond the law. Moses and Elias, therefore, were not to have any place with Him. God the Father put them aside, when Peter wishes to put them in connection. They disappear immediately. This is the important thing for us. Every word of law and prophets is the truth of God, but these were until John. Now the Son of God is the messenger of the Father's love, and the accomplisher of divine righteousness. When He is there, the voice says, "This is my beloved Son: hear him" - and He is left alone.

93 Mark, too, that they were occupied with His death, while talking with Him. One thing occupies the minds of heaven and earth. He was going to be crucified where He ought to have been King. Under such circumstances, there was nothing for heaven or earth to talk about but His death. And so for us, the great thing to talk about Messiah is, that He died. Though He could destroy all the evil that had come in, He must die - in grace of course. It must all end in death, because the carnal mind is not only under Satan's power, but enmity against God; therefore heaven has to speak.

Zion, the very place He had chosen, where He had been and is to be - the special place of God's favour, is to be the scene of His death. There they cast Him out of the world He came to save. The One in whom all human and divine righteousness and perfections were centred must die there. All man's nature, under the most advantageous circumstances: all man's wickedness, spite of the public and patient and varied ways of God in government, are brought out here.

Moses could deal with man as man; and bring water from the rock for them, in answer to their murmurings; the prophet the same, "Plead with me," "Put me in remembrance, let us plead together." But now, all this was gone. God had cultivated the vineyard - done all that could be done for it. There was yet one thing; His Son - the best of all. Him He sent, and they cast Him out and slew Him. And now the testimony concerning man is, that he has "killed the Prince of life," and "denied the Holy One and the Just." We never can have peace then, till we get pardon through Christ on the cross. Then we see a true picture of heaven: but all the intermediate dealings of testimony are entirely short of what we have in Christ on the cross, because short of the ground of what man actually is, which fully came out only when he "killed the Prince of life."

When the Lord's Messiahship was given up, we have seen He takes the place of translation from earth to heaven. He, being rejected, was no longer to be looked upon as the Head of Israel down here, but as the heavenly Christ; for He takes His place on high, when cast out by man, and this fact was to give a character to the path of those who follow Him. The two things go together - rejection on earth and a heavenly place. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me," v. 23. The Lord shews them that this heavenly calling involves the cross down here, as it was with Christ Himself. The peculiar place given Him in heaven was, in God's counsels, dependent on the cross which He bore as the Man. "He humbled himself and became obedient unto death," etc.; "wherefore God hath highly exalted him," etc. It was through the cross that He went there: and, if we are to have a place in heaven, we must have it too. The cross was for the destruction of sin and for the destruction of self, in which sin dwells. We have the same place; therefore He says, "Let these sayings sink deep into your ears, for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men."

94 We want the heavenly calling to give power to take up the cross; and it is at the same time in proportion as we are dead to things down here, that the heavenly things are realised. When the blood was taken within the veil, the sacrifice was taken without the gate: so we are to go "without the camp, bearing his reproach"; and if we apprehend the value of the blood, and go within the veil, we get to the place of being where the burning outside the camp was; for while we are in spirit where His blood has been carried in, our bodies are where His body was burned. Judaism only put men between the two: for they did not go in within the veil, His blood not having been shed; and they never went without the camp; v. 18-22. He is going to take another place, and they are to follow Him in it; and then, in order to strengthen them for it, He shews them what the heavenly place was. "He took Peter, and James, and John, and went up into a mountain to pray," etc.; v. 28. The heavenly part of the kingdom is here represented by Christ, Moses, and Elias - the earthly part by the disciples (and there is one part in which the church on earth is alluded to as down here). Peter speaks of this scene as the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, etc. Christ Himself, in the position of the dependent man (praying), takes them up into a mountain. "Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep"; asleep in the presence of the glory, just as in Gethsemane, shewing what human nature is. There is no power in it, in suffering or glory, to fix the attention on Christ and His interest.

95 Moses and Elias were in the same glory (v. 30-32), and we are made the associates of Christ in the same glory (the glory of the kingdom in its broad character), not of course, the essential glory. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," even of God's Son in glory. "We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory." The portion is not to be under Christ, but with Christ. "We shall appear with him in glory" - with Him in the same glory. We look for the Lord from heaven, "who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned," etc. We shall be with Him and like Him, and this we shall all alike share, though there will be different degrees of glory for one and another: for example, Paul's measure will not be mine. What we speak of now is all the same glory, and we are predestinated "to be conformed to the image of his Son." "The glory thou hast given me I have given them."

The next thing that we see is the perfect familiarity in this glory. They are talking with Him - not presenting a petition - not at His feet (though this is our blessed place too); but this part of the scene represents communion, familiarity of intercourse, the same as that of the disciples on earth, though better of course. On the holy mount they had a higher understanding about it, but it was the same subject occupied them. This shews us the kind of intercourse we have with Jesus now, for we belong to the heavenly part of the kingdom.

A third point to mark is the subject they talked of. This is quite a new thing, for He ought to have been a king. But man was a sinner, and there was the determinate counsel of God to be fulfilled - redemption. Jerusalem was the place of royalty, and His decease was to be accomplished there, where He ought to have been acknowledged king. There was full intimacy on the theme which occupied His heart, for they talked on this, His decease. Then He told His disciples afterwards the consequences of it to them. They must deny themselves. "Let these sayings sink down into your ears. The great subject on God's heart should be that for us.

96 Another thing is, it is the glory which enables us to talk on this subject. We cannot talk of it until we have peace with God through the knowledge of forgiven sin. When a man has not this, he has to come in his need and get it: but when he is in it, he can contemplate and enjoy it. Besides this, God saw all that was passing in Christ's soul as to obedience unto death, etc. We shall never cease having interest in this subject: when with the Father in the glory, it will be the absorbing theme. He said Himself, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life." How much more shall we not love Him for the same cause? Think what it must have been to be occupied with Christ about His decease! What His knowledge was, of what He was going to do! He knew what man was, what the counsel of God was. He came to "reconcile all things to himself." It was so effectually done that the eye of God could only see the effect of that blood in what was washed away. The rejected Christ a Saviour! and this the subject of intercourse with Christ Himself! "They spake of his decease." Peter says, "Master, it is good for us to be here," etc. Then immediately there was a voice from the cloud: "This is my beloved Son; hear him." The effect on Peter's mind is a wish to put Moses and Elias on a level with Christ.

We have spoken of this, viewing it dispensationally, law and prophecy mixed with Him; but there is another thing to be noticed in it; namely, that which characterised the Son was peculiar. Nothing could be put on a level with Him. There necessarily comes out, therefore, the Father's testimony to the Son. "This is my beloved Son," etc. When a saint knows Jesus, though he also knows he will be like Him hereafter, and that all the saints will be like Him too, yet Christ has the supremacy in his heart. He is single and alone in blessedness, having supremacy in the heart, as well as being the object of faith. I delight in the saints, but Christ is the alone object of faith. Then I get into this fellowship with the Father. I have the Father's thoughts about the Son, as well as the Son's thoughts about the work. I have fellowship with the Father and the Son. We cannot have communion with the Father about redemption work because He has not been made a man. Notice, the Father does not say, This is the Son whom you ought to adore and admire, but He tells us His own thoughts about Him. "This is my beloved Son." Wherefore "beloved!" "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life"; thus I know that I have one thought with the Father, in delighting in the Son and in His death. The Father communicates His own thoughts about the Son, and by the power of the Holy Ghost they are put into my heart, and I have fellowship; and as a consequence I know that he that hath everlasting life shall never come into judgment.

97 Mark, further, how they came into the excellent glory. There came a cloud and overshadowed them. The cloud is the Shechinah, the dwelling-place of God, which the people had to guide them through the wilderness, and they were to stay or move according to it. It was the divine presence, and "they feared as they entered into the cloud." They were not protected by the cloud, as Israel were, and as they will be by-and-by. "Upon all the glory shall be a defence"; but here they enter into the cloud. The fact was, coming into the cloud was coming into the presence of the Father now, a dwelling-place for us. It was thence the Father's voice was heard. "This is my beloved Son," etc. Thence they were told who this Son was. He had been with them as one of them. He was the Father's beloved Son, in a place worthy of adoration, but the companion of their hearts. He brought them to the Father, the only place into which redemption brings us (as to our relationship). Until a man knows redemption and is brought into His presence, he can never know the Father's love: but when there, he can never know the end of it. It is the kind of love the prodigal never knew till he was in his father's arms. He had doubts and fears as he went on, and thoughts about the hired servants, but none when he was in his father's house. It is known only by the teaching of the Holy Ghost in us - in the cloud - God in us. It is in the presence of the glory, realised by faith now, we know the power of redemption; and by its brightness and its truth, it blots out all other relationship.

Notice who are learning this glory. Saints walking on the earth - Peter, James, and John; and so with us. The truths written in this book are not for us to know in heaven. Is the Father's love not to be known till we are in heaven? Is redemption only to be known there? Was God less intimate with those on earth than with those in heaven? Not at all. It was to Peter, James, and John this was communicated, not to Moses and Elias. The Father's voice was to men on earth. We learn the rejection of man here and the grace which has brought us to share in the glory.

98 In what follows we find the Lord coming down into the crowd of this world, not remaining on the mount. We may listen and enjoy, but we have to come down and pass through this world. The Lord comes down and meets three things - a throng of men, Satan's power, and the disciples' unbelief. There was no seclusion here for Him, but He comes to a crowd. What a picture of distress this is! The son of one, possessed with a devil (v. 39); and the father's heart racked more than the son's body. The world will weep till they are tired of weeping, and then go on with the same-thing again.

We have seen before how the Lord was come in the display of His power and bound the strong man. The disciples could not do it. The power of Satan remains the same unto this day. He is not literally cast out, but remains the "prince of this world," the character he has gained, not lost, by Christianity. He will be bound; his power will be overthrown as a fact, and not to faith only. The question was to be settled about Satan's right, and what did the Lord say of him?

"Now is the judgment of this world" - "Now is the prince of this world cast out." His tide is "cast out," but Christ has not yet exerted this power. Therefore in the epistles we find him spoken of as still ruling in this world. In Ephesians he is called, "the prince of the power of the air," "the spirit that now worketh," etc. Then we hear of the "rulers of the darkness of this world." When "the powers of the world to come" are in their full display, Satan will be cast out entirely; but these instances and more shew he was here then as he is still. "How long shall I be with you," etc.; v. 41. It was not because Satan was here that Christ said this, but because the disciples could not use the power He had brought in; and that closed the dispensation. So it will be in this. The power and goodness of God brought Christ into the world, but the incapacity of man to believe, so as to use that power, will close it. So we read in Romans 11, "Toward thee [the professing body now], goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off"; but until His grace ceases, there is refuge for us to go to Him. While He was here, the moment the father of the child sought to Him, He cast out the spirit. As long as Christ's grace is at work, if there is only one saint on the earth and everything else failed around, he would find the power of Christ ready to be exercised on his behalf. There can be no failing in meeting the need of a soul, because as there is Christ to go to, there is help in Him. However dark the dispensation may be, there is exactly the grace that is needed for the position. Not that God would have our eyes blinded to the darkness around, for if we do not take heed to the ruinous state, conscience is not in its right place. If I am ready to say, Why should He not stay? when He says, How long shall I be with you? I am insensible to the state of things around me, and I am not awake to the response that Christ's love to the church demands; but, on the other hand, if I am not able to look up and count on the grace of Christ to meet that state, however bad it may be, I am powerless.

99 Verse 43. "They were amazed at the mighty power of God." It is very humbling to see how amazed they were about this power. They did not wonder at the power of the evil. But they ought so to have counted on His power as to have been amazed if the power were not exerted. Christ brings them back to the cross. "Let these sayings sink down into your ears, for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men" (v. 44). You ought to have been able to get this power; but you must now know not only the power of Christ, but the cross of the rejected One. "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." We have more to be rejoiced at in this than if a miracle were to be performed to-morrow. It is more blessed to know the cross. It was as though He had said, "I had rather you should come now to own the rejected One than be looking for this power even." Beloved friends, you are not thinking of what God is doing at this present time, if you do not see that now it is not power on the earth, but rejection.

Verse 46. "There arose a reasoning which should be the greatest." What a tale this tells! What a selfishness runs trough and through! Even at the Lord's supper it was the same thing. In Luke we find it, where there is so much of what man is brought out.

We see then, from what we have been tracing, that we need to come down from the hill; not to be without Jesus, but to learn what man is. It is not necessary to come down from the mount, as some people say, lest we should be puffed up there; for we shall never be puffed up while on the mount. Like Peter we may be afraid, but we are never puffed up in the presence of God. It is when we quit it that we are in danger. Paul was not exalted above measure when in the third heaven; but after he came down, he needed the thorn in the flesh to prevent it.

100 Besides, there is an historical necessity for us to get through this world. But Jesus was as much with His disciples when they came down as while they were on the mount, and that is our comfort. Do not let us suppose we have lost Christ. We have to serve Him, walk with Him, learn from Him, and mark His patient grace towards us in and through all circumstances. The Lord give us to know, while passing through this world, what a Christ we have, taking our hearts clean out of the defiling circumstances around, so that, whether we get a taste of the glory, or are passing through the crowd of this world, He may be everything to us, as He is everything for us.

Verse 46, etc. The Lord is now shewing His disciples the place they are to take upon earth. They are not to be in a position connected with Him as Messiah in earthly glory - heavenly glory they could not have till the end. In the meantime they have to take their place with Him in rejection, and this put them to the test, for they were to give up things right enough in themselves, for example, to hate father, mother, wife, etc., all which earthly relationships had a claim upon them, and especially so upon the Jew. "Honour thy father and mother," etc. But all these relationships would not stand in association with the cross. Everything must be sacrificed, everything that linked man with the earth must be snapped asunder to faith, when Christ was rejected.

The character of the world was fully manifested in His rejection: its deeds were evil and it rejected the light. The incarnation, which should have been the link to man's blessing, is rejected. He accomplishes redemption by His rejection on earth, and He has a place in heaven. This alters the character of everything. It brings in the judging of self. There never would have been this if Christ had been crowned on earth. He was "delivered into the hands of men," etc. He whose very name carried power and authority is to be delivered up. If Christ had had His place on earth, the heart of man would never have been put to the test. Why? Because, if men had seen all the dignity and glory displayed on earth which was His right, it would have gratified their flesh with its greatness. But flesh cannot inherit heaven, and what place has it on the cross? There they go together so blessedly - the cross and heaven; and for the flesh there is no place in either. There was a terrible breach between man and God, and the One who would have healed it they crucified. Then every carnal thought that was in accordance with such an act must be judged.

101 The disciples were disputing who should be the greatest - not the greatest in the world, but the greatest in the glory. It is self after all. They have not to tell Him much, but their thoughts are judged. When in the light, everything is judged. Jacob had the word from God to go to Bethel (Gen. 35), and he immediately says to his household, "Put away the strange gods that are among you." And why so? Everything is detected when getting into the presence of God. Jacob could get the blessing before he went to Bethel; but when he goes into God's presence, the idols are judged. When he has got rid of the idols, it is "El-bethel," the God of Bethel. The disciples were reasoning which should be the greatest, and when He detected their thoughts He "took a child and set him by him," etc. This shews us our place: we ought to seek the lowest place. We never can have it, because Christ has taken it. He went down under sin, wrath, death. He took the lowest place, because the servant of all. This is the truly happy place for us, but how it judges self! This is what the cross does. Not only are the idols judged, but self is judged.

It is a blessed thing to have done with self. When there is room for God, we can be full of joy and happiness. We are not humble, even when we are occupied with our own nothingness, or how bad we are; but we are humble when we do not think of ourselves at all. When we have to learn our nothingness and badness, that is being humbled. If we get away from the Lord, we have to be brought back, and that is a humbling process. We want to judge the flesh in ourselves. It is pretty easy to judge it in another, but it is in ourselves we miss it (v. 50). Things are brought to a crisis. "He that is not against us is for us."

102 Mark how conscious the Lord was of His utter rejection by man; so utter that He said, he that is not against us is proved to be for us. Christ was perfect; therefore He was a perfect test to men's consciences; and, as far as He is manifested in us, we shall be so also. Paul could say, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." Why could he say so? Because it went out from him as pure as it went in. John said, "We forbad him, because he followeth not with us." That tells the whole tale. They were thinking of themselves, not of Christ; of their own importance, and not His honour. If it had been His importance, they would have thought how blessed it was to find the effect of His name, and rejoiced to know how His power was being exercised by man. But no; they were looking at themselves as well as at the Messiah. Even John was thus using Christ Himself to further his own importance. And is there not something in us of the same thing, a satisfaction at that which aggrandises self as well as Christ, instead of seeking the honour of Christ alone? The Lord takes him up and answers him on the ground of His utter rejection, which was coming. "He that is not against us is for us." And mark that the very selfishness of John brings out the grace of Christ. He says "us." You do not know the lot you have with Me. If you find one who can use the power of My name, rejoice in it.

Verse 51. "It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." I am going to get a portion in heaven, and you are to have the same portion, but it must be through rejection here. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily," etc. "When the time was come that he should be received up, he set his face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem." In Isaiah, "I set my face as a flint." He was accomplishing His Father's will here, as in all His course. Redemption must be accomplished through the cross. He "learned obedience by the things which he suffered." It was the same obedience as at the beginning, when He was coming amongst them with "Blessed are the poor," etc. - more painful, and of course, He felt the difference; but still He goes in the same blessed spirit and earnestness. Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, etc. He had found it His meat to do the will of Him that sent Him. There was joy to Him in this; but in the cup of wrath which He was going to drink there was no joy. He had met with scorn here, smiting there, rejection all through, but nothing like this cup, and therefore He cried, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me," etc. Christ proved His perfectness, for He felt what it was to be "made sin," etc. His holy nature shrank from it, yet there was the same quiet, steady, patient obedience, for "He stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem," as all through. He knows His Father's will and He does it. He sets His face there, where His Father's will is to be done, not looking to this side or to that, but there - Jerusalem.

103 We, according to the measure we have of the single eye, shall be following in the same course, going to the cross steadily, with one purpose: and, in proportion as we do so, will those who do not so set their face oppose us. But the Lord says, "If any man serve me, let him follow me." Service is not doing a great deal, but following the Master, and the world and half-hearted Christians do not like that. There is plenty of doing in the world, but "if any man serve me, let him follow me." Paul wanted to serve every way, but we find the Spirit forbidding him to go into Bithynia or Troas, and yet two years afterwards we read that "all Asia heard the word." God's work was to be done, but it was to be in His time and of His ordering. His servant had only to follow in obedience. It was the same with Moses. Nature would say of him, Why not stay in Pharaoh's court that the people there may be converted, instead of leaving it? Flesh cannot understand what faith leads to. Afterwards he goes out in all the earnestness of his spirit, natural energy comes in, but then there is no deliverance. Moses has to go and keep sheep, for forty years, to be broken down, and made nothing of, and what were Israel to do all that time? To wait. Then when he comes back to serve them, how is it done? There is the flesh appearing in another way. "Lord, I am not eloquent." Then Aaron is sent back with him, and the work is done in the power of God.

Verse 52. "They went and entered into a village of the Samaritans," etc. (v. 53). We see the reason why they did not receive Him was because His face was set towards Jerusalem. His obedience and singleness of eye, going to do God's will without honour or attractiveness or repute, going to Jerusalem, is the very reason they would have nothing to do with Him (v. 54). See the religious opposition of the disciples to them. The Samaritans would not submit to God's way: Christ did. That is the difference; and the disciples want to command fire to come out of heaven as Elias did, and at the very place where Elias worked the miracle. In fleshly reasoning they think Christ was as worthy as Elias to call down fire. This is a more subtle kind of self than the other. It seemed like direct zeal for Christ, but they did not understand the zeal of Christ. He was not come for judgment nor to destroy men's lives, but to suffer Himself for them. If they had known God's thoughts, they would have submitted quietly. Peter again understood not the Lord's mind when he drew his sword and smote the servant of the high priest. All the miracles of Elias were characterised by the spirit of judgment, not like Elisha who had his commission from heaven. Elijah stood in the place of judgment and righteousness, like John the Baptist who came in the spirit and power of Elias, saying, "Every tree that bringeth not forth fruit shall be hewn down," etc., and "the axe is laid to the root of the trees." Elisha had life-giving power, on the contrary, and was a type of grace. Elijah passed through Jordan (death in type), while Elisha starts from the other side of Jordan in resurrection.

104 Verse 56. He turned round and went to another village. It is not pleasant to be trodden upon in this world, but Christ was. To do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently, is what we have; and is it to end there? Yes, and that is "acceptable with God." Christ came to suffer, to bear anything for the sake of others; and He would not have been doing this, if He had called down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans. We have to follow Christ in carrying the testimony of God's love into the world in all our walk through it. The world needs it. We must not be seeking for ourselves, but have Christ the object. At the end of the chapter He goes on to shew how the links with this world are to be broken.

Verses 57, 58. One says, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest," but Christ puts him to the test. You cannot go if you do not take up your lot with One who had not where to lay His head; for you may sooner go to the birds of the air for a nest, or to the foxes for a hole, than to the Son of man for a home in this world. They were not now to come to Him as the One who had the promises, etc., but to One whose portion was utter and entire rejection. Following Him could not be accompanied with ease and comfort here. He was to be delivered into the hands of men. At His birth we see the same thing. Every one found room in the inn save He, but any who wanted to find Him whom angels celebrate must go to the manger!

105 Verse 59. He says to one, "Follow me." The first one wanted something with Christ; but here where He says, "Follow me," then immediately a difficulty is started; and it is when He calls a man that difficulties are felt. There was no sense of the difficulties of the one who said, "Lord, I will follow thee," without His call. But this man who is called says, "Let me first go and bury my father." He is going presently, but there is a link felt. Jesus says, "Let the dead bury their dead"; you must leave them to follow Me. You may be ready to say, the things of the earth have no power over you; but just try what it is to have them, and you will learn the extent of their power. A man may go to the length of his cord, but when he gets to the end he is checked. A father had the first claim in nature, and especially to a Jew, but Christ says, I am calling you out in the power of life; I am putting in My claim for the life I give you, and it breaks every bond here. It is a question of life in the midst of death. The word "first" (let me first go and bury my father) shews something put before Christ, as though the man said, There is something I put before Your calling. Death had come in, and this very plea told Christ they were all under death. It was quite a right thing for the man to bury his father; but if life has come in, and the question is one of redemption, to be lost or saved, you must give yourself up to it. In the divine light which is in the cross, He saw all dead, and therefore He said, "Let the dead bury their dead." The one thing to be done now is to follow Christ. The question is, Death in the world or life in Christ? Where are the affections?

Verse 61. "Another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house." In the previous case it was just this: When my first affections are settled, then will I come and follow Thee. There is no good in that: the Lord says, "Let the dead bury their dead." But this case shews that those at home were not left in heart. He felt he had to break with them, and yet his heart lingered. "No man looking back is fit for the kingdom of God." "Remember Lot's wife." "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." If Christ be not first and last, He will always be last, for faith is not in exercise. The question is, whether we are walking as seeing what the cross tells us. The cross lifts the veil, shewing the skeleton of the world, and when I see this sentence on all that is in the world, on self. as well as what is outside, and our links of affection with it, I learn that all is to be given up: but there is Christ Himself and the love which is in Him to meet it. It will and must judge self: and it brings out the will too, for there is a great deal of will in all this shunning of the cross. People may speak of the claims of affection, yet it is not really and only family affection, etc., but the end which connects with self is felt. Natural affection there should be - indeed it is one of the signs of the last evil days to be without it; but if you have power to judge yourselves, you will find that many an excuse you make has this secret at the end. So in affliction, bereavement, etc., it is not only the affection that is touched, but the will. There is sweetness in the sorrow, so long as we realise Christ in it, and affection only is sorrowing. But if the will is touched, there is rebellion, resistance, struggling; and all this the Lord must judge, for a mass of flesh and self can never follow Christ. What a wonderful detail all this is! It is God going through our hearts entering into every corner and crevice. Why? Because of the constant undeviating stedfastness of His love; and as a father loves his child when it is naughty, as well as when it is good, so our God takes pains, as it were, with us all, even when so bad.

106 The effect of all is not only to make us practically righteous, but happy - "imitators of God as dear children." It is well, on the one hand, for us to judge ourselves and see what there is to detect in us, and, on the other, to see the fulness of His grace in Christ.

May the Lord give us to feel more and more that "the friendship of the world is enmity with God," and that the energy of the flesh cannot accomplish the work of God, so that we may learn to work from God, for God, and with God.

Luke 10.

The Lord pursues the subject we have been looking at in the preceding chapter, connected with the change that has taken place in His own position amongst them. It is no longer the Messiah on earth, but the heavenly Christ, they are to look to. There is another thing brought out here in the amazing importance attached to that moment, the last testimony being applied to them: and those who heard it would be more the subject of judgment than Tyre and Sidon. Any among them would have repented with the truth you have, but they had it not. The blessing now was the Lord Himself being there; and He was so glorious and excellent that to hear Him was the prime source of blessing. All hung upon their reception or rejection of Him. In the sending out of these seventy, we see the same patient grace at work as when He sent out twelve. If they were not received, they were to shake off the dust from their feet, etc. God's love never stops, whatever the wickedness of man, until His work is done. His grace never fails. Christ looks at the power of grace in God, more than at the wickedness of men, and He went patiently on, and said, "the harvest is great," though knowing what there was all around Him. The Lord was not like Elijah who needed to be reminded of the seven thousand, who, as God knew, had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. He came in by the door, and went through everything with God. Nothing stopped Him from seeking out His sheep, scattered on the dark mountains. He laid down His life to save His sheep, and not one should be lost. To gather them, He went on in the power of grace. Paul was of this spirit when he says, "I endure all things for the elect's sakes."

107 Did Christ suffer nothing in it? Look at Him, weary with His journey, sitting at the well, and a poor wretched vile sinner coming to meet Him, to whom He gives the water of life. There He finds meat to eat that they know not of; and He says, "the fields are white unto harvest." He was as fresh and happy in His testimony, while sitting at the well with this poor woman, as if all Jerusalem had received Him; because the fountain was within. In Him was "a well of water, springing up," etc. So with us. If we are going on with Him, we shall be "troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; cast down, but not destroyed." The testimony is in the earthen vessel, it is true, but the fountain is within; and they were to be perfectly dependent on God, and independent of everything else. They were to expect to meet enemies, wolves. "Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves." You cannot turn a lamb into a wolf to defend itself. Peter was for taking a sword to smite off the servant's right ear. but the Lord forbids him, and says, "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." It is difficult to receive everything and do nothing, to be a lamb among wolves - like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in prospect of the fiery furnace, saying, "we are not careful, O king, to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver," etc.

108 "Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes; and salute no man by the way." Not be uncourteous, but waste not time in useless ceremonies, etc. When in God's service, and among God's enemies, God must be everything. It needs concentration of heart in Him, as knowing that the world has rejected your Master, and will reject you, if you are faithful to Him. Faith knows this, and goes on, not with carnal prudence and worldly wisdom, but as knowing what to do and going on to do it. Faith always carries peace to the house; it produces enmity - two against three, and three against two - because some will receive it, and some not; but the thing brought is always peace (v. 7-9). "The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." Not merely such and such a thing is God's will, but whatever you do, whether you receive or reject it, "the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." The condition of the world now is, that it has rejected Christ. The Son of God, the King, has come into the world, put it to the test, and it says, We will not have Him. This fact has not lost its solemnity now, for we are walking through the world that has rejected Christ; we bring the testimony of peace to it - peace that has been made, for the sacrifice has been offered. It is also true that the testimony has been rejected. "Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you" (v. 10, 11). Faith carries things in its own sphere, needing nothing but God's word. The sight of the eyes is constantly tending to dim the estimate which faith forms; and if faith is not nourished by the word, it sinks down and fades away. If I am not feeding on the word, faith is not fed, for it cannot be fed by sight of things all around. When the Lord spoke to Jerusalem, saying, Their house shall be left unto them desolate, and there should not be one stone left upon another, they could not actually see the stones then falling, but it was Christ's word for them to believe. Natural reasoning is fed by what we see, but faith is fed by what God has revealed to the soul.

109 Verse 15. "Thou, Capernaum, shalt be thrust down to hell" - in God's eye, not man's. In man's eye it might be exalted to heaven. So with this world. And what does that prove? That it may last as long as God permits, but that His word will be fulfilled," the earth and the works that are therein shall be burnt up." There is nothing stable here. When God comes in, where will it all be? though there are scoffers who say, "Where is the promise of his coming?"

Verse 16. "He that heareth you heareth me." That is where faith has its resource. In hearing the word the disciples spoke, I am hearing Christ Himself. That is where faith walks. I know it must be true, for Christ has said it. Everything may go wrong, the world, Jews, the church, etc., but God's word never. And it has been given. It never changes, for it has been given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, etc. The church, as ground of confidence in testimony, is gone (though we know it is founded upon a rock, and as to its security, it can never be destroyed), but God's word will not fail. Whatever we see tends to weaken and deface faith puts to the test what the affections of the soul are, because it is not to be what I like, but what God says.

Verses 17-20. "Rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." This shews the change of everything. Demons may be subject to you, but the Lord says, That is not the portion for you to rejoice in; I am now shewing My power in another way. This word, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven," alludes to the time when Satan the "accuser of the brethren," will be cast down. Now he is in heaven, not in God's presence, in light inaccessible, but before the throne of judgment - two different things. "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" It proves that when others came before the throne, Satan came also. Contrast verses 19 and 20. The one speaks of what can be seen, the other of what could be known only to faith. The unseen thoughts of your heart are much more important than what can be seen. The invisible is always more important than the visible.

In this world, it is not merely that man is a sinner, but there is the introduction into it of the power of evil. Satan has got hold of this world through man's sin. So in the case of the poor woman it is said, "whom Satan hath bound these eighteen years." But when the church has been caught up, Satan will be cast down. There was war in heaven; but when he is on the earth, he will for three and a half years be raising up the man of the earth against the Lord from heaven. When He comes, Satan's power will be put away. He is not put into the "lake of fire" until the close of the thousand years, but into "the bottomless pit." That is just what the demons asked to be saved from when cast out of the man whose name was Legion (chap. 8: 31); "deep" meaning "bottomless pit." The Lord did not cast them down to it, because the time was not then come.

110 This ability to cast out demons was a great thing. The communicating of the power by the Lord was a power above the immediate working of the miracles themselves. It required divine power, and none but that could give the power to others. In the millennium there will not be the power of good and evil together; the latter will. be cast out. "Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee?" etc. The pit shall be digged for the wicked. Satan must be cast out. And when Christ was upon earth, He was presenting Himself in the power of God to bind the strong man, and spoil his goods, etc. It was a wonderful thing to meet a man under the power of Satan, and to cast Satan out. It was an earnest of the "powers of the world to come"; "the world to come" referring, not to heaven, but to this earth being renewed. He was then putting forth the same power that He will exercise fully in the coming kingdom.

Verse 19. "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents," etc.; and it was at the point when He was rejected that He says this. He knew what was really going on, and though He said peace, they did not say peace to Him. "I give you power" over all the power of the enemy. "Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." That is the church's place. When Christ was manifested on earth, it was a blessed thing; but it is better to be His companion in heaven, as we shall be when He comes to take us. Far better to be with Himself and as Himself in the Father's house. We have nothing to do with earth - our names are not written in the earth - kings in it indeed, but our portion is not in it. "He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places." We shall have the inheritance with Him, but it is below us; our hope is to be with Himself above it. The inheritance is the consequence of having this place with Him (Eph. 1). We are children of the Father, to be "holy and without blame before him in love." Now we have our portion according to the riches of His grace, of poor sinners whom He has saved; and we shall be to the glory of His grace in the manifestation of it. The inheritance comes in afterwards.

111 "Rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." As though He would say to them, Do not let your minds be filled with things down here, but think of what you have in Me and with Me. We find two things brought before us in God's ways; first, the government of this world - that which is still prophetic, connected with the kingdom; and then the church up in heaven. When the inheritance is spoken of, it is always future: but when our place is spoken of, it is always up in heaven. The Lord saw that the present setting up of the kingdom would all fail, and He was bringing in a better thing than any kingdom, and He rejoiced in that; for when He gives joy to another, He cannot help having it also Himself. When the thief on the cross asked Him to remember him in His kingdom, He said, "this day shalt thou be with me," etc. He was gratifying the thief and also Himself. So with these disciples. He would have them not be rejoicing in the good down here, for it is not good enough. Not only do not be troubled with the bad, but rejoice not in the best thing in this world. "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit." "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." He felt the circumstances deeply, but His soul was up to the source, and He would say, It is quite right that these proud and haughty ones should see they are nothing, and that these poor despised lambs should get the glory. "Even so, Father." He must bow to the evil, because the time to judge it was not yet come. Evil is going on; people are saying, Where is the God of the earth? We have to bear it - the Lord did. We must get our thoughts away from the expectation of having things better down here. The soul that enters into God's thoughts and purposes bows to His will. "Even so, Father."

Then He, as it were, retires into the glory of His own person. The Son has to reveal the Father. The world rejects Him, and He submits to the rejection of the kingdom, and brings out, instead of it, the blessedness of the heavenly thing, and now speaks of Himself as the Son, and glories in that. The present result of His coming is the Son revealing the Father; and this is even better than the kingdom. The testimony is brighter as to what God is about, when I take things quietly and submit, not desiring to be a wolf among the wolves. It is exceedingly difficult for one's heart to bow and say, "I will be nothing but a lamb"; but that is our place, for the Lord says, "Vengeance is mine": "rather give place unto wrath" (Rom. 12); and "neither give place to the devil" (Eph. 4). But if you do not give place to wrath, you will give place to the devil. Shall we lose anything by being quiet, and taking things patiently? No, "all power," He says, "is given unto me in heaven and on earth." We must bow to what it is, without, and be satisfied with what is written. If not we shall be only wearing ourselves in the greatness of our way. May we be satisfied to have our "names written in heaven.

112 Verses 23, 24. "He said to them privately." These things could only be enjoyed by faith. He would have them in consciousness of present blessing.

Verse 25. Now that the Lord has shewn out the dispensational change, He shews the moral change. A lawyer comes and asks how he is to get eternal life. The Lord brings him to the law - Keep the law, and you shall live. But he is stopped directly with the simplicity of this, "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." He does not love his neighbour as himself! He asks, "Who is my neighbour? . . . This do and thou shalt live." Who does love his neighbour as himself? The good Samaritan is the one who does not ask who the neighbour is, but acts in grace, without asking what title the other had. Christ has the title of doing good to him that is in need and misery. This is grace that gives without a title.

See how thoughtful this grace and love is. He went to him - did not send some one else, but went, bound up his wounds, poured in oil and wine, set him on his own beast, brought hum to an inn, took care of him, gave him in charge to the host, and said, "When I come again, I will repay thee." How beautiful are all the details of the actings of this love which flows from what is within, and acts according to what is working there, and not according to the claims upon it!

In the closing part of chapter 10 (v. 38-42), we see the one great thing was to hear Jesus' word. Hence the approval given to Mary above Martha, who, in a certain sense, was doing a very good work. She received Him into her house and served Him; but there is something better than this: "Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." He wanted His words to enter and to have power in the heart. The only thing that endures for ever is "the word of the Lord." The wisdom of this world is against it, and so is human reasoning; but it is the only thing worth waiting upon diligently; and if Christians reason about the things of God instead of appealing to the word, they are sure to be going down. We want to have the word in our hearts, to sit at Christ's feet that we may understand and treasure it up. To hear Jesus is the "one thing" needful. No attention, even to Himself in the flesh, though it were from one who loved Him and whom He loved, could replace this. The "many things" end only in disappointment and death, instead of leading into life eternal, as did the words of Jesus, issuing from a heart broken, that it might let forth the stream of life. The hearing ear for His word delighted Him. He was bringing in truth to people's souls.

113 "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth." "Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken to you." Truth sets everything to rights; it sets God and man in their place, or it is not truth. Sin, and righteousness, and love - these never came out fully by the law; but "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Everything was set morally in perfect light by Him: but men saw it not, because they knew Him not. The word now is the instrument of revealing truth. The law was perfect because it was of God, but it did not tell what man was, much less what God was - it told what man ought to be. Christ comes in as the light and says, You are all dead, but I can give you life. His coming into the world shewed out everything exactly as it was. As the living Word He came and revealed to those who could see God - not at first in redemption, but in testimony. What value to Him was it that Martha cumbered herself about serving, in comparison to a soul listening to His word!

It is the same now to a Christian. When God's word comes with nothing else, it has a right to have power over the soul. It makes its way by its own authority and its attractive grace to the hearts, and where received it gives life in Christ. There is no living power in a miracle to quicken a soul, but there is living power in the word. It is by the word that any soul can get into heaven. We are begotten by the word. If the word cannot do it, it will never be done. There are three things constantly pressed in connection with the power of the word. 1. The words spoken will all come up against them another day (John 12: 37-41). 2. Though perilous times come (2 Tim. 3), the word is able to make wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. There is another thing also. When a soul is quickened by the word, the moral effect is to make it dependent and obedient - "sanctified to obedience." Such is the character of the new man, as the old man would be independent.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

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Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 11.

Verse 1. At the beginning of this chapter we have another instance of our Lord praying, the expression of dependence. And there the disciples ask Him to teach them to pray. They had not learnt the simple confidence in the Father that would go up naturally to Him and tell Him all. There may not always be wisdom in asking, but there should be confidence of communion by the Holy Ghost. Even Paul had not always intelligence of God's mind, or he would not have asked to have the thorn in the flesh taken away; but he was not afraid to make his request. The disciples had not this simple-hearted confidence. They understood not their place as children of the Father. He condescends to teach them when in this condition and gives them this prayer. The Lord teaches them to pray for things about which His own heart was occupied. "Father, glorify thy name," was expressive of the grand desire of His heart. "Hallowed be thy name." He first tells them of Him with whom they are brought into relationship. Not that they had the present power of the Holy Ghost, giving them the consciousness of their relationship - this they did not get till the day of Pentecost; but He teaches them to say, "Father, hallowed be thy name." There we have perfection. It is the desire for Him to be glorified, though I cannot tell what it may involve me in. There will be the desire not to sin, etc. This was the expression of the perfect desire that was in Christ Himself - "Hallowed be thy name."

"Thy kingdom come." There will be the removing of those things that are made, that, "those things which cannot be shaken may remain." Are you quite sure that you would like Him to come in this kingdom that will involve the shaking out of everything that may not remain? Surely that will wrench the heart from a quantity of things that are attaching you to that which does not belong to the kingdom to come. There may be the desire for these things, while at the same time the consciousness that I have not the sense of the object, but a sense of distance from it which hinders my enjoyment, though I know Him to be "the chiefest among ten thousand," and the "altogether lovely." There are often complaining prayers, because there is not the present enjoyment of seeing Him in the sanctuary, though the remembrance of it. We may have the hope of the Lord's coming, being glad to get to the end of this desert, because it is a desert; or we may long to get out, because Canaan is at the end. If it is not the latter, we shall be in danger of being tired with running, which is always wrong. We should be in the spirit of waiting pilgrims, not weary ones. We ought not to be weary; I do not say we are not, but we ought to be ever desiring His coming, because He is precious. In Revelation 22: 17, the bride says "come," in answer to what He is, when He says, "I am the bright and morning star." God does not reject the cry which comes to Him as "out of the depths"; but there is a difference between the cry of distress and the cry of desire.

115 When Christ was on earth, there was an answer in Him to all God's will, for He always did the things which pleased His Father. He did it as no angel ever could. Then He comes down to notice our daily need, and there is dependence, indeed, in this. "Give us day by day our daily bread."

"Forgive us our sins," etc. This chapter does not go into what we may call proper church privileges; the desires are perfect, but the place is not known. The Lord touches upon all the circumstances down here. Man is looking up from the earth, he is walking there, and needs his feet washed. There are trespasses to be forgiven, and the spirit of grace is wanted. There is no sin imputed to us now; it is all put away. But will that make me hard when others fail? No; my seeing that Christ has agonized on the cross for me, will give me a sense of my freedom, but not indifference about sin. Instead of hardness, it will give us tenderness and softness of spirit.

"Lead us not into temptation." Why should God ever lead us into temptation? it may be asked. Sometimes the Lord has need to put us through a certain process to make us learn our weakness. Look at Peter. The Lord saw he needed to be sifted, or He could have prayed for him to be saved from that fall. A soul would always desire that he may not have this sifting. Christ Himself, though it was a different thing for Him, desired to be delivered from it when bearing sin. Paul prayed for the thorn to be removed. But Paul did not get a fourth heaven - that would have made him worse, but a "thorn in the flesh"; something to make him despicable in preaching (otherwise people might have come to him and said, Paul, you must be better than anyone else, for you have been to the third heaven), to prevent his being puffed up, and to keep him even. It was a gracious provision for him, though it is a right thing for the soul to desire not to be led into temptation, but to be delivered from the evil.

116 Verse 5. "Which of you shall have a friend," etc. This is another character of prayer - earnest waiting upon God. There is majesty in God's goodness, and yet He takes knowledge of all our wants, and we must await His will and pleasure. Suppose one asks his father for anything, and he says, "you must wait five minutes," is the child to say, "No, I cannot; I must have it directly?" Meantime, while waiting, faith is exercised, and the spirit broken down in the sense of need. Look at Daniel, and see another thing. God gave him a deep sense of his identification with Himself in what he was doing; so He must make him pray three weeks before he has his request granted. This is a great privilege, for it is to have fellowship with God. In the case of this friend, there is a depth of interest excited in desire for the thing, and because of his importunity he gains it. There is a certainty of God's answering in blessing, though He delay.

Verse 9-13. This is prayer for the Holy Spirit, whom they, though believers, had not then received. In one sense a man may pray for this now, when he has not the Spirit of adoption, like the disciples then. But now the Holy Ghost has been given, consequent upon the Lord's ascension to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2: 33). There could be no union with the man Christ on earth. It is as a heavenly people that there is union with Him. Christ was looked upon alone until His work was done. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." The Holy Ghost was the seal of Christ's work, not of John's preaching righteousness. The second time He received the Holy Ghost was for the church. He received for Himself (Matt. 3) at His baptism, but for us when He ascended, having finished the work of our salvation. The fruits of the Spirit in us are the consequences of the grace and righteousness in Him, He being the only righteous man. The firstfruits of the Spirit in us are love, joy, peace - then come the practical fruits toward men. The first-named fruits are toward God, then patience, temperance, etc., towards men. The Holy Ghost cannot be the subject for the church, as such, to ask for now, seeing He has thus been given. Christ received Him for us. We pray by or in the Holy Ghost, not for Him now. We should pray for more of the working of the Spirit in us, and desire to be filled with the Spirit - poor little hearts indeed, but they may be filled. It does not at all follow that we are filled with the Spirit because sealed with the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit would keep out evil thoughts. It will not take away the evil nature, which ever remains, but thereby that will be kept down.

117 Verse 14, etc. See the dreadful opposition of man's heart against Him, which brings out a very important test. "He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth." When Christ is manifested, it is for or against Him that people take their stand. We have spiritual enemies to contend with, and Joshua leading the people in conflict was figurative of the Spirit leading the soul against our spiritual enemies. It is not Christians but Christ who is become God's centre. We may gather Christians together, but if it is not Christ in one's own spirit, it is scattering. God knows no centre of union but the Lord Jesus Christ. It is Himself the object, and nothing but Christ can be the centre. Whatever is not gathering round that centre, for Him and from Him, is scattering. There may be gathering, but, if not "with Me," it is scattering. We are by nature so essentially sectarian, that we have need to watch against this. I cannot make Christ the centre of my efforts, if He is not the centre of my thoughts. It is a great thing for a man to say, I have no other object but Christ - no other activity in my heart but for Christ; not only that He is the chief object at bottom - every Christian has that - but there may be a quantity of middle things in our hearts between the inside and the outside. These must be judged in the soul. Besides love to Christ, there may be love of company, etc.; and we must judge all that is between Christ, the root, and the offspring.

118 Verse 27, etc. "Blessed is the womb that bare thee," etc. They speak of the honour of being His mother. No, we would say, that has nothing to do with it. The closest connection with the Son of man is not equal to keeping the word of God. Religionists make a great deal of natural affection, but, though blessed in its way, it is nothing to the life of God in my soul. Of course it was a blessed thing to be the mother of the Lord; yet it was but a natural relationship, though a miracle; nor could it have been a light thing to her heart. Still, it was not equal to the blessing of the word of God bringing a soul to Himself. O! beloved friends, if you will only let the pure word of God abide in your hearts, you will find that it will sweep away all the cobwebs of the flesh.

Verse 29. They are seeking a sign, another natural thing; but He says, "There shall no sign be given." Jonah is a sign; he preached, and they repented. Now My word has come to you, and that is the test to you. "The queen of the south," etc. The word of God is so perfectly suited to man's heart, even the natural feelings are touched by it. The word is sown in the heart, though it may bring forth no fruit.

Verses 33-36. Light is there, and the question is about the man's eye. If a man has bad eyes, the light is painful. So the word to one who has not clear eyesight or the eye single. This is a solemn word; but if a person was converted only yesterday, it might be true of him; he might be full of light It applies as much to the babe in Christ as to the grown man Where God is in the soul, His light is seen. "If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not." "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light, having no part dark," etc. When the candle is there, we see all around. It shews itself and thus shews all around. The eye receives the light, single or evil. It is not single or double, but single or evil. If Christ is not the object, there is some evil object. If the eye be single, it is all simple, though there will be difficulties in the path, as with Paul. The light is set on a candlestick, that all who come in "may see the light." The man is forced to the question, Do you see it or not? Christ has set up the light in the world. God has displayed Himself in Him, and the effect of that is to shew your condition. Do you say, "Suffer me first to go and bury my father?" Ah, you have something first. If my body is not full of light, there is something not single in my eye - something has not given way before the power of Christ - something not given up. People say, I cannot see. No, of course you cannot; you have some other light. Further, what you do-see now will presently be given up if you do not walk in the power of what you have.

119 "Take heed that the light that is in thee be not darkness." Our manner of judging may be wrong, because the standard is not Christ, and then the light becomes darkness: we are guided wrong and mistaken in our path. If the eye be full of Christ, and we judge everything by that light, when I see anything that would not glorify Christ, I say, That will not do for me. I may be a little vessel, but I must be wholly for Christ. May we be walking in the power of the Holy Ghost, and by the divine teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, content to follow Him, and desire no other path, having the eye upon Him, and only upon Him, so that when other objects are put before us, we may be able to say, "This one thing I do!" While walking through the world, may we be occupied with Christ, not making it our business to judge evil, but simple concerning it.

From verse 37 we have the sure judgment of the Lord on the various forms which the lifeless religion of those who led the people took up, expressed in different ways, but His constant and unmingled judgment upon it all. The first ground of condemnation is the substitution of outward cleansings and services, which the flesh can render, for purity of heart and the spirit of love: where these last are, external things are clean. Thus money occupies the heart, where there is only a religious form, for it represents the world; and pre-eminence is another expression of the same thing. Next (v. 45, etc.), the doctors of the law are sentenced, and with them the imposing of burdens on others, while they spared themselves from the trouble. It might not at first appear why building the sepulchre of the prophets shewed approval of those who killed them; but the truth was that the lawyers sought in this their own honour, instead of receiving the testimony of the prophets, which would have humbled them, for the moral and utter ruin of the nation. But they were adorning, as if all were right, the tombs of the righteous and good. It was the spirit of the world, arrogating credit to itself for piety to the dead, not holy fear at the prophet's rebukes. But a clearer proof should be in the wisdom of God that they sympathised not with the word of the prophets, but with the works of their fathers. Prophets and apostles would be sent, and once more be slain and persecuted. The Pharisees were hypocrites, and so judged; the expositors of the law perverted their nearness to scripture in their hatred of any real testimony to their own conscience. These could, least of all bear, what detected their evil. Hence, in pride and fear, they took to themselves all the springs of knowledge, neither entering themselves (for they must do that as learners, and needy, and lost), nor allowing those to enter who would (lest they should condemn themselves, and besides, their honour and characters go for nothing). The closing verses shew us the invariable conduct of false religionists. Having no answer of moral truth to the evidence of deceit and evil exhibited in their ways, their effort was to perplex and to entrap. Convicted of sin, and incapable of truth, they sought to make void God's goodness in accusing even Christ of error. It was mercy toward others to be plain as to these false guides, and therefore the Lord denounced them unsparingly.

120 Luke 12.

The last section of this gospel (chap. 10: 38; 11) shewed the two great means of blessing to the soul - namely the word of God and prayer, the precious gift of God, and the true need of man in the presence of a rejected Messiah. It shewed withal the doom of the people who refused every testimony of God. Chapter 12 presents the disciples carrying on their testimony in the midst of hypocrisy and opposition, but in the power of the Holy Ghost. The Lord addressed His disciples first of all; but fearlessly, and without compromise, before a vast throng, as one who acted in the spirit of what He taught. He warns them against that religious formalism which consists of what could be presented to man, and insists strongly and explicitly upon the sure bringing of all things into the light (v. 1-3).

But just as the breaking down of forms and the revelation of the full light of God had its highest operation and effect in His own death, so the disciples must look for the world's hostility, must be prepared for it in their own case, it might be up to death itself. If Messiah were rejected and slain, what could they look for in the same scene, while Satan's power is not set aside? Hence, also, in these chapters it is a question of the soul's relationship with God. It was not the unfolding of the church yet, but the kingdom in its Jewish application is set aside, and the consequence is that the disciples are to look for the Lord's coming again, and until then, trial and violence. His return would have two aspects: one for such as are in relationship with Himself, and the other for the world; and both are taken up here. They were to beware of hypocrisy, and to remember God's necessary determination to bring everything to light. "For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops."

121 Verses 4, 5. Next, as to the importance of walking in the light. They were not to fear them who kill the body but God, who could cast into hell. Jesus perfectly feared God, and called on His friends to fear none but Him. "Yea, I say unto you, fear him." But further (v. 6-8), not even a sparrow is forgotten before God; and the very hairs of their head were all numbered. Therefore they were not to fear. Our God has made it of faith to be assured that He cares much for us.

On the other hand, they were not to trust in themselves - in their own courage or their own wisdom, but to confess Christ. There was the result in relation with the humbled, but yet to be exalted, Son of man. There would be a return of love or shame before the angels of God, according as He should be confessed or denied before men (v. 8, 9). He had hidden His glory to effect grace. He had come among men and into the midst of evil, that God might be fully glorified in His humiliation. This was the patience of God, for Christ claimed nothing. But the Holy Ghost would come asserting the glory of God, and claiming subjection to it, witnessing the grace, and proving the glory in power. Hence a word spoken against the Holy Ghost would not be forgiven. Wonderful to say, this is attached to the disciples (v. 10) to console and strengthen them in their weakness. The Son of man might be slighted, and yet there was forgiveness; but if He by whom they would speak was blasphemed, it would be unpardonable. Further (v. 11, 12), the Holy Ghost would speak by them, whatever the power, ecclesiastical or civil, that arraigned them. Such were the principles, the warnings, the motives. and the encouragements the Lord attached to a mission which, rejected by and outside Judaism, was the introduction of light by grace into a world of sin and darkness.

122 Thereupon in verses 13, 14, the Lord, by positively refusing to adjudge in Israel, shews that Jewish blessing had lost its place. It was no longer a question of dividing the inheritance, but of the soul in its position before God. Only He warns against the folly of loving the things which gave occasion to such disputes. Righteousness on earth is not looked for now: Jesus declines the place of regulating it, and proceeds to shew the inward principle of the kingdom in contrast with the world. Hence He told the multitude to beware of covetousness, for a man's life is not in what he possesses, adding a most solemn parable as to the doom of the rich man, who was not rich toward God. Whatever he might say to his soul, God required it that night. "So is he that layeth up treasure for himself" (v. 16-21).

Verses 22-31. If it be thus with the world, do you who have a father, even the Father, not be anxious for your soul or body. Food and clothing were not just objects for disciples' care, but rather to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Their thoughts should be in another channel, rising above a mere natural view of the life and the body. But He proceeds to assign positive grounds operative upon them as believers. Needful things were subsidiary which God provided, for they were His and under His ordering. He cared for much less than they were. The fowls of heaven and the grass of the field read them no uninstructive lesson, as interpreted of Christ. And if there was, on the one side, God's provident care for the least of His creatures, on the other side let them bear in mind the utter weakness of their anxieties. Whatever might be natural to those who knew not God, they were not to be seeking what to eat or drink: their Father knew they wanted such things. Let them seek the kingdom of God, and all the rest should be added.

Verses 32-40. The Lord now takes higher ground for them. "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Therefore were they rather to get rid of what they had as men, and to provide things such as the Father gives to the heirs of the kingdom. They were to act the part of kings called to and having an higher inheritance. The heart follows the treasure. Let them provide a treasure in the heavens, and their heart will be there also. To be great saints is not by the value of what they gave meritoriously, but the effect internally suitable to their position and their calling. God is not ashamed to be called their God. Further (v. 35, etc.), they were to wait for their Lord. This was especially to form their character, and to be continually and outwardly expressed - the habitual expectancy of the Lord. Their loins were girded, and their lights burning, as if Christ was actually on His way. And He that shall come will come; and "blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them."

123 They were now associated with the heavenly character of the kingdom. This world was nought; what they had of it they could turn into the privilege of doing good unselfishly, and have their treasure above, where there would be no losing it, and so their hearts would be kept there. Thus their character would be heavenly. Meanwhile they were to be as men who waited their Lord returning from the wedding. The general aim of the heavenly effect of the calling is here in question. They were to be on the watch. It is not prophecy, but character and position. There are no signs or historical circumstances, as in chapters 17 and 21, for people on earth; here there is heavenly separation from it. For those who thus wait Jesus is still a servant. He will make them sit down to meat, and come forth and serve them. Girded to serve as man, His ear bored in death, in joy He comes forth delighting in disciples so walking. Gladly He releases them from their endurance and watching and service; He sets them at the feast, and honours their faithfulness thus. They were therefore left in uncertainty; and so the church, when formed, was left. The church is always to wait for Christ, having no special time: every moment is its time in desire and duty, as alas! it is the world's for negligence. The Jews have a time; days, years, and earth computations belong to them, and therefore signs. To us it may be second watch or third watch; blessed only if we are found watching!

Verses 41-48. Peter puts the question of the application of what goes before, which brings out the portion of those who serve faithfully. They will be set over all the Lord's goods when He returns to take possession of all He made and will inherit; a very encouraging thought, though not the highest. On the other hand Christendom apostatises by putting off in heart the Lord's coming. The great stay of heavenly-mindedness is lost thereby, and so our peculiar calling and hope. To expect the Lord detaches from the world; putting it off left the servant to his own will. It is not doctrinal denial; but he says in his heart, "My Lord delayeth his coming"; and then he acts with violence towards the fellow-servants, and his fellowship is with the world. But that servant has a Lord, let hum act ever so independently; and He will come when not expected, and set that servant's portion with the unbelievers, whatever may have been his boasted rights and privileges Further in detail there would be a righteous adjudgment (v. 47, 48); for here we have the principles of service, as before of position. The ignorance of heathenism, etc., will not be spared, but far more tremendous will be the doom of Christendom. Most righteous, but oh, how solemn!

124 Verse 49. There is another thing to be noted - the import of our Lord's coming then into the world. Had man been what he ought, peace would have been the result; but man saw no beauty in Christ to desire Him, and the effect was hatred - not peace, but a sword. The nearer the relation, the deeper the grievance. The will of man comes out, and is utterly opposed to God. They would not endure to be told that they were under God's judgment. But there is this peculiarity in the character of division which the entrance of grace makes. He who is converted in a family becomes generally, and at once, the slave of the rest. Nature even is subverted in such cases. How often thus a husband or parent loses his authority! There is a fire kindled before Christ comes again in judgment to kindle it. He was not then come to judge, but they, by their rejection of Him, kindled the fire of judgment.

Now look at the Lord's part. "I have a baptism," etc What could straiten the Lord's heart? The perfect infinite love of God in Him was, as it were, shut up. If He spoke to His disciples of His death, "That be far from thee, Lord" was all the response He met with even in Peter. How painfully was He thus shut up into Himself! But on He went in His service of living love through the world, looking forward to the baptism of His death; and His being straitened shewed the fulness and strength of His love. Till then there could be no letting out of heart; for who understood Him? The Jews said, "Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!" They were shut up within the walls of Judaism; so that, though One was there with a flowing river of blessing, they would not receive Him. Divine love was, we may say, pent up and driven back into the heart of God. But all is met. "How am I straitened till it be accomplished?" He is not straitened now. The barrier is broken in His death.

125 How could they as sinners have communion with Christ? There could be none. When He came to meet man's need, they hated and rejected Him. But on the cross He has put away sin, and now grace can flow out without hindrance or measure: "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Man is not changed, but God can act in His own way through redemption. Christ's love and glory did come out in a measure before, for "He could not be hid." But at the cross all overflowed; and looking back from that over His life, we see what infinite love, and sorrow, and suffering, filled it up.

In verses 54-57 the multitude are addressed on the principle of personal responsibility - first, upon the evident signs of God's dealing with the world, and next, from their moral judgment of what was right. The conclusion was, that God was in the way with the Jewish people; and if they did not agree with Him then, they would turn Him into a judge, and must incur the full penalty of their iniquities. In human affairs man would be prudent enough to come to terms with his adversary, knowing himself wrong and anticipating the judgment. If they did not submit and be reconciled to the Lord now in the way, they would soon be delivered to His judicial dealings and not cease from them till they had received of His hand double for all their sins.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25015E> 125

Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 13.

There are two great principles or subjects in connection with man on the earth - the church of God as such, and the government of God in the world; and these are very distinct. In the church the riches of His grace are manifested. In His governmental dealings we see the display of His justice, mercy, and goodness. An example of God's governmental power as to Israel we have in Exodus 34: 5-7. This is not sovereign grace, bringing a soul to eternal life, but government of the same character as we may see every day around us. If a man wastes his fortune or ruins his health by intemperance of any kind, his children suffer for it. "What a man soweth, that shall he also reap." See God's dealings with David, because of the matter of Uriah. "The sword shall never depart from thine house . . . . Thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel . . . . Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, the child that is born unto thee shall surely die." And we know that this judgment for his sin was accomplished in David's after-history. This is not grace, but government. God deals in the same way with a saint now - that is, both in grace and righteousness.

126 In Luke 13 we see the Jews had this thought of government in their minds, nor was it wrong in itself. They thought that God could not let such a guilty fellow live as this Pilate, who had been mingling the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices. But Christ brings them to a new principle by which to judge, and tells them judgment was coming upon themselves if impenitent. "Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners," etc.? "I tell ye nay, but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." It refers to judgment in the government of this world, which would overtake all who repented not. They had God's Son there, and they were practically rejecting Him; and how many of the Jews had their blood mingled by Titus? Christ had said to the Jews at the close of chapter 12, "When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate . . . give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him, lest he hale thee to the judge," etc.; but of the state of the Jews, who were under God's dealings and would not escape till the chastenings of the Lord upon them are complete. Thus it is very evident that this passage refers simply to God's government of His people. Natural conscience ought to have told these Jews not to reject the Messiah, for God was going all the way along with them to the magistrate, dealing with them in patient grace, and He would say to them, If you do not repent and be reconciled, judgment must come upon you, when it will be the same with you as with those whom ye think to be such sinners.

Verse 6. The Lord is dealing here with the same state of things. The fig-tree is Israel, and God comes seeking fruit in them and finding none. In the gospel there is this difference, that grace, instead of seeking, sows in order to produce fruit. He found none, and the sentence therefore upon it is, "Cut it down." He not only found it useless, but His vineyard was encumbered by it. "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you." Then comes in Christ's mission. Last of all "He sent his Son." God had planted a vineyard and pruned it, but there was no fruit. Then a new gardener comes in, and He says, "Spare it this year also, till I shall dig about it," etc. It must bring forth fruit then, or be digged up. He has done as He said, but still there is no fruit.

127 Verse 11. The woman with an infirmity, whom Jesus heals on the sabbath day, brings out another thing that was working in their hearts, in the place of the law which left room for hypocrisy. They would lead an ox or an ass from the stall on the sabbath, but they would not bear that a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound these eighteen years, should be loosed on that day. One of the infirmities of man's mind is to use possessed truth to resist revealed truth. Paul was an example of this - "as touching the righteousness of the law, blameless"; still he "thought he ought to do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth." So also Christ says of the Jews in John 16, "These things will they do unto you," etc. They were using the name of the one true God, which had been given them ("Jehovah thy God is one God") to reject the Son; for when Christ came in humiliation, they would not receive Him. Orthodoxy is used to stop the reception of truth. When truth is the ground of a man's standing, it gains him credit; but when a new truth comes in, it puts faith to the test. Truth that requires faith to walk by is resisted by the natural heart; and the root of this is hypocrisy. The ruler of the synagogue said, "There are six days in which men ought to work; in them come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day." But he ought to have known that the Lord of the sabbath was there; for that single word "daughter of Abraham" ought to have told him who He was that stood there. The Lord answered him, "Thou hypocrite!" A solemn word this!

Verse 18. He goes on to shew what the kingdom will be like when the king is rejected and gone away. A kingdom without a king! who is sitting on His Father's throne, until He comes to take His own throne. The kingdom is like a little seed thrown into the ground, which springs up and becomes a great tree - just what we call Christendom. This fills up the gap between His rejection and His coming again. There is no power exercised while the King is away; as in Mark's Gospel it sprang up, men knew not how. When the harvest is ripe, He will come again. He sowed the first time, but He will put in the sickle the second time. He is looking for heavenly fruit now; but when He comes, He will find Christendom a great tree with the fowls of the air lodging in its branches. Pharaoh was a great tree; Nebuchadnezzar a greater still: they were the high and mighty ones of the earth, representatives of worldly power. Even Israel, which had been planted a noble vine, wholly a right seed, was bearing no fruit. Therefore, as it is said in Ezekiel 15, "what is the vine-tree more than any tree," if it bears no fruit? It is only fit to be burned. Otherwise useless if it does not bear fruit, it only makes the best firewood.

128 Verse 21. Here the kingdom is likened unto leaven, and leaven is that which spreads throughout the whole mass, and also gives a character to that in which it works. It is nominal profession of Christianity which is spread into a vast system. There is not a word here about the Holy Ghost, but about the effect in the world. In Matthew 13, in the first parable, there is individual result, and not the kingdom spoken of. In the first three of the six similitudes, it is the public appearance; in the last three, the inward character is described.

Verse 23. "Are there few that be saved?" The word used here is the same word that through the LXX signifies a remnant, or "such as shall be saved." The question really was as to whether this remnant would be few or many, who were to be spared when the judgment came; but, this being a mere idle question, the Lord does not answer it, but says to them: -

Verse 24. "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." The strait gate was receiving Christ at that time - the real but narrow entrance of faith in Him and conversion to God. There will be some to come and knock when the door is closed, to whom He will say, "I know you not whence ye are": you are not changed, Strive to enter in at the strait gate, through which Christ goes before you - that is, rejection. "Many shall seek to enter into [not at the strait gate] and shall not be able."

It is most simple when we see the rejection of Christ. Those who reject Him in the day of His humiliation will themselves be rejected in the day of His glory; and, instead of being His companions in the kingdom, they will be thrust out. The unbelieving Jews will see the Gentiles come into the glory of the kingdom, while they, remaining in unbelief, will be cast out.

129 Verse 31. The Pharisees say to Him, "Get thee out and depart, for Herod will kill thee." Now Herod was an Idumaean, and what right had such a stranger to be their king? What had he to do with the promises to Israel? Nothing. In Herod we have a figure of the wilful king. He tried to kill Christ, and therefore the character of opposition-king belongs to him. He had no faith in God's purposes or in Christ's glory; and the Lord says, "Go and tell that fox." I shall do My Father's will till the moment come for Me to be glorified. I am here as long as My Father wills, and then I shall be perfected. The power of God must be fully known. What divine contempt for the apostate king, but what perfect human obedience combined! "Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets," etc. After all, Jerusalem is the guilty place. Let the Edomite king do and say what he will, it is "the holy city" that is guilty, for it was nearest to Himself. The nearer I am to God, if I reject Him, the worse is the sin and the more dreadful the judgment. See Psalm 132. "The Lord hath chosen Zion," etc., and Psalm 88: 65-68, the same election of Zion. Christ does not put the sin upon them till they have rejected both Him and His Father. He brings out a purpose of grace in these closing verses. The old man is condemned and profitless - Israel and all of us. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" The gospel begins with seeking and saving that which was lost. Here we see that, though they have rejected Him in responsibility, He has not rejected them in the day of His grace. Grace shines out in His yet choosing Judah.

Notice how the divine person of the Lord comes out here. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered," etc. A prophet could not say this, and He was a prophet too, and more than a prophet: He was Jehovah, for none but Jehovah could gather Israel; as "He that scattereth Israel will gather him." Israel under responsibility had rejected Jehovah; but Jehovah will own them when He comes in sovereign grace. How blessed is the way! The circumstances through which He passed in His path down here did bring out in a far brighter way who He was than any text to prove it, important as that is in its place. For suppose you believed there was a God, yet if He were to come down by your very side and say I am, would not this be a very different thing? Christ was the humbled man all through His path down here, for He was ever the servant of all; yet when the service was done, and rejected as of no use, His glory shines out. "Before Abraham was, I am." See in this chapter of Luke the connection between verses 33, 34, and 35 as illustrative of this. "How often would I have gathered thy children . . . your house is left unto you desolate . . . until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

130 The complaint in the Psalms is, that there is none to say "How long" - none to count on the faithfulness of God to His people. See Psalm 74: 9. This expression is often used in the Psalms and in Isaiah 6 and refers to chastening, not retribution. How long is Israel to stumble and fall? (Rom. 11). In Isaiah 6 the prophet, having uttered these words, "Make the heart of this people fat," etc., taken up by the Lord in John 12, then says, "how long?" He waits in faith, and reckons upon God, and having God's mind, he cannot believe that God will give them up, and therefore asks, "how long" is the chastening to continue? To which the Lord answers, "There shall be a great forsaking in the midst of the land, but in it there shall be a tenth, and the holy seed shall be the substance therefore." The sap is still there, though there are no leaves. So in Psalm 118, "He hath chastised me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death." In the same way the Lord does not say, "Your house is left unto you desolate, and therefore you shall not see me again." No; but He says, "Ye shall not see me until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." He can give, as Jehovah, the answer in grace, and when He gives repentance to Israel, then He will send Jesus, whom until that day the heavens have received. Meanwhile our connection with Him comes in. The prophet spake only of earthly things, though divine; but to the church it is, "Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling," and "hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus": that gives security. How did I get there? By virtue of Christ. He is my tide. My desire is to be acquainted with this, that I am one with Christ in heaven-an everlasting portion. This the Holy Ghost seals upon my soul, and would have me enjoy more and more.

131 When Israel is brought to repentance, "the stone which the builders rejected" will be "the head of the corner," and owned of them. They will say, "O give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever." Alas! they will receive another first; but when their hearts are turned, and grace works, they will use the language of Psalm 119 and find the expression of the law within their hearts; and when faith is thus exercised, and their hearts are broken, and open to receive Him, then He Himself will come to them. If there is not a prophet to say "How long?" Jehovah will give the answer. He never changes; and though He executes judgment and righteousness, grace is found in Him still. "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" Well, if there be not faith to be found, or a prophet to say "How long?" there is One who will lay up, in His treasures, something for faith to lay hold on, in the sovereignty of His own grace.

Thus we see Jehovah in that humbled One, and how He is able to rise above all iniquity. How precious does all this make Jesus to us! and we are one with Him. May we learn of Him, and so follow Him, remembering that all that is left outside the narrow way is the flesh and evil.

Luke 14.

This chapter shews out the distributive justice of God. First, it is toward His saints, the consequence of conduct with God, and the place a man will take in view of that. Next, we have responsibility connected with grace, the moral position of the soul, because of having grace presented to it. Slighting God's grace fills up the measure of man's sin. But here it is the presentation, which is a different thing from the possession, of grace. This is brought out in those who refused to come to the Supper.

Verses 1-6. The Lord, in bringing the dispensation to a close, constantly brings before Israel the sabbath. The question was, Could man, as man, find rest with God? Could man ever enter into God's rest? We know man broke God's rest directly - how soon we are not told: but, perhaps the very day he ought to have rested, he ate the forbidden fruit. Man never entered into God's rest; and now the question was, how to enter in - by his own work or Christ's? It was essential to the rest after creation, to have it at the end of the six days of work, and therefore it was on the seventh day. So afterwards, when the legal ordinances were given, the sabbath became a sign of the covenant. The Lord, when here, constantly trenched on the sabbath, to shew that, sin being unremoved, He must work. He could not rest, the sabbath being a sign of man's getting rest after work, and the law shewing that man constantly broke that covenant. The Lord presses home to their consciences their sin, by shewing them that He must work if they were to have rest. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." If man had kept the law, he was entitled to the rest, but he neither did nor could keep it. All that was the sign of God's rest, for man, after work done, failed; but "there remaineth a rest for the people of God." The sabbath continued as a sign; and all through the prophets, we find it insisted on, but they did not get rest. Paul, reasoning upon it in Hebrews 4, says, "We which have believed, do enter into rest." But Canaan, the nominal rest, they of old did not enter, save the few faithful ones, and these did not get rest, for if they had, another day would not have been spoken of; and so it is said by the Psalmist, and quoted in Hebrews, "If they shall enter into my rest." "If" means "they shall not." This being the sabbath was no rest to them. The sabbath was still the sign, but no real rest. The whole thing being therefore gone as to man's getting into God's rest, it must be now on an entirely new principle, by faith and not by works. When Messiah came, He would have been rest to the people, but man would not have Him, as we find it here. Man could not have God's rest by law, and they would not have it by grace, and this proves man has altogether broken with God. If I have got to God, I have rest, and need not journey farther for it. I have my rest in Himself; for grace, not law, has given me a capacity to enjoy what God is. But when the creature had broken the rest of his Creator, there could be no relationship between them. Sin has come in and caused God to be towards me as a judge, and there can be no link of heart between a judge and a criminal. If God judges me as a sinner, the only word I can have from Him is, "Depart from me, ye cursed." Therefore all that man can say is, "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord." There is a link between a father and a child that brings them into relationship; but it is a new thing. All must be put on a new footing, for there is no rest in the old creation.

133 In chapter 15 we have grace at work to give rest, the Shepherd bringing the sheep home, etc.; and in this chapter we have a case of misery brought out in the man who had the dropsy. Christ said, "Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? But they held their peace. He puts the case to themselves. "If you shall have an ox or an ass fallen into a pit, . . . and they could not answer him." There was no present rest, no hope of rest, no possibility of rest for man as a sinner, and there could be no rest for God, for God could not rest where sin was. There was no sabbath for righteousness, for man had no righteousness. There was no sabbath for love, for love could not rest where judgment must be exercised. Love might come in and work, but work is not rest. Man has lost his communion with God, through his sin; and this is a solemn thing, for he has made God a judge through his sin. The very thought of judgment connected with God shews man a sinner, for there was no necessary association of judgment with God; but when sin came in, judgment must follow, for God is holy. If brought to the consciousness of there being no relationship between us as sinners and God, we learn what a place becomes us, when once we have faith in His grace.

Verses 7-11. "And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms." It is just the place that nature likes. The world which has no relations with God delights in exalting self and shutting Him out. Self gets for self what it likes and forgets God. Man is always setting up self, pushing for self, against God. He does not think so, for he says he is only using his faculties. But so Adam did to hide himself from God. Do not we use our faculties to please ourselves, rather than for God? While the master is away, the servants go on their own way and do their own will. A man is naturally hurt when he is put down in a corner and despised. Flesh does not relish being thrust aside, but this seeking for a place is to seek for it where Christ had none. "Therefore," He says, "when thou art bidden to a wedding, sit down in the lowest room."

134 The point of this parable is seen in verses 8-11: it refers the heart to the Master, to "him that bade thee." If I am conscious of being a sinner, and therefore deserving no place, I shall take none, but wait till God bestows one on me. I shall have honour indeed, when God gives me a place. The point is, What does He bestow upon me? Having the eye upon God, and referring to Him, seek for the lowest place as Christ did. It will not do to say, I will not have a place in the world; the great thing is, the heart resting on God's place in the world. When the eye is thus upon God, self is forgotten; if not, I am thinking of the slights I receive, and neither faith nor grace are in exercise. If I could think nothing of myself, I should be perfect. The man who bade the guests has the right estimate of each and the honour due to them. The evangelist's place, the pastor's, the apostle's, etc., will all be appointed by God. When God gives me a place, it is one of power and nighness to Himself; but when a man takes a place for himself, it is one of weakness and alienation from God, because self is the object.

Then, again, we must guard against the mere refusing to take a place in the world, because we know it is wrong, as followers of Him who has been rejected. A mere legal estimate of what is right can never last. A thing may be very right; but there is no stability in pursuing it, because there is no power to subdue the flesh in merely doing what one knows to be right. There was the sense of obligation with the law, but the law did not set an object before me to attract my heart; it did not bring God to me nor me to God. That lasts which feels that we are nothing and that God is everything. Many have begun very energetically, and taken a certain place, right in itself; but if legality be the source of it, there will be no power of perseverance, for that which is taken up under law will be sure to be lost in the flesh. When God is the object, the low place here is sufficient. He Himself carries me on; and whatever it be, if the mind and affections are upon Him, what was hard at first is no effort as I proceed. His love, which attracted and gave me power at first to take such a position, becomes brighter and brighter when better and longer known; and what was done, at first tremblingly, is easy with increasing courage. The only thing which can enable me thus to go on is to have CHRIST the object before me, and just in proportion as it is so can I be happy. There may be a thousand and one things to vex me, if self is of importance; they will not vex me at all, if self is not there to be vexed. The passions of the flesh will not harass us, if we are walking with God. What rubs we get when not walking with God, and thinking only of self! There is no such deliverance as that of having no importance in one's own eyes. Then one may be happy indeed before God.

135 If we look at Christ, we learn two principles: first, that He humbled Himself, because of the sin of the world all around Him; second, the world did all they could to humble Him, for the more He went down, so much the more they sought to pull Him down.

No one cares for another; so that if a man does not care for himself, he will be sure to be pushed down low enough. Then again, so deceitful are our hearts that it is possible we should be willing to humble ourselves, if we could get anything by it, even the approbation of men. On the other hand, if we, in the usual sense of men, merely seek to imitate Christ in this, it will be but legal effort. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." He humbled Himself. First, "He made himself of no reputation"; that is, He emptied Himself of His glory to become a man. In doing this, He left the Father's glory to become a man. This was a great descent (though we think a great deal of ourselves). But was that all? No. He humbled Himself to death, even the death of the cross. It is the same principle which is put before us in this chapter in Luke. "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Real lowliness is being ready to serve any and everybody: and though it may to the eye of man look low, it is in reality very high, being the fruit of divine love working in our hearts. God, operating in our hearts, makes us unselfish. The only thing worth doing in the world is this service, except it be enjoying God. We should be ready to serve our enemies. "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." This is not only being humbled but humbling one's self, and not doing it before those who would honour us all the more for being humble. Paul could say of himself and others, "ourselves your servants for Christ's sake." He felt they had a title to serve in grace; and in proportion as he took the humble place, he will be exalted in the day that is coming.

Verses 12-14. The next statement in the chapter goes on to speak of him who bade. Before, it was about the guest; but here it is the principle on which feasts are made. "Call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind . . . and thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." Thus He takes them all out of the world again, to the time when they shall meet God, and makes it a present guide for action. They must not act on the principle of getting reward here, but must wait for the time when they are to meet the Lord, as it is not till the Master of the house returns that the servants receive their wages. This is not a question of salvation, but of reward for service. "Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just."

136 Mark how the Lord brings out the JUST as a separate class. The resurrection is not a common one; there is no such thing in Scripture. There is no thought of confounding in another world what God has separated in this. Grace has separated the believer, so that he is risen in his soul now; but he does not get the reward of his service till "the resurrection of the just." A sinner is quickened here, though not judicially manifested here; because we are in a dispensation of faith, and the portion is in glory. There is no "general" resurrection to good and bad alike; but there is the "first resurrection," which is God separating in power those whom in grace He has made His own. It was the "resurrection from among" or "out of the dead" that awakened such wonder among the Jews. The Pharisees could teach resurrection though the Sadducees denied it. A resurrection was commonly believed, as Martha said, "I know that he shall rise again at the last day." But they could not comprehend divine power coming in to Satan's house, and taking the righteous dead out from among the rest of the dead. Jesus replied to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life" - speaking of the living power that visits a man when he is in a state of death, and takes him out of it. They knew nothing of the discriminating process of the one to life, and the other to judgment (John 5).

The Master of the house will shew His approval of the faithful servant. There will be degrees of glory given according to the service done. Not that I shall be saved for what I have done; but my service will be rewarded, whatever may have been produced by the Holy Ghost answering the desire of Christ in working in me; for it is service of which I could not do an atom without His power. It is likewise the answer of God according to His counsels; as we may see in the reply to the mother of Zebedee's children, "It shall be given to those for whom it is prepared of my Father." The service of love is never influenced by recompense. Reward is not set before the soul as the motive for doing anything; but when we find difficulties in treading the path of service, then the crown is set before us to encourage us to go on. So, even Christ, for the joy that was set before Him, "endured the cross, despising the shame." So also Moses, while esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, had respect unto the recompense of the reward. If the recompense and not love be the spring of our service, it would just amount to this, "Take thy penny, and go thy way." But if the world is broken with, no recompense can be looked for from that source, which is as great a deliverance as the deliverance from self.

137 Now (v. 15-24) see how grace, when brought in, is rejected. The Supper was ready; the guests were bidden, but they would not come. The Lord had before spoken of the kingdom, and here He shews what the reception of the kingdom would cost. All things are now ready; but they all make excuses. They do not care enough for the Supper to leave their yoke of oxen, the piece of ground, etc. The Supper was in God's thoughts from the beginning, and it was to be when He came to the Jews, as their Messiah, at the close of the day; but they rejected Him - they did not want Him. It does not say that their sins shut them out from the Supper, for God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Neither was it the piece of ground, the oxen, or the wife that were in themselves the evil; but in their case they became so, because their minds were intent on them to the slighting of the Supper. And is it not just the same now? What harm is there in these things, do you say? If they have occupied your heart, and made you slight God, that is the harm. In the kingdom of God where are you? There was not one link of heart between Christ and the people He came to, and therefore they rejected the Supper. This is also a test to our souls all through the day. It is not a question of whether a thing be right or wrong, but what savour have the things of Christ to our souls in it? It may be a very small thing. If we find the reading of a book makes the manifestation of Christ to become less precious to us, we have got away from God, and we cannot tell where the next step may take us. Satan often cheats us in this way. The soul is put to the test day by day, whether the things that are revealed by God in Christ have so much power over us as to engage the heart; but if other things have come in between when we want the enjoyment of the things of Christ, we shall not have it, and this will shew us how far we have got away. If anything comes in and takes the freshness of Christ from your soul, take heed! for, if the oxen, etc., are thus cared for, when you have opportunity for the things of Christ, you will have no taste for them.

138 In verse 21 the Lord turns to "the poor of the flock," those who have no yoke of oxen, and are glad of the feast. The priests and chiefs of the Jews had the first invitation, but, they rejecting it, the Master of the house sends out into the streets and lanes of the city, to bring in the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind of the people. Still the house is not filled; and then He sends outside the city, into the highways and hedges, and compels them to come in, that the house may be filled. These are the Gentiles. In this Gospel the poor of the flock and the Gentiles are distinguished from each other. But in Matthew, whose aim is Jewish, there is no mention made of both classes as distinct. "The wedding was furnished with guests" includes the Gentiles, gathered in after the Jews are brought into the blessing. Then mark the lowliness of the servant and the patient grace of the Master; that goes right on to the end. He cannot rest till He gets His house filled with guests.

What perseverance there is on the part of God! and we are called to go on in the same spirit. It does cost a great deal, to go on, and on, and on, in spite of everybody and everything; and for us to do so, marks the presence of divine power in us, for God's grace is unwearied. There is indeed judgment at the same time, for it is said, "Not one of those that were bidden shall taste of my supper." But God's acting thus shews us what lowliness there should be in us, as regards self, and grace as regards everyone else, and all grounded on this one fact, that all man's relationships with God are morally broken; and if you are really going to take such a path as that of following Christ, you must count the cost. It is all very well to see such grace and admire it; but there is no power to persevere in it, without such love in the heart as the establishment of a new relationship with God gives. There must be a link in the heart with the new thing; and Christ must have such strength in the heart as to give power to break with old things.

139 Verses 25-33. Multitudes were attracted by the hearing of such grace: so in verse 26 He tells them what discipleship will involve. There may be an allusion here to Micah 7: 5, 6. Friends must be given up for Christ. A man may have to leave everything else, but the question is, Am I to leave God? What! life too? Yes - no matter. In that life you are linked with the world, and that must be given up too, if I am in question: you cannot have two hearts - a heart for the world, and a heart for Me - Christ would say. I tremble when I see people who have not counted the cost, setting out in the profession of following Christ. It is God's way to put the barrier at the first start. If you can leap that, you will do. Legal obedience will not stand, but following Christ. If He is in the path, it is happy and easy; but it is a path between two hedges. If Christ is not with you in it, there will be nothing but trouble and difficulty.

Verses 34, 35. "Salt" is grace in spiritual energy; that is, the saints being witnesses in the world of the power of holy love, instead of selfishness. Salt is the consecrating principle of grace: if that is gone, what is to preserve? Salt is rather grace in the aspect of holy separateness unto God, than in that of kindness and meekness, though of course these are also inseparable from grace. If the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? If I have meat without salt, I can salt it; but if there is no saltness in salt, what can I do? What a character we have here of an unspiritual church, or an unspiritual saint! Like the vine which represented Israel, good for nothing at all but to dishonour the Lord its owner and be destroyed. Mercy, it is true, may recover us; but as saints we should have the savour of Christ. Whatever enfeebles attachment to Christ destroys power. It is not gross sin that does it, which of course will be met and judged; but it is the little things of every-day life which are apt to be chosen before Christ. When the world creeps in, the salt has lost its savour and we shew that a rejected Christ has little power in our eyes.

The Lord keep us in the path with Christ, where all is bright and blessed. If the film of this world has been drawn over our spiritual vision, hiding Christ from us, He alone can remove it.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25017E> 140

Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 15, 16.

We have seen the Lord shewing out His own rejection, in grace, followed by an entirely new order of things. The church, brought in subsequently, is not an age, properly so called, but a heavenly episode between the ages. There are three ages spoken of in Scripture: the age before the law; the age under the law; and the millennial age. Christ was "made under the law," and that age is not finished yet. The disciples said to Him, "What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age?" That was the age when He was there, but when they rejected Him, the age was suspended. As He straitly charged Peter to tell no man He was the Christ, saying, "the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected," etc. Therefore He says to them, "Ye shall not see me, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." We, who form a part of the church of God, and not having anything to do with the earth, are in no sense an age, but are a heavenly people united to Christ above, during the suspension of this age, filling up the gap between the Lord's leaving the Jews, and His return to them again. So in Romans 11 we have the olive tree with some of the branches broken off, and others graffed in. This is the tree with its root in the earth, and consequently it could have nothing directly to do with the church in heaven. Some of the branches were broken off, and some left; but this could never be said of the church, the body united to its head, at the right hand of God. The church, of course, does fill up a certain place and time, but it is during the suspension of the age to which Christ came. Characteristically we belong to that which is above and beyond anything connected with this world. It is grace that has set us there, and that is not of earth but of heaven.

In chapter 15 we find the Lord rising above Jewish dispensation altogether, to the full display of God's own nature - love - in the gospel. At the close of chapter 14 He takes up the professing system in its responsibility. "Salt is good, but if the salt have lost its savour," it is good for nothing. Thus He shews what man is. Then in chapter 15 come publicans and sinners, and we have the display of what God is. Here God is dealing with lost man, in grace. Sinners, who owned their sins and came to repentance, were those who justified God. "Wisdom is justified of her children." God is vindicated in His ways, whether in the condemnation or salvation of a sinner. The publicans and sinners justified God, being baptized of John, while the Pharisees rejected His counsel against themselves. All that is wanted to justify God is that He should shew Himself; and this is what the Lord now does. He manifests what God is in grace, and this it is which makes the chapter ever so fresh and full to our souls; the heart that has been awakened never tires of such a chapter.

141 Then, in chapter 16, He shews the responsibility of those who are thus dealt with. The earth was given to the children of men, and God looked for fruit. He first dealt with man as to what he ought to have been on the earth, but there was entire failure. Now there comes out another thing, entire grace, which is irrespective of all that man was, and takes an absolutely heavenly character. Divine love is its source, and its character is heavenly. Revealing heaven, it puts man into connection with it; and the people so put must be a heavenly people. Why so? Because this world is all gone wrong; it has fallen from God, and is become the "far country." Hence, its riches are of no value, but a great hindrance, unless used in a heavenly way; and chapter 16 shews how they should be used. Chapter 15 shews the sinner called out by grace; that which follows shews what he, who is called out, is to be as a heavenly man. This world is a scene of evil, and that which attaches to it is now ruin and not blessedness. (See the rich man and Lazarus.) Adam had a place in this world, and Israel had a place in it; but now that is all gone, and grace has come in, lifting those who are the subjects of it into another state of things altogether. Christ is justifying God. His nature being love, it was His joy to manifest grace to sinners. It is not here the joy of those brought back, but God's own joy in bringing the sinner back to Himself. This gives the tone to heaven. "There is joy" above in the poor wretched sinner brought back.

I have no doubt we have, in these three parables, the unfolding of the ways of the Trinity. In the first is shewn the Son, as the Good Shepherd, going after the sheep. In the second, the woman lighting a candle, and searching diligently till she find the piece of silver, we have the painstaking work of the Holy Ghost, lighting up a testimony in this dark world. The third is the Father's reception of the returning sinner, when brought back. In this, the prodigal son, we find the work in the sinner; but in the two previous ones, it is the sovereignty and the activity of grace, which goes out in love to find that which was lost, and brings the sinner back without his having anything to do in it. This persevering energy of love is in the Shepherd Himself - the Good Shepherd cares for the sheep, and gives it no trouble in getting home; He carries it on His shoulders. Herein is seen the perfect grace in which the Lord Jesus has so charged Himself with bearing our every burden, our every trial and difficulty all along the road. Christ is thus the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. Then mark, in verse 6, the peculiar character of this joy. "He calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost." There could not be a more genuine picture, or a fuller expression of a person being happy than this. Joy always speaks out. In the second parable we have the same general principle. The painstaking of the Holy Ghost is shewn in the acting of the woman who sought the lost piece of silver; the piece of silver could have neither trouble nor joy itself. The difference in the two is, that in the first, the Shepherd bears all the burden; in the second, it is the pains taken in finding the lost piece, proving the woman cared enough for it to take all this trouble to search it out. Thus does God's love act towards us, to bring us out of the dark world to Himself. What a work it is to bring man's heart back to God!

142 "'Twas great to speak a world from nought"

"Twas greater to redeem."

If we look at man, as he is in himself, he could never get back to God. But look at what God is in Himself, and who or what can resist His grace! Still it is the joy of the finder, and not of the thing found: "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep - my piece - that was lost." And in the case of the returning prodigal, who made the feast? Not the young man, but the father, saying to those in the house, "Let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." All caught the joy of the Father's heart, the servants, etc., all except the unhappy self-righteous elder brother (the Pharisee, the Jew), to whom the father replied, "It was meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again," etc. It is the joy God has in receiving a sinner back to Himself. In the parable of the prodigal son, by itself, the full glory of grace is not seen, as these three parables set it forth together. The case of the sheep is the Shepherd charging Himself with the whole burden of the sheep; the silver is the painstaking of the Holy Ghost. Before actual departure there was moral departure. When the young man left his father's house, it was but a display of the evil in his heart. He was just as wicked when he asked for his portion of goods, and crossed his father's threshold, as when he ate husks with the swine in the far country; he was doubtless, more miserable then, but his heart was gone before. One man may run farther into riot than another, but if we have turned our backs upon God, we are utterly bad. In this sense there is no difference.

143 The moral evil was just the same with Eve. She gave up God for forbidden fruit. She virtually thought the devil a much better friend to her than God, and took his word instead of God's. Satan is a lair from the beginning, and at the cross the Lord proved this. It cost the Lord His life to prove that God was good. Christ came to contradict the devil's lie, which man believed, and under which the whole world is lying. Grace and truth came by Christ, and at all cost were set up by Him on the cross. Man can do without God, and from the beginning the whole world has been a public lie against God. Who could unriddle it? Look at creation, how it groans under the bondage of corruption. Look at providence - how can I account for the goodness of God when I see an infant writhing with pain? How can I reconcile the two things? The villain prospers - the good man suffers. When I see Christ on the cross, I see what God is. Death came on man by reason of sin. But Christ takes my sin on His own sinless person, bows His head in death upon the cross, and thus sets aside that lie of Satan, "Ye shall not surely die." Thus was God's truth re-established here below in the work and person of the Lord Jesus, and nowhere else. In Him I see holiness, truth, and love, no matter at what cost.

The natural man is just like this prodigal, he spends his substance in the far country, and ruins himself. A man having £5,000 a year, and spending £20,000, will seem very rich for the time; but look at the results. He is a ruined man. The moment man departed from God, he sold himself to Satan, and is spending his soul, his heart, away from God; he even spends what God has given him against God, and when he is thoroughly spent, and has nothing to live on, he begins to be in want. "There arose a mighty famine in that land," and all the world feels that. Every sinner does not go to the same lengths of eating the swine's husks, but all are in the same condition of ruin. Every man has turned his back upon God, though all have not run to the same excess of riot, nor fallen into the same degradation. The famine never draws back to the Father's house.

144 The prodigal joined himself to a citizen of that country - not his father's country. "He would fain have filled his belly," etc., and "no man gave to him." Satan never gives; that is found where God's love is, who spared not His own Son. When the prodigal thinks of his father's house, the whole work is morally done, though he is not back there yet. He turns, his heart was changed, and thus his whole desire was to get back to his father's house, from whence he had departed. He was not yet in the full liberty of grace, so as to have peace and happiness, and he says to himself, "make me as one of thy hired servants." He is brought to a sense of his guilt; and what was it? feeding with the swine? No, this was the fruit of it; but his guilt was in leaving his father's house, turning away from God. When he came to himself, he desired to return. This was truly a right wish, but the form it took in his mind, from his not yet knowing grace, was a legal one. "I am no more worthy to be called thy son! make me as one of thy hired servants." But the father does not give him time for that. We hear nothing more about hired servants; for when he was "yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion on him, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." He could not have been a servant with the father's arms round his neck. It would have spoiled the father's feelings, if not the son's.

It was the joy of Him who was receiving back the sinner to Himself; and it is the knowledge of this which gives peace to the soul: nothing else does. If a man does not know love, he does not know God, for God is love. The full revelation of God is what we have in Christ. "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?" God acts from the joy and delight He has in Himself, in receiving back the sinner, and therefore He does not think of the rags but of the child He has got back again. What right has man to call God in question, when He indulges His own heart in the outflow of love to the sinner? You will never get peace by the mere act of coming back, but by learning the Father's mind about you. Could the prodigal get peace as he was coming back if the father had not met him? No, all along the road he would be questioning, how will he receive me? - will he be angry with me? will he spurn me from his presence? And if he does, what will become of me? "But when he was get a great way off his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him." If not so, he would have trembled even to knock at the door.

145 When the father's arms were on the son's neck, was he defiled by the rags? No; and he will not have the son bring rags into the house, but orders the best robe to be brought out of it. God sends His own Son out of heaven, and clothes the sinner; and, thus arrayed, the young man could bring credit to his father's house. And, surely, if we are so clothed with Christ, we shall do credit to God; and, in the ages to come, He will shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.

"Let us eat and be merry." It is not, Let him eat and be merry. Again, he says, "It was meet that we should make merry and be glad." There was but one exception to the delight in the house. The elder brother (the self-righteous person) was angry, and would not go in. God had shewn what He was in Himself, by His Son, in thus receiving the prodigal: and now He would shew what they were in themselves. We know the Pharisees murmured from the beginning, and the elder brother had no communion with his father: for if the father was happy, why was not he happy too? "He was angry, and would not go in." If such a vile person as the publican gets in, this makes my righteousness go for nothing! It is truly so; for where God's happiness is, there self-righteousness cannot come. If God is good to the sinner, what avails my righteousness? He had no sympathy with his father. He ought to have said, "My father is happy, so I must be." There should have been communion in the joy. "Thy brother is back." That ought to have rung on his heart, but no.

Then see the perfect patience of God's grace: the father goes out and entreats him. And do we not, all through the Acts, see God entreating the Jews to be reconciled, although they had crucified His Son? So Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 2: 15, 16, says that the Jews filled up the measure of their sins by forbidding the apostles to speak to the Gentiles, that they might be saved. It is all selfishness in the elder son. "Thou never gavest me a kid that I might make merry with my friends." To which the father replies, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." The oracles of God, the covenants, the promises, God gave to the Jews; but He will not give up the right to shew His grace to sinners, because of the self-righteous selfishness of the Jews, or of any one else.

146 Chapter 16. "There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods." Man, generally, is God's steward: and in another sense and in another way, Israel was God's steward, put into God's vineyard, and entrusted with law, promises, covenants, worship, etc. But in all, Israel was found to have wasted His goods. Man, looked at as a steward, has been found to be entirely unfaithful. Now, what is to be done? God appears, and in the sovereignty of His grace, turns that which man has abused on the earth, into a means of heavenly fruit. The things of this world being in the hands of man he is not to be using them for the present enjoyment of this world, which is altogether apart from God, but with a view to the future. We are not to seek to possess the things now, but, by the right use of these things, to make a provision for other times. "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness," etc. It is better to turn all into a friend for another day than to have money now. Man here is gone to destruction. Therefore now man is a steward out of place. "Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward." He is discharged from stewardship - has lost his place, but not the things of which he has the administration. Here is something far better than the alchemy which would turn all into gold. For this is grace, turning even gold itself, that vile thing which enslaves men's hearts, into a means of shewing love and getting riches for heaven.

To Israel, God is saying, You have failed in the stewardship; therefore now I am going to put you out. In chapter 15 the elder brother, the Jew, would not go in; and here, in chapter 16, God is putting the Jew out of the stewardship. With Adam, all is over; but we have a title in grace to use, in a heavenly way, that to which we have no title at all as man. "If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" "If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?" Our own things are the heavenly things; the earthly things are another's; and if you do not use your title in grace in devoting in love these earthly temporal goods, which are not your own, how can God trust you with the spiritual things which are "your own"? Our own things are all the glories of Christ - all that is Christ's is ours, for "we are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold," etc. We were bought with a price, it is true, not with money, but "with the precious blood of Christ," etc. God has not given us eternal life in order that we might be getting money. "No man can serve two masters," and if you want to be rich, you cannot be seeking to serve God. We may have to do our duty in this world, but it is never our duty to serve mammon and desire riches.

147 Now He goes on to shew that there are these everlasting habitations, when the grand results will appear of what has been done here. The old thing is fleeting away, and the new coming in. The Jew, who refused to come to the feast, is loosening the law, while rejecting grace. See chapter 14: 18, 19.

Verse 19. "A certain rich man, clothed in purple," etc. The thought here is Jewish, and the great principle is that all God's dealings, as to the distributive justice on the earth, were no longer in force, and that now He only deals in grace. He draws aside the veil to shew the result in another world. The rich man had his good things here - he belonged to the earth, and the basket and the store belonged to him - his treasure was on earth, and his heart there too. But look into the other world and see the result - "torment." The good things have changed now. "The rich man died and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment." "And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, etc . . . . and the beggar died." Was he buried? Not a word about it, for he belonged not to the earth. "He was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." He who had the "evil things" down here, "was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." He who have the "evil things" down here, was carried to the best place in heaven. Then mark, it was not the affliction, sores, etc., of Lazarus made him righteous, any more than the riches of the rich man made him unrighteous. God having done with the earthly things, no earthly circumstances are a mark of God's present favour, or the reverse: though, no doubt, God's dealings with Lazarus were the means of bringing down his pride, breaking the will, etc., and so preparing him for the place He was going to take him to.

148 Verse 31. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets," etc. Here this solemn truth comes out, that even the resurrection of Christ will not convince them; for if they refuse to hear God's word as they have it, they will not hear the testimony of God, even though one rose from the dead; and we know they did not.

This chapter 16 is to let in the light of another world upon God's ways and dealings in this. The whole world is bankrupt before God; so that man is now trading with another's goods. When man rejected Christ he was turned out of his stewardship. This is man's position. We should therefore, dispose of everything now, in reference to the world to come, according to this permission in grace revealed in chapter 16, to use the things of which we have the administration. If we are serving mammon, we shall not get the blessing of serving God, in the sense of God's gifts; for it is retributive justice here, in a sense. If you are not faithful in another man's, who will give you that which is your own? If you have not been faithful to the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? If you are loving money, you cannot have your heart filled with Christ. We are not to be "slothful in business," but "fervent in spirit, serving the Lord"; and for this He opens heaven to us. Not as He said to Abraham, "Unto a land that I will shew thee." He has shewn heaven unto us, having opened it to us in grace. It is the revelation of grace that gives power over earthly things. May the Lord keep before us a living Christ, as our light for guidance and salvation to walk and trust in!

Luke 17.

We have seen the great principle of divine grace in contrast with self-righteousness, and the Jewish economy, which refused its Messiah, the Son of God, set aside to make way for bringing to light life and incorruption through the gospel. "Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come; but woe unto him through whom they come" (v. 1). We enter here on the spirit and way of serving, now that the world to come was let in upon the conduct and faith of the disciples in this world, for none could serve two masters. God is carrying on a work - in a little child perhaps - but it is His own work and individual faith is needed in the path of a rejected Christ. Among those who professed to follow Him and His glory on the principles of faith, there would be alas! many scandals. It was not now, nor yet to be, a reign of judicial power when the Son of man would gather out of His kingdom all scandals and them which do iniquity. Satan's power is permitted, the exercise of faith is required. It is a time of proving, by the prevalence of evil, that which lasts because of God. The cross must be taken and self denied. It is a hard lesson, but blessed when learned. The cross and the glory are always connected. The cross must be on the natural man, not on sin merely, so as to break the will. Christ had no will, shewing perfectness; but we need the cross practically, as the means of communion by breaking down that which hinders.

149 Then, again, the whole system of the world is a stumbling-block: there is not one thing in it which is not calculated to turn the heart from God. Take the merest trifle - dress, vanities in the street, flattery of man, of brethren, perhaps, etc. - all tend to elevate the flesh. What a different thing is heaven opening on a rejected Saviour! And this is our light and pathway through the world, for now the heavens are open to faith, as we pass through it to Him whom we see in glory. There is an active energetic flow of God's love in carrying on souls. Is our walk a witness? Take care you are not a stumbling-block. You may say, A person must be very weak to feel such or such a thing, but it is the very reason why he is to be cared for. The Lord give us never to hinder but to help the weak! These things are the stumbling-block of the enemy, and the man by whom they come is so far an instrument of Satan. The Lord loves His little ones. Better for that man that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of them.

Verse 3. But suppose a person does something to stumble you, what then? "Take heed to yourselves." Your part is to forgive. Take heed to yourselves, jealous and self-judging. "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." What! if he trespass often - "seven times in a day?" Yes, if he "seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." Watch incessantly yourselves and see to it that the spirit of love (the power of unity and the bond of perfectness, as we know from elsewhere) be not broken, nor the spirit of holiness, that the peace be not false. Blessed path! what condescension to our weakness and danger in the introduction of grace, and the moral judgment of present things, which are the aliment of the flesh and the domain of the world! Watchfulness against self and grace to others bring us through, rising like a life-boat above all breakers.

150 Verses 5-10. In such a position there would be need of faith and the energy proper to it. The apostles (led of God, though perhaps seeing but a petty part of the difficulty and with a confused sense of this new position) pray for an increase of faith. The Lord answers by setting forth the fulness of its energy: for faith realises a power which is not in the person and thus acts without limit. He applies it also, though in general terms, to the removal of the obstacles of a system, which might present the form of what was good and great, but fruitless. In every need we may draw upon God. All consists in looking simply to Him. All things are possible to him that believes. For it is God accomplishing His will, and He has willed to accomplish it by man and to honour Himself in man, after being dishonoured of Satan in and by man; but this in faith according to His will, till the Lord Jesus returns in power and glory. God is at work, and if you are co-workers under Him, you could believe that He is and say, Let this be done and this. Is it nothing to wield God's power? If you know what it is to be opposed by Satan, you will feel how blessed it is to call in the power of God. Your place and work may be very humble - outside - no matter what: still you need God's power to be little. What the Lord says in verses 7-10 is not applicable to a careless servant. If he has neglected his work, he is a slothful one. But I am an unprofitable servant when I have done all that I am commanded. Am I neglected? It is to try me. Something needs it. Perhaps I want to learn that God can do without me. Now that Christ is rejected, God is at work. If He uses me, it is a great honour; if He lays me by because self was elated, it is a great mercy. He is saying, as it were, Be satisfied with Myself, be content to know I love thee. Are you content with His love? Do you want man's honour or your own? Remember that when you have done all, it is the time to say, "unprofitable servant!"

151 Verses 11-19. The history which follows shews that when God brings in new power, those who have had the previous privileges are the last to rise above them into what is better. But there is a faith wrought of God in the heart which sets free from the subsidiary forms thrown around God's will in the past economy. Thus, recognising God in Jesus, it carries the soul beyond the law of a carnal commandment and associates it with Him in whom is the power of an endless life. It occupies us with His person who is above all, planting us not in dishonour of the law ("yea, we establish the law" through faith), but in the liberty wherewith the truth - the Son - makes free. All were cleansed by the word of divine power. The nine went on to shew themselves to the priests, acting on the word of Jesus and thus far in faith. But the Samaritan stranger perceived God's glory in what had taken place, and so turned back to Jesus and aloud glorified God. The others owned the power which had come, but remained in their religious habits and associations. He, less pre-occupied with outward institutions, returned to the source of power, not to its shadow and witness, which nature always uses to hide God. He had experienced divine power in Jesus, and instead of merely enjoying the gift, he most humbly, but in the boldness and propriety of faith, went back to own the Giver. "He fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks." He wanted no priest. The priest did not, could not cleanse, but only discern and pronounce a man clean. Evil had levelled the Jew and the Samaritan. They were alike cast out of the presence of divine communion by the leprosy which afflicted them. But He who healed lepers under the law was He who gave the law, and the word of Jesus at once recognised the law and manifested the Jehovah who gave it. The gratitude of faith was a readier reasoner than the instruction of the law; for the blessing afforded by the work and presence of Jesus was to the nine the means of keeping up Jewish distinction, to the tenth it was the evidence of divine goodness. To him, therefore, it was complete deliverance. He was by faith arrived in grace at the fountain-head from which the law itself proceeded, and was let go in peace, made whole by his faith, having liberty from God and with God, giving thanks and glorifying Him, and withal knowing how acceptable it was in His sight.

152 How many reasons might have been pleaded for going on and not returning to Jesus! How might the nine Jews have said, You are ordered to go and shew yourself to the priest! But faith goes straight to the heart of God, and there finds all grace and a dismissal in the liberty of grace. To him who returned to Jesus, cleansed and with heart-felt thanks, the priests were left behind. In spirit and figure the healed Samaritan was passed into another system by faith - the grace and liberty of the gospel. It is blessed thus to be at the source of power and goodness, and there only does God put now those who believe. If under the law before, we are become dead to it by the body of Christ that we should belong to another-to Him who is raised from the dead. It is this way alone that glorifies God, however men may plead the letter. Thus only can we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received (not the law, but) the reconciliation. In Him, thus known and enjoyed, we have all and more than all then the priests ever conceived. We have communion with the Father and the Son by faith in God fully revealed. We have to do with Him in heaven now, not with a temple and priests on earth. "Arise, go thy way." You have found the person and glory of the Lord. You are beyond the priests and the temple, your faith has pierced the veil and found One greater than both. The rest went their way, cleansed, to be under the law. Stupefied by Judaism, they did not return to glorify God. All this, at the point of the gospel we are arrived at, is full of importance. It is another light thrown on the passing away of the law and of that dispensation.

In the next verses, from verse 20 to 37, the question was actually raised as to the coming of God's kingdom. The Pharisees asked when it should come, and the Lord places them on their plain responsibility. "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation," or outward show. It should not be said, Lo here! or Lo there! for that kingdom then was there among them. The King was speaking to them. Ought they not to have known Him because He came in grace? If He had humbled Himself to know their sorrows and to die for their sins, was that a reason for not discerning His greatness and moral perfection manifested in ten thousand ways? Did not His holy love to the poor and guilty prove, plainly enough, who He was? If man's heart had not been opposed to all that was the delight of God in the kingdom, if his eye had not been blind to all that was lovely and of good report, he would have felt that the lower Christ stooped, the more wonderful were His works.

153 To His disciples He had other things to say. He was rejected and leaving them. Suffering awaited them. Trying as their position might now be as the companions of His rejection, the days would come when they would long in vain for one of those days when they had enjoyed blessed and sweet intercourse with the Son of man. They would, as Jews in the land, feel the difference. Then Satan, to allure and deceive in that day, would lead men to say, "Lo here," or "Lo there"; but the disciples would know its falsehood. There was no hope for the nation which rejected Christ. The King had been there but refused; He was no longer "here" or "there." This day the Son of man would be as the lightning flashing from one quarter under heaven to another. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected of this generation, that is, the unbelieving Jews.

It is evident that while the Lord takes this name of Son of man to His disciples as revealing a relation higher and wider than that of Messiah (the link of which was broken and gone in the nation's ruinous rejection of Him), the whole of this instruction is Jewish and shall find its accomplishment properly in a godly remnant of the latter day. The Christian part is not spoken of here, for that is association after a heavenly sort with Christ, and we have its great moral outlines, at least in Luke 12. Here we are on the ground of responsibility, not of heavenly grace. We must separate the church's place with Christ from the government of the world by Christ. The very character of the predicted delusion confirms this distinction. For if men said to the Christian, "Here is Christ," he would instantly know that it was of Satan, because we are to meet Him, not here or there on earth, but in the air; 1 Thess. 4. But this is not the case when you come to the government of the world. There the hope rests on Jewish ground, and then the witnesses for God must go through tribulation such as has never been. Now, unless expressly forewarned, they would naturally look here or there for the Deliverer: for in that character His feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, and He shall come to Zion and shall come out of it. "Jehovah shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion; rule thou in the midst of thine enemies." All this differs from the Christian's hope and his desire meanwhile; for we do not want our enemies destroyed, but converted, and we are looking to be taken from them all to heaven with the Saviour, instead of waiting for Him to join and exalt us under His reign upon the earth.

154 But, again, the subject here is neither the past siege of Jerusalem nor the future judgment of the dead. Titus's capture of the city was not like the lightning, but a long, fierce, hardly-contested struggle. Nor were the Jews, up to the moment of the final stroke, in a state of ease and carnal security, resting on the continuance of things as they were, as in the days of Noah and Lot. Suddenness of judgment is its first feature, certainty is the next, discriminating certainty, neither of which things could be fairly said of the Romans. Without or within, at rest or at work, men or women, it mattered not, God would burn up the chaff and preserve the wheat: the one should be taken, and the other be left. Next, there is a local and earthly stamp, which excludes the scene from that of the great white-throne judgment. For there is no resemblance between the judgment of the dead and the deluge or the fate of Sodom. It is the end of the age, not of the world, and is a judgment on a temporal people, and more especially on their city; for they were not to return into the house, if on the housetop; and if in the field, they were not to turn back. None of these things could be said of the dead, any more than the bed or the mill. It would be no time for human motives, artifices, or concessions (v. 33). Faithfulness to the Lord and His testimony would be the true and saving wisdom. The day of the Son of man's revelation was in question - His judgment of the quick, and especially of a generation which has rejected and caused Him to suffer. If they asked, "where?" the solemn word for conscience was, where the body, the corpse, was, the swift inevitable judgments of God would fall.

Luke 18.

We saw, from verse 20 to the end of the last chapter, that the kingdom of God was presented, first, in the person of Jesus, as a question of faith, not of outward show, nor of a Lo, here! or lo, there! and, secondly, in the way of judgment, which should deliver the remnant by the execution of divine vengeance on their enemies.

155 Verses 1-8. The first eight verses of our chapter complete the prophetic warning, and shew that the resource of the righteous in the last days will be prayer. Nevertheless, though the parable has the special application to the future oppression of God's witnesses who will then be found in Jerusalem, the instruction, as usual with this gospel, is made general so as to suit any or all kinds of difficulty by which men might be tried. "And he speaks a parable unto them, to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint." Faith would be put to the test. If God were looked to, and not merely the blessing, men would not faint, though there was no answer. They would go on, always looking up, though all seemed against them. The widow represents those who have no human resource: their resource would be constancy in prayer. Such will be the godly seed in Israel, for it is the remnant, not the church which is here meant. They will plead with the judge to avenge them of their adversary. Their patience and confidence may be sorely tried, but they will not cry in vain. "And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him." He may be slow in taking up their cause; but when once He shall rise up, a short work will He make on the earth. Meanwhile, patience must have its perfect work. In Jesus it had its full perfection. There was the rejection and the reproach of men, the forsaking of disciples, the power of Satan, the cup of God's wrath; but He went through all to the glory of God. In detail, we too have to be sifted, and to find all circumstances against us but God for us, yet more than if we had outward help, miraculous power, the church all right, etc. Even joy may hinder our entire dependence on God, making us forget, practically, that the flesh profits nothing. When no circumstances lead you to have any hope, is your hope then in Him? The flesh may get on for a long while, as in Saul; but faith only can wait with all against it. It is then the divine life depending on divine power. Thus it was in Christ pre-eminently. "I believed, therefore have I spoken." He went down into the dust of death, and has introduced a wholly new order of things. And we, having the same spirit of faith - we also believe, and therefore speak. "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation." Christ is dead, risen, and now set down at the right hand of God. Having this life, we are put to the test practically to learn the lesson of death and resurrection, where nothing but God can sustain.

156 In the parable there are two considerations. If the unjust judge hear and act for the defenceless, be the motive what it may, will not God? But this is far from all. God has His affections, not only His character, but objects of His delight. "And shall not God avenge his own elect?" etc. It never can become the righteous God, who taketh vengeance to make light of evil or let the wicked go unpunished. For then how shall He judge the world? He notices the cry from the oppressed day and night, and it is the cry of His own elect. "I tell you that he will avenge them speedily." But will there be the faith that expects His interference? They will cry from distress and God will hear. Nevertheless, the question is raised, Will there be, when the Son of man cometh, that faith on the earth, which is founded on God known in peaceful communion? Will it not rather be the cry of the righteous, in bitterness of spirit, a cry forced out of them, and not the cry of desire?

Verse 9. We have next, the moral features of, and suited to, the kingdom, the characters which are in harmony or discord with the state of things introduced by grace. The Pharisee and publican set forth, not the doctrine of atonement or of justification by faith, but the certainty that self-righteousness is displeasing to God, and that lowliness because of our sin is most acceptable in His sight. The Pharisee does not set God aside. He "stood and prayed thus with himself: God, I thank thee." But then he thanks God for what he is, not for what God is. The only hope of the publican was in God Himself. He was very ignorant, no doubt, but he had the right spirit to get at God. Light had broken in and shewn he was a sinner, and he submitted to the painful conviction, and confessed the truth of his state to God. He was cast on God's mercy to his soul. He dared not appeal to justice, he did not ask indifference, but that mercy which measures the sin and forgives it. The revelation of grace had not yet come in, the work of reconciliation was not yet done, so that the publican stood "afar off," but his heart was touched, and God was what he wanted. If a soul is brought to a sense of sin now, it need not, and ought not, to stand afar off. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared. Nevertheless, though he did and could not thus know grace, the publican gives God and himself their true character. It was not full knowledge, but the knowledge, as far as it went was true. "I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Universal truth! but where so shewn as in Jesus? For if the first man, exalting himself, was abased to hell, He who was God, made Himself of no reputation, humbled Himself to the death of the cross. "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him," etc.

157 In one sense men cannot humble themselves, because they are sinners already, and cannot go lower; a saint may. True humility is forgetfulness of self.

This is illustrated yet more by the incident that follows (v. 15-17), where they brought infants to Jesus, that He would touch them. It is the lowliness of real insignificance, as the former was because of sinfulness. Who would be troubled with beings of such little consequence? Not the disciples, but Jesus. The Lord delighted in them, and that is the spirit of the kingdom of God. And here too a general moral maxim comes out. If a man is to enter that kingdom, all confidence in self must be broken down, and the truth be received simply, as a little child hears its mother. If it is not so, God and man have not their place. When He speaks, all I have to do is to listen. This is the humility of nothingness, as the other was on account of sin.

Next, in verses 18 to 27 comes the question of doing in order to eternal life, not salvation for a lost one, but that which searches the heart to the bottom. The young man was a lovely character, looked at as a creature. For if there are the ravages of sin in the world, there are traces of God there too. This ruler did not see God in Christ. Morally attracted, he came to learn to do good, without a doubt of his own competence. In Jesus he only saw a perfectly good man, and one therefore eminently able to advise and direct him in the same path. Sin, on the one hand, and grace, on the other, were altogether ignored by him. He knew neither himself nor God. There is no man good. All are gone astray. Man is a sinner, and needs God to be good to him: he is incompetent to do the good which satisfies God.

158 The Lord took up the young ruler on his own assumption that he could do good, for the purpose of bringing out what he was. The good Master that he had appealed to puts to the test what his heart really is. "Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast . . . and come, follow me." Would he give up self-importance? After all, he loved his riches too well. "He was very sorrowful; for he was very rich." Had not such things been promised as a blessing to the Jews? Christ shews them to be a snare. But then they do much good! Nay, are they good for your heart? It is not that they may not be used in grace; but the man did not know his own heart. Good is not there, nor the strength to produce it. Every motive which governs man is rooted up by the cross. But all within is bad, and I can never work a thing fit for God out of bad material. I need God therefore, who can give me a new and holy nature, who can be merciful to me because He is above all sin. The spring of all good is, that it flows from God and not man. It is an impossibility, as far as man is concerned, that any should be saved. Sin has ruined man and all his hopes. If one looks at the means he can avail himself of, they are wholly useless to save him. But "the things which are impossible with men," said the Saviour, "are possible with God." Such is the sole foundation for the sinner.

On the other hand (v. 28-30), if Peter is quick to speak of the devotedness of the disciples, in leaving all and following Jesus, the Lord shews the certainty that every loss, for the kingdom's sake, will turn into manifold gain, both now and in the world to come.

But He binds it all up (v. 31-33) with what was coming on His own person. They were going up to Jerusalem; but for what? He, the Messiah, "shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on; and they shall scourge him, and put him to death." All hopes must end here: "Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." Even He, if He is to deliver the lost, must come down to the dust of death. Christ has no association with sinful man. How then can He deliver? He must die for us; He cannot take corruption into union with Himself. A living Christ, we may reverently say, could not deliver us, consistently with God's nature and character; redemption was a necessity. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

159 But it was the only means of a holy salvation; man's full wickedness came out in the rejection and death of Christ. He hated what is in God and Him who is God - hated both the Son and the Father. All question of human justice is settled and negatived for ever. Alas! the disciples understood none of these things, neither His shame and death, nor His resurrection. It was the accomplishment of what the prophets had written concerning the Son of man. But they knew not what He said nor what they wrote. The death of Christ would manifest what man was, and what God was; His resurrection would evince the power of life that can deliver the dead. But He was not understood.

Verse 34 closed that part of our Gospel which shews the bringing in of the new and heavenly dispensation. With verse 35 we enter on the historical account of the Lord's final intercourse with the Jews. "Son of man" was the general character of the Gospel, but now, in the midst of Israel, He takes up that of Son of David. Jericho was the first place Israel had to say to when they crossed the Jordan, and a special curse was pronounced against it. But Israel had not walked in obedience, and the Messiah enters not as the king in outward glory, but as the rejected Jesus of Nazareth, with blessing for the remnant that received Him in faith.

"And it came to pass that as he was nigh unto Jericho," etc. It is not "came nigh," as if it were necessarily His first approach, but a general expression, just as applicable to His being nigh on His leaving the city. (Compare Matthew and Mark.) "A certain blind man sat by the way side, begging . . . and he cried, saying Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me." He was rebuked by many, but there was the perseverance of faith, and he cried so much the more, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on me." Here was a sample of the power of the Name that Israel rejected. The eye of the blind was opened then, as it will be in the remnant by-and-by.

160 Luke 19.

Next, we have the account of Zacchaeus (chap. 19: 1-10), for the Spirit of God did not tie Luke to the mere order of time; and morally viewed, it was the fitting sequel to the healing of the blind man. Found only in this Gospel, it is a striking illustration of the grace which receives a man, no matter how low, and in the face of Jewish prejudices. For a publican, a rich chief of the publicans, was justly an object of abhorrence to those who regarded him as the expression of Gentile dominion. All was wrong through sin, and Israel was not humbled. Still it was a sad position for an Israelite, however honest and conscientious Zacchaeus might be in it. But it was the day of grace, and "he sought to see Jesus." There were difficulties, hindrances in him and around; but faith perseveres in spite of opposition. As the blind man was bent on his object, so was the rich publican set on seeing Jesus. This marks the working of God's Spirit - the apprehension of the worth of the object. We want it and more of it; we know enough to want more. It is an appetite produced by the Holy Spirit. It is a terrible thing, if we, as Christians, have not this craving, this hungering and thirsting after a greater enjoyment of God; for where this is not, deadness and apathy of soul have come in.

Jesus came to the place, and saw him and said unto him, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for today I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully." He had not yet the full knowledge of Jesus, but his desire had been met, and he had joy. It was neither law nor glory, but a hidden Messiah come in full grace. There was abundant evidence who He was, but in grace He was come down where they were. No matter what people thought. Finding Jesus is everything. Zacchaeus had the answer to the want which divine grace had created. Grace does not give at first the knowledge of Christ's work; there may be little or no understanding that we are made the righteousness of God in Him. Hence the first joy often wanes; because, when conscience is accused, I want the consciousness of that righteousness. The first joy is constantly that of discovering that we possess the felt need of the soul for Christ; but the full question as to righteousness may still have to be met in the conscience, though of course every believer in possessing Christ does possess divine righteousness. Nevertheless, much as there is to learn, there is joy. New interests are awakened, new desires arise, a new insight is obtained into good and evil. When there is a deep sense of what it is to be lost and saved, the world (man) is a light matter. But when the pressure on the conscience is removed, too often nature resumes a sort of place, and Christ is not all and everything to the saint.

161 Zacchaeus' heart is opened. There is confidence, which tells itself out. There might be ever so much honest effort to satisfy conscience in his false position; but after all what a place it was! Men murmured. The Lord passed all over. Self-defence was needless. The Lord did not accuse, and speaks of nothing but the salvation which was that day come to the house. Zacchaeus was a son of Abraham, and the Son of man was come to seek and to save that which was lost. What, could a Pharisee object? There had been a work with the conscience of Zacchaeus, but the Son of man was come and salvation was the word. He brings it. He gave what Zacchaeus had little thought of. He was come to meet the need He had created. He was come to seek, that is, to produce the desire; and to save, that is, to meet the desire.

The Lord was now nigh to Jerusalem, and so He added a parable to correct the thought that the kingdom of God was immediately to appear; for Jerusalem is the city of the great King, and the question of His rejection would be closed there. He shews, on the contrary, that He was going away - going to a far country, to heaven, where He was to receive the kingdom and to return. The time was not come to set up the kingdom on earth. Meanwhile, the business of His servants was to trade with the money He delivered them. When returned, having received the kingdom, He assigns them places according to their faithfulness; for in Luke it is a question of man's responsibility; in the corresponding parable of Matthew God's sovereignty is the point. Difference of gifts appears in Matthew, difference of rewards in Luke. In Luke each servant receives a mina from the Lord; in Matthew all who gained in trading enter alike the joy of their Lord. Here the whole force is, occupy. "Occupy till I come." Our position is serving a rejected Saviour till He comes again. We are not yet to share in the glory of the kingdom. When He returns, all will be disposed of impartially, and there will be that which answers to authority over ten cities and over five. The righteousness of God is the same for us as for Paul; but as there is very different service, and different measures of fidelity, so there will be speciality of reward. No doubt it is grace that works, still here there is reward of faithful service The secret of all service is the due appreciation of the Master's grace. If one fears Him as "an austere man," there is unfaithfulness too, even on one's own principles.

162 Verse 26 is a universal principle. When through grace there is the realisation in our souls of the truth presented to us, we are of those "who have." But if a truth comes before a man, and he talks about it without its being mixed with faith in the heart, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. Truth, if it reveals Christ, humbles me and deals with the evil within. Then it is not only Christ as an object outside me, but a living Christ in my soul. Knowledge, which has not power over the conscience, only puffs up. If truth be not acted on, it troubles the conscience. But how often one sees a conscience, having lost the light, quite easy at a lower standard than before, rejoicing that it has lost its trouble, though the light of truth be lost with it! The soul has sunk below that which had exercised the conscience, and thus the whole standard, principle, and life are lowered, and opportunities of winning Christ lost for ever.

Holding fast the truth - Christ - I have Him as it were a part of myself, and learn to hate the evil and to delight in the good; so that I get more, till I grow up into Christ, into the measure of the stature of His fulness. Common duties do not rob us of Him: from these the heart returns with fresh delight into its own centre. It is the heart clinging to vanity that spoils our joy; it is anything which exalts self and lowers Christ - an idle thought even, if allowed in the heart. As to the citizens, the Jews on whom He had rights as king, their will was against Him, not only hating Him there while among them, but above all, sending the message after Him, We will not have this man to reign over us. Unsparing vengeance must take its course on them in His presence.

Verse 28. Jesus enters Jerusalem as Messiah. His rights as Lord of all were to be asserted and acted on, verses 29-36. He presents Himself for the last time to Israel, in the lowliness of grace, which was of far greater importance than the kingdom. This gives rise to the most marked contrast between the disciples and the Pharisees. The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with loud voice, saying "Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven and glory in the highest." Some of the Pharisees appeal to Him to rebuke the disciples, but learn from His lips that if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. There must be a testimony to His glory; verses 37-40.

163 When Jesus was born, angels announced it to the poor of the flock, and the heavenly host praised God, saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace - good pleasure in men. Such will be the result, and the angels anticipate it, without reference to the hindrances, or to the means. But Christ was rejected here below; and now the disciples say, "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest." When the question of power is raised, in order to establish the kingdom, there will be war then (Rev. 12). In fact there can be no peace in heaven till Satan and his host are cast out. Then will the King be established in power, when the obstacles shall be taken out of the way. Psalm 118 celebrates this, His mercy enduring for ever, spite of all the people's sins. It is the song of the latter day. If God sends peace to the earth in the person of His Son, it is in vain, not as to the accomplishment, but as to present effect. Meanwhile, to faith there is peace in heaven, and when this is asserted in power against the evil spirits in the heavenly places, there will be blessing indeed. Oh, what a time will it be! What a relief to the working of God's grace! For now it is ever toil and watching. What, always? Yes, always; and that is not the rest. But then it will be, as sure as God takes His great power and reigns. "The Lord shall hear the heavens," etc. (Hosea 2). There will be an unbroken chain of blessing, and that too on earth. It will not be one "building, and another inhabiting," but blessing flowing down and around to the lowest and the least. Till then, as now, the word is suffering in grace, not victorious power. Never fear persecution: it will make your face shine as an angel's. But God could not be silent if His own Son were cast out. He might leave Him to suffer, but not without a testimony. If there were no others, the stones would speak. And so if we are faithful and near to Christ, this will turn for a testimony.

164 Next (v. 41-44) we have, not the cursing of the fig-tree, but the spirit of grace in the Lord's weeping over the city. The counsels of God will surely be accomplished, but we ought also to know His real tenderness in Jesus. Those tears were not in vain, whatever the appearances. It was the time of Jerusalem's visitation, but she knew it not. We ought, as having the mind of Christ, to know when and how to interfere spiritually. We are the epistle of Christ, whereby the world should be able to read what God is. Christ manifested Him perfectly. But what did He find in the people? See verses 45, 46. God declares His house to be one of prayer: men - the Jews - had made it a den of thieves. It was a terrible moral estimate, but this is the true way to judge; that is, having God's word, to take facts as they are. We are ignorant and morally incapable of judging without the word of God. Let the eye be fixed on Christ and our judgment be formed on things around by the word.

Notes on the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25021E> 164

Collected Writings Vol. 25, Expository No. 4d. (b & c are the charts, pp. 28-36)

Luke 20.

The first question raised was by the scribes, as to the authority of Christ and its source. Jesus questions them about the baptism of John: Was it from heaven or of man? They reasoned without conscience. They owned their incompetency, rather than acknowledge His Messiahship. The simple child of God receives the word as certainly as Christ gives it. Reliance on God's word is the only sure ground. How can you be certain? God has said it. If God's speaking requires proof, I must have something more sure and true than God. Is the church? Alas! alas! . . . If God cannot speak so as to claim authority, without another to accredit what He says, there is no such thing as faith.

The parable of the husbandmen (v. 9-18) sets forth the Lord's dealings with Israel, to whom the vineyard was first let, and, upon the rejection of "the Heir," the gift of it to others. Nor was this all. The rejected stone becomes the head of the corner. Whosoever fell on that stone should be broken; but on whomsoever it fell, utter destruction would be the result. The past sins of Jerusalem illustrate the first; for the second we must wait for the execution of judgment when the Lord appears.

Verse 19. The question of tribute to Caesar was very subtle. They used the effect of their own wickedness to tempt the Lord. Abstractedly the Jews ought not to have been subject to the Gentiles. And, moreover, the Messiah was come, the Deliverer of Israel. If He said, Obey the Gentiles, where was His delivering power? If He said, Rebel, they would have had an excuse to deliver Him to Pilate. Because of Israel's sin, God has broken down the key-stone of nations, and given power to the Gentile. The Jew has been rebellious under the sentence, and ever craving deliverance from their thraldom. But the Lord answered with divine wisdom. He put them exactly in the place where their sin had put them: Caesar's things are to be rendered to Caesar, and God's things to God.

165 After settling the question as to this world between God and the people, He next meets the Sadducean or sceptical difficulty as to the next world; verses 27-38. The Lord shews the place of the risen saints in entire contrast with the world. The idea of a general resurrection is set aside. If all rise together, there is uncertainty, a common judgment, etc.; but if the saints are raised by themselves because they are children of God, leaving the rest of the dead for another and distinctive resurrection - a resurrection of judgment, all is changed. No passage of scripture speaks of both rising together. The resurrection is that which most of all distinguishes, and this for ever. It is the grand testimony to the difference between good and bad. The saint will be raised because of the Spirit of Christ that dwells in him - the application to his body of that power of life in Christ which has already quickened his soul. It is a resurrection from among the dead, as was Christ's. So here, "they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that age," for such it is, "and the resurrection from the dead." "They are equal to the angels, and are the children of God." Luke adds another characteristic point omitted elsewhere; "all live unto him." It is the present blessed living unto God of those who have died, and await the resurrection from among the dead.

Then in verses 41-44 the Lord puts His question, How is David's Son, David's Lord? This was just what the Jews could not understand. It was the hinge on which turned the change in the whole moral system. He had taken the place of the holy dependent One, a pilgrim as others, and He had drunk of the brook by the way. He was going on in meekness and quietness, but living by the refreshments which came from God His Father. Thus having emptied Himself, humbled Himself, He is now exalted by God. This great universal principle, "he that humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he that exalteth himself shall be abased," is fully exemplified in the two Adams. The first Adam, man's nature, would exalt itself to be "as God," until in its full ripeness Antichrist will exalt himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.

166 Satan tempted man at the beginning to make himself like God, and at the end God shall send them strong delusion to believe a lie. Satan, not being able to exalt himself in heaven, will attempt to do it through the seed of man; but in the end shall be abased; Isaiah 14: 12-15. In the last Adam we have Him who was God humbling Himself, going down, becoming obedient unto death, even the vilest, and then we see that humbled One going back to the place of power at God's right hand, but as man as well as God. God highly exalted Him, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. Having been obedient all through, in humiliation, He is exalted to be David's Lord. This took Him out of the line of Jewish promises, though as David's Son of course He had them.

The Jews did not understand the Scriptures, and fulfilled them through not understanding them. God's ways have gone on through all, manifesting His grace and patience towards man. He placed man on the earth, and then sent law, prophets, etc., until man gets to the end in rejecting all. God tries man and then brings in the new man, who is the fulfilment of all His blessed counsels - the second Man. Then He takes up the last Adam as the heavenly man into a heavenly place and all now depends not on the responsibility of man, but on the stability of God. Life, righteousness, and glory descend from heaven. Is it life that is needed? God gives the life of Christ in resurrection. Is it righteousness? It is a divine righteousness that God gives. Is it a kingdom? It is the kingdom of heaven. All flows down not simply from God in grace, but from the place which man has in glory, from the counsels of God about the heavenly man in glory. He has first taken Him up, and thence the blessing flows down. The man Christ Jesus has fully met all man's responsibilities. This is the reason of the fulness of the blessing of the gospel, and also that of the kingdom to come. The gospel is the power of God, and the kingdom is to be set up in heaven. The king is gone into the far country; and when He returns, it will be to bring in the kingdom of heaven. All the counsels of God now take their centre and seat in heaven. Thus, in the largest way, the turning-point in all the plans and counsels of God is Jesus being set at the right hand of God. All the character, the stability, and the perfectness of our blessing takes its source from the exalted Jesus. The character of it is heavenly; the stability is what God has done; and the righteousness that fits me for it is God's.

167 The Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, has come down to bear witness to Him, on whom peace of the soul rests, even on the accomplished righteousness of Him who is taken up into glory. His office is to work within, and make us down here manifest what God is. All this we have as the result of Christ, instead of accomplishing the promises as David's Son, bringing them in as David's Lord.

Mark the moral blessedness of this general principle: "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." Christ humbled Himself - not was humbled, that is another thing. "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." That is what we are to do - take the lowest place. We cannot do this till we are Christians; but it is our glory to take the lowest, and hear Him say, "Come up higher." "He hath left us an example that we should follow his steps." The Lord Jesus has been rejected as David's Son; He will come forth as David's Lord.

Now, while He is thus hidden, we see the church's place. We are "hid with Christ in God," and have our portion by faith, as united to Him, while He is out of sight. The Holy Ghost, having come down, gives us a place as associated with Him in all the blessedness of the Father's house, and in all the glory which He has to be displayed by-and-by.

The place of Eve was one of union with Adam in the dominion over all things; Genesis 1: 26-28; 5: 2. We find the church in the display of Christ's glory, only as by grace, the bride and companion of Christ, never as part of the inheritance. Viewed even individually, we are "joint-heirs with Christ." It is of the last importance to the saints in these days to apprehend the distinct place which we have, as one with Christ, the heavenly Man.

168 Luke 21.

At the close of chapter 20 and the beginning of chapter 21 we have a most instructive, though painful, contrast between the selfish hypocrisy of the scribes, whom He condemns before the people, and the real devoted love of the widow, whom He singles out for honour. Remark also that the Lord knows how to separate the intention of a sincere soul from the system that surrounds it, judging the whole state of that with which the individual is associated. Observe, further, the difference of giving one's living and one's superfluity. It is easy to compliment God with presents, and thus really minister to self; but she who gives her living gives herself in devotedness to God, and proves her dependence on God. Thus, the two mites of her who had these only expressed all this perfectly: for there was need and everything else to hinder, while the applause of men and the pride of the donor found no place here. For Jewish splendour the act had little worth; but the Lord saw, and bore witness of, the poor widow, blessed in her deed.

Verses 5 and following. The account which the Lord gives in this Gospel of the sorrows of Jerusalem is also, like the preceding, much more allied to the simple fact of the judgment on the nation and the change of dispensation. It differs much from Matthew 24, which fully refers to what is to arrive at the end; while our Gospel bears, more than the first two, on the then present time and setting aside of Jerusalem. Hence, Luke plainly sets forth the siege and destruction by Titus, and the times of the Gentiles. Let it be observed also that the question in verse 7 extends only to the predicted destruction. Consequently, in what follows, we have the judgment on the nation taken as a whole, from its then destruction till the times of the Gentiles (with whose economy this Gospel is so much occupied) be fulfilled. Nation should rise against nation, signs from heaven and sorrows on earth follow. And before all these the disciples would be objects of hostility, but this would turn for a testimony instead of destroying theirs. They were to go on testifying, while the unhappy devoted city where they were filled up its iniquity. The Lord would permit trial, but not a hair of their head would be lost. But this would close. The sign given here is in no wise the abomination of desolation, but an historical fact - Jerusalem encompassed with armies. Its desolation now approached. They were then to flee, not to return. These were days of vengeance (it is not said of the unprecedented tribulation, as in Matthew, which is only in the latter day). All that was written was to be fulfilled. Great distress there was in the land, and wrath on this people. Slaughter first and captivity afterwards wrought their cruel work of devastation, and Jerusalem till this hour abides, the boast and prey of Gentile lords, and so must it be till their day is over.

169 In these earlier verses (8-19) the Lord dwells on the dangers, duties, and trials of the disciples before the sack of Titus. Specially were they to beware of a pretended deliverer, and of the cry that the time (that is, of deliverance) was at hand. Neither were they to be terrified by wars or commotions, any more than seduced by fair promises. These things must first be, but the end not immediately. Besides, it was not only confusion and woes and signs of coming change and evil outside. Before all these they themselves were to be in affliction and persecution for Christ's sake.

Then in verses 20-24, comes the actual judgment of the city and people, already judged virtually by His rejection. This extends down to our own days in principle. But all is not yet fulfilled. For in verse 25 begins the Lord's description of the closing scene - a judgment not on the Jews merely, but on the Gentiles also; for the powers of the heavens, the source of authority, shall be shaken, as in Haggai 2 and Hebrews 12 This is not said to be immediately after the siege of Titus; but on the contrary, room is left for the long course of treading down of Jerusalem under Gentiles, till their times are run out. It is in Matthew that we must look for the great tribulation of the last days, occupied as the first evangelist is with the consequences of Messiah's rejection, especially to Israel. Therefore it is said there, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days," that is, the short crisis of "Jacob's trouble" yet to come. Here, however, after mention of the times of the Gentiles, it is said that "there shall be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and waves roaring, men's hearts failing them," etc. Men were astounded because they saw not the end, and trembled as they were dragged along to some unknown awful conclusion. For principles were at work, they knew not how, dragging them along whether or no.

170 The coming of the Son of man disclosed all the scene to the disciples. But it is clear from the circumstances, and especially from the character of the redemption spoken of (v. 28), that it is a question, not of Christians, but of earthly disciples, and of an earthly deliverance by judgment here below. The Lord in mercy turns the terror of man into a sign of deliverance for the remnant of that day.

Verses 31, 32 are interesting in this point of view here, because they furnish remarkable evidence, first, that the kingdom of God does not mean the gospel of His grace; and, secondly, that this generation cannot refer to the space of time from the prophecy to the destruction of Jerusalem.

1. For when they see these things coming to pass (and He had spoken of the final, universal trouble for the whole habitable earth, and not merely of what has befallen the Jews), they are to conclude that the kingdom of God is nigh. Now, even if it were only the Romans taking away their place and nation, and still more if it include the latter-day trouble, it is undeniable that the gospel had extended far and wide before the first. In fact, the manifestation of its influence was declining rather before that time, as we see in the later epistles. But the things here seen were signs like the budding of the trees, and the kingdom of God is evidently to be at the coming of the King, when the Lord God Almighty takes His great power and reigns. That there was a partial analogous judgment, when Jerusalem fell, is true, but verses 25-28 ought to leave no doubt of a wider subsequent judgment, with signs which introduce, not the sorrows of the Jews, but the Son of man coming in His kingdom.

2. For a similar reason, "this generation" does not apply to a mere lifetime, but is viewed morally, as in Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 12, and many other scriptures. It is here expressly put at the close, after not only the fall of Jerusalem, but the totally distinct scene of Christ's coming in power and glory. The expression in verse 33 is very solemn. Deeper interests were involved than a casual change as to Jerusalem. The time was wrapped up in purposed obscurity, but nothing more sure than the facts predicted.

The Lord has provided for His then disciples what was needful, but also in the written word for the like times to come. Still, though the principle be always true, verse 34 clearly applies to a day to come on the earth. The privilege is to escape the judgments, and stand before the Son of man. This again is earthly, not the rapture to heaven. The great moral principles, of course, remain true for all; specially indeed for those who, by virtue of a higher calling, can enjoy them in a more excellent way.

171 Verses 37, 38. The Lord yet returned to give testimony, walking and working in the day; but His resting-place was there, whence He did depart, and where His feet shall stand in that day. Patient in service, He taught daily and early in the temple; at night He was separate from the judged city. His time was now come.

Luke 22.

How the carnal mind was shewn to be enmity against God in the rejection of Christ! Wickedness was summed up and brought out in all - people, priests, rulers. If a friend, he is a traitor; if disciples, they either fled when danger approached, or denied Him when near. The religious chiefs who ought to have owned the Messiah took Him to the infidel power of the world. He who was in the place of judgment washed his hands, owning Christ's innocence, but gives Him up to man's will and rage. Thus man's evil was brought into complete juxtaposition with that which was perfect, and this in putting Him to death. It is no use to look for good in man. Not that there are no amiable traits of nature, but God has no place at all if man is put to the test.

Along with this is the picture of the Lord's perfect patience through it all. Not man only, but Satan was there in temptation. It was the power of darkness, as well as man's hour. And the Lord Jesus passes through this scene of men's wickedness and Satan's power; His heart melted like wax, but the effect always being the manifestation of perfectness. An angel strengthens Him; for He was really man, but perfect man, enduring all that could try Him, and nothing brought out but perfect grace and perfect obedience. Whenever there was sorrow, His love surmounts the suffering to help and comfort others.

Verses 3-6. It is a solemn thought that the nearer to Jesus, if there is not spiritual life, the more a man resists God, and the more sure and sad an instrument of the enemy he becomes. If truth has been presented and not received, nowhere has Satan so much power.* Covetousness was the means used; but though they plotted to betray and crucify Him in a corner, this could not be; they were obliged to accomplish it according to God's purposes.

{*This is a sample of Luke's manner as to dates. The entrance of Satan into Judas was what was morally necessary to present here; not so the particulars. Strictly, he put it into Judas' heart then, and entered after the sop was received.}

172 Then the light from behind the scene (v. 8-13) makes a passage. It is the Lord; and no matter what He suffers, or what is before Him, yet we find the divine knowledge and power. There is the chamber! What calm and peaceful dignity! It is no effort, nothing to display a character. All yields before the unwitnessed authority of this rejected Saviour - all but that to which it had been most manifested, the unrenewed heart of man. To the householder, unknown it seems to every eye but one, it is enough to hear, "The Master saith to thee."

Verses 14, 15. How blessed to see such perfect human affections combined with His divine knowledge of all things! "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer" - like one leaving his family and first desiring a farewell meeting. When we see the divine glory in the person of Christ, we find the human affections shining out. (Compare Matt. 17: 27.) It is this which gives Him a power and charm which no object else has: so that God can delight in man and man can delight in God. The Lord breaks every link with the old thing (v. 16). It is not setting up the kingdom here, but setting up man with God when the old connection was impossible. He was taking a new place where flesh and blood could not enter. His death and resurrection introduce a new relation with God.

The Lord distinguishes here between the paschal lamb and the wine, and both from the institution of His supper. He entered in the fullest way into all the feelings of Israel - the Israel of God, into the interests of the people as such, till His rejection put them on other ground, and divine favour passed into another scene by the resurrection, becoming Himself the Substitute, the true Paschal Lamb. His disciples held the foremost rank as to this fellowship, as we have Hushai the king's friend. With them He desired the last testimony of parting and love. But while thus expressing His affection to them, He assumes manifestly (v. 18) the Nazarite character, which was always His morally, but now externally and painfully: "I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God come." He postpones His joy with them as in the common enjoyment of the kingdom, till then.

173 Then (v. 19, 20) He institutes the memorial of His better redemption, of His self-sacrificing dying love. If He separated Himself now to God in His joy, it was not want of love to His disciples, but its fullest display. It was to be done "in remembrance" of Him. We remember Him suffering, dead, absent; we know Him as a present living Saviour. The new covenant is established in His blood. We cannot, in all the joy of fellowship with Christ above, forget what brought us into it. On one side, it is a body broken and blood shed; on the other, it is Himself and all the perfectness of love in dying for us. We are united to Him as a risen Christ, but He calls us to remember Him as a dead Christ. The blessedness of this last is in the work He did alone, by virtue of which I am put in union with Himself, alive again for evermore. As to man's part in it (v. 21-23), it was treachery and wickedness.

The Lord then distinctly sets forth this calling to walk in His own lowliness and not as the world. Earthly grandeur was recognised among the Jews, but now it was sentenced, like all their system, as the rudiments of the world. All other greatness, though under the form of being benefactors, was worldly. He was one that served. The grace of His heart sets them right without a reproach. He lets them know that whatever high place they sought, He took a low one. He might have said, Nothing will break down this horrid selfishness; yet says He, "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations." And He is the same now. What we should seek is to have as much of the burden of the church as we can. Suffering thus with Him, His heart goes on with us.

Verse 31. Peter was bold enough in the flesh to enter temptation. But it is impossible for man to stand where it is a question of good and evil. He is a sinner and cannot go through that trial. If God judges, flesh comes to nothing. There is the weakness of human nature, but, besides, Satan's title and power over man, who had brought out his own condition in God's presence, and come under death as the judgment of God. I may have learnt in grace that the flesh is thus profitless, but it must be learnt by intercourse with the enemy, if not with God. For Simon, the Lord prayed that his faith should not fail; all his self-confidence must perish. Nor did he distrust Christ like Judas, who had no faith. What enabled him afterwards to strengthen his brethren? He discovered that there is perfect grace in Christ even when he did worst.

174 Verses 35-38 shew an entire change of circumstances. Previously He had protected them and supplied all, as Messiah disposing of everything here. That was now gone, since the Righteous One was being more and more rejected. He had come, able to destroy Satan's power, but it was the Lord, and man would not have Him; that is the condition the world is in. He must be reckoned among the transgressors! What link could there be between God and man? Humanity is a condemned thing, because it refused Christ. You may find a scrupulous conscience as to putting the money in the treasury, but no conscience in betraying and crucifying Him. But it is in a rejected, dead Christ that faith delights. The Christ that man scorns, it requires faith and grace to own. But the disciples still rested on man's strength, not on Messiah crucified in weakness, and said "Here are two swords." The Lord in saying "It is enough," alludes to their words, and implies that they did not enter into His mind. He did not want to say more.

Verses 39-46. There are siftings needed to exercise us and to judge flesh. Christ, of course, did not need this, but dealt with all in communion with His Father. To Him it was a path of obedience, a blessed opportunity of doing God's will; to Peter it was Satan's power. Christ did not speak of the wickedness of the priests, the will of the people, or the injustice of Pilate, but of the cup His Father gave Him. There was positive intercourse with God about the trial, before the time came. And so it must ever be. It is late to put the armour on when we ought to be in the battle. A man living with God, when he gets into trial, goes through it, in his measure, as Christ did. He stands in the evil day, because he has been with God when there was no evil day. On the cross it was not a question of communion; in the garden Christ is in communion with the Father, as to Satan's power, which was about to fall on Him. He felt all, but succumbed under nothing. Thus, instead of entering into temptation, He was in the highest exercise of spirituality, accomplishing the will of God in the most difficult circumstances, and the most perfect submission where it cost everything. Our Father never can lead us into sin, but He may into temptation, that is, into the place of sifting, where the flesh is exposed, when this is needful, because hardness, or levity, or inattention to His patient warnings, has come in. It is the last, and often necessary, means of self-knowledge and discipline. Though it is great grace that He should take such pains, yet seeing our weakness, and the terribleness of the conflict with the enemy, it well becomes us to pray that we may not be cast into the furnace. In such times a bad conscience drives to despair. The flesh, in its undiscerning carelessness, meets the trial in uncertainty, or carnal opposition, and falls. If, on the other hand, trial comes, we learn our position before God - watching, prayer, entreaty, spreading all before Him in child-like confidence, but submissive desire that His will be done.

175 The Lord was thoroughly man in this, for an angel appears and ministers, strengthening Him; for the conflict of His soul was great; but it urged Him, in the realisation of the trial, to pray more earnestly. The effect of this is to see more clearly the power of evil and the sorrow; and that so as to act on the very body. He was in agony Himself, but always says "Father." He is, and speaks, in His relationship as Son; not yet the victim before God, but the sufferer in spirit, feeling all the depths of the waters He is passing through, but crying out of them to His Father. Satan tried to stop Christ with the difficulty, when he could not beguile Him with the pleasure. But He went through all with His Father. At the cross was another thing - the power of God against sin.

Verses 47-53. It is blessed to see these two things brought together - patience with men, and yet power to stop every thing. Having been in agony with God, He is calm before man. When the servant's ear was cut off, He puts forth His hand to heal. What a picture of man, what a picture of God, if we look here at Christ!

Verses 54-62. When we tremble before men, it is when we have not been with God. Peter breaks down, proving the deceitfulness of the flesh. In Jesus suffering as He was, there was nought to disable the perfect and simple action of grace at each moment required. When the cock crew, He turned and looked on Peter, who remembered His word, went out and wept bitterly.

176 Verses 63-71. The Lord spent the night, not before His judges, who took their ease till morning, before they judged the Lord of glory, but with the men whom they employed, the object of all injury and insult. Then, when it suited the convenience of the Jewish rulers, they brought Him to their council; but the Lord knew it was not the time of testimony, and left them to their weakness. The presenting of Messiah to the Jews was finished; from this the Son of man was to be seated at the right hand of God. All was settled with God - they could go on. They draw the right conclusion, and He conceals nothing. He was the Son of God. They must be guilty, not of mistake, but of condemning Him because He was the Son of God and owned it.

Luke 23.

Verses 1-25. Religious iniquity had now only to lead on the world to finish the wickedness in which itself had taken the lead. The civil power must give in to the wilful evil of the apostate people of God. This is the history of the world, and of the two, the religious side is always nearest to Satan. The chief priests manifested their enmity by their accusation, which was calculated to arouse the jealousy of the governor; charging on Christ what was entirely false as to Caesar, but with the subtle groundwork of that which they knew (reckoning on His truth) He could not deny. The guilt of the Jews was complete, as was also that of the Gentiles, for Pontius Pilate declared Him innocent, and desired to release Him. Cruel enough himself, the Roman governor disliked cruelty in others, but he would not go so far as to save Him from the malice of His enemies: it would have cost something to do this; it threatened his interest, and Pilate gave way. The one thing that is strong in the world is enmity against Christ.

But there was another form of evil to be introduced, to wit, Herod, the apostate king of apostate Israel; and in rejecting Jesus all are friends, however jealous and divided. How terrible the union between the fourth beast and God's external people! But if the Gentiles failed shamefully in protecting the just and hence fell into basely unrighteous judgment, the activity of an evil will was with the Jews. Three times the opportunity of a relenting voice was given; but while the governor's indifference was as plain as the disappointed insolence of Herod, every time the cry of the people increased in ardour for the death of the Messiah. Pilate, therefore, released the guilty Barabbas, whom they desired, to appease the Jews, and delivered Jesus to their will.

177 Verses 26-31. It was a terrible time and full of violence. It mattered little whom they met, if they could only force them to help in their iniquity. Their hour was struck, and all fell into the same mass of rejection and insult of Christ, save that the Jews acted with more knowledge. The forms of privilege became sorrows and harbingers of terror; they must be laid low, for all was untrue now. The natural feelings, touched by affecting circumstances, as we see in the weeping daughters of Jerusalem, did not change this. They understood neither the cross of Christ nor the ruin which awaited themselves. One may be affected with comparison, as if one were superior to Christ, and fall under the judgment consequent on His rejection and death. No humiliation of Jesus put Him out of His place of perfect capability of dealing with all others from God. Alas! it was not only on Pilate and Herod, nor on the chief priests, that judgment was coming, but on the women that lamented Him, unconscious of their own state, which was under condemnation. Neither natural conscience, nor natural religiousness, nor natural feelings will do - nothing short of the glory of God in Jesus. And if He, the living and true vine, who indeed bore fruit to God, was thus dealt with, what must be the lot of the fruitless and unprofitable, for such branches were they? Where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Man rejects the green tree, and God rejects the dry. Life was there in the person of Jesus, and they would not have it, and are therefore given up; it cannot be had now but through a dead and risen Christ.

Verses 32-43. There is the setting aside of all they looked for here in present deliverance, for Christ must die. But if we are also to see how low man can go morally, we learn, at the same time, that Christ in His grace can go lower still. "Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." Therefore, whenever you see an attempt (and it is the attempt of man's religion) to connect a living Christ, before death and resurrection, with living sinners, be sure there is error. It unites sin with the Lord from heaven, and it denies that its wages is death. Had Christ delivered Himself as the rulers, with the people, said in derision, He would not have delivered us. He must pass through death, and take a higher place, even in resurrection, and there He takes us. By itself, the incarnation cannot bring life and redemption to those who are dead in trespasses and sins. We need to be set beyond all in resurrection-life in Christ.

178 Thus, then, in spite of the grace of Jesus in intercession, Jews and Gentiles joined in mockery of the crucified; yet God had prepared, even here, the consolation of His mercy for Jesus in a poor sinner. But no sorrow, no shame, no suffering brings the heart too low to scorn Jesus; a gibbeted robber despises Him! There is an instinct, so to speak, in every unrenewed heart, against Jesus, which was not quelled even by that power of love in which He was going down into the deepest humiliation, to suffer the wrath due to sin. Say not that you are one whit better than this wretched man. "There is none righteous, no, not one: none that understandeth; none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become unprofitable." In two words, there is no difference. You are as bad, in God's sight, as the railing impenitent thief. See now the fruit of grace in the other. Grace works in a man who was in as low a condition as he who, notwithstanding his own dying agony and disgrace, had pleasure in outraging the Lord of glory; indeed both had done it (Mark 15: 32). But what more blessed and certain than the salvation of this thief, now that he bows to the name of Jesus? He is going to Paradise in companionship with the Lord whom he owned.

It is often idly said, that there was one saved in this way, that none might despair, and but one, that none might presume. The truth is, that this is the only way whereby any poor sinner can be saved. There is but one and the same salvation for all. There was evidently no time for him to do anything, had this been the way; but all is done for him. That very day his knees were to be broken. But how could he get into Paradise! Christ wrought his deliverance through His own death, and his eye was opened in faith to what Christ was doing.

Nor was it only that Christ's work was wrought for him - the ground on which his soul rested for salvation. There was a mighty moral work wrought in him through the revelation of Christ to his soul by the Spirit who convinced him of his utter sinfulness. "Dost not thou fear God," is his rebuke to his railing fellow, "seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we, indeed, justly." It was not all joy. Conscience had its place. There is a real sense of good and evil; for he has got in spirit into God's presence, and this, making him forget circumstances, elevates him into a preacher of righteousness. And if he owns the rightness of his own punishment in honest confession of sin, what a wonderful testimony he bears to Christ! "This man hath done nothing amiss." It was just as if he had known Christ all his life. He had a divine perception of His character; and so with the Christian now. Have you such jealousy about the spotlessness and glory of Christ, that you cannot help crying out when you hear Him slighted? He believed that He was the Lord, the Son of God, and so could answer with assurance for what He had been as a man. As completely a man as any other, the holy obedience of Christ was divine. "This man hath done nothing amiss." What a response in the renewed heart to the delight of sinlessness! His eye glances, as it were, over the whole life of Christ; he could answer for Christ anywhere, because he has learnt to know himself.

179 Then he says, turning to Jesus, "Lord, remember me, when thou comest in thy kingdom." As soon as he can get rid of what was sad, when he has done with his testimony to the other thief, his heart turns to Christ instinctively. How undistracted he was! Was he thinking of his pain? or of the people around the cross? As is always the case, where God's presence is realised, he was absorbed. In the extremity of helplessness, as to outward appearance, he hears the Shepherd's voice, and recognised Him as the Saviour and King. He wants Christ to think of him. The judgment of men was that Christ was a malefactor. The weeping women saw not who He was. But no degradation of circumstances could hide the glory of the Person who hung by his side. He owned Jesus as the Lord, and knows that His kingdom will certainly come. The other malefactor thought only, if he thought at all, of present deliverance; but this one saw the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. His mind was set, not on being free from bodily pain, but on the loving recognition of Christ in glory. He looks not to earth, nor nature, but to another kingdom, where death could not come. There was not a cloud, not a doubt, but the peaceful settled assurance that the Lord would come in His kingdom.

180 And the Lord gave him more than his faith asked. There was the answer of present peace. It was not only the kingdom by-and-by, but "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." As if He said, You shall have the kingdom when it comes, but I am giving now soul-salvation; you are to be associated at once with Me in a way far better and more than the kingdom, blessed and true as it is. For indeed the work was accomplished on the cross, which could transport a soul into Paradise. If the Saviour had taken the sinner's place, the sinner is by grace entitled to take the place of the Saviour. The poor thief might know but little of Christ's work and its effect, but the Holy Spirit had fixed his heart on the person of Christ. The words of the Lord (v. 43) imply the atonement, by virtue of which we are made fit to be His companions in the presence of God. The work of Christ is as perfect now for us, as then for him; it is as much accomplished for us as if we were already caught up into Paradise. How distinct this is from anything like progress of the soul to fit it for heaven! And how wonderful that such a soul should be a comfort to the Saviour! He had come into the condemnation; yea, and wrath was on Him to the uttermost. And now the converted thief was a bright witness of perfect grace and eternal salvation through His blood.

Verses 44-49. The scene was closed which let in the light beyond through the portals of a heart now purged by faith, and the darkness proper, to the hour took now its suited course - specially over Israel, it would seem; "and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Thus the way into the holiest was made manifest by the act which had its place in this darkness, and God in the grace of Christ's sacrifice shone forth upon the world. Darkness of judgment as it was to one, the light broke through, and access was opened within the veil. All was finished, and the Lord with no hesitating voice but aloud cried, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." This was not Jewish blessing, (for the living, the living, they shall praise Thee), but it was much higher; it was sonship, death overcome, and the occasion merely of presenting the spirit, safe, happy, confident, notwithstanding death, into the Father's care and presence. This is an immense principle, and, short of resurrection, of the highest possible importance. Death in the hands of Jesus - what a fact! The centurion, in the course of duty, struck at least in natural conscience, glorified God and owned a righteous man on the cross. The masses were troubled and went away, auguring no good. Those who knew Him, and the women from Galilee, were more nearly interested, but in fear stood afar off.

181 Verses 50-56. But the providence and operation of God, the righteous Judge, took measures for the body of the Holy One. If the more prominent witnesses were set aside, others feeble in the faith are found active and faithful in the post of danger, confession, and attachment to the Lord. How often the difficulties which frighten those force these forward! So was it with Joseph of Arimathea, for Jesus must be "with the rich in his death." The women too, in true but ignorant affection, make useless preparation, awaiting the just Jewish time for a Lord who had passed far beyond their faith. The resurrection was soon to usher in the dawn of a bright morrow: for the honour of the grave, like the intentions of the women from Galilee, was of a Jewish character, and all this was now closed in death.

Luke 24.

What now occupies our evangelist is the Risen Man again with His disciples and the testimony to the world founded on the resurrection - this new truth and power above all the principles of natural life. The door of the cross is shut on all that man in the flesh is, and the new thing is introduced in this risen Christ. Resurrection is an entirely new condition; but even the Jew could not have the sure mercies of David without it. Man, lawless and under law, has had the sentence of death pronounced on him. He may pride himself on his natural powers, but he is without God. He has rejected the One who came to him, a man in perfect divine grace, and in so doing has fully shewn what he is. Therefore says the Lord, "Now is the judgment of this world."

An entirely new ground appears, and this is here brought out in Christ Himself. Our bodies are still the same, but the life, character, motive, means, end are altogether new in the Christian. "Old things are passed away, and all things are become new." The women, pre-occupied with their own thoughts and affections, come with their spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus, while He was already living in the perfume of His work and offering before God, having effected all that placed man anew before God the Father, the last Adam in living acceptance. Then they were thrown into an unlooked-for difficulty at first, for they did not find the Lord's body. Neither did they know He was risen. They understood not that there was neither judgment nor sin remaining. There may be real and great love to Jesus without understanding this. But soon the question was put which involved the answer to all. "Why seek ye the living One among the dead?" These women, faithful if ignorant, were not forgotten of the Lord; and He whose ways are grace has preserved their memorial and their early seeking of the Lord, thence to bear the message to the apostles themselves, but to them the words were as idle tales. Peter's heart, broken and contrite, was the more affected by what he heard, and ran to the sepulchre, and having seen the linen clothes laid aside there, went away wondering. Surely it was a marvellous secret, baffling and rising above all human thought! (v. 1-12).

182 Luke's statements of circumstances are always general. In John we have more details, especially developing Mary Magdalene's devoted affection to His person, but shewing also how little she as yet knew of the power of God in resurrection.

Verses 13-27. The touchingness of this interview with the Lord on the journey to Emmaus need not be spoken of. How the Lord draws out all their thoughts! But He is here altogether as a man, and presenting the truth they speak of Jewishly. How naturally their minds rested always in the same circle! He was a prophet, and they hoped He might redeem Israel. The fact of the resurrection occupied their attention, but it had no link with the counsels of God. They were astonished, and, like others before them, there they rested. Christ takes up quite other ground, though it was only in the way of intelligence and not yet the power of the Holy Ghost. "O fools," says He, "and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written." These He expounds, and opens their understanding to them; for though viewed completely as man, He operates divinely and spiritually on their mind. "Ought not," said He - was it not the counsel of God plainly revealed in His word? What He presses is the mind of God in the scriptures relative to the Christ. This was an immense step; it took them out of their egotism and the egoistical character of Judaism. Their thought was of the redemption of Israel by power. They had no idea of a new and heavenly life, though of course they had it. Even as to the Christ, death must come in if God were to be vindicated and man really blessed, and so Moses and all the prophets had taught. "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?" - not set up His kingdom down here, but "enter into his glory."

182 Verses 28-35. Then we have a most graphic account of the scene at Emmaus. "He made as though he would have gone further." Why should He, to their eye "a stranger," intrude? "But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And it came to pass as they sat at meat with him, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight."

This was not celebrating the Lord's supper with them; yet was it taking up that part of it - the act of breaking the bread - which was the sign of His death. He was not now merely as the living Bread that came down from heaven, but as He had said, "this is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world" not which I will take, but give. He did take flesh, of course, in order to give it; but it was His death that became the life of the world. For Jew or Gentile there was no other way. The condition of man was such that he could be quickened only in connection with the cross. All that was in man, as a child of Adam, was under sentence of death and judgment. Christ, by grace, entered into the place of man - came where I am, that I might be on equal terms with Him, as far as acceptance with God; His broken body shews me that I have got that which brings me to God. A dead sinner can find life and divine favour only in a dead Christ. So the Lord had taught in John 6. To eat His flesh and drink His blood must be in order to have life.

It was not any longer a question of His bodily presence merely as incarnate. Redemption was absolutely necessary, and faith in it. Christ is to be fed upon, not alone as a living Messiah, nor only as One alive again for evermore in resurrection; but, besides that, as He who died, His body broken and blood shed in atonement. Thus it was the Lord was known to the disciples at Emmaus, though it was not the Lord's supper. Their hearts had been opened by what encouraged them in connecting the truth of God with the facts of human unbelief and Christ's rejection, and thus turning the cause of their despair into joy and peace by the sight of the counsels of God in it. But His actual revelation was by the affecting circumstance of personal association in the breaking of bread. It was Himself who broke the bread. There could be no mistake. He was gone in a moment - "vanished out of their sight." But His object was gained. They had life through His death.

184 And He was risen. The body was a spiritual body, and had flesh and bones, which a spirit has not. He had shewn them not only the fact, but its necessity. Why does He not say "did," but "must rise from the dead?" Because all the sentence must be passed on the first Adam. All that I have now is in the last Adam: I am not only quickened, but quickened together with Christ, having all trespasses forgiven. Christ, by His death, put them away for all who believe, and for such, all that belonged to the first Adam is clean gone. This is power over the principle of sin, which as a fact is still within. And hence the apostle bids the believers reckon themselves dead to sin. In the power of the Holy Ghost, giving me the consciousness of new life in Christ, I am to mortify my members here below, because I have to apply the death of Christ to my old nature. The monkish principle tries to kill sin in order to get life, but the apostle shews that we must have life by faith in Christ in order to treat sin as a dead thing. See Romans 6, 7, 8.

The holding of the disciples' eyes was of importance. To have recognised Jesus would have been in their state to have satisfied their thoughts. The Lord, on the other hand, engaging their hearts by all God said of Him, furnished them with scriptural intelligence; and then in the act of intimate friendship, which recalled the great truth of His death, brought to mind His great deliverance. "We walk by faith, not by sight." Filled with the concentrating event which began a new world, they hastened back to Jerusalem, where the eleven and others were occupied. "The Lord," said the latter, "is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon." Then the two told the tale of their wondrous journey, and still more wondrous recognition of Jesus in breaking of bread. The Lord was proving that there should be independent witnesses.

185 Verses 36-53. Thus their hearts were prepared. Yet in the fact of this new thing, "the beginning, the firstborn from the dead," there was that to which earthly hearts could ill assort themselves. The Lord presents Himself as the very same man, all through and in every way. In His intercourse with the two, it had been just the same; all was human, though what no man ever was, and what none but God could be, was shewn in and through it. Here also His hands, His feet, His previous wounds are presented. He takes of fish and of an honey-comb, and eats before them. Two sentiments had overpowering possession of the disciples - joy to see Himself again, and astonishment. The Lord presents the truth of resurrection, not as a doctrine, but in living reality, thus restoring their souls and making them know Him most familiarly, risen indeed, but yet a man properly and truly. "And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures."

This shewed the standing before God in justification of life and liberty. But another thing was wanted before men-power. This is not the question before God, where the Christian stands as Christ stands, "accepted in the beloved." But the testimony of the Christian here below, whether preaching or anything else, needs power to be given. This power was promised to the disciples, but even yet they must wait for it. We must not confound service of any kind with standing. The power of the Spirit is requisite to live before man - power over and above the new birth, and distinct from spiritual understanding. This last is needed to give us the apprehension of our standing in Christ; and when He opens our understandings to understand the Scriptures, it does not puff up. It is a revelation of Himself and leads to communion with Him. Yet the other want still remains. Even this knowledge is not necessarily power. The testimony and purpose of God in the word has to be fulfilled.

The great truth of a suffering and risen Christ reaches out to the Gentiles. In Matthew His association with the Jewish remnant is taken up. Consequently He meets them in Galilee after, as before, His resurrection; and thence flows the commission to go and disciple all the Gentiles. But all this is dropped in Luke. Jerusalem, Emmaus, and Bethany, above all, are prominent; from thence He ascends to heaven, where He has to do with poor sinners. The testimony was to begin at Jerusalem expressly: the riches of His grace must be shewn first where there was the deepest guilt. The cross broke this link with the Jews as a Jewish Messiah, but opened the door of repentance and remission of sins, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. "And ye are witnesses." Then came in the need of power. "And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." This all-important sign of Christ's exaltation could only be obtained for man by the reception of Jesus in heaven when redemption was effected. The Holy Ghost had ever acted in creation, in providence, in revelation, in regeneration, and in every good thing, but He had never been given before. It hung on the glory of Jesus: to this the Holy Ghost could become a servant in man; for it was the divine counsel and the perfection of love.

186 Meanwhile, before this endowment, they returned with great joy to the city which their Lord had left. Their hearts were filled with the influence of the great fact, that their Master was glorified, though it was still associated with Jewish thoughts. And these two elements reproduce themselves in the Acts of the Apostles, particularly in the earlier part.

On the Gospel of Luke

J. N. Darby.

<25026E> 187

Luke 4, 5

I hardly know whether the thoughts I send you suit your little journal;* but I trust that all that unfolds the way the blessed Lord presented Himself on the earth, the connection of the Old Testament with the New, and the revealing of God in man upon the earth, will be profitable to some of your readers at least.

{*This was a contribution to the "Girdle of Truth." - Ed.}

I forward to you therefore some remarks on the Gospel of Luke, flowing from thoughts which have arisen in my mind while lately reading it. There are two great subjects in the life of the blessed Lord which Luke brings out: the fulfilment of promise; and the revelation of God in grace in the "Son of man." These are presented to us in the history in a very interesting way. I will notice this as displayed in chapters 4 and 5.

In chapter 4 the Spirit of God has shewn us the blessed One led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, victorious in trial, as the first man had failed in it. He returns in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, having first bound the strong man.

Let me remark here, in passing, how faithfulness in trial and temptation shews the power of the Spirit as much as the energy of action. Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted, overcame Satan by the word through the Spirit, and returned in its power, working miracles and casting out devils. But the power had been exercised all through the temptation, only in standing fast. See Ephesians 6. Therein He had overcome Satan, baffled his power, really bound the strong man, and then had only to spoil his goods. He used too the weapon we have to use, the word of God: only we must remark, as we learn from Ephesians 6, that, to use the word, we must first have all the defensive armours, that is, the state of the soul must be right. Christ, of course, was perfect and used it perfectly. In the measure of our spirituality and uprightness we shall be able to wield this blessed weapon. But here even the sword was a defensive weapon. He met the wiles of Satan by it. Whatever reasonings or scriptures Satan may use, if we are spiritual enough to use it, the word of God suffices to confound him.

188 But to turn to my more direct subject. The Lord now stood as man, anointed of the Holy Ghost, having overcome Satan, to make good divine grace and goodness amongst men, and specially first amongst the Jews; but the glory of His divine person was not to be hid. But first He presents Himself as the anointed Man, fulfilling all that has been promised in grace.

I must remark another point. The Lord looks for rejection; and this, it will be seen, is the case in both the characters in which He presents Himself. First, then, as the anointed Man. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Thus He presents Himself as the fulfiller of promise, announcing the favourable and gracious time of God's mercy in His own person. "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." But at the same time He tells them that He will be rejected. A prophet has not honour in his own country. But He adds that grace, as grace, passed beyond the limits of the Jews; that God was sovereign in His goodness, and of old had sent help to two Gentiles, while many remained in sorrow in rebellious Israel. This the haughty Jews would not bear, and, gracious as His words had been, they are now ready to destroy Him for preaching a grace which Israel might lose all part in, as rejecting Him, and the Gentile get blessing by. They are ready to destroy Him; but it was not the time, and He passed through the midst of them.

Now see the character in which the demons own Him: how it meets this character in which He was really come. How sad a picture! Demons perforce own Him; men reject Him with hatred. It is remarkable how these evil spirits own Him according to the truth (as we may remember the spirit of divination did Paul), but surely only as dreading, and, if they could have done so, avoiding His power. "Let us alone: what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God." It was the reluctant owning of a power they could not avoid. The time was not come to cast them into the pit, but to deliver man. The demon came out of the man at Jesus' word.

189 But it is well to note that this title was a prophetic one of Jesus; and His title as summing up all the mercies of God. It is unfolded in Psalm 89. The word "mercies," in the first verse of that psalm, is the same as "Holy One" in verse 19: "Holy One" in verse 18 is quite different. Mercy was to be built up for ever, the psalm declares. How? "Thou spakest in vision of [not "to," I think, but about, as we see that of the prophecy in Psalm 72, "A Psalm about Solomon"] thy holy One, "thy gracious One, in whom help and mercy is summed up." I have laid help upon One that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people. I have found David my servant," etc. Here, no doubt, the immediate subject is David: but in the mind of God a greater, even Christ, is here. The evil spirit owns that this Holy One is there in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Help was indeed laid upon the Mighty One, who, having overcome Satan wholly, could have delivered man from all the miserable fruits of his power, even death itself; but man would have none of Him. He must be redeemed or lost.

Next, in this fourth chapter, when healing many, the demons who are cast out own Him as the Christ the Son of God. This was owning His title as promised to Israel in Psalm a; but which also witnessed to His rejection. Thus the power of present delivering goodness, in the promised One, was there. He is owned the Holy One of God, in whom mercies came to Israel; as the Christ and Son of God spoken of in Psalm a. But in His own country He is not received. The prejudices and passions of man rise up against grace and this gracious One, while the demons own Him, but through dread; a strange but solemn picture! They could not but know Him. But what is knowledge when only such? Those He really came to would not receive Him.

In chapter 5 He is seen in another character. He reveals, and is, Jehovah. In the miraculous draught of fishes He makes Himself known to the conscience of Peter, who sees the Lord in it, and acknowledges himself a sinful man unfit for His presence. This is always the effect of the revelation of God to us, and indeed of nothing else. Jesus speaks words of grace, "Fear not." From henceforth he should catch men. In what follows He heals the leper, which was Jehovah's work alone. But there was a special circumstance connected with this. full of blessed significance. The leper recognised His power, but was not sure of His goodness or willingness to help him. "Lord," he says, "if thou wilt thou canst make me clean." The Lord does not merely say He is willing, He puts forth His hand and touches him. Now, if a man touched a leper he too was unclean, and must be put out of the camp. But here was a divine person come down, Jehovah, who could cleanse. One who could say, "I will"; "be thou." - One who could not be defiled, but had for that very reason come down to touch the defiled one, and remove the defilement. He was Jehovah, come as man, to touch, so to speak, the sinner in grace. Jesus was one whose holiness was so perfect, as God become man, that He could carry divine love to the vilest - carry it wherever a need or a sorrow was, and as love touch the defiled, not to become so, but to heal. It is a wonderful picture of what Christ, Jehovah, present to heal was in this world. Thus revealing Himself to the conscience, and doing a divine work in love, in what was a figure of cleansing from sin, mark Him out as Jehovah in the world in grace.

190 He withdraws Himself into the wilderness and prays; ever the dependent, as the obedient and victorious, man. But other elements of divine grace are yet to be observed here. He was sitting with doctors of the law, ready to object to grace, and ignorant of how the Son of God had in manhood visited this sinful world in the power and title of divine grace. One sick of the palsy is brought to Him by faith. He goes to the root of all sorrow, and says, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." The question is not here how through the precious death of Christ forgiveness was consistent with divine righteousness and glorified it. What is here revealed is Jehovah present in unmingled grace. As the testimony and witness of this, the Lord does what is ascribed to Jehovah in Psalm 103, along with the forgiveness of sins. "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; and healeth all thy diseases."

Lastly, the Lord shews, as the friend of publicans and sinners, that He had come in sovereign grace to gather, in the power of good, not looking for it in man. But thus also He must be rejected. This new wine, for it was so, could not be put into old bottles; Judaism could not receive and be the vessel of sovereign grace; nor could those who were used to Judaism easily receive the new wine of the gospel and Spirit of God. And so it ever is in all ages.

191 Luke 7.

I do not for the present make any remark on chapter 6. Only we may note that the Lord is gathering distinctly around Himself, apart from the nation, and that He addresses His disciples as thus separated - as those already called to possess the kingdom. But in chapter 7 we have the Lord brought out in a far greater character, and more fully revealed, than as the fulfiller of promise. He is entirely a divine person, and consequently reaches out beyond Judaism, and even human life, in this world. Still the Jews are recognised by the Gentile whom the Lord blesses; and this was right. The Lord did the same. It was the lowliness and submission to God's ways which the knowledge of God, true faith, always produces.

Remark here, too, a principle which will be found to shine forth through all the Gospels, namely, that whenever Christ was manifested as God, it was impossible that He could be confined to His relationship to the Jews. God present in His own nature, as love, cannot be confined to the special relationships to a nation to whom He has made promises: although He may, and surely will, faithfully meet them according to promise. This is largely and specially brought out in John: where, indeed, however, the principle reaches further, and thereby assumes another character. The Jews are there looked at, already, in the first chapter, as reprobate, and so treated; though dealt with, still, all through the Gospel. "He came to his own, and his own received him not." The world, too, is viewed as blind. "The world knew him not." It was that phenomenon known only in morals, the light shining in darkness. The effect of this is to bring out the Lord in two characters in that Gospel - first, as God, as light in the world, and as such, when forcing the conscience to attend to Him, bringing out the terrible truth that men love darkness rather than light - that they will not have God such as He is: this especially, and formally, in chapter 8, when His word is rejected, as His work is in the ninth. But this makes a turning-point in the Gospel after the first three chapters, which are preface. The first, Christ in nature - Christ incarnate - Christ in work of blessing on earth - Christ (as John Baptist also) calling and gathering on the earth; which reaches on, by His servants, to His millennial presence on earth; in all which, note, no heavenly character or office of Christ is given, as is ever the case in John's writings. The second gives the millennial kingdom. The third what is needed for the kingdom, and heavenly things: where John also brings out His full person and glory in grace. Then being driven out of Judea, the new order of things is intimated, from God's nature and the Father's love, in the fourth chapter. Thereon, to the end of the seventh, Christ is presented as the divine life-giving Son of God; in incarnation, and as the dying Son of man; the Giver of the Spirit, as the feast of tabernacles, the figure of earthly rest, could not yet be kept by Him. Then, His word being rejected in the eighth, in the ninth He gives sight, and this brings in effectual grace; and, rejected though He be, He will have His sheep. Here we have not simply God, who is light in darkness, revealed, but the Father sending the Son in grace. This distinction is always kept up in John. When grace is spoken of it is the Father and the Son! the Father sending the Son; while as mere light, it is God. But this expression of Father and Son refers to grace revealed and effectual, not to the love of God in His nature and character. Where this is spoken of, it is still God. "God so loved the world." I may follow this Gospel and its character more in detail, if it suit you and the Lord so will, another time; but this leads me back to the general truth that Christ as revealing God shines necessarily out beyond Israel.

192 Thus, in a very striking and beautiful example, the Syrophenician woman. There the Lord seems to hold back and confine Himself to Israel. "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs." The poor woman says, "Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Could He say, God is not so good as you suppose? He has no crumbs for the wretched, who even look to Him through grace? Impossible. It would have been denying, not revealing, God; and her faith is at once met. Remark, too, again here, how lowly faith is, and how it submits to God's sovereign will! She owns herself a dog, and the privilege of being near God, as Israel was, as a nation. But her faith pierces through the difficulty, with a want, to Him who revealed God in love; and divine goodness, which had taught her to trust in it, met, and could not but meet, that confiding trust.

193 Now in the seventh chapter of Luke the Lord fully takes the divine place. He is owned by the Gentile as One who can dispose of all, as he himself ordered his soldiers about; and the Lord owns his faith. "I have not found so great faith; no, not in Israel." In the next recorded event He goes farther in the display of divine power and goodness. "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her." That was His first thought; and to the bereaved widow He spoke first, and this was God too, though as man near to her sorrow. But divine power was there too; and a word from Him woke up to conscious life the young man they were about to bury. But power, the fullest, divine power, did not obliterate goodness, and cannot. God uses power, but He is love. He delivered him to his mother.

This reaches the ears of John. The very dead are raised, and he remained in prison! He sends to know, Is the promised One come? He trusts the word of Him of whom he had heard such things, but he wants to know if He be the One that should come. John is to believe in Christ, not Christ receive testimony from men. But "He that should come" is the promised One. And John is to receive Him, as others, by the testimony which He gave of Himself, as setting right all the sorrows that sin and Satan had brought into the world, and in grace caring for the poor. But this was more than promise, though it witnessed to the promised One. It proved the presence of One who was love and had all power. But because He manifested God, He was the rejected One; and blessed was he who should not be offended in Him. If He came in promise, as man expected Him, it would not have been in the grace of divine power come down in love to every want. But because He did, though His arm was not shortened, "He was despised and rejected of men."

However, when John's messengers were gone, the Lord bears testimony to the captive one. He was Jehovah's messenger, sent before His face to prepare His way. But it was really Jehovah who was come. But he who mourned to them, and He who piped to them, were alike rejected by that generation. One class alone received the Lord - the humbled ones who had owned their sinfulness. These intelligently justified God's ways in both John and Christ. But it went far beyond a Messiah; they had morally met God. They owned they needed repentance; they had deserved the axe. They owned the suitableness of grace. It was not merely Messiah they received. Perhaps, in some of the happiest cases, they are not much occupied with this, though they may have recognised Him as such. They wanted compassionate grace, and they had found it. They recognised the justice of God in condemning them and calling them to repentance: They acknowledged His sovereign goodness in having to do with and in receiving worthless sinners. They justified God. One who was self-righteous thought John and divine grace alike out of place. Repentance was all well for others; they were the heirs of the kingdom.

194 Now this is characteristic of Luke. The promised One was there no doubt. But it was in grace to men, grace bringing home to them their moral state. They were meeting God. His way, such as He was in truth, John prepared; Him in His own person and ways Christ fully revealed; God manifest in flesh meeting sorrow, meeting Satan's power, meeting death, meeting sin, in grace. They who felt all these found God in perfect grace there; the friend, indeed, not of the lame, and blind, and deaf merely, but, more wonderful still, of publicans and sinners. They - oh how willingly! - justified God in His ways; while they did so truly and righteously, in what led them to it, in the mourning testimony of John, who coming in the way of righteousness, went into the desert alone (for there was none righteous; no, not one), and, calling for good fruit, found only that which sinners could, through grace, come with - the confession that they had borne bad fruit. But this gave understanding. The conscience, recognising the state he who has it is in, finds in the manifestation of God Himself in grace all it wants, and what infinitely attracts the heart. The knowledge of God is found through conscience, not through the understanding.

The convicted sinner is wisdom's child; he knows himself - the hardest of all knowledge to acquire. And God in grace meets his state exactly. But such a manifestation of God does not meet the Pharisee. Right and wrong he knows, and can judge of God's dealing in grace; but not the smallest ray of it enters his soul. Yet God can only be so revealed to man who is a sinner, if it be not in eternal judgment; and even so He is not known, for He is love; that is, he does not know God at all. Intellect never knows grace; self-righteousness does not want it. We learn to know God through conscience, when grace has awakened us to feel its need.

195 Here the child of wisdom is found. The history of the poor woman and the Pharisee is the example of this. The poor sinner was the child of wisdom. She judged her sins with God; she had found Him in grace for her sins. She did not know forgiveness, but she had tasted love. It had won her confidence, the true divinely-given confidence of an humbled heart. This was Christ's work in the world. At the beginning Satan had gained man to evil and lust by first producing distrust of God. Why had God kept back this one tree? Man would be like Him if he had it. Confidence in God was gone; then lust came in.

The blessed Redeemer, while coming indeed to put away sin, yet in His life as the manifestation of God, had come winning back the confidence of man's heart by perfect love - grace in the midst of sin: humbled to the lowest to bring it wherever there was a want; to win man by his wants, and sorrows, and even his sins, where by grace the true sense of them was, back to God; that he might trust in God, because He was God, in love, when he could trust in none else, and thus know Him as God in the fullest revelation of Him - a child of wisdom, true in heart, and knowing God. Such was this poor sinner; justly feeling her sins, but feeling that being such, and feeling herself such, there was One she could trust. Had He been less than God, she could not - had no right to do so - no profit in doing it. It would not meet her case. What God was had reached her heart. She could not have explained it. But it had met her case.

How lovely is this, and yet how humbling to man! In the Pharisee we have clear intellect - the perception of right and wrong, as far as natural conscience goes. All that was in Christ, all that was in God manifested in grace, he had no perception of, he saw no beauty in it; his eye was blind as to God; he says, "If he were a prophet," to say nothing of the promised One. This the Lord shewed He was, by exposing his heart, and noting to him what state he was in; He then leaves him, and the cavillers he was surrounded by.

His heart was with the sinner, the humbled one. Her sins, He had declared to all, were forgiven; but to her He turns, to unfold all God's grace, to give rest to a weary heart - "Thy sins are forgiven thee." No concealing, no marring integrity by softening matters with her; though owning all that grace had wrought (she loved much) standing by her, with the heartless. When He notices her sins, she would not have had it otherwise: we never would when grace really works. "Thy sins" - but He notices it as God, which He could, and could righteously, through His coming work - "Thy sins are forgiven thee." Man's cavils do not interrupt His work of grace: "Go in peace; thy faith hath saved thee."

196 What words from a divine Redeemer! Sins forgiven, faith in divine love owned, and salvation declared to be possessed by it! peace - perfectly divinely-given peace - for her! She had not trusted the heart of God in vain. He had revealed Himself that she might trust it. Grace was greater than sin, though it allowed none of it. It wrought conviction, confession, confidence; but it gave forgiveness, salvation, peace: for God, who had restored the soul, and more, by the revelation of Himself, was there. It seems to me, besides this profoundly interesting individual case, instructive to see how, while manifested clearly as the promised One, the Saviour in this Gospel passes on, by the way in which He is manifested, into His divine manifestation in grace. It is not followed here as in Matthew, which speaks of dealings with Israel, with woes to Chorazin and Bethsaida, though even there it issues in grace; but in the manifestation of God in grace, and the picture of a poor sinner become the child of wisdom, as taught her soul's need, and the grace of God to meet it. Observe here, too, how love is known, and brokenness of heart trusts it, before the answer of peace is given by Him who could do so.

Our chapter gives us thus the God of the Gentiles; the God who delivers from death, raises from it; the God who meets the sinner in grace, when all sin is known, and sends him away in peace from Himself. It is well to have to do with such a God!

Luke 12.

In this Gospel we constantly find the Lord going over the same ground again and again, in different aspects; but here He is pressing the rejection of His own person, not in connection with the kingdom, but in connection with men's souls. It is not the kingdom as being set aside by His rejection, nor yet the connection of men's souls and bodies with Him in future earthly glory - such as blessing the basket and the store - but the blessing of their souls for ever; therefore what is pressed here is the relationship of the soul with God. On this ground He says a man is but a "fool," that "layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." For "what is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" He thus takes them off all dispensational teaching, to put them on the broad moral ground of the soul's relationship to God; and then shews them the consequence of discipleship with Himself.

197 His coming again also is not in its aspect towards the church; but the consequence of His kingdom being set aside for the present is, that His disciples are to look for His coming again. And this also bears two aspects; the one for those in relationship with God, and the other towards the world. Both are taken up in this chapter.

But first He puts before the disciples some of the motives which should actuate them as His disciples (v. 19). "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy, for there is nothing hid that shall not be made known." It will all come out before God: whatever is said or done, it will all come out before God. Having made this appeal to their consciences, the next thing is, that He being rejected, power will be on the side of evil. Power would be there, and it would be against them: still not one single hair of their head was unnumbered. This was for their comfort! but as to the government on earth by Christ, that was now closed for the present, and, Christ as Messiah being rejected, they must be rejected too, and bear the cross like their Master, being left down here in the midst of the power of evil unsubdued. So thoroughly indeed was power on the side of evil, that when the Lord was casting out a demon, the people said, "He casteth out demons through Beelzebub the chief of the demons." The principle brought out in this is, that the saints are now down here in conflict with evil, but they are not to be afraid. "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear; fear him which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him." Think of your souls as being connected with God. The hairs of your head are all numbered. If men kill your body, do not be afraid; for they cannot touch your soul; and not a single hair of your head shall perish. You may be cut off by an ignominious death. What then? Why, "not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father." "Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows."

198 Nothing can possibly separate us from God's love. However hot the persecution may be, confidence in God is all that is needed. As Paul said, "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

In all human efforts to preserve oneself from suffering, there is shewn a want of confidence in God. If I am delivered from suffering, I am thankful to God for it; but if it be permitted, I accept suffering as my portion, and trust God in it. Do not seek suffering; but in confessing Christ, you will be sure to get it: and then you should take the suffering and trust God in it. It is a privilege to suffer for the name of Christ. "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." However severe the suffering, let your confidence be in God. Do nothing of yourself, leave everything to God alone; for God may make some man (a Gamaliel it may be) to stand up for you. God may use anything as a means of preserving you which you could not use yourself, even the wickedness of man. So that it is never a question of means, but of who is to use them. It is God Himself, and not you. And mark that this would not be indifference, or haughty defiance; it is simply trusting in God. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied, "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."

If a man persecute me, I would not say a word; I must be quiet and passive, whatever they may do, referring everything to God. As in the case of Peter and John, when the chief priests "commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye."

199 Then again, in verse 8, "Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God." How thoroughly the Lord is supposing the hostility of man! He expects it, for in truth the gospel sets out with it. "I send you forth as lambs among wolves." He did not say as lambs among lambs: but as lambs among wolves. Therefore, beloved, if you meet with this hostility, "think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." For what Christ met with in His own person while down here, He fully anticipates for all His followers; and therefore "rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." But then it is as lambs - not in rashness, but harmless as doves, though wise as serpents. Be prudent in not giving occasion to hostility; but if confessing the name of Christ brings it out, take is patiently, trusting in God.

The Lord sees the difficulties they will have to encounter, and cheers them by saying, "If you confess me before men, I will confess you before the angels of God." And mark how the Lord knows how to put His finger on the very point of the difficulty; "If you confess me before men." It is not whether they could think of Him in their closets: of course they could do that, if they cared for Him at all; but that is not it. Do they "confess me before men?" Alas! how often we cannot find courage to confess Christ openly "before men," when we can do it in our closets. But this is just a simple test how far the fear of man has more power over our souls than God. Still He would not have us to thrusting ourselves upon people; this would be no good at all. "Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves." "Be simple concerning evil, and wise concerning good." As they said of Daniel, "We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it in the law of his God." Daniel was simply obeying God, and in thus simply and steadily doing God's will, he had to suffer for it; and so may we. But then let us take care that we are suffering for doing God's will, and not in doing our own will. Not as Moses in his rashness, going and slaying an Egyptian and then running away. There was no good in that. But go on steadily doing God's will, giving Satan no handle: but at the same time having unhesitating boldness in confessing Christ, and in bringing out God's truth; but not anything of the flesh to excite or offend the flesh in another, except it be by the cross, and that will always be an offence. As it is said, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee have fallen upon me." He took Himself all the rejection of man's wicked heart against God. He set his face "as a flint"; and so must we. But then we are not to fret ourselves by saying anything contrary to the grace of Christ, and thereby bring on us needless hostility.

200 Then again, it is not sufficient to be right in the thing that we confess, neither to be sincere. It must be God speaking by us. That which flows from me ought to be of the Spirit, in the power of the Spirit, and according to the time of the Spirit, or it is not of the Lord; it is not the manifestation of the grace of Jesus. This requires the will to be mortified, and the flesh crucified; for if it be otherwise, there will be the blustering out of something without any grace. But assuming the will to be mortified, the flesh subdued, and the Spirit of God working, He says (v. 10), "Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him." The Lord is here putting them, in a sense, on higher ground than Himself. What an amazing encouragement to our poor hearts! If you speak, they are even more responsible if they reject it than in rejecting Me. This, of course, could only be true but as they spake by the Holy Ghost: there must be no water mixed with the wine.

Paul could say, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." I should not venture to say, If my gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. Paul could say so, because he gave it out as pure as he got it in. But it is not always so with us; and therefore we cannot say what the apostle could, because it was the truth and nothing but the truth that was given pure from God. I could say so as to the truth of it; that is, I can say if you reject the truth you will be lost, though I cannot say if you reject the gospel I preach you will be lost.

Verse 11. Here the Lord encourages the disciples for the warfare, supposing the hostility of the world, which must be expected if the gospel is set forth in power, and guarding them against the fear of man. He says, "When they bring you unto the synagogues, unto magistrates, and unto powers, take ye no thought how, or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say; for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say." When God first sent out the gospel, He took care that it should go out pure. All we speak ought to be by the Spirit, as it is nothing but what is of the Holy Ghost that God can use. But when it is by inspiration, which is nothing but by the Holy Ghost, then God takes care that nothing else but the truth shall be spoken. But when I am speaking it is not necessarily so guarded as that no error is mixed up with it. Of course anything really good that is spoken is in a manner inspired. But when the truth was inspired by the Holy Ghost, God so kept the man that nothing but the truth came out. It is not so now. When God came forth in creation, it was by the Spirit. "The Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters." Everything was always done by the Spirit. "He that God has sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him." This was spoken of Christ. But now there is no warrant that every man speaks the truth, because there is no man now so qualified, as to leave no doubt whether there is nothing beside the Holy Ghost.

201 In verse 13 one comes to the Lord, complaining of the injustice of his brother; "Speak to my brother," says he, "that he divide the inheritance with me." And the Lord replied, "Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" He was not come to set things right in this world then; though He will do this when He comes again. Had He been accepted as Messiah, He would have done so then; but the counsels of God were otherwise. It was quite right that the man should have his inheritance; but as Messiah He was rejected, and therefore could not then set "justice and judgment on the earth." He was then come about men's souls; therefore He says to them, "Take heed and beware of covetousness." For while the one sought to defraud, the other sought to obtain; and it was the same spirit in both. They were both loving the possession of these things, and this was the whole secret: therefore the Lord told them, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."

He could not be occupied with dividing men's inheritance, for His whole business was with their souls. The world was going to be set aside, therefore what had the Lord to do with men's inheritances? His work was to go on with God, doing His will; and His entire business as to men was with their souls; and this ought to be our business too, for we are associated with God on new grounds. But if we are seeking the world or riches, the effect will be practically to separate us from God. I always tremble now when I hear of a Christian getting on in the world; for "how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God?" And who ever escapes the snare of getting on in the world? Generally there is a getting down in spirituality, when there is a getting up in the world. It may all be taken up in service to the Lord, but that is quite another thing; then it would be a bright testimony. A person once said to me, What harm is there in riches? My reply was, Suppose they keep you out of heaven; what then? Oh! said he, I never thought of that! If riches do get possession of the heart, they surely must keep Christ out; and a Christless heart never got into heaven yet.

202 The real mischief is in the riches of this world getting into the heart. Mark that most solemn word in 1 Timothy 6: 9, 10, 11, "But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness." It is they that have a desire for riches, who fall into "many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." It is not the question as to whether riches are right or wrong in themselves, but as to riches being the object of the heart. If so, they keep Christ out. A man will then say, But suppose I do not set my heart upon them; but the Lord who knows our hearts better than we do ourselves, does not deal in this way: for He says, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also"; and not as it is often quoted, "Where the heart is, there the treasure will be." It is quite true that, if the Lord give riches, He can give grace to use them; but even then they are a snare. The language of the "certain rich man" to his soul in this chapter is, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry"; but God says, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" So is he that "layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God." Here come in the questions, "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

203 "Therefore take heed, and beware of covetousness, which is idolatry." For, be it ever remembered, that while riches are a snare to the rich man, to be jealous of a rich man, because of his riches, is as bad or worse in the poor man; for it just shews that he would also have them if he could. It is not a question about riches. The Lord wants to get souls into heaven, and riches will not take them there; that can only be by being rich towards God. The whole question is about Christ; for if Christ has His place in our hearts, the things of this world cease to be temptations to us. The man that is rich towards God has no desire for other riches. But the man that layeth up treasure for himself is not rich towards God; because self is at the bottom. All this has to do with the world.

But now in verse 22 He says unto His disciples, "Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on." "The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment." When speaking to the world He takes the lowest ground; but when He turns to His disciples He speaks differently. They may trust in God, for He presses upon them that as His disciples they were of great value in the sight of God. Poor worthless things in themselves, no doubt, still they were of great value to God. Do not you be uneasy, for God has a particular interest in you, and the hairs of your head are all numbered. If God feedeth the fowls, "how much more are ye better than they?" They were all God's subjects by creation, for He had not given up His title to the world. In the peculiar teaching of the Book of Jonah, when God had given up Israel as an earthly testimony, we learn that God's character of doing good to all, and caring for all was not at all touched. "Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and also much cattle?" "But does God take care of oxen?" In truth He does, for they are the work of His creative power. But to the disciples He says, You are of such value to God that He would have you reckon yourselves to be of value to Him even in the midst of this hostile world. Do not you be taking thought for the morrow; leave the morrow with God. Do not you be taking thought at all; for if by taking thought ye cannot do that which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? He is urging upon them unlimited confidence in God, who is to them as a tender Father. Therefore He says to them, "Seek not ye what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after, but your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Therefore, do not be uneasy in passing through the desert, for the kingdom is at the end. And if God is going to give you the kingdom, though as sheep you may be killed here, still He will give you the kingdom.

204 Then after shewing them what their relationship involved as His disciples, He speaks to them of His coming again.

Verse 35. They were to be "like unto men that wait for their Lord." For though rejected for a season on the earth, He will return: and therefore He here tells us of the blessedness of those who will be found waiting for Him.

That which should characterise the saints is, not merely holding the doctrine of the Lord's coming, as that which they believe, but their souls should be in the daily attitude of waiting, expecting, and desire His coming! But why? That they may see Himself and be with Him, and like Him for ever! - not because the world which has been so hostile to them is going to be judged, though God will smite the wicked.

It is true, there will be mercy to those who are spared. But we have obtained mercy now, and are therefore waiting for Himself, for what He is in Himself to us, and not because of judgment. That would not be joy to me, though it will be to some on the earth; for "In every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which Jehovah shall lay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps, etc. (Isa. 30: 32). This is not our hope, but simple waiting for Himself. The whole walk and character of a saint depends on this, on his waiting for the Lord. Every one should be able to read us by this as having nothing to do in this world, but to get through it, and not as having any portion in it; "turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven." This is thought a strange thing now, but the Thessalonians were converted to this hope, for they belonged to a world which had rejected God's Son; therefore they had to turn from these idols to serve the true and living God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.

205 What I desire to press upon you all and myself too is the individual waiting for the Lord; not as a doctrine merely, but as a daily waiting for Himself. Whatever the Lord's will may be, I should like Him to find me doing it when He comes. But that is not the question, but am I waiting for Himself day by day?

In the second chapter of 1 Thessalonians the hope is connected with ministry, "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?" Then Paul would get the reward of His service to the saints. Then in the third chapter the hope is connected with our walk, as a motive for holiness, "unblameable in holiness, before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all his saints."

Then in the fourth chapter, the doctrine of the hope is unfolded; the manner of it comes out - "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

Thus we see what a present expectation the coming of the Lord was; therefore Paul says, "WE which are alive and remain." But why does he say "WE"? Because he expected it then. This was Paul's character then, that of waiting for the Lord. And does he lose that character, because he died before He came? No, not at all.

Though Peter had a revelation that he should put off the tabernacle of his body (2 Pet. 1: 14), yet did he daily wait for the Lord's coming then; and this will be Paul's character when the Lord does come; he will lose nothing by his death. "Be ye like unto men that wait for their Lord." The character of their waiting was to be like servants at the hall-door, that, when the master knocked, they were ready to open to Him immediately. It is a figure of course here; but it is the present power of the expectation that is alluded to. And the ruin of the church has come in by practically saying, "My Lord delayeth his coming." "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching."

"Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning" - "your loins girt about with truth" for service. You must not let your garments flow loose; that is, you must not let your thoughts and affections spread abroad, but be ready with your garments well girt up and your lights burning. This is not rest, for it is an exceedingly tiring thing to have to sit up and watch through a long dark night. But in the spirit of service the heart, affections, thoughts, feelings, and desires must all be girt up. And this requires real painstaking not to let the flesh go its own way; for it is a great comfort sometimes to do this, if but for a moment, but if we do we shall surely fall asleep like the virgins. For as the virgins went to sleep with their oil in their lamps, so may we go to sleep with the Holy Ghost in our hearts. But blessed are those servants who are found watching. The Lord says this is the time for you to be girded, to take your turn in love to serve and watch; but when I come again, and have things My own way, then I will take My turn in love, ungird you, and gird Myself, and come forth and serve you. You must be well girt up and watchful in the midst of evil; but when the evil is done with, then you may take your rest. When in the Father's house, you may lie down and be at ease; and then your robes may flow down without any fear of their being soiled. In that blessed place of holiness and purity you may let your affections, thoughts, and desires flow out without the fear of their being defiled.

206 The Lord does not speak to us, as He does to the remnant on the earth. He does not say to them that He will come as a thief in the night, but He tells them the tribulation will be so terrible, that He notes how many days it shall last, and says, "For the elect's sake those days shall be shortened, or no flesh could be saved." But to us it would be nothing that our flesh should be saved on the earth - we would rather get out of the flesh. To them it would be everything to "fear not them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." They would be amongst those who would not have Christ, and therefore will have Antichrist; and so terrible will be the sorrow, that the Lord comes to cut short those days. They were too late for the other thing, but now, by reason of the sorrow, a short work will the Lord make of it on the earth. The Psalms express a desire for judgment, because those who express it then get their deliverance; but no Christian can claim this. Who could ask, "that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same?" Judgment will not be our deliverance, but going up to heaven before the judgment begins.

207 He will come in judgment; as it is said, "Sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." But that is not for us - we are not His enemies; for He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. And we are perfected now, but we wait by the Holy Ghost to have that which is ours by virtue of our union with Him; and when He comes forth to judgment, we shall come with Him. The Lord comes with His saints, when He comes to execute judgment on the earth; but He comes for His saints previously.

I do not desire judgment, but I do desire that which is worthy of being desired, the hope of being with the Lord, as the Lord, and like the Lord for ever. It is the end of the whole thing as regards ourselves. Therefore, as the apostle says, The times and the seasons are nothing to you, for you belong to the day that will come, when the wicked shall be as ashes under the feet of the saints.

Verses 40, 41. The Lord then goes on to speak of the conduct of the saints while waiting for their Lord; and, "Peter said, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even unto all? And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing." Now observe that the answer of our blessed Lord was most remarkable, and in this way, that those who had the name of waiting for the Lord would become the world. In our country, in England, worldly people are called Christians, and thus they are responsible for the name they bear, and not only for the power. So they that take the name of ministers are responsible for the position they take. For people will be judged, not according to the power they have, but according to the PLACE they have taken. They cannot say, I have taken the place, but have not the power, so you ought not to judge me. But you have taken the place, and therefore are responsible for the power, or you should not have taken the place. If a servant comes into your house and spoils all your goods, you judge him according to the place he has taken. Therefore the professing church or Christendom is responsible for having taken the place of Christianity without the power; and how can there be power where there is not life? If servants, they are to give to the household the portion of meat in due season, because it is a service to be done in the house while the master is away. So that whatever the place, whether little or great, the servant is to be in service to Christ, while He is away; and if faithful, He will make him ruler over all that He hath at His return.

208 Verse 45. "But and if that servant say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming," etc. Mark, he does not say He will not come, but "he delayeth his coming." And the moment the church of God said, My Lord delayeth His coming, it got into the world; and the Lord's coming was counted a heresy. For as soon as the church lost the practical sense of the Lord's coming, it began to decay and decline, and the hope gradually dropped out, until it was entirely lost. What awoke the virgins at first was the cry, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh." But they needed to be called out again from the place where they had gone to make themselves comfortable, although they had been called out before; and that which awakes them again is, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh," etc. It is not that the church had been saying, He will never come again, but "My Lord delayeth his coming," just shewing that the hope of His immediate coming had lost its place in her heart. The servant does not say he will be a heathen or a Jew, nor does he leave the other servants; but instead of giving them their meat in due season, he begins to beat them. And when it came to this, they began to eat and drink with the drunken; not that they got drunk, but that they readily went on with the ways, customs, and habits of the world from which they had been redeemed. Is that the wilderness? No. It is getting into the world and setting up a millennium in the continuity and perpetuity of the church down here, which is virtually denying the Lord's coming. How can I make preparation for continuing down here, if I am expecting Him daily? Men tell me that the Lord is providing for the continuance of the church down here on the earth; but the Lord tells me in His word to expect Him daily to take me up to heaven.

It is a most solemn thing, that this thought of settling in the earth because the Lord delayeth His coming is fast closing in upon the blinded hearts of the professing church, and thus fitting them for the judgment that is fast approaching. The voice then ought now to be lifted up like a trumpet to meet this state of things. "Behold the Bridegroom cometh." This will be the test again by which souls may yet be gathered out to wait for the Lord, and not settle down into the expectation of the perpetuity and continuance of the church down here.

209 Now mark the result of this (v. 46). "The lord of that servant cometh in an hour when he looketh not for him, and will cut him in sunder, and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers." He is treated according to the position he has taken.

Verse 47. Christendom is in the worst case after all; it will be better even for the poor heathen than for it. "As many as have sinned without law shall perish without law." That which now boasts itself as the church will then have peculiar judgment; for "it shall be beaten with many stripes."

Verse 48. While the heathen who ought to have acted according to the light of conscience "will be beaten with few stripes," God will not go on with evil, though He may bear long with it. And where Satan is working, believers cannot rightly deal with it, but by treating it as what it is. I have no power over it, for it corrupts the principles of the light within me, and brings darkness into my soul.

First, then, there is the waiting for the Lord Himself; and, secondly, the answer to the question, "Speakest thou this unto us, or to all?" is to all that call themselves, and take the place of servants. The Lord make us faithful as those who are waiting for Him! It will be no joy to my soul for Him to find me heaping up riches when He comes; for there should be the testimony to the world that He was coming. Individual faithfulness is first, and then love to Him and to souls will flow out naturally.

Luke 13.

There are two great principles in God's dealings, in connection with man on the earth, which are developed in the church of God, as such, and in the government of God. And these two things are very distinct the one from the other. In the church the riches of God's grace are manifested; but in His governmental dealings, righteousness, and the display of His attributes, as justice, mercy, and goodness. We have an example of God's governmental power in Exodus 34: 6, 7, "And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation." Here it is in connection with the Jews, and not only among the Jews, but it shews also that which is outside in the world in God's dealings. What we get in Exodus 34 is not sovereign grace bringing a soul to eternal life, but governmental power; the exercise of which we may now mark every day around us. For if a man wastes his fortune, or ruins his health by intemperance of any kind, his children suffer for it. This is an invariable principle. We see also the exercise of righteous government in God's not clearing the guilty.

210 See God's dealings with David, because of the matter of Uriah. "The sword shall never depart from thine house . . . . Thou didst it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun . . . . Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, the child that is born unto thee shall surely die." Now, here was judgment for David's sin; and we know that in his after life, the "sword did not depart from his house."

This also is true of the Jews for the murder of the Lord; as it is expressed in Galatians: - "What a man soweth that shall he also reap." This, however, is not grace but government; still it is true of a saint as well as of a sinner. Both kinds of dealing God has with the saints now, that is, in grace, and in righteous government. I shall never reap the reward of my sins in eternal blessedness, for it is infinite grace; but in the way of righteous government I shall reap the reward of my iniquity down here. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked . . . . He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." It is grace as to sins eternally, but righteous government as to iniquity down here. God never lets go the reins of government, even over the world, although for a season He did not interfere in governmental power. As it is said, "The time of this ignorance God winked at." He did not say there was no sin; therefore they were responsible. So that "death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." There was sin and death, though no transgression, because God had not then come in with law. But Adam had received a positive commandment and had transgressed it. And sin must bear its consequence, which is death. But "in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel," then all will come out, and both will have their place.

211 The angels see and understand the government of God in the world; but in the church it is quite another thing, as Peter says, "Which things the angels desire to look into." The angels had seen the various wisdom of God in creation, when the morning stars sang together; but here it was quite a new thing; for by the church the manifold wisdom of God is displayed. God is going to have a people not belonging to the earth at all.

In the prophets government on the earth is spoken of, because it is of Messiah's kingdom that they speak. But God's government towards Israel in its Messiah-character is now suspended, but it will come out again another day. When the kingdom is spoken of, it is government on the earth; but when the church is spoken of, it is as-connected with the Governor Himself. The position of Christians is such, that they have in it a motive for the very commonest affairs of life: so that their daily conduct should be suitable to their high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We are united to Him who will judge the world; and therefore, when the apostle is going to counsel two foolish Christians that are going to law, he says, "what! cannot you settle such a trifling thing as that about money without going to law?" "Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" Could not those who are destined to do such high things settle their own smaller matters, without going to law, and that before the unbelievers? It is the sense of their high calling that Paul places before them; which he desired might fill their minds as it did his. Therefore, if telling them as servants to be faithful in a house, and not to be guilty of purloining, he says, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." The grace having appeared, the glory is looked for. Therefore the conclusion is, do you, as subjects of the grace and waiting for the glory, live righteously and suffer wrongfully, rather than avenge yourselves.

212 We have, then, God's government of this world, and of the Jew in justice, though in patient goodness; and His taking out of the world a people united to Christ in governing. If you look into the prophets, you do not find anything about the church whatever, but about government, whether of the Jew or of the world. But when we come to the church we find a suspension of government, in its outward, visible, and settled order, because the world had rejected Christ, who was their Governor. In the church I get an entirely new thing; for the Son of God, having been rejected in the world, is gone back to the Father, and He now says to us, "Ye are not of this world, even as I am not of this world." "Now is the judgment of this world, now is the prince of this world cast out." Christ, who made all things, is also set over all things in government, as Heir of all things; though not yet openly exercising His power thus. But Christ, who is "Head over all things, is also Head to the church, which is his body": a thing hidden from ages and generations, but now made manifest.

In Ephesians this is fully brought out, but there we have more of the fulness of the body; while in Colossians there is more about the fulness of the Head. This is because the Colossians were in danger of slipping back from the Head into the observance of ordinances; therefore the apostle presses upon them the fulness of the Head to bring them back again. But in Ephesians he dwells on the church, the body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. The church, as His body, is the completeness of Christ.

In Ephesians 3 we read of the promise in Christ by the gospel given in the eternal purpose of God to the church before the foundation of the world; whereas the promises given to Israel were given to them on the earth and not before the world was. The church was called in the eternal purpose of God before time; while the Jew was called out in time. In Colossians 1: 23-25 we read, "Be not moved-away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I, Paul, am made a minister; who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the church; whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you, to fulfil [or, more properly, to complete] the word of God." That which still remained for God to give, and which we now have, is the revelation of the church; for until the church was revealed, the word of God was not complete. But now that which for ages and generations was hid in God is fully told out.

213 Here we see Paul's two ministries, first, that of the gospel, and then that of the church. And the form which a believer's life now takes is, "Christ in you the hope of glory." A Christ in heaven, and at the same time dwelling in the saints now on the earth, is a thing which was hid in God before the foundation of the world. Unto the Jews had been committed the oracles of God; but they knew nothing of a body on the earth united to a Head in heaven, even to the man Christ Jesus, as members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. Until the church was revealed to Paul, this was still hid in God's eternal purpose. As soon as all God's dealings, in the sense of proving man, were closed with the earth, by the rejection of His Son ("This is the heir, come let us kill him"), all was closed to men in the flesh, and the church is brought out in connection with a Man in heaven.

God sent His only Son, and Him they crucified. He had no other messenger. Christ was rejected as Prophet, as Messiah, as Son of man, and as Son of God; and when man, as man, was thus fully shewn out, God comes in and acts for Himself. Him, whom man had put to death, God raises from the dead, and sets Him down at His own right hand in heaven; in virtue of which the Holy Ghost comes down and unites a people on the earth to this risen Man in glory. This is quite a distinct thing, and therefore it is that in Scripture we constantly find a gap, as it were, leaving space for the mystery of the church, "which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God," to be brought out.

Therefore, as we have previously remarked, the church is not found in the Old Testament; but Christ's coming in humiliation, and His coming in judgment, are spoken of close together, without saying a word about the church coming in between the two events. So. in Luke 4 when the Lord was in the synagogue at Nazareth, after preaching from Isaiah what referred to His then mission of healing the brokenhearted and preaching the acceptable year of the Lord, He closed the book and sat down, saying not a word about "the day of vengeance" - that being deferred until the mystery which had been hid from ages and generations had been manifest to the saints; or, in other words, until after the church had been brought out.

214 It is of immense importance, for the steadiness of the soul, to keep these two principles quite distinct; for what often confounds people in the study of prophecy is their not seeing the distinctive place which the church of God holds apart from God's government of the world, or of Israel. But the very essence of the church is, that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. They are all sinners alike; but, when reached by God's grace, are all brought into one body. The very principle on which the church is based, would have destroyed the whole basis of the Jewish system. All along in the Jewish system their righteousness consisted in maintaining a distinct separation between themselves and the Gentiles; but now "there is no difference"; for both Jew and Gentile are made one in Christ. If the barrier which God Himself had originally set up had been broken down before Christ was crucified and risen, it would have been sin: therefore the church could never have been even hinted at in the Jewish scriptures. The principle of the church could not be brought in, while the "handwriting of ordinances" remained. But this being "blotted out" in Christ, "the twain, Jew and Gentile, are made one new man."

In going back to our chapter (Luke 13), we see the Jews had the thought of God's government in their minds. Nor was it wrong in itself. They thought that God could not let such a guilty wretch as this Pilate live, who had been mingling the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices. But Christ brings them to a new principle by which to judge of things, and tells them that Pilate is but a mere instrument in the governmental dealings of God with the nation. Judgment was going on in this present evil world. "Suppose ye," says the Lord, "that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans? I tell you nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." It is not that they were finally condemned as sinners here, but it was governmental judgment in this world which would overtake them all unless they repented. God had sent forth His judgment and caught these Galileans, and would catch the Jews also unless they repented. For not only Pilate but God's Son was there, and they were practically rejecting Him. And how many of the Jews had their blood mingled with their sacrifices by Titus in the destruction of Jerusalem!

215 Christ had said to the Jews in the close of chapter 12, "When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite." This is not a question of eternal salvation, but it simply refers to the state of the Jews: that is, the Jews will not come out till they have paid the very last mite. Jerusalem will not get out till she has received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. But she will get out from the chastenings of the Lord when they are complete. It is very evident that this passage refers simply to God's government of His people.

In verse 56 of the preceding chapter the Lord asks in the way of reproach, "How is it that ye do not discern this time?" And ought not we always to discern the time? Surely the Lord might often reproach us by saying, "How is it that ye do not discern this time? All the world is rejecting Me, and if they do not repent before they get to the judgment, there is no hope. Natural conscience ought to tell you Jews not to reject your Messiah, for God is going all the way along with you to the magistrate, dealing with you in patient grace; and if you do not repent and be reconciled, judgment must come upon you; and then it will be the same with you, as with those whom you think to be such sinners."

"I am come to send fire on the earth," - (the fire of judgment) "and what will I if it be already kindled?" (v. 6). The Lord is here dealing with the same state of things. The fig-tree also is Israel; for God came seeking fruit in them, but He found none. In the gospel there is this difference, that grace sows in order to produce fruit; but in connection with Israel's responsibility, He came seeking fruit and found none.

The sentence upon the fig-tree then is, "cut it down." He not only found it useless, but His vineyard was cumbered by it. "The name of God is blasphemed through you among the Gentiles." Then comes in Christ's mission. "Last of all he sent his Son." God had planted a vineyard and pruned it, but found no fruit. Then a new Gardener comes in to try what He can do, and He said, "Let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it and dung it," etc. This was all done, but still there was no fruit. All was useless, as far as Israel was concerned. Then God says, I will get rid of the whole thing: "cut it down."

216 The woman with an infirmity (v. 11), whom Jesus heals on the sabbath day, brings out another thing that was working in their hearts, that is, the abuse of the law, which brought in hypocrisy. They would lead an ox or an ass from the stall to water on the sabbath day, but they could not bear that a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound eighteen years, should be loosed on the sabbath day. One of the infirmities of man's mind is to use possessed truth to resist revealed truth. Paul was an example of this. As "touching the righteousness of the law, he was blameless"; still Paul thought he ought to do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth. And so also Christ says of them in John 16: 2, 3: "These things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me." They were using the name of the Godhead which had been given them ("Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah") to reject the Son; for when Christ came in humiliation, they would not receive Him. Orthodoxy is used to stop the reception of truth. When truth is the ground of a man's standing, it gains him credit; but when a new truth comes in, it puts faith to the test. So the unity of the Godhead was used by the Jews to resist the reception of Christ.

The ruler of the synagogue said, "There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day." But he ought to have known that the Lord of the sabbath was there. That single word "daughter of Abraham" ought to have told him who He was that stood there. And the Lord answered him and said, "Thou hypocrite," etc.

In verse 18 the Lord goes on to say what the kingdom will be like, while the king is rejected and away. While the king is sitting on His Father's throne, until He comes to take His own throne, the kingdom is like a little seed thrown into the ground which springs up and becomes a great tree; just what we see in Christendom. This fills up the gap between Christ's rejection and His coming again. There is no royal power exercised while the king is away; as it is said in Mark's Gospel, "It springs up men know not how." But when the harvest is ripe He will come again. He sowed the first time, and the second time He will put in His sickle. He does not, however, come looking for a great tree, but for heavenly fruit; though, instead of the fruit He expected, He will find the seed has become a great tree, with the fowls of the air lodging in the branches. Pharaoh was a great tree; Nebuchadnezzar was a great tree; the high and great ones of the earth, the representatives of earthly power. Even Israel, who had been planted "a noble vine, wholly a right seed," was bearing no fruit. Therefore, as it is said in Ezekiel 15, "What is the vine-tree more than any other tree," if it bears no fruit? It is only fit to be burned. We all know that the vine is the most fruitful thing that grows upon the face of the earth, and that the branches when cut off and withered make the best firewood; but they are useless for anything else. It was not a question of the kingdom here, but of fruit-bearing. The word sown in the heart does not come to a great tree, but produces fruit.

217 In verse 21 the kingdom is likened unto leaven; and leaven is just that which spreads throughout the whole mass in which it is placed, and also gives a character to the thing in which it is. It is the nominal profession of Christianity which is spread into a great mass - a great system. Looked at as a doctrine it has leavened whole countries. Still it is not what the Lord could own; as leaven in Scripture is never used in a good sense. The idea is, the spreading of the doctrine while the king is away.

It should be observed that there is not a word here about the power of the Holy Ghost in connection with the spread of Christian doctrine. He is simply speaking about the effect produced in the world.

In the question of the disciples (v. 23), "Are there few that be saved?" the word "saved" is the same as that which all through the Old Testament signifies the remnant spared. Therefore the question really was as to whether this remnant that would be spared would be few or many, when the judgment came. But, this being a mere idle question, the Lord does not answer it, but says to them (v. 24), "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." Those who would get in may. The strait gate was receiving Christ at that time. Some however would come and knock when the door is closed, to whom He will say, "I know ye not whence ye are." Strive to enter in at the strait gate, through which Christ goes before you - that is, rejection. "For many [all Israel] shall seek to enter in and shall not be able." For, inasmuch as they did not receive Christ in humiliation, He says, "Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity." It is all most simple when we see the rejection of Christ. For those who reject Christ in the day of His humiliation will themselves be rejected in the day of His glory; and, instead of being His companions in the kingdom, will be thrust out. The unbelieving Jews shall see the Gentiles come into the glory of the kingdom, while they remaining in unbelief will be cast out.

218 The Pharisees came and said to Him, "Get thee out and depart, for Herod will kill thee" (v. 31). Now Herod was an Idumean and became their king; but what had this Idumean king to do with God's promises to Israel? Nothing whatever. In Herod we have a kind of figure of the wilful king, first in his trying to kill Christ, and then in his having no faith in God's purposes or Christ's glory. But Christ answers, "Go tell that fox" I shall do my Father's will till the moment come, for I am come to shew divine power, and when rejected here shall be perfected in glory. What divine contempt for the apostate king was here combined with the most perfect human obedience! "Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet perish OUT of Jerusalem." "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" After all, Jerusalem is the guilty place. Let the Idumean king say and do what he will, it is Jerusalem that is guilty; for Jerusalem was nearest to Himself. And the nearer I am to God, if I reject Him, the worse is the rejection, and the more dreadful the judgment, because it is the place of love. Look at Psalm 132, "The Lord hath chosen Zion, he hath desired it for his habitation," etc., and at the end of Psalm 78 it is the same election of Zion from verses 65-68. "But chose the tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved." And in Psalm 87, "What is Rahab and Babylon?" I am not ashamed of Zion to compete with them. But Christ does not put the sin upon them until they have rejected both Him and His Father.

219 But before bringing out this purpose of grace, God dealt all through with man on the ground of responsibility, and the last effort He made was in sending His Son. The fig-tree yielded nothing - responsibility was fully put to the test, when the soil itself was found to be bad. I have tried the chosen portion, says God, and find the whole thing so worthless that nothing can be done with it. It is as though one had taken the sand of the sea and found it so impregnated with salt that nothing could be done with it; and, the more digging and pruning that was given to it, the more bad fruit it produced. And we all are no better than the Jews were, for we were, by nature, children of wrath even as others. What! condemn everybody? Yes, to be sure, but then I condemn myself! Man's "heart is enmity against God." And the more pains God has taken, it has only brought out the more hatred. The old man is condemned, and the gospel begins with seeking and saving that which was lost. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" And do we not find the truth of all this in ourselves?

But notice how the divine person of the Lord comes out here, "O! Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered . . . and ye would not!" Now a prophet could not say this. Though Christ was a prophet, it is true, still He was more than a prophet. He was Jehovah; for none but Jehovah could gather Israel. As it is said, "He that scattered Israel will gather him." Israel had rejected Jehovah, when under responsibility; but Jehovah will own them when He comes in grace. The church will go up to heaven, and the kingdom will be set up on the earth. And mark how the deity of our blessed Lord shines out again and again in the Gospels, while at the same moment the humanity remained so perfect. And here I would say a word or two as to the way of bringing this blessed fact out. For surely the circumstances through which the Lord passed in His path down here did bring out in a far brighter way WHO HE WAS, than any text that could be adduced to prove it. Not that I would set aside any text, but suppose you believed there was a God as a truth; if He were to come down by your very side and say, Here I AM, would not that be a very different thing? And though Christ was the humbled Man all through His path here (for He was ever the servant of all), yet when the service was of no use, then it was that God shone out. "Before Abraham was, I AM." See Luke 13: 33, 34. The moment He said, I must die, since you reject Me, immediately Jehovah shone out. "O! Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee" - and who could gather ISRAEL but Jehovah Himself? - "but ye would not," therefore "your house is left unto you desolate until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

220 The complaint in the Psalms is, that there is none to say, "How long?" - none to count upon the faithfulness of Jehovah to His people. (See Psalm 74.) The expression, "How long?" is often used in the Psalms, and in Isaiah 6 it refers to chastening, and not retribution. How long is Israel to stumble or fall? (Rom. 11). In Isaiah 6 the prophet having uttered those words, "Make the heart of this people fat," etc., taken up by the Lord in John 12, the prophet then says, "How long?" He was in the faith of God and reckoning upon God, and having God's mind, he cannot believe that God will give them up, and therefore asks, "how long" the chastening is to continue. To which the Lord God answers, "There shall be a great forsaking in the midst of the land, but in it there shall be a tenth, and so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof." The sap is still there, though there be no leaves.

So in Psalm 118, "Jehovah hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death." In the same way, the Lord does not say, Your house is left unto you desolate, and therefore you shall not see me again. No, but He says, "Ye shall not see me, until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Jehovah." He can give as Jehovah, in grace, the answer, and when He gives repentance to Israel, then He will send Jesus - whom, until then, the heavens have received-and then our connection with Him comes in. The prophets spoke only of earthly things, though divine; but to the church it is "Holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling!" You hath He made to sit together with Him in the heavenly places, and that gives security. How did I get in there? By virtue of Christ; He is my title and is He not a good title? My desires are to be acquainted with this, that I am one with Christ in heaven. And these are my desires in fact, and that is what the Holy Ghost seals upon my soul, and we get it as our everlasting portion. When Israel is brought to repentance, then "the stone which the builders rejected will be the head of the corner," and owned of them. They will say, "O! give thanks unto Jehovah, for his mercy endureth for ever." Alas, they will receive another first! But when their hearts are turned and grace works, then they will use the language of Psalm 119, and find the expression of the law within their hearts, and when faith is thus exercised, and their hearts are broken and open to receive Him, then He Himself will come to them. If there is not a prophet to say, "How long?" then Jehovah Himself will give the answer.

221 And though applied to Israel here, yet we may learn what the Lord is, for He never changes, and though He executes judgment in righteousness, grace is found in His heart for faith to lay hold of. "When he cometh shall he find faith on the earth?" Well, if there be not faith to be found, or a prophet to be found, there is One who will lay up in His treasures something for faith to lay hold of in the sovereignty of His grace. We see Jehovah in that humble one, that Nazarene, and see how He is able to rise above all iniquity; and thus to see Jehovah shining out through it all, how precious He becomes to us! That we are one with Him should endear Him to our hearts, and in learning Him may He give us to follow Him.

On the Gospel according to John

J. N. Darby.

{Notes of remarks made partly in reply to questions at a conference.}

<25027E> 222 {file section a.}

There is a general remark as to John's Gospel which will astonish some perhaps; that, except in three cases, John has nothing to do with heaven. In these alone you have heaven. "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" "I go to prepare a place for you," and "Those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am," in chapters 6, 14, and 17; and in these it is only thrown out in a way. John's Gospel is really the manifestation of God to men down here in the person of Christ, and the coming of the Holy Ghost, with the declaration of Christ's coming again. I merely indicate the character of the Gospel in saying so: you do not get any ascension either at the end of it. Let me first give you a summary of it.

In chapter 1 you get Christ's person, and incarnation and work, or rather, perhaps, what He does than His work. All His essential names are there, not His relative ones. You do not get Him as Head of the church, or as High Priest, nor as the Christ, which are His relationships; for He is not revealed as Christ in verse 41.

In chapter 2, having His title as Son of man at the close of the first, we hear of His millennial work in the marriage, and the clearing of the temple, up to the end of verse 22. Verses 23 and 24 are connected with chapter 3, where we see not only Christ's total rejection by man, but the setting aside of the natural man, the new birth and the cross.

These three chapters are before His entry on His public ministry. We know this, because John was not yet cast into prison, and from the other Gospels we learn it was after John was cast into prison, that He went out into His public ministry. In chapter 4 He leaves Judaea, the place of promise, of the temple, and all that, and sets aside Jerusalem and Samaria, bringing the gift of God down to the earth in grace. He sets up spiritual worship, and the old thing is set aside altogether. Then, in Galilee, He brings the power of life to man where he is, and heals the nobleman's son. In chapter 5 He is the quickening Son of God along with the Father, and the judging Son of man alone. He is Son of God in judging too. In chapter 6, He is the humbled Son of man incarnate and dying, and the food of the saints while He is away.

22 In chapter 7 the Holy Ghost is substituted for His manifestation to the world. Of course it is only the main idea I am giving you now. In chapter 8 His word is rejected. In chapter 9 His work is rejected. In chapter 10 He has His sheep in spite of all. In chapter 11 being rejected and having His sheep, God bears testimony to Him as Son of God in the power of resurrection. In chapter 12 He is owned by spiritual intelligence as the dying one (which comes in most beautifully in a little parenthesis), and then as Son of David, King of Israel, and Son of man; you get the three here, Son of God, Son of David, and Son of man. In chapter 13 He still remains the servant. As He cannot remain with His disciples here, He abides a servant, though gone to God, to fit them to be with Him there. At the end you have the last supper, and Judas, and then the cross, but in the character of His glorifying God there. In chapter 14 He is telling them that He would come again to receive them, and He gives them what would be their comfort, while He was away; having revealed the Father in His own person, and then they in Him and He in them, known by them through the presence of the Holy Ghost.

In chapter 15 He is Himself the true vine on the earth, Israel is not; and He sends the Comforter to reveal His heavenly glory while His disciples bear witness, through the Comforter, of what He had been on earth. In chapter 16 we have the action of the Comforter on earth towards the world and in the church; they were to ask in His name which they had not done yet. In chapter 17 to the end of verse 23 He puts them completely into His own place on earth toward the Father, and towards the world, He being glorified; and in the last verses He wills that they should be brought into the same place with Him in heaven. In chapter 18 you begin the last history of Gethsemane, and so on. In chapter 19 remark that you have no human suffering, but divine power in it all; they scourge Him and you get all the facts about it, not that He did not suffer, but it is not that part that is brought out: people fall back to the ground instead of His sweating great drops of blood; you have the divine side, I mean. In chapter 20 you have the whole condition of believers from the first revelation of the fact of His resurrection and ascension until the remnant believe by seeing. In chapter 21 you get Christ ministerially represented as come again in the millennial times and the services of Peter and John until then, Peter to be cut off, but John to go on. It is the beginning of the millennium and of the history of Peter and John in the interval from Christ's death. Paul's ministry is not found there. Now let us go back.

224 In the very outset Christ came to the world, and the world knew him not, and He came to His own and His own received Him not; consequently the Jews are treated as reprobates; but He has come from the Father into the world. It is what some might call a Calvinistic gospel; consequently it shews the sovereign grace which leads anybody to receive Christ or own Him at all. They are born of God, not of the will of man. Therefore, too, He has His sheep; and this characterises the Gospel.

The truth is entirely abstract in the first five verses except five words. The Gospel itself begins before Genesis. In Genesis you have the responsible creation; but here "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," a very distinct statement of the eternity of Christ. There is the being of the Word, He is the Word, the Logos, the expression of God's mind, for Word is both - it is what we were speaking of once before as the intelligent and the intelligible. Christ is the expression, and the Logos too, because He is God. When the expression only is meant it is rhema, not logos. But logos takes up what the mind is as having a thought, or it expresses the mind. All the wisdom of God is in Christ, He is it, and besides He is the expression of it. Then you get another thing, and that is, personal distinction, - "the Word was with God," - something in a personal sense distinct. And then "the Word was God," and that is the nature. It is very full, though brief.

Verse 2 meets what was a common difficulty that He only became into personal distinctness when God began to act. Of course it is a mere notion, but it is met here: "He was in the beginning with God." Then in verse 3 I come to the beginning of Genesis. "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." He is Creator as to things outside Himself. And then I get what is inside Himself, "in him was life." Very full all this, as to the divine person and glory of the Lord. And another thing, "and the life was the light of men." God is light in His nature, but here is specific appropriation in the second person. It is in form too a reciprocal expression. Wisdom always had man in its thoughts; the angels come into creation, but the life was the light of men, and therefore He became a man.

225 Then I get the judgment of the world, and of "his own," "the light shineth in darkness" - a thing impossible in nature, for if the light there shone in darkness, there would be no darkness for it to shine in. The judgment of the world is the consequence, for "the darkness comprehended it not." "The light shineth in darkness" is abstract too; He does not say "shone."

Then comes another truth of immense import. "There was a man sent from God," that is, God took pains with men to bring them to apprehend this light. He sends this messenger to draw people's attention; "the same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe." All to no purpose it might be, but still there was the painstaking of God. "He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light." Here we get this name of light (we have nothing of love yet), the purest thing we have any idea of, and which manifests everything else. It is light that makes all things manifest; but it is a thing too which is perfect purity. That is the true light which, on coming into the world, lights every man. It was not a mere Jewish thing: we have got far away out of that now, but it comes into the world; it is not a question of promises here, but of nature and counsels. God in His counsels had to say to men, and light comes into the world; He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. Man had not the sense to see that the person who made him was in the world, and its light. And He came to the Jews, and they would not receive Him either. So there was the judgment of everything. You have got the world, and its pitch-darkness; and the Jews - His own - will not have Him: "there is none that understandeth or that seeketh after God." Job 38: 1-7, refers to the same: only that these very singers were created too; so that Job does not go quite so wide. John 1: 3 is before the beginning of Genesis when you think of the angels.

We have got what Christ was, abstractly, and the result was that nobody received Him. They had no understanding, and no will; and now, consequently, we get grace working, "but to as many as received him, to them gave he power* to become children of God." It is not merely that they got light and blessing, but He gave them a place, "children of God," "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God." I have the action of grace, and, where the action of grace is, they do receive Him.

{*Authority to take the place which the saints had not before.}

226 If we are to distinguish the phrases in verse 13, "of flesh" is the nature more; "of man" is the being; "flesh" is the characteristic, "man" is general. "Not of blood." A Jew was born of blood and thought himself a son of the kingdom; but it was not of the will of the flesh either - Gentile, if you please. This closes on God's part what He was; and it closes on man's part too; and then there is the grace that comes in.

Now the Word is looked at as become flesh. In verse 14 a new part commences. Before, it was what He was; now, what He became (what He began to be). The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; it was a real thing, not like God visiting Abraham; but He dwelt among us, tabernacled there "and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." His own incarnate character and our connection with it. The part about John the Baptist comes in in the middle. But there is the statement, "the Word was made flesh": and then you get the aspect He had. We beheld His glory, not of the Son as such, but as of an only-begotten with a Father. He had all the title of that excellency and value in everything. All that that was to the Father was with Him. It is His personal glory made visible in flesh. When He was made flesh, we get a witness of John (v. 15), just as before, saying, "This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me."

The difference between only-begotten (monogenees) and first-born (prototokos), is that the first is His relationship to God eternally; the second is His relationship to other things. Thus, "I will make him my first-born, higher than the kings of the earth," in Psalm 89. This is not what He is essentially. He was light - the revealer of the Father. "Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." "The light shineth in darkness" is real, and it is by incarnation; but John is not taking it up in an historical way, only the fact of light and life. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth," he does not say were given, but "came by Jesus Christ" - they were in His person.

227 He was the truth. The truth never was in the world till then. Bits of truth there were; prophecy was true, and people tell the truth to one another; but the truth was only now. Christ alone is the truth. The truth itself had never come. The law is not the truth; it is not its object. The law tells me what I ought to be; truth tells a fact that is. The law never told anything about truth, but gave a perfect rule, and shewed what man ought to be - "Thou shalt not do this and that." I might draw conclusions from it and say, I am not this or that; whereas, Christ was this and that; He was God and was man, a holy being, and love itself; and all that man without sin was; and the effect was, that He shewed not what things ought to be, but what they were. This world is all very fine, but it is the mere tool and instrument of the devil. Christ tells the truth about everything, evil and good alike - just as light manifests everything; and, more, grace came by Him too; and I know not only what I am, but what God is, and, whatever I am, He is grace to me. Of course Christ had to die to fit us to be with God, but as regards testimony, everything is told out by Christ's coming - what we are, what God is, what the devil is, and what the world is, and everything. The light shines in it, that is Christ's nature; and then he comes down to the fact, that the "darkness comprehended it not." That is the moral statement as to it.

As to the force of the use of the names "God" and "Father" in the Gospel of John, and pretty much in his Epistle, as a general rule, when you speak of our responsibility or the nature of things, you get "God." But when the ways of grace are unfolded, you get the Father and the Son; there are certain exceptions which only confirm it. "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life." It was essential to put "God" in there, because it was as God He did it. "The Father sent the Son to be Saviour of the world." "And this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." That is a most blessed sentence; though the word "love" is not there, it is the perfection of it. We cannot know God by seeing Him; but the only-begotten Son, in whom is concentrated all the Father's delight, and who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him. The Son comes and declares the Father as He knows Him in His bosom, just as the Father enjoys the Son as the object of His delight and love. If I were to tell you what my father was in his love, I should tell you what he was to me; and Christ comes and tells us all this Himself, and therefore He could say, "He hath that seen me hath seen the Father." In another sense He "came forth from the Father and came into the world."

228 There never was a time when the Son was so dear to the Father as on the cross. "Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I may take it again." That is, if you look at Him as a Son with His Father. If you take Him as actually suffering being made sin, He could as such have no joy in God. He was forsaken in His soul of God. That is quite true, if you are looking at judicial action in respect of sin. He could not then have any enjoyment of communion with God. The principal part of the cross was the interruption of the communion, but the complacency of the Father in the Son was never so great. It is a misapprehension of relationships which has made confusion here. My father is a man; but suppose I were to go and say to him "my man, so-and-so," it would deny the relationship between us; but if he says to me "my boy," it is very natural, because it is the expression of the relationship. You will never get the value of such things by putting them into a cut-and-dry form. Suppose I were to try to act the son to somebody, I should in that case slip out something all wrong as sure as possible. If the judge were my father, and I go into court, there I should say to him, "my lord"; but this would not be to deny him as my father.

Verse 18 is the revelation of the Father in the world, and it is striking, if we compare it with John's first epistle. In that he says, "No man hath seen God at any time; if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us!" We know that by the Holy Ghost. Here the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father He hath declared Him.

But I think that very often there is defect among Christians as to relationship, and their apprehension of it; that is, they do not live in the present consciousness of it; they come even in worship in a certain sense through Christ - no man ever came in any other way - but there is not the sense of what the Lord means when He says the "Father himself loveth you." There is no consciousness of that; it is rather persons outside, conscious they can get in. Of course they never could get in but by Christ.

229 Then comes John's mission, preparing the way before Him. He says, "I baptize you with water, but there standeth one among you whom ye know not; he it is who coming after me is preferred before me." John gives the divine person of Christ and bears testimony to Him. So that we now have had three things: the abstract nature of Christ; then Christ incarnate; then as the revealer of the Father. And we have John's testimony to these; and He who was divine and incarnate, and the revealer of the Father, dwelt among us "full of grace and truth."

Then in verse 29 we come to His work. He is "the Lamb of God," and He "baptizes with the Holy Ghost." Those are the two parts of His work; He is not only a Lamb, who takes away the sin of the world, but He gathers a peculiar people by the Holy Ghost too. You notice it is not "taketh away the sins," nor "has taken" away the sin; you never get either. Often people say Christ has taken away original sin and so on; here it simply says He is the doer of it. It points Him out as such. He is in every sense God's Lamb, He is of God and suited to God, and the effect of the work of this Lamb is the removal of all sin totally out of the world, away from God's sight; He takes it clean away. The first Adam was set up an innocent man; but the moment he became a sinful man, all that God did and does now as to the world He does in respect of sin. If He judges, it is for sins; if He forgives and shews grace it refers to sin, whatever He does in government must have reference to that. There is sin, and God must act in respect of it now; when the new heavens come and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, then the ground of relationship between God and the world will be righteousness instead of sin, or indeed instead of innocence either. It is based upon accomplished redemption which never can lose its value, and therefore the ground of relationship is immutable in the nature of things. And that ground is already laid, though the thing itself has not yet come. We have justification and peace and reconciliation. This is however only one particular part of the result; in the new heavens and new earth the whole result will be completely fulfilled. The result is not produced in manifestation at all as yet.

230 Thus verse 29 has no reference to time. Christ is the taker away of sin. It is just the same as in Hebrews 2, "He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one." It is not there that they are going to be sanctified, or that they have been sanctified, but simply those are the people.

Thus we have His work as the Lamb of God, and the next thing is John bearing record, saying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him." And then follows the great fact that, besides accomplishing redemption, He is the baptizer with the Holy Ghost. The first thing is, He is the one who takes sin clean out of the world, and then His work being accomplished brings the redeemed into the full blessing of sons. He first, note, takes His place among men and receives the Holy Ghost before He becomes the giver of it to others. And He is marked as Son of God in that place. It is a beautiful expression of the way in which Christ found Himself among us. And then heaven was opened the moment He took His place with the remnant and was baptized - the Holy Ghost comes down on Him, and the Father says, That is My Son.

It was the Son that created in Hebrews 1, and in Colossians 1; and as to being Son in the eternal state, He says, "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world "; again, "I leave the world and go to the Father "; and you have no Father if you have no Son. If I do not know Him as Son when He came into the world, I have no mission from God at all. And you get too the Father sent the Son.

"Son of the Father" and "Son of God" are the same essentially, only one is personal relationship, the other nature. But there are persons who take it that Christ was only Son as come into the world. The positive answer is given to this in Hebrews and Colossians, that by Him, the Son, the world was made. He is also called Son as born into this world. There is "This day have I begotten thee," in Psalm 2. That is not quite the same thing, though the same person, of course. He was begotten in time, that is true as to His human estate.

But Hebrews and Colossians are conclusive. It is of immense import, because I have not the Father's love sending the Son out of heaven, if I have not Him as Son before born into the world. The Son gives up the kingdom to the Father in 1 Corinthians 15. I lose all that the Son is, if He is only so as incarnate, and you have lost all the love of the Father in sending the Son as well. "I have declared thy name and will declare it," will declare it is now. He did it on earth, and does still, and I believe will do it to all eternity if you take the general statement of Scripture.

231 In Acts 13 you will find Paul, after speaking of other things, says in verse 33, "God hath raised up Jesus" (not "again"; which ought not to be there), and so in Acts 3: 26, "God having raised up his Servant Jesus" (not Son; Peter never states that Jesus is the Son of God); so in chapter 13, "he hath raised him up," as it is written in Psalm 2. "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee"; and then he goes on to prove resurrection by quoting another text: "I will give you the sure mercies of David." The sureness of them is the proof they were in resurrection not dependent on failing man, and then by resurrection He was declared to be the Son of God with power.

Then in verses 35, 36 you get again, "The next day after John stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God." In this we have not John's public ministry that had not produced the effect; but the going out of his own heart at the sight of the Lamb of God. "And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." And then Christ - which to me is most important - Christ accepts the being a centre. He "saith unto them, What seek ye?" They said unto Him, "Where dwellest thou?" "He saith unto them, Come and see." Christ becomes a centre.

Again in verse 43 Christ says to Philip, "Follow me"; and this intimates another thing to me, which is, the only right path through the world where there is no path and nothing right. We are accustomed to think we have a way to trace; but a way to trace proves the world is in ruin and nothing right with us. If a man is in a right place, he has no way to find out; but if I am in a wrong place, there is no right way there. Suppose my son scampers off away from me to Brazil, there is no right way for him until he comes back; for all he is doing does but carry on his error of being away from his father. In Eden and in heaven there is no way to find. If I have got to find a way, it is because I am in a wrong place; but here I find Christ is the way, and Christ is the centre, and He accepts it too. The days are numbered from verse 34 when the gathering of the godly remnant around Jesus begins. First through John the Baptist's ministry, and the day following Jesus Himself gathers; and this takes up all the time right on to the remnant at the end represented by Nathanael, a remnant then and a remnant to the end. Philip found Nathanael and said unto him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph." There is the greatest prejudice in Nathanael, but there is uprightness. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" "Come and see." Nathanael asks, "Whence knowest thou me?" "Before that Philip called thee when thou wast under the fig tree; I saw thee." Nathanael answers, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." This is the confession of Psalm 2. That is Christ's Jewish place. Jesus answered and said, "Because I said unto thee I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these." And He said unto him, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Henceforth ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." This is Psalm 8. I get Nathanael as a remnant owning Christ in His place there, and then comes "Ye shall see greater things than these" - ye shall see all creation - the angels - subject to the Son of man. "Under the fig tree" was really the Jew, and God knew him there. The fig tree is symbolic of Judaism. That gives us the whole, the abstract nature of Christ, His incarnation, His work, gathering others, and calling by John the Baptist and by Christ; then the owning of Him as in Psalm 2, and finally His place in Psalm 8.

232 Then in chapter 2 you get the third day. John's ministry is one day, Christ's ministry is a second day, and then "the third day" in chapter 2 is the millennium, the marriage, and water of purification of the Jews. All among the Jews.

Thus chapter 1: 35 is the first day. The third day is when the remnant is all called in. You get no church here at all. John the Baptist's ministry was preparatory; then Christ gathers by His own ministry, and gathers to the kingdom, and revealing of the Son of man; and then the millennium. It is in Psalm 2 we hear of Christ set King of Zion; then the trials of the remnant, and in Psalm 8 everything is put under Him. Here it is the highest creature that is put under Him. When I get Him Son of man, He is Lord of all. There is nothing of the church, unless it would be in baptizing with the Holy Ghost.

233 The marriage in chapter 2 is all a picture of millennial joy. The time of the second day would have commenced when the Lord was on earth, and it will be resumed again; but it is in abeyance now. What was to go on till the destruction of Jerusalem you get in Matthew 10 to the end of verse 15. The baptism of the Holy Ghost was at Pentecost. There will be a latter rain when the Holy Ghost will come down, though you do not get exactly a baptism of the Holy Ghost in the millennium.

Chapter 3 is immensely important; for you get in it a complete judgment of human nature, the absolute testimony to what man is, but the bringing in of the complete grace that meets it too. The last three verses of chapter 2 belong really to chapter 3; and there you get that men could believe in Christ in a certain kind of way, and yet it is good for nothing. It was not insincerity, nor is it so now, often; but it is a human conviction there justly drawn from His miracles now. That has arisen perhaps from education or human causes, but it was all in man and of man. The moment other motives and stronger came before them, they cry out, "Crucify him."

In Nicodemus we find a want that is something more than that. The moment a want is thus felt, there is a consciousness that the world will be against you; and so he goes by night. There is a real want in his soul. He goes to Christ and follows up the impression. What the Holy Ghost produces is always a want, though the want is met. Nicodemus owns Christ to be a teacher that comes from God; but he did not know that the old nature was good for nothing, and that he must be born again. Thus it is the Lord meets him: "I am not going to teach flesh: you must have a new nature; the old cannot be taught at all, except outwardly, and this is worthless." The special case for a Jew is that he could not enter the earthly kingdom, except he were born again. Therefore the Lord says, "Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again."

Then you come to the principle of sovereign grace, "the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit." This can reach a Gentile; and that is grace. Do not be astonished that I say, you Jews must be born again, flesh is but flesh, and then the Holy Ghost goes where it lists. The Spirit of God goes where He pleases; God is sovereign.

234 Nicodemus ought to have known it from the Old Testament prophecies, say Ezekiel 36. That was for the Jews, and in the millennium they must be born again, and they must be so even to get into the kingdom on earth. But the moment you get the cross, the whole thing is carried farther; if you look at it, you will see the Lord's own statement. The water of Ezekiel refers not to baptism, but to the word of God exclusively. Baptism refers to it; and so here. Puseyites and others refer these words to sacraments, but it is the word. Baptism may be its symbol; the symbol refers to the truth, of course. It is not that such words misplace the symbol; people do that; but the symbol is one way of teaching the truth. You have a similar thing in John 6: we must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, or else we have no life in us. People apply that to the Lord's supper, and there we have a symbol again; for it is a symbolic statement of these truths; and we have the written statement of them too in the word; and both these refer to death, Christ's death, and that brought home to us when you come to look into them.

It does not say in terms, you cannot enter heaven except you are born again, though it would be perfectly true; but you cannot enter the kingdom of God. These chapters and the sacraments refer to the same thing, but these chapters do not refer to the sacraments.

Then the Lord says, "we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness." In verse 32 John says the same thing, "and what he hath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." If you get man as man in the presence of Christ Himself telling these heavenly things, man's heart will not have one of them. A man would have nothing to do with them; if you were to put a natural man in heaven, he would get out as fast as ever he could, he would not find a single thing there that he likes.

We have had the rejection of the Lord's testimony, and also the fact that an entirely new nature is brought in, "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The cross must be there, but it goes on to the millennium on the earth, and there you must get men born again to have part in the kingdom.

235 "Again" means "anew, completely, from the beginning," not a modification of the old thing. In Luke 1: 3 it is "from the very first." It is the same word. I know many think the new birth is an action of the Holy Ghost on man as he is, especially where there are no decided views of truth; as if the Spirit of God found a man, body, soul, and spirit, in a bad state, and then put him, body, soul, and spirit, in a good state. But the testimony as brought here is received of nobody: "wherefore when I came, was there no man; when I called, was there none to answer"; that is the condition, and then what is done is that they are born of God. Then we come to the second great truth, the Lord comes revealing things from heaven, and also doing that which was needed to take us up there. We see the two sides of the cross, the Son of man must be lifted up (and that carries a great deal with it), and then the source of it is that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This same person comes on man's behalf, and on God's side God gave Him. On the one side, it is Son of man; and on the other side, it is Son of God. Then the lifting up of the Son of man you will see in two connections, as the rejected of man, and as "made sin." A living Messiah is for the Jews according to promise, but He must be lifted up, rejected by the world, cast out of it, and made sin before He could draw all men.

But God gave His only-begotten Son, and that brings everything to a test. He was not sent to judge, but save, and he that believeth not is judged already because he has not believed. "And this is the judgment that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil." He came into the world to die, and verses 16, 17 refer to Him as the lifted-up Son of man. I should not say in the same absolute way now, that God loves the world. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. But this has not stopped His grace, but laid the ground for the testimony of it in the whole creation under heaven by His ambassadors. I suppose it is the characteristic of God, and no time is in the statement. Still there is the accepted time and the day of salvation, though that depends on resurrection. It is in full view of the cross that the Lord said, "God so loved the world." God is now beseeching men to be reconciled, He is acting on that ground now. He gave His Son, and that is done and finished; but it is on that He is now acting.

236 The casting away of the Jews did put the world in a different position before God; and the cross put the world in a different position of responsibility as to grace and the saint as delivered from it. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." The cross gave a righteous outlet to God's love. The strongest scripture as to this change is, "for if the casting away of them," the Jews, "be the reconciling of the world," etc.

We get a very distinct character given to Christ's testimony, and one that made a total breach with the world; "he that cometh from above is above all, he that is of the earth is earthy, and speaketh of the earth," that is John the Baptist's testimony; the setting up of the kingdom on earth has its place and character, but all that is gone now, and it is the setting up of the kingdom of heaven. "He that hath received his [Christ's] testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." That is the true reception of the word.

It may be John the Baptist's testimony to the end of verse 32, and John the Evangelist's in verse 33. There may be some doubt about it. The last verse certainly looks like John the Evangelist's line of things more than John the Baptist's.

The force of "the wrath of God abideth on him" is that he has deserved it; and that if he rejects Christ, he lies under it still. But we must not forget that this wrath applies to all sins and uncleanness, not merely to unbelief: "for which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience." In this last verse of the chapter "the wrath of God abideth" if they do not bow to Christ's authority; it is not, disobey Him in the details of precept, or anything of that sort; the "believeth not" means "is not subject to" Him. In "He that believeth not is judged already," it takes him as not believing. If he has been inattentive, it is not condemnation that he cannot escape from as yet. John is not speaking about attention or inattention, but about not believing or being subject to Christ

What is so striking is the entire setting aside of man. The Son of God comes with His testimony, and nobody receives it. God sent His Son that the world through Him might be saved, and that is what the world will not receive. In a sense the object of the gospel now is that men through Him may be saved, though it is also to gather out a people. It is a different thing - God's mind and the absolute state of things. You read in 1 Timothy, "Who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth"; it is not "will" in the sense of purpose and desire, but it is good will as to His own nature and love. It is the character of God, not His purpose; and the two are very distinct, what God is, and the way He deals. But there is the activity of His love, "As though God did beseech by us": and, as one result of that, even the condemnation becomes more terrible if the riches of His goodness are despised, "not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God "; that increases the condemnation.

237 When grace had been offered to man and rejected, man was set aside, and a new thing altogether brought in. And so in chapter 4, Christ being set aside by the Jews, He leaves Judaea and goes to Galilee. In verse 4, "He must needs go through Samaria," and then follows the character of His ministry. Wearied with His journey He sits on the well. A woman comes to draw water, and He says to her, "If thou knewest the gift, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." If you did but know that God was giving, and had come down so low as to ask a drink of water of you, if you but knew that, who it is, and in what character He has come down, you would have asked and He would have given, and what He would have given would have been in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Then you find all that is to no purpose directly, and the way the Lord gets at the woman is by her conscience; and understanding comes in by conscience. She is a poor wretched soul, but a very interesting woman, and a great deal going on in her heart though a vile creature. It is a beautiful picture, wonderfully distinct and definite, of how the Lord deals with her heart. The woman is astonished that He has anything to say to her, and the disciples that he had to say to a woman. But the Lord's action towards her is very distinct, getting intelligence in by the conscience. "Go, call thy husband and come hither." "I have no husband." "Thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." She had got totally alone through her restless search for happiness and wilful ways, she does not go to the well at the time when the women usually went to draw water; she was tired of her life, for she says, "That I come not hither to draw." The Lord was weary too in His lonely path of grace, and more isolated than she, and sat at the well, and the woman was weary and utterly isolated by sin, but her conscience is reached, and note here the effect. She recognises the word of God that had reached her, its authority not merely the truth of what was said: "I perceive that thou art a prophet"; and then the Lord points out to her that God must be worshipped in spirit because He is a Spirit, and that the Father seeketh worshippers in spirit and in truth. His nature required it, His grace sought it. She says she knows that, when Messias comes, He will tell us all things. But He replies, You have got Him already. Where the heart has been visited really, there Christ has already come. Then you see the effect; she is entirely delivered from care; she leaves her water-pot and goes after other people. "He that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal." We do not get the kingdom here exactly, though it was here I have no doubt.

238 The "needs," in chapter 4: 4, is a material one. The straight way was through Samaria; the Jews went that way generally, though they did not stop at Samaria on the way. I would not say it was on purpose to meet this woman, though God's purpose that He should. The sixth hour was our noon - at least so I have always reckoned it here. At the end of the chapter we see the character of the ministry of Christ in anticipating death, symbolical of the death that was coming on Israel. In point of fact, He had to make him alive: "Come down ere my child die," said the man.

The Samaritans were a mixed people. After Israel was carried captive, the king of Assyria sent people to live in the land who did not fear the Lord; and the Lord sent lions and slew some of them. So one of the priests was sent back to teach them the manner of the God of the land, and then when Nehemiah came back, Sanballat and these people wanted to join him, and he would not let them. Mount Gerizim was the place where Joshua pronounced the blessings, and so they said that would be the proper place for worship, and a temple was built at Gerizim by them. The high priest's daughter was married to a prince of these people; and they built a temple for themselves.

239 As to the temple in the millennium, there is a square in the midst of the land, and the city is one side of the square, and the temple is on the other. The portion allotted to the temple seems to be separated from Jerusalem by some distance.

In chapter 3 Christ takes them out of flesh; and in chapter 4 He tells what worship is outside of flesh. In chapter 5 we get the great principle of life, but He does not begin with life. There is instruction connected with it that carries us farther in it as to the character of sin when He comes to the doctrine that men are dead. A man lay at Bethesda, where there were some remains of Jewish blessing. Jehovah had said, "I am Jehovah that healeth thee"; and the Jehovah that healeth was yet there. In the case of this man, the means were there; but the disease he had had taken away the power of using the means; the effect of sin is to make us incapable of using the means afforded to flesh under the old covenant. To use the pool, he must have the power to get in, and it was just what the disease he had to be healed of had taken away, and such even if willing, as this man was, is man's state under the law. The Lord brings power with Him. The Jews reproach Him when the man is healed, with breaking the sabbath, and then He gives that beautiful answer ("Father" being the name of grace), "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." God could not have His rest where sin and misery are. The law tested man and said, "Do your duty and enjoy my sabbath of rest here below"; but the fact was, they did not do the duty; they were all sinners, and, instead of there being the rest of God, the Father works and the Son works, and brings in divine life where sin and death are; but in this world as such one can have no rest. God at least can have none.

I do not believe a word of what they say about leaving out verse 4 of this chapter. These learned Germans leave anything out. It is just the same with the opening of chapter 8. You get Augustine in the fourth century, saying some had left that out because it was contrary to morality; and the same language is used by others. In one of the manuscripts of the old Latin translation it was there, and they have deliberately torn in out. But some men take this and that out without the least moral discernment; it is very easy to take it out so, but how did it get in? what should people have put it in for? In other places, as in Acts 8: 37, you can account for it in the plainest way. There was a reason for putting in this verse. As for the manuscripts, if not versed in them it is very easy to be entirely misled about them. L is almost always the same as B, and so L is no good as a separate witness. The manuscript E omits the verse, and the corrector has put it in again. These people did not like the angels, and so they left them out. After all the only question is whether an angel did it - God did it, anyway.

240 Then you have "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The Lord often did miracles on the sabbath day, taking pains as it were to upset it. You do not find any one institution in the wilderness to which the sabbath is not added. You find the sabbath brought in wherever there was some new expression of God's will and ways, as obligatory; while you never have the sabbath mentioned in connection with Christ's working in the New Testament, except to cast a slur upon it; it was a sign of the old covenant and the dispensation was passing away. Now the Lord's day is a testimony to resurrection, the essential basis of the new creation for man; the sabbath of the rest of God for man on the earth; while in connection with that rest it serves to give man a day's rest as of God and it will be fulfilled in the millennium: whatever man has a title to in purpose and peace Christ takes the right of it and will make it good. Then when you come to the typical import of it, the seventh day was type or sign of the earth's rest, and the Lord's day of heavenly rest. The Lord by His action shews that a power was come in that was paramount to law. It is strikingly significant that Christ lay in His grave on the sabbath day.

Adam takes no share in the sabbath before he fell; he never entered into it according to Hebrews. The Lord took up flesh and its responsibilities, and without slighting what God instituted, man having failed, He died out from under the whole. This is the thing that made such a hubbub in Scotland - this sabbath question. A well-known minister said he found Moses dead and threw him out of the pulpit. I say no man has died in Christ away from under the law, which has power over a man as long as he lives. I believe it is a very bad sign indeed if a man slights the Lord's day. God has given you a day free to use for Him, and you make light of it or turn it to mere pleasure. I ask, what use do you make of it, for yourself or for Him? It is all connected with the question, Is the law the thing we are still under? It is perfectly true that the Christian by love fulfils the law, but if I have to do with the law as such, I have not died to sin; because the law has power over a man so long as he lives. I remember one, a most blessed man too, who would not wash his hands on the Lord's day; he was acting up to the light he had, I do not doubt.

241 The "greater works than these that ye may marvel," are His raising the dead, and many works that He did; He raised Lazarus when he was stinking. They all knew that if the Lord had been there Lazarus would not have died, but He did not go purposely before his death; raising him was more than healing.

Now in the doctrine that follows, Christ does not take up mere weakness, but He goes on to death. We are dead in sin, and He says, "As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will"; and judgment too is committed to the Son alone, "that all men may honour the Son even as they honour the Father." Both Father and Son quicken, but judgment against the wicked is committed by the Father to the Son because He is the Son of man. The Father chastens: that is another thing.

I get these two ways in which the Son is honoured, quickened souls own Him, and the wicked must, for they are judged by Him. There is no confounding of the two things, or rather destroying the certain truth of the first by bringing it into question in the second; by bringing all up into a common judgment, as if the thing was not settled already; but you have the two ways through which the Son is honoured. Then the heart will ask: which place am I in? "He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life and shall not come into judgment ["condemnation" is not the same word], but is passed from death unto life." I see in that verse the whole system of Romans and Ephesians brought out. He that is under the quickening power will not come into judgment, that is Romans; but, not merely his responsibility is met, he is passed from death unto life and gone over into the new creation; that is Ephesians.

242 As I said, when you come to the doctrine He goes on beyond the case of the paralytic. Doctrinally, a man is dead in sins, and by grace passes out of death into life, and does not go into judgment at all, so as to raise any question as to his acceptance; though he gives an account of himself. The bringing all men into judgment upsets all the truth of Scripture about it, because saints are raised in glory. What an odd thing it is to talk about raising a man in glory, and then judging him! It is upsetting the whole of grace right on to the glory. Then people say it is done only to declare a man just. But he is declared just already; all that believe are justified from all things, and glorifying declares him just, surely. Take for example; there is Paul who has been these eighteen hundred years in heaven, and you are going to take him out and judge him as to whether he is fit to go there! It is striking folly.

The Son quickeneth whom He will, but when you come to the end of the chapter, you get the responsible side. You have the testimony of John the Baptist, the testimony of My Father, the testimony of My works, and the testimony of your own scriptures (where you think you have eternal life) which testify of Me, and yet you will not come unto Me that you might have life. I have four witnesses that there is eternal life here for you, and you will not have it. It was the rejection of the One in whom life was present from God.

Now as to responsibility; power is not the question at all. If my will were right, there would soon be power from God. Here is my child tied under the table by the leg, and I say to him, "Come with me "; and he says, "I won't." I say, "You must "; but he will not, and I go to flog him. But then he says, "I was tied by the leg to the table "; but I say, "that makes no difference, I have a knife to cut the cord, for you would not come. It is the will that is the difficulty. I have lent ten thousand pounds to a man; he comes and tells me he is not responsible to me for his debt, for he has not a penny left - all is squandered. He has no power to pay but that does not destroy my claim.

In chapter 6 we see a beautiful picture of the Son of man in lowliness. In chapter 5 we have the Jewish means of healing, and here follows the Jewish passover, for which His own sacrifice is substituted. He shews Himself as Jehovah in Psalm 132. "He shall satisfy the poor with bread," He shews that here, and they own Him for a prophet, and then they are going to take Him by force and make Him a king. That gives two of Christ's titles. But He will not be king in this carnal way, and goes up into the mountain, and takes the place of priest. Here is Christ, who would not be king, was a prophet, and intercedes on high, His people toiling below. Then you get Christ, the food of His people now while He is away, in a double character; He is the bread that came down from heaven - the incarnation; they reject that, and then He goes farther and says, you must eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood. They say, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" I get the revelation that, if you do not take a dead Christ, you cannot enjoy a living one come down from heaven. You cannot enjoy Christ as bread come down from heaven, unless you come in by atonement. You must come in as a mere sinner, or else you cannot take Him to eat for the maintenance and food of life.

243 Verse 57 says the living Father had sent Him, and He lived on account of the Father, so we live by reason of Him by eating Him. We have the two things, it is eating both for reception of and for maintenance of life. I remember a person once saying he ate Christ once for all, but it is not so here. In verses 54, 56 you have in the Greek, the present participle for "eating," in the others the aorist tense. I come in by Christ's death, eat His flesh and drink His blood - that is eating to have life; but I go on eating Him after, though my life is the consequence of eating. Verse 56, "dwelleth in me and in I him," goes farther than the first statement.

"I will raise him up at the last day" shews perpetual security on into another world. "I bring in death, as the true way and you must come in by death; you cannot have the old thing; nor can you have a living Christ to be your Saviour, it is only by death, and then it will be in resurrection, that you get the blessing"; and then you get the statement that it goes right on to the end, and then when the present period is closed "I will have them all up in resurrection."

There is a distinction between the eatings. It is the aorist tense in verse 51, and in verse 53, "have eaten," which having no present participle, borrows another word in the next verses, 54, 56, 57 and 58; the first (aorist) is the one act eating for life, and the other is now eating for maintenance of life. "The last day" is the last of this period when Christ comes of course. Really this is not a dispensation. The Jews had a "this world" and "a world to come," "this age" and an "age to come." Messiah was to bring in the "age to come." The age of the law went on and Messiah did come, but they would not have Him, and the whole thing stopped; then comes the church between that and His second coming; and this is why I said this is not strictly a dispensation, but when Messiah comes again, it will close this time, and then will be the last day of this age.

244 The times of the Gentiles in Daniel, and the parenthesis of the church, are not at all contemporaneous; for the times of the Gentiles began in Babylon, being the times of the four Gentiles beasts in Daniel. The times of the Gentiles will not end at the same time with the church, but go on a little after we are caught up. The temple of Jehovah on earth was set aside when the people were carried to Babylon, and they never got the ark again, but a remnant of them was spared to present to them Messiah.

I know what a person means by "the dispensation of the kingdom of heaven," but we belong to a heavenly thing in an interval, and there are no dispensations in heaven. The kingdom of heaven is a dispensation, the dispensation of the gospel is an administration. The "I live by the Father" in verse 57 is the sense of dependence: (dia with a genitive is the instrument); with the accusative as this is, it is the reason. It is not "by," "through," or "for the sake of"; but by

reason of," "on account of," is right.

We have had that Christ was a prophet, and was not King, and had taken a place on high. He had left the disciples, and while absent they toiled against the sea, and when He rejoined them, they were at the land. He was their food, and in our coming to Him we must come by eating His flesh and drinking His blood; and then we saw that it was completed in resurrection, "I will raise him up at the last day." You have proof there that it cannot be the Lord's supper, for whosoever eats Christ will live for ever, be raised at the last day according to the life he has received. The aorist, in verses 51 and 53, "has eaten," is the thing done; where it is "eats," the participle is used, verses 54, 56, 57 and 58. I am an eater of Christ, I go on eating, I feed on Him. It is first feeding on His death, and then feeding on Him continually. This shews what poor Romanists do in transubstantiation; they deny the whole truth in their doctrine of concomitancy. If the blood be in the body, it is no atonement at all, and therefore you eat the flesh and drink the blood separately. Theirs is a sacrament of non-redemption, instead of a sacrament of redemption.

245 It was not "old corn" here. It is the Father sending the Son to be the Saviour. In the end of Galatians 2 it is faith on Him in heaven, it is not a question of eating there. I prefer "on him" to "in him," because it is on Him as an object there. "The faith of him" is simply that He is the object. "Have faith in God" in Mark 11: 22 is in Greek "the faith of God"; that is, has God for its object. What is in Galatians is this, I am dead, and then I get two things, "nevertheless I live," and "I live by the faith of the Son of God." But whenever I have Christ as life in me, it is by faith of Christ as an object; He is my life and makes me live on Him, my eye rests on Him and I live by that. "By faith of Jesus Christ," in Romans 3 is the faith which is characterised by that name, so to speak, and the owning of what is in Him.

John 6 refers to communion and feeding. Then the Lord adds "the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life," the mere carnal eating is nothing. Flesh profits nothing - I am speaking in a spiritual sense, that is, not literal - a guard against that, though we eat Him as incarnate. Flesh may take it up in a way, and then it becomes a mere awakening of a sentiment or feeling, just as the daughters of Jerusalem wept for Him at seeing a man carried off to the cross, but there is no conscience in that. But when I go to Him and am cleansed by Him, this is a different thing.

I must "have eaten" in the first instance; verses 51 and 53 are aorists as I was saying; and in some cases of exhortation. It is "He that has eaten"; in verse 53; "Except ye have eaten," etc., and in verse 57; "So he that eateth me [goes on eating] shall live on account of me." In verse 54 the real force of it is, "the eater of my flesh and the drinker of my blood." In the Jewish services the passover in the beginning of the chapter would answer to this. And "Christ our passover was sacrificed for us."

It is striking how the Jews are always viewed as rejected, and uniformly oppose Him in this Gospel. Nor does He say a word to make His words intelligible to them. And the disciples many of them went away, and the branches of the vine were broken off. These were simply professors. Thus a man might be a disciple without being quickened, so far as following after Him goes.

246 The great thing is death first. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins," and when I come to talk of feeding on Christ, I must first feed on His death. The Lord's supper is a symbol of the same truth of which this chapter speaks; but these words are positively untrue of the Lord's supper. I would not connect the eating of the Supper with this chapter at all, but with the Christ who is spoken of in this chapter. The Supper and the chapter refer to the same thing, but not to one another. This chapter is the word of God about it, and the Lord's supper is the symbol of the same.

In Luke 24, I doubt not, it is the Lord's supper; not actually sitting down for that purpose, but they sat down to a meal, and the Lord took the bread and brake it. The "did eat" in John 6: 58 is the aorist tense; "not as your fathers did eat," because they were not eating it now; and He adds, "he that eateth [or the eater - present participle] of this bread shall live for ever."

Then He asks, "Doth this offend you, What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before," You have in this chapter the incarnation, the death, and then the ascension suggested, but you do not get the resurrection referred to here. An incarnate and dead Christ are looked at as food of life. Death and resurrection is not the point of view in John; but simply departing out of this world to the Father.

I do not know what is the best reading of verse 69, as I trouble myself little about readings, unless there is something positive in them. Tischendorf's English Testament gives the English text all thrown into doubt; adding readings from three manuscripts for people to decide which is which, as if they could. The effect on my mind was very unsatisfactory. It is very difficult for people to enter into the merits of these manuscripts. These gentlemen turn up their noses at Alexandrian when they get others on their side; but the Syriac is older still, and it is said more often agrees with Alexandrian. As for leading people to any conclusion by quoting letters, it is no guide whatever unless to those who know the place and character of the various texts. The Alexandrian is of two distinct families in the Gospels and Epistles; and it is perfectly impossible for ninety-nine out of a hundred to know anything about them. Tregelles is very accurate and diligent, but he is one-sided so that you cannot trust him. As for any truth, whether "Son of the living God" be there or not, it makes little difference; no particular truth, I mean, is involved in it here.

247 To return, many of the disciples go back, but Peter had the consciousness of Christ's person; whatever the degree of his knowledge, he had what held him fast when other people went away, though he knew no better than they did what the eating and drinking was. You cannot take a lower condition of faith than this expresses: "thou hast the words of eternal life, to whom shall we go?" But Peter had got the person in whom the life was. In point of fact, the less the confession, the more strong would be the instruction of the passage. If I had got hold of Christ at all, I had got what was not to be shaken. Peter was negatively kept; "there is nowhere else to go but to you": after all it is a great thing to say so; simple souls are often kept when wiseacres fall. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." But "a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers." It is just like a child; a stranger may come, kindness itself, but it is not the voice of its mother; it will not do.

Quickening is the power of the Spirit by the word, of course. The Thomasites take up verse 63, and say it is in the "word" the Spirit is; and Campbellites too. One of them told me they were just as much begotten of Paul, as they were of the Holy Ghost, because they were begotten of him by the gospel. But I get the personality of the Holy Ghost in Scripture very clearly; He wills, distributes, is sent, comes, speaks, works, and so on; and this is somebody.

The business of the Old Testament is to reveal the unity of the Godhead; the business of the New Testament is to reveal the Trinity; and therefore, though you have got at the beginning "the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters" and elsewhere, it is not so clear in the Old Testament; there is no personal coming; As to the word "person," use what word may be best, but the testimony of scripture is plain enough that what we mean by a person is said both of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

248 I do not think the remnant will see anything like so clearly as we do. They will be an earthly people, not a heavenly; they will never get the place we have. But you see we never say a prayer without the Trinity (Eph. 2: 18). As far as the remnant take up promise and prophecy as to the church in the then past, they will see it is all over and gone. They will look for Christ, and the strongest expression of their intelligence that I know of is, "Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the Son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself," Ps. 80: 17. They will say, "Here is forgiveness, but the people are all gone that it was for; and I do not know whether it is for me."

The Spirit of God will not be confined to the remnant, for there will be the everlasting gospel. But the thing now is, the Holy Ghost being come it is the firstfruits that we have got, and we become a kind of firstfruits of His creatures, and that is sanctification to God in a special manner, but it will not be the case with the remnant. And so now we get a far fuller insight into the heavenly things than they will then. God has reserved some better thing for us, than even for the Old Testament saints.

In chapter 7 comes the feast of tabernacles, and the Spirit instead of it. Of the feast of tabernacles there has been no fulfilment at all. None had then been fulfilled, but we had the passover in the last chapter and the truth connected with it; but the tabernacles Christ could not then have to say to, and He substitutes the gift of the Holy Ghost for the revelation of Christ to the world. That is the grand truth that is in this chapter. The tabernacles came after the harvest and vintage (that is, the double judgment of God) is fulfilled, the separative judgment and the execution of vengeance. Pentecost and passover are over. We have the fulfilment of them in Christ's sacrifice and Pentecost; but at the tabernacles they dwelt in booths, as a sign that they had been strangers, but are so no more. His brethren say to Him, "go and shew thyself to the world," but He says, "I do not go to this feast: your time is always ready." And, having gone up as it were secretly, on the last day, the eighth day - it was only this feast that had an eighth day to it - He then "stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." He could not shew Himself to the world, for His time was not yet come, but He does go up in the middle of the feast, though He could take no part in it; but instead of that, there was this eighth day - not one of the seven days of the complete feast - and on it He speaks of the "Spirit which they that believe on him should receive." He could not shew Himself in the glory then.

249 The word "yet" in verse 6 is right, but in verse 8 it is doubtful the first time it is used. When you say, "I go not up," it is different from "I go not yet." He did go up afterwards. The time referred to in verse 6 is the millennium. I believe the Virgin Mary had a family afterwards, but "brethren" is used in a large way including relatives.

Christ cannot shew Himself to the world, but says, If any man thirst for himself - wants to drink for himself; it is not looking for gifts for others, but if any man is thirsty, let him come unto Me and drink. If he fill his own soul in the power of the Holy Ghost from Christ, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

We had a passover in chapter 2; in chapter 5 it was not one of the great feasts. I do not know what feast it was. But now the feasts give a distinctive character to everything.

The aspect of the Holy Ghost in John 4 is communion, as in chapter 3 life giving; in chapter 4 springing up into everlasting life and communion; and here, in chapter 7, it flows out to others, but I get a drink for myself first. In chapter 20 it is the power of life in resurrection. It is not sending it from heaven, but just as God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul, so Christ breathes into His disciples the breath of life. It is an immense advance on the Old Testament, but here in chapter 7 the waters flow forth again from them; it is far more than they had in the wilderness. There they "drank of that rock that followed." Here the rivers flow forth from them. This chapter 7 is immensely important, but not so objective, and therefore simpler.

He could not shew Himself, for the feast of Tabernacles will be kept in the millennium, and His time was not yet come. But the seventh day completed the week of the feast properly speaking, and as when Christ rose it was the beginning of a wholly new state, the eighth day was the first day of another week, the beginning of another world for man. The seven days are the figure of the millennium, the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles; the first of the seven was a holy convocation. Only here Christ does not shew Himself to the world for the seven days, but at the last He announces the gift of the Holy Ghost to connect us with Himself in heaven. It will be an immense relief to see the world delivered from evil, no doubt; but what you get here is for the meanwhile the Holy Ghost till Christ returns.

250 Just a word or two back. In verse 17, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." The first "will" is emphatic - if he wills to do it; if he wills, he shall know if the word is right. There is a difference between the people and the Jews. The people in verse 20 ask, "Who goeth about to kill you?" But in verse 25, "Then said some of them of Jerusalem, Is not this he whom they seek to kill?" He had gone to Galilee to the poor of the flock, and they did not understand that any were going about to kill Him; but the Jews from Jerusalem knew very well; and the controversy between them and Christ constantly comes out in John. All Christ's work was in Galilee except a very occasional thing, the beginning of Matthew tells you so; but in John it is nearly all in Jerusalem bringing out His controversy with the Jews. It is very striking that in Matthew in the end of chapter 4 you get all Christ's ministry in about four verses. "And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease among the people, and his fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with demons, and those which were lunatic, those that had the palsy, and he healed them; and there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan;" three verses; and then He goes on to tell them in chapters 5-7 what kind of people were fit for the kingdom. The rest unfolds His person and dispensational ministry as come among the Jews and what took its place.

In the close of the chapter, John 7, poor Nicodemus shews himself, and says a word for Christ, just what he dared. Then in chapter 8, with other things, you will find His word rejected. Instead of the millennium we have had the Holy Ghost given; the Bread of life had before come down from heaven; and now it is the word in chapter 8. They bring Him a woman taken in adultery.

251 The first verse of chapter 8 should go with chapter 7. The divisions are of no authority at all. The chapters had been arranged, and verses put in the New Testament in 1551. The first divisions were in 1200 and something for the New Testament. Stephens was the first to issue the text so divided. There were Dutch printers who in 1624 published an emendation of Stephens, calling it the text received by all, and then people got afraid to change anything. Here and there a word was taken from Beza, but at large the text was from Stephens. In the Apocalypse Erasmus had but one manuscript, and that mingled up with a commentary. Stephens had some thirteen second-rate manuscripts. Erasmus employed a man to cull out the text from the commentary. The last verse he translated into Greek from the Vulgate. We have now a hundred manuscripts of the Apocalypse, with five uncial ones; but the first translations having been all made from the one text, we may say that of Stephens, it looks now as if we were changing what we were all used to. This narrative in John 8 was left out where it was found avowedly for the sake of morality, and this was so stated near as early as we have any copy at all.

The Lord here takes up the law in this way; they bring the letter of it to Him that He may condemn the woman. They thought they had a great advantage against the Lord, for by the law He must say, "Stone her": but if so, then He was no Saviour; and if He said, "You must not stone her," then clearly He had broken the law. Really in them it was no respect for the law, nor compassion for the woman either; but the Lord takes it up and says: Quite right, The law condemns, but I must apply it to all of you: whosoever "is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." And the oldest went out first, because he had the most character to save. So the Lord gives the law all its power, and the woman is spared too. "Hath no man condemned her?" "No man, Lord." "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." The law is not set aside, for if you give it its proper authority, all are condemned together; and that is just where we all are, all gone in the light of the law for Christ to come in. Like a man attempting to conduct a business; I say to him, You ought to do so-and-so; but he replies, "What is the good of telling me that? for my money is gone already." We have got debts and no capital, counsels for righteousness are of no avail; and what are we to do? Then the Lord says, "I am the light of life." "I am the light of the world, and he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." That is not the law which was death, righteous death to everybody, but it is the person of Christ who is the light of the world, "and the life was the light of men." The writing on the ground was just giving them time for conscience to work.

252 You have no forgiveness of sins in this gospel unless administrative forgiveness by man. I think this is characteristic. Christ does not here forgive or condemn. It is characteristic, for instead of that He is in constant conflict with these Jews in respect of who He was.

And now follows that which declares this testimony: "I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me." And so He taught in the temple, but "no man laid hands on him, for his hour was not yet come." He tells them, "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." "He that sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him." Some of them believed on Him, and He says to them, "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." They say they are Abraham's seed; but if you commit sin, you are the slaves of sin. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. I know that ye are Abraham's seed, but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you." This shews that being under law and being under sin are tantamount. The Jews - people under law - are slaves of sin. The slave does not abide in the house always, but the Son abides ever and He could make free.

There is a mis-translation in verse 25. It should be "Who art thou? Altogether that which I said unto you." It is His word still. It is the same in verses 32 and 36: the word sets free. But it is the living Son's act. The passage is important to shew how the word and the living person go together. It is not "from the beginning" in verse 25; it is "altogether what I also say to you." That is true of every honest man in a certain sense; it is not "from the beginning," but in principle or absolutely. The word that Christ spake was the absolute expression of what He was. I am what I speak, that is the thought expressed.

253 Then the truth sets free and the Son sets free. There may be this much difference, that you do not connect grace so much with the word as with the Son. When I say the truth, I think of God as coming and judging everything in men by the revelation of truth by the word, bringing what is good and divine by that word. When I say the Son I speak of living power and authority working in love. It does not appear that it was divine faith the Jews had who believed on Him; but it might be in some.

Then comes another principle; our Lord says, "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word." They did not understand what He said because they did not take in His thought. In human things you must understand the language, the technical terms, before you understand the thing; but in divine things you must understand the propositions in order to understand the words. If I say, "Ye must be born again," the words do not give an understanding of what it is. Until I know the liberty of Christ, until I have the thing in freedom, no words make me understand what "free" really is. Christ has to say to them, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do; he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him; when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin; and if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God, heareth God's words." And in verse 51 He says, "If a man keep my saying he shall never see death." The Lord's words expressed Himself, and these words are the Father's testimony to Him, and they would not have him. Later on He says "Believe me, or else believe me for the very works' sake."

Then they drive Him to say that He is God Himself.

It is the day of His glory, I have no doubt in verse 56. But now, instead of executing judgment on His enemies, He allowed Himself to be executed to save sinners. Abraham in a figure may have seen that day in Isaac. And then He says, "Before Abraham was, I am" - He is God. People may quibble now and again, but the Jews understood it very well, and took up stones to stone Him for it, but He passed away. This is His word rejected.

In chapter 9 it is Christ's work. "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth; and his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." It is not the word now, but the works. I suppose they thought Exodus 34 was being carried out in the man because his parents had sinned; though that had been abrogated in Jeremiah and Ezekiel really, and it became, "the soul that sinneth it shall die," that is, the death of the person himself who had sinned. It is not spiritual death either; it has done a great deal of mischief, using that as spiritual death, it was temporal only. God's governmental dealings with the Jews.

254 The word "soul," though often used for living person simply, as it is in English yet, in the Old Testament is for soul contrasted with the body. Still "life and incorruptibility are brought to light by the gospel." Life was intimated in a way, "Thou will not leave my soul in hell [hades], neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." Suffering and disease are the common lot of a poor world, lying in sin and ruin; though they may be special chastisement. But the Lord displays His grace to the man. He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle; you get what comes from the earth, and what comes from Christ's person. The Lord typified in this clay that the only effect of His presence was, that, if it were possible to make a blind man more blind, it did. The man was blind already, just as the Jews were; but the effect of the presence of Christ was to make them more blind still. Only He goes to the pool of Siloam which is by interpretation "sent"; and the moment anyone saw Him as the sent One of God, they got their sight. You have got Christ there present as a Man before the eyes of the people, and that is not giving them sight at all, but the contrary; but the moment the word in the power of the Spirit of God opened their eyes, it was healing and sight at once.

You have a very distinct principle here, as to the way of the operation of divine grace. When the man is questioned, he says, "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." And that is the only way of knowing that is worth anything, while the external knowledge of Christ is only double blindness. But the moment there is the power of the Spirit of God giving the knowledge of Christ as the sent One of God, you get eyes then, spiritual eyes of course. The Jews do what they can to confound the man; they bring his parents who are afraid to say a word of who did it, because "if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue "; but the only thing their testimony is worth anything for is, that he was their son, and was born blind - just what the Pharisees did not want. And then the man begins to reason with them, that He has opened my eyes, and you cannot tell whence He is. Himself the subject of divine power He knew it was such. "Oh," say they, "but he does not keep the sabbath," and there was a division among them. Then they tell the man, "Thou wast altogether born in sins," the very thing he was not; it was their blindness that said so.

255 And now Christ has got a sheep, and He goes before him. The man had said that He was a prophet, and when he was cast out and Jesus found him, He asks him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God," and he said, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?" The word of Christ had already power in his soul, and this leads him directly to the knowledge of Himself as Son of God, as with the Samaritan the reception of the word is really, though only implicitly, the reception of Christ. "And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee." The man gets to know Him as Son of God, and he worships Him; and then Christ has got His sheep with Him. The sign in itself had no effect on the Jews though the sign was there; there was power in the word spoken which gives the knowledge of the sent One. The clay on his eyes was Christ, and the Jews had the clay, but nothing else morally. The pool, morally, is the word of God in the power of the Spirit of God, and thus Christ known as sent of God.

How these poor Pharisees are baffled! We see again, wherever Christ has visited the soul bringing the word of God, He is owned a prophet; and when the soul owns the prophet, the word of God presents Christ as the Son, and you have the Son too. You cannot separate the word from the person of Christ. If we receive what He says, we receive Himself. We have done with that history now. We have the Lord, His word, and His works rejected, and now therefore He says, "No matter what the opposition, I will have my sheep," and the porter opens the door.

256 Verse 39 shews the blindness of their judgment, and that looked at as to the effect the Lord came to judge. "When he putteth forth his own sheep"; the blind man was one of them. "I am the door of the sheep." "I am the good shepherd." Verses 14, 15 read, "I am the good shepherd, and I know my sheep and am known of mine, as the Father knoweth me and I know the Father," that is, "As the Father knows me and I know the Father, so I know my sheep and am known of them." He puts His sheep and Himself in the place which He and the Father had been in relatively. The relationship between Himself and the sheep was the same as between Himself and the Father. It is a beautiful expression of Christ in connection with the sheep. He is taking them out of the Jewish fold. You get Christ from the time of His lowest subjection to the will of the Father entering by the door until He says, I am one with the Father.

The "porter" signifies the power of God by the Spirit of God opening the door to Christ, in spite of the Pharisees and everybody else who would shut Him out. They would have shut Him out if they could, but they could not succeed, and the sheep hear His voice. There had been thieves and robbers who had set up to be Christ before, but "he that cometh in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep."

The door is made for people to come in at, and Christ did not climb over the wall, but came in by the door. Whatever had been appointed to Him, He came in by that, a lowly man. Then we read He "leadeth them out," that is a new thing; He is taking them out from Judaism. And then He is the door, the appointed way.

"And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." It has often been noticed that this is one of the most familiar images in the world, because they never drive sheep except in England, and perhaps in Ireland, but go before them, and the flock follows. And "a stranger will they not follow but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers."

"I am the door of the sheep." As He came in by God's appointed way, He is God's appointed way for everybody else, and so He is the door. "By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved" - now He is not taking them out - "and shall go in and out and find pasture." What you call folds are hardly intelligible here; there were wild beasts there, and the fold was many feet high, that animals should not jump over. Now He takes His sheep out of Judaism, and they are saved, and they are free, and they find pasture; before they were neither safe nor free, nor had they pasture. But if a soul go in by Christ, he gets salvation, liberty, and food. If I am entering, and they say, Where are you going? I do not know, but I am sure it is all right if Christ is the door; like Abraham going forth, not knowing whither he went; it is all right if Christ leads. Further, our safety comes from the personal care of the shepherd, and not from the prison of a fold. With Christ, we have salvation, liberty and pasture.

257 Then "the thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy; I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." He was going to give it them in all the power of resurrection and ascension. That was the Good Shepherd that gives His life for His sheep. I do not think the object here is so much atonement as devotedness, when He speaks of laying down His life for the sheep, though atonement of course was in laying down His life. At any cost the sheep must be kept. The hireling fleeth and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep. There is an important word there to notice: "catcheth" is the same word as in verse 28 is rendered "pluck." The wolf can lay hold of them so as to scatter them in this world, but he cannot lay hold of them so as to pluck them out of Christ's hand.

Verse 15 involves atonement, but it is especially the devotedness with which Christ loves His sheep. The "again" in verse 17 is not connected with "much more by his life" in Romans 5. That is the life that comes after death; here it is the life He lays down in death, and so lives again.

The "other sheep" are Gentiles which are not of this fold. "Them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd." It was ecclesiastical feeling put in "one fold," because they understood not one flock. "Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it up again." To me that is a most astonishing testimony to the person of Christ. We love God because He first loved us; but here I find one that would give a motive to the Father for loving Him; it is not merely that the Father is pleased to delight in Him, as in us. We cannot give motives to the Father to love us, but Christ could. In that sense of the word the Father was debtor to Christ for all His own glory. It is the burnt-offering character of Christ in sacrifice. What is tantamount to the meat-offering is found in "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again." At the same time the Lord absolutely refuses to go out of the place of obedience, as He says later, "That the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do." He was a divine Person who could give a motive to His Father for loving Him; and at the same time He was a man that was doing all in obedience.

258 Verse 24. "Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me; but ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you." Here again you have the distinct election principle of John "because ye are not of my sheep." I do not know why it is said here "it was winter," except because it was another occasion. The verse shews He had gone up for that feast as He never stayed in Jerusalem.

As to the "more abundantly" of verse 10 it is not only that they should have life as every believer from Adam had life, but the liberty that redemption brought them into, and life in resurrection power and character. Of old, they had differed nothing from a servant, though lords of all.

You never find the Lord saying He is the Christ, except to the woman of Samaria, "I that speak unto thee am he," and that was to a person who had no right to Christ. He delights to call Himself Son of man. We learn from this that He knew He was come to give His life a ransom for many, and so could not speak of Himself as the Christ. The Gospels are really the history of His rejection. In Samaria it was out of the way to do it, in one sense, because salvation is of the Jews. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one." You get this principle of election; then the character of the elected, "they hear my voice"; what He does for them - gives them eternal life; and then they will not perish, that is, inwardly so to speak; and no man plucks them out of His hand: no inward perishing, and no outward force can destroy.

259 Then He takes the low place, My Father gave them, and He keeps. And then you come to His glory, "I and my Father are one." The Jews felt that and took up stones to stone Him. And you see He does not reason with the Jews to convince them, but to silence them. "Is it not written in your law, I said Ye are gods?" In the Pentateuch "then his master shall bring him unto the judges" is Elohim, that is, to God, so that this is literally true in its very letter - "if he called them gods unto whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?" And He left them.

In chapters 5, 6 and 7, you have Christ revealed and bringing in what grace is, in chapters 8 and 9 you have the rejection of His word and of His work, but in chapter 10 He will have His sheep and that closes the whole thing. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are before His public ministry, what you may call introductory. Chapter 4 is a transitional scene. Chapter 5 is the Son of God; chapter 6 is the crucified Son of man; chapter 7 the giving of the Holy Ghost instead of the glory. And now what we get is the testimony borne to Christ by God in all His characters. God would not allow Him to be rejected, without giving Him a full testimony to what He is. Then there is the episode of a heart that owned Him in His rejection and death, and His character of Son of David and Son of man; that is in chapter 12.

Chapter 11 is what He is as Son of God, a testimony to Him as the perfectly obedient One as servant, but still the Son of God with power while death is allowed to come in. That is the character of it here. He was the rejected One, then death is allowed to come in, and He is manifested as having power over all that Satan and death can do; and this shews that He is Son of God. Therefore He says: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." You get nature expecting Him to do the old work, that is, to come and heal the sick man, but that could not be here. Of course the miracle came from His divine power, but in that way merely it was what many a one might have done, and He had done often before, but you find no act of His will merely, nor of human kindness even. We read that He loved Mary and her sister and Lazarus, and they sent unto Him to say, "Lord, behold he whom thou lovest is sick." One might have expected that He so full of tenderness would have gone directly; but He said it was not unto death, and abode two days still in the place where He was. He does not stir; He had no expression of His Father's will for Him to go, and so He stayed.

260 Verse 9 has reference to the Jews seeking to stone Him. He says "it is a question of my Father's will, and so it is all light before me." In the light of God all was plain. He does not go when natural feelings would lead Him, but He does go when it is His Father's will even if death were before Him. And we get the divine object of it - "that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." It is not the Son of David, but the Son of God declared with power by resurrection. He knew that Lazarus was fallen asleep, and says, "I go that I may awake him out of sleep." The disciples did not understand Him and He says plainly, "Lazarus is dead." Some people talk of the sleep of the soul, whereas the sleep here is simply death itself, the death of the body. A man here goes to sleep - dies; but there is no such thing as a hint of the soul sleeping afterwards. He says, "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that ye may believe," because He was going to raise him up from the dead. Healing would have been no such proof of His divine sonship. It is just what they all say, "Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?" But there Lazarus was dead, and the question was, the power of the Son of God who raises the dead. It is beautiful to see Thomas brought in here (v. 16), because Thomas was the doubting one after Christ was risen, and his character is given beforehand so far as it shews his attachment to Christ at any rate.

Well, there was to be no mistake about Lazarus being dead. Many of the Jews came there; it became a great public testimony. Then we get the character of Martha and Mary, both in a state of partial unbelief, they could only look for healing; that is, if Christ had only come in time, Lazarus would not have died at all. You have Martha running out uncalled, and Mary sitting in the house till Martha called her; as Jesus Himself did not go until God called Him. It was no harm, as men say, in a certain sense in Martha - no evil intended of course; but she rushes out from her own feelings instead of waiting for the Lord's call.

261 In verse 26 the Lord had gone beyond all Martha's faith. Christ begins by resurrection, taking people out of death, and He was there with that power, but she has no idea of that; what the Lord was bringing out she did not understand one bit, and that makes her go and call Mary. Mary had been sitting at Jesus' feet and heard His word. Martha tells her, "The Master is come and calleth for thee" - like saying, "He is talking about what I do not understand, and you must come." The Lord says to Martha, "thy brother shall rise again." She has the general truth like evangelical Christendom in the present day, but of a special resurrection in power, He being the resurrection and the life, she has no idea at all. But you find the Lord Himself moved and exercised when Mary goes out; she is sent for in a way, and went as called, and she falls at Christ's feet. There is a great deal more feeling as to Christ, than is in Martha, but she is in much the same state, and has no idea of present power over death; so she says, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died": no thought of His present power in resurrection; they were all alike as to that. There was no sense of a power that could take away the power of death; and that is what makes the Lord weep - the power of death that He saw lying on all their spirits. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in spirit and was troubled and said, "Where have ye laid him?" There was sympathy there, but it was the full character of the Lord's sympathy that strikes one, that is, His understanding the power of death that lay upon them. It lay on their spirits, but not on His. There was no weeping for Lazarus on His part. It was His full sense of the power of death resting on their hearts, no matter how advanced they were. The groaning was for others - something like the groaning in Romans 8. Then you have Martha's unbelief coming definitely out, "Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days." The Jews said nothing more, but "behold how he loved him." Again groaning in Himself, "He cometh to the grave: it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it." That groaning is a very strong word, He troubled Himself withal, stirred up His heart in its depths in His sense of man's state under death; His soul went into the power of the death lying on others.

262 All through this, at the same time, you see the Lord taking distinctly the place of subjection and service both, and so here He says, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me; and I know that thou hearest me always." Then He cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." There was the power of the Son of God. Poor Martha! hers was a positive unbelief, or belief in the power of death, "Lord by this time he stinketh," instead of the power of resurrection. Jesus said unto her, full of patience, "Said I not unto thee that, if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" They took away the stone, and when He cried, "Lazarus, come forth," "he that was dead came forth." It was the testimony to the Son of God come amongst us, and His power over death - He is the resurrection and the life - and of His thorough entering into what the power of death was.

He never healed a sick person, I believe, without His heart entering into the power of the evil that was there as distress and sorrow on man. There is another thing to note - what you find in James about Elias. He had said, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall not be dew or rain these years, but according to my word." It seemed simple authority and power. But James teaches us how the power of the Lord was in the prophet, for he says, he "prayed earnestly that it might not rain "; that is, where a person acts really in the will and power of God, you constantly find his intercourse with God clear and simple. Paul went up to Jerusalem at the wish of the church, but he tells us in Galatians he went up by revelation. And here Christ had the power in Himself, because He was Son of God, but still He says, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me." He never swerved from His place of subjection. The great thing is that He was really Son of God, though rejected. And then He must die; it is desperate, the dreadful hardness of the Jews. Afterwards they wanted to kill Lazarus [again] because he was such a testimony. And we have the utter unbelief of the people - not only unbelief, but positive hostility; we must get rid of Him [Christ]. "If we let him thus alone all men will believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation." But at Christ's death the temple and all connected with it was disowned, high priest and everything. Then Jesus walked no more openly among them, but went to Ephraim and waited for the passover.

263 The "high priest that year" is named because the Jewish things continued till Christ died. There were two high priests. The Romans meddled with everything. Large sums of money were given to get to be high priest, and they were changing constantly. As yet things were not altogether gone from the Jews; there was the pool of Bethesda and remnants of blessing one way or another. The opening of Luke gives us a remnant in the midst of the iniquity, Simeon, Anna, Zechariah, and so on; a most lovely picture of how grace was ripening in these poor things whilst the Pharisees were ripening in iniquity.

Now we come to Bethany. There they made Him a supper; Lazarus was there as a man alive through the power of resurrection, but death had come in first. Here we see Mary goes to Christ in the consciousness of the other side of the truth - that He must die. She was not a prophetess at all; but at the hostility of the Jews her heart rises up in love with the instinct of what that hostility sought and meant. She was the opposite of the Jews; it was the fulness of affection that moved her though she was no prophetess.

You may see continually the way in which personal attachment to Christ gets His secret by some means or other. Mary Magdalene was all wrong, seeking the living among the dead, but still her heart was entirely on Christ, and if she did not get Him she got nothing, and she is the messenger to the apostles themselves of the highest privileges we have. "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God "; she is sent with it to the apostles, who learn it through her.

It is the same in other things: the poor woman that was a sinner did not know forgiveness, but she clings to Christ, and there comes out the forgiveness of her sins, "thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace," the fulness of the gospel. So with Mary; she did not understand resurrection and life as she ought to have done, but the thing she does is the thing she ought to have done, and it is what she felt was right. It was from attachment to His person that she comes and anoints Him with her ointment. She might have put it in a bag, and given it to Him, but that would not do. Judas shews how the wrong thing leads people away. It was Judas said. "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" and they were all led away by it (Matt. 26: 8). The disciples did not shine at this time at all. They all ran away too from Him later on, but her heart enters into it all. The Lord gives a voice of intelligence to her act, the wickedness of the Jews was rising up to the point of putting Him to death, and her heart had the sense of it, the Lord leading her no doubt.

264 "Let her alone," He says: "against the day of my burying hath she kept this; for the poor always ye have with you, but me ye have not always." It was His person He meant there of course. This is a beautiful expression of Mary's heart, and it shews how a heart fixed on Christ gives the right thing; though there may be a want of intelligence, it does the right act. The poor woman in the city acted rightly and confides in Him; though as yet unforgiven, the light and love of God are both in her heart. There was the confidence that love produces, and the sense of sins that light and love both produced. So with Mary Magdalene; it was the right thing to seek Him among the dead in a sense. And here Mary anoints His feet - His feet were worth it - that is the thought, I think; but generally they would have put ointment on the head.

Mary is a figure of the heavenly remnant in that sense of the word. Martha was one of the heavenly remnant, I suppose, but we do not see much of it in what she did, she had been busied with care. The heavenly remnant belong to heaven, whereas the earthly remnant get their portion on earth. Mary was on the heavenly road, she was entering into the spirit of Christ's death. She anointed Him for His burial, though nobody could die with Him; and her heart went with Him. She could not weep and raise from the dead, but she could weep and anoint. Her heart went with the sense of what was coming; she saw the way in which He was being treated. They had plotted the death already. That is just what we get here, not intelligence, but the heart right, and it does the right thing, that which is intelligent, so to speak. It is, very largely, want of attachment to the person of Christ that keeps people in the systems around us if they have not any particular motive.

Now we get the Son of David sitting on an ass's colt; afterwards in verse 20 the Son of man comes out. They go to meet Him and cry, "Hosanna, blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord," taken from Psalm 118, which is the introduction of the millennial day. "Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord," and so on.

265 The Greeks are the nations coming up, or individuals of them. They are Hellenes; Grecian Jews are Hellenists. "Jesus answered them saying, The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified." He was Son of God in raising Lazarus; He was Son of God in the world without dying; He was Son of David too, and ought to have been received as such according to Psalm 2, but when He takes His place as Son of man, according to Psalm 8, He must die. He cannot take the heavenly place of glory and be over all the works of God's hand without dying. And then we must follow in that, "he that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me." A very important word; if you want to serve Christ, you must follow Him. It is not as if you could do so much service in a kind of independent way, but if I serve Him I must follow Him where He is. And then His own soul enters into this death. "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say; Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour." Not so deep, but like Gethsemane. And then you get His perfectness brought out, seeking only His Father's glory, at all cost. He cannot be glorified without thus dying, and on the perfect submission the sense of the glory comes into His own soul. This is very instructive to us. And then comes a voice from heaven, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." You have had the Father's name glorified in the Lord in raising back Lazarus to this world, and He is going to glorify it again in raising Christ from the dead. He was declared the Son of God with power here as given in Romans 1, and raised from the dead by the glory of the Father in Romans 6. Then in verse 32 He says, "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." Having submitted Himself entirely, and having looked only for His Father's glory, He says that the thing where He glorifies God is the way to His own glory. Wherever we bow to a dealing of God that brings us down, we find that it is the path of more glory.

266 As a living Messiah He had to say to the Jews, but as Saviour of everybody, He must die - " Will draw all men unto me." It is not the Father drawing to Him here, but the attractive point to which men are drawn.

Verse 32 is the cross, and the effect of it goes on; every soul that is brought in is the effect of it. The drawing goes on, but it is to a crucified Christ they are drawn. A living Christ was for a Jew, but it is by a dying Christ salvation comes to the world. When living, He says, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

When it says, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live," He is quickening; it is then, and goes on still. It is the Son of God in power; here it is the Son of man dying. The "lifting up" is lifted out of the world, though not gone to heaven. Here it is the mere fact stated, but it is the atoning Saviour.

The character of resurrection answers to the condition in which Christ is. At the grave of Lazarus He raises back to this world; but now He is at the right hand of God, He quickens us into the character of His own place. We have Him only spiritually now, and we only live spiritually. But when He comes back into the world, those who are quickened then will receive a life accordingly. The power of resurrection or of life answers to Christ's position. He raised back Lazarus to the place where He Himself was alive; and so too it is now, to where He is now alive, and when He comes again He will raise up the body or change it to His own likeness then. Lazarus was merely a restored man.

"Now is the judgment of this world." That is the consequence of the Lord being lifted up; and the prince of the world is cast out. By death He has "destroyed him that had the power of death" - that is, annulled his power. Though it says, "shall be," his power is now destroyed. The sentence is passed, but not carried out. It is the cross that is referred to. The world is a judged world. Satan has led it to crucify the Lord. He is its prince, but by that in which this was fully shewn his power was broken. I quite admit that, until Christ comes again, he is not cast into the bottomless pit, but through Christ's death Satan's power is annulled, and therefore "now is the prince of this world"; it was "shall be," but that was then. And he is only called the prince of the power of this world when we come to the cross. To faith his power is annulled now. And so it is as to everything; you will find it is "yes" for faith, and not yet for full accomplishment fact. I have eternal life and yet the end is everlasting life. I am looking for salvation ready to be revealed, yet He has saved us and called us. We are really quickened, and have the Holy Ghost in our souls, we receive the end of our faith, salvation of soul, but not the result. I think it is a great thing to see that Christ is lifted up, and has nothing more to do with this world. That the breach was total and final: "O righteous Father the world hath not known thee." Then we get the unbelief: "Who is this Son of man?" and the Lord says, "Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you."

267 Verse 34 gives the meaning of "lifting up." It is contrary to abiding here. Then you have two references to Isaiah, verse 38, (quoting Isa. 53) which is His rejection, and goes on to death; and verse 40 (quoting Isa. 6), which we are told Isaiah said when he saw His glory.

Then you have another terrible warning. "Many believed on him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue." Such would be lost. They were convinced, yet would not own Him. The principle is in Romans 10: "With the mouth confession is made unto salvation." That applies now. I do not believe there are many of whom it is true now or ever - that many are ashamed to confess Christ, and yet are truly saved. I could not say they are saved. God knows what is at the bottom of their hearts. Some are afraid, it may be, of acting in certain ways, and yet they confess Christ in a more open manner than we do. We must leave such to God, like Nicodemus who goes secretly by night for fear of the Jews. And the counsellor Joseph, who had been hidden, comes out when the disciples have all run away. These two confessed at last, when they said as it were, We cannot go on with all this wickedness, this is too much for us.

By "He that is not with me is against me" is meant taking the path of faith, you must take your place for Christ, or else you are against Him. The world has manifested itself as entirely against Him. The open breach is come, you must take your place either one way or other. We have Christ practically rejected - "lifted up" - and in chapter 13 we pass on to His going out of the world altogether.

268 The Epistle to the Hebrews says He could not be a priest on earth, because there were priests here already. Christ offered Himself; He was kept up three days - three years if you like better - as a pure victim. He offered Himself up on the cross. It is on the cross the Lord lays on Him the iniquity of us all, when He gave Himself a voluntary offering. But the offering Himself was not a priest's office: the priest only began when He took the blood, he had nothing to say to the offering until he accepted the blood. On the day of atonement the priest put his hand on the head of the scape-goat and confessed the people's sins, but there the whole nation was looked at as separate from God, and for them he confesses, though that was not exactly a priestly thing, though done by the high priest as representing the people. Christ offered Himself through the eternal Spirit without spot to God, but then He so far answered to the priest that He confessed our sins on the cross, and then after that He is properly a priest. Christ as now on high is not a priest for sins, He is an advocate with the Father if we sin. When I look at Him as suffering for sins, His work is done once for all, as in Hebrews 9, 12; when we fail, we have an advocate with the Father, for then it is a question of communion with the Father; but His sacrifice was for sins. He was a priest, He stood as priest, but He is not priest for sins now, but for grace to help that we may not sin and ever in God's presence for us the witness that our sins are put away, the reconciliation is made, and this was once done for us, where He stood as our suffering representative.

Christ did not, as the high priest in Israel, confess His own sins, for He had none (I need hardly say that), but the high priest on the day of atonement had his own to confess too, but Christ did only stand there as His people's representative. If He were on earth, He should not be a priest at all, and in the Hebrews you get the exercise of His priesthood now, which does not refer to sins because He has done with that question for ever. You get Him as an advocate in John, but there it is dealing with communion, and hence the question of imputation never comes up, but communion is destroyed for the time.

Looked at as an instrument used, this chapter applies to ministry. The word, in Hebrews 4, detects, and is the means of washing in that way. The word detects that which leads to falling away; the constant tendency to apostasy runs all through Hebrews. I would not include advocacy in priesthood. Intercession is a general word. He ever lives to make intercession for us. Intercession is commonly used for priesthood; but it is more a question of what is meant by words. Advocacy much more corresponds with Numbers 19.

On the Gospel according to John

J. N. Darby.

{Notes of remarks made partly in reply to questions at a conference.}

<25027E> 269 {file section b.}

What we come to in chapter 13 is that Christ's hour was come to depart out of this world unto the Father; up to this it had been His place and rejection on earth. Only when testimony was given to Him, He had declared He could only take that of Son of man, unless alone by dying. As to Himself there was now an end to all His sorrow and trouble, but His service He now shews us is not over; He goes up into the glory, and is there going to be our servant: "I have loved my own, and I love them through and through," that is the meaning of "to the end." He could not stay with them down here, but did not give them up; but He was now going to God perfect as He came from God, and the Father had given all things into His hand. He was returning spotless to God Himself, the glory being His. He could not stay with them, could they be with Him there? This is the solemn problem in this chapter. He solves it in ineffable grace. He rose up from supper, "and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself, after that he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded." Peter objects, but the Lord says, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." Peter says then, "Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." "Jesus saith to him, He that is washed, needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." The two words "wash" in verse 10 are different; the first is washing the whole body, "bathed," and the second is washing hands or small objects. And you notice the "hands" are left out, for it does not apply to our works, but to our walk. It is bringing the light of the word to judge inwardly when a man has done wrong. Those who have received the word have been bathed, they are clean as chapter 15: 3. Here not all because Judas was still there. The statement alludes to the priests, who were washed bodily once for all, and afterwards whenever they went to any service, washed their hands and feet. The consecrating with water was done once for all. So with us; but we are set to walk through this world, and in danger of defiling our feet as we go.

270 The words in Hebrews 10, "bodies washed with pure water," refer to the first bathing, and not to this action of Christ or what it signifies. It is "bathed" there. And then Christ comes in as an advocate, and cleanses me when defiled in walk, and restores me to communion. It is like the red heifer when a person touched death; there was no fresh death appointed for that, but the application of the word, moral cleansing based on the death already accomplished.

As to the washing of regeneration, the priests were not washed at the laver at their first consecration; but they had to wash their hands and their feet at the laver every time when they came to serve. "Regeneration" in Titus is the same word as in Matthew 19, and not used elsewhere. It is the millennium in Matthew, instead of the present state of things. It is a change of state in both places. It is connected with what you are brought into, and what you are brought out of; for you are brought out of one, and into the other.

The action is very beautiful as to the Lord's loving and lowly service, and is really the glory of grace in providing for, and meeting moral evil in every shape for us that we might have communion with that which is on high. It is the fruit of the perfect love of Christ whatever is needed, the Lord sets Himself to do it, for love likes to serve: "having loved his own which were in the world he loved them unto the end." "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand, and that he was come from God and went to God, he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded himself." It was with this glory present in spirit though actually future. In all the glory to which I am going, I shall be a servant as much as down here: such is its meaning.

It is "to God" in verse 3, because Christ's returning in the spotless divine perfectness in which He left God is thus affirmed; He is just as perfect as ever, and is going back as such to God - goes back just as He came from. He did not go half way, but came from God and went back to God. And then He must bring us into the same place too; either He must give us up, as He could not stay here where we are, or He must do all for us to fit us to be there where He is. And He will have us have part with Him in everything the Father gives, and be with the Father as He Himself is. So He has washed us and made us partakers of the divine nature. It is the new birth, only it is looked at in its moral character rather than in the life-giving power of the Spirit's work; though they cannot be separated. In His love He takes up a slave's work; Peter objects, and the point He insists on is, our having a part with Himself. "Ye are clean, but not all," is because Judas was there. And then He tells us to walk in the same spirit of serving.

271 Next, He puts the reception of an apostle on the same footing as the reception of Himself. "He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me." It had been already true, even of Judas, but still it is true always practically, and we know it - he that receives Christ's servant receives Him.

Then you find the Lord coming to the time of His betrayal. He is troubled in spirit. It is remarkable to see how the Lord feels everything thoroughly and personally; you never find in Him any failure as to that; but He is always Himself in it, the very opposite of insensibility; circumstances draw out His feelings, but it is what is divinely perfect, which is there to be drawn out. He says He knew who was going to betray Him from the beginning. And who is it? He is to have every sorrow. One of His intimate companions who had been with Him all the time. Through the devoted affection of women, you generally find them clinging to Him and so in the place of confidence, but here you have the one instance where a man comes into that good place. John was sitting close to Christ not from his seeking it then but from habitual nearness to Him, and Peter is obliged to ask John to inquire of Christ, who it was that should betray Him. It is an instance of what I mean; John was not there in order to get the information, but he was in the place to get it, the disciple whom Jesus loved and close to Him in order to be there, but there in the place to know His mind. That is the point; it is of all importance to be in a position so to learn of Him.

Now we get an important statement; after the sop, Satan entered into Judas. There is much in that; there is a familiarity with Christ in an outward way, which where the heart is wrong is a deadly inlet to Satan's power. Satan had already gained Judas's lusts, and suggested the evil; but here he takes possession of him in a personal way, Satan enters into him. He hardens his heart against every natural feeling.

If you take Luke as giving the order of the thing, Judas broke bread; having received the sop, he went immediately out. Luke says, after He had given both the bread and the cup, "the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table." But here in John we have nothing to do with the Lord's supper; I merely get the fact that the sop was given to Judas. I think it has nothing to do with the Supper, whether Judas was there or not. Christ washed his feet, and there was intimacy at the table. It is important to notice that, because of the guilt resulting from it. If anybody quotes it as to fellowship now, then you would have betrayers at the table. Further there was no evil manifested, and you cannot of course put a man out where no evil is manifested. Besides, after all, people do not mean that they would have a table of Judases, and if you put it so to them, they will reject it. The Lord knew it Himself of course divinely, but that is no ground for us to act on and the disciples knew nothing of it, nor was their conscience exercised as to it; nor was the church founded till the Holy Ghost came.

272 As to Judas you first get the lust, and then the acting on it; he was a thief and had the bag; and then comes an occasion suggested by Satan to gratify the lust, who thereon enters in and hardens the person's heart against even his natural feelings, for many an unconverted man would not betray a friend with a kiss. It is at this point when all this has come completely forward that you get "Now is the Son of man glorified," that is, in the cross the perfectness of His work was His glory, perfect devotedness and love were in it, and obedience at all cost to His Father, suffering all things where His glory called for it and it was a man's glory to make God's glory good and in such a place, "and God is glorified in him." All that God is in His character is there made good by a man much more than a man no doubt, but one who was a man - "God is glorified in him; if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and will straightway glorify him." He does not wait for the glory of the kingdom, but goes straight up to God's right hand. God thus is perfectly glorified by man, so that man goes into the glory of God. And that is an immense truth, for the fact of our sins being put away, if it stood alone, would not entitle us to the glory of God. But that which has done it has. But Christ has gone into the glory of God: so Stephen saw and said. But man could not follow before this was all done; you must have the ark in the bottom of Jordan, or the people could not come over. Peter had confidence in himself, and so he denies Christ. If we come in flesh into the place of Christ, it will only be to deny Him there.

273 The "in himself" in verse 32 is in God, and Christ went straight into the glory of God. It is an immense part of the cross that, the ending of self and all confidence in self. The Lord told Peter he could not follow Him. And now the Lord in a certain sense assumes that He has gone out of the world, and He looks at things in that aspect, but their heart is not to be troubled at it; and in chapter 14 He gives them the ground on which it is not to be troubled. In the first place they get the comfort from God by believing in Him; and so would it be with Christ; and the next point is, in Christ's going away: it was not to leave them behind and He go alone, but He is going to prepare a place for them. It is not only a place for me, but there are a number of places, and I am going to prepare one for you, and "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." Now that part of the chapter is complete in itself; they believe in Him instead of seeing Him; there are places in the Father's house and He is going to prepare us for them; He cannot stay with them where they are, but He will have them there with Himself.

Now comes, in the body of the chapter, what the comfort is while He has not come back. That is divided into two parts; what they had in His person, and what they would get on having the Comforter. The first part extends to about the end of verse 15. The three or four verses about their doing greater works come in by the bye.

The first part of the chapter is exceedingly beautiful and simple, when once you get at what the Lord is at. The point was "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Thomas answers, "Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?" There was a good bit of unbelief in Thomas, his mind made difficulties, but he loved the Lord; and the Spirit delights to shew it (chap. 11: 16); and the answer is this, "I am going to the Father, and you know what He is, because you have seen the Father in me, and therefore you do know where I am going; and you know the way, because having come to Me, you have found Him." Such is what the Lord says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also, and from henceforth ye know him and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father and it sufficeth us; Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, shew us the Father?" and so on. If they had seen the Father (in seeing Christ) and Christ was going to the Father, they both knew where He was going, and they knew that He was the way, because in Him they had found the Father. They had had this upon earth, and they ought to have known where they were.

274 It is "from henceforth" in verse 7, because He had revealed Himself and told them plainly now; but they did not understand. But they said, "now speakest thou plainly"; but they deceive themselves. He says, "I came forth from the Father, and come into the world, again, I leave the world and go to the Father"; they say, "by this we believe that thou camest forth from God." They had no idea of the Father after all. Still there it was: they had it, though they did not realise it. Then you get the two things He has once or twice insisted upon, as in chapters 8 and 9, His word and His work, "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake."

Then in the second part (you may connect verse 15 with it if you like) "I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not neither knoweth him, but ye know him for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." Now I get a second element, not the Father and the Son, but the Spirit. The Father had been revealed in the Son, and He had declared the Father's name on earth; but now comes another thing, He was going away, as we know, and the second Comforter was to come. He was not to be sent into the world, the world cannot receive Him. Christ had been presented to the world, and the world would not have Him; but the Spirit is not for the world, the way that He is known shews that the world cannot know Him. He abides with you and shall be in you. The first Comforter, Christ, was neither to abide, nor to be "in." But the second would not go away, He would abide, Christ could not abide. As to whether it should he "dwelleth" or "will dwell," in verse 17, for the Greek, or indeed for the sense, it is just as good in one case as the other; it is a mere question of a Greek accent. The "Comforter" is the character He would have in coming to them, He is the Spirit of truth as well. It is to me evidently the point, the difference of the first Comforter, that is, Christ, that He could not stay with them, and the second could. Christ was not in them either, but with them; the second should dwell in them, and abide for ever ("abide" is the same word as "dwell") not be merely with them. In the power of the Spirit of God they should do "greater works," and a glorified Christ should be the source of them. The very shadow of Peter would do; a handkerchief or apron from Paul, and so on; three thousand be converted in one day. But Christ had come in the character of humiliation.

275 The "I will come to you" is Christ in Spirit now, I believe; Himself in Spirit. It is not merely the Holy Ghost, but what the believer can always count on. There is a particular promise in the case of two or three gathered in Christ's name. There is not only individually dwelling in our hearts by faith, but the particular way in which He comes to two or three gathered.

The "manifest myself to him," is where a person walks right; he gets Christ specially revealed to his heart. You have a very great additional fact in this second part of the chapter which you could not have in the first. What is in verse 20 that they could not have known then: "in that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you," it was only when the Holy Ghost came that they knew that. The person of Christ was in the Father, that they knew; at any rate it was there to be known; but also they were in Christ and He in them: this they could know only by the Holy Ghost. Now you come to Judas - not Iscariot - and the realisation of all this. We may look at verse 15 here; "if ye love me, keep my commandments," if you love me, do not be thinking of keeping Me down here, but do you obey Me. They were sorrowing about His going, and His words are; then, "keep my commandments." There is a connection here (He is looking at them in the character of obedience, though it is not the motive of His praying in next verse) with Acts 5: 32, "and so is also the Holy Ghost whom God hath given to them that obey him."

The difference between "commandments" and "words" is that words go farther rather. In Acts 13: 47 you have a quotation from Isaiah, "for so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth." He calls that a commandment, though it was a word of prophecy, but the moment they understood it, it was a commandment. The whole thing is comprised in obedience whether words or commandments, we are "sanctified to obedience." If they had words which gave them the knowledge of God's will, they are commandments really.

276 You will find in all this part of John the responsibility of the disciples in the first place, and that, in the verse we have just come to. "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him." It is the Father loves us because we love Christ, it is not here, "we love him because he first loved us," but with disciples, it is "he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him."

It is no question here whether he is a child of the Father, but what he is to the Father as a child; there is more expression of love and kindness to an obedient child, than to a disobedient one. And He adds "if a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode in him." That goes farther, the "abode" will be more constant than the "manifestation." "He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." Notice before in verse 21, it is not he that keepeth my commandments when he hath them; but knowing what the commandments of Christ are when we love Him so as to give heed to what He says. This is an important principle. A loving child enters into its father's mind, and knows what he would like and does it; a careless child will not know a bit what his father's wishes are.

In John 10: 17, "therefore doth my Father love me," etc., it is not here so much for those for whom He is laying down His life, the motive is rather the immense value of glorifying His Father. Children that are living in their father's house, might all hear their father's voice and words, but there is instructive perception of what he intends on the part of the children that love him best. Which of us would settle quite clearly from Isaiah 49: "I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth," that we were to go and preach the grace of God? Paul did in Acts 13: 47. It is quite clear we must have the commandments if we are to use them, but the loving attentive person will have ten times more knowledge of them than a careless one. Mary and Martha are a kind of illustration; you get the example of the listening there or the lack of it.

277 In this chapter the Father sends the Comforter, not Christ; Christ sends Him in the close of the next chapter, and in chapter 16: 7. It is in Christ's name here, but the Father sends Him, and "he shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." The value of sending in His name is seen in this. If you come to me in a person's name now, I should receive according to the value to me of the person in whose name you come. Then He says, "Peace I leave with you," and then it is "his own peace." You will find that as to everything. He puts us into His own place. It is His own peace, the peace He had in walking through this world with the Father, as a man with God. Christ says it of "joy," "glory," "peace," "words," "love." The world may give liberally sometimes, but it has another kind and way of giving. It has no longer what it has given. The emphasis is on the word "my," "my joy," "the glory thou gavest me," "the words which thou gavest me." But we find another thing here which I have often referred to, but it is one of the most wonderful things in Scripture as to Christ. He expects us to be interested in His happiness, not merely to trust Him as interested in ourselves; but "if ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I." That is, if you love Me, you will rejoice because I am going out of this world into happiness. He expects that His disciples should be really interested in His happiness and glory.

Then we come to verse 30, "hereafter I will not talk much with you, for the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." "Prince of this world" is an important expression; it was then that the devil was proved to be the prince of this world, and he is never called so until Christ was rejected, so long as there was a possibility remaining of the world receiving the Son and owning Him; but in the rejection of Christ, the devil was able to raise both Jews and Gentiles against Christ Himself, and even the disciples ran away. His full power was shewn. And therefore too now, the devil is a judged being - "the prince of this world is judged" - and the world shewn to be under Satan's power. He its god and its prince. The opposite is in Christ, "has nothing in me." And Christ loves the Father, and is obedient (v. 31).

278 Satan finds plenty in us. He had the power of death in us, but he had nothing at all in Christ. It is a beautiful expression of Christ's perfectness. He was divine, but He was also man, and perfection as to both comes out so wonderfully. He would not talk much with His disciples, for the time was over. The devil is coming, and I cannot talk with you much more. The thing is all finished. In chapter 14 we get Christ's person and the Comforter; and now we go on to find the connection of people with Him upon earth, not with the Father.

In chapter 15 it is His relationship with the disciples on earth, and in the end of the chapter He has gone up on high, and sends the Comforter Himself, and it closes with the testimony. In chapter 16 it is the Comforter down here; He is not sent but come, He has been sent. In chapter 15 you get Christ in the earth, and His people on the earth. There is an analogy to this now, but what He is looking at is His being the real vine Himself in contrast with Israel on earth.

"Now ye are clean" is "already ye are clean." The "ye are not all clean" in chapter 13 refers to Judas, here there is no exception for it, Judas had gone out. The point is, Israel was the old vine, and Christ takes the place of Israel, and is the true vine. If you look at Isaiah 49, you will see distinctly how he replaces the nation "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." "And now, saith Jehovah that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, though Israel be not gathered," and so on. Thus it is Christ is the real servant - Israel a vine, but Christ the true vine. So you get in Matthew, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son." Hence Christ is the true Man for God - the true Servant - the true Vine. The true Man, God's Son, has taken up all that in which the first man had failed. Then, when Christ was upon earth, there was no church union; there is no question of planting vines in heaven nor of pruning to get fruit. He says, "Every branch in me that beareth fruit, he purgeth it"; and in verse 3, "Now ye are already purged"; it is the same word. They were clean in the sense of "purged," only that the purging continues; like "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet"; this is the first of these washings. "Ye are already clean"; you are "already." And then comes, "abide in me." It is all responsibility here. The person's conduct is put first, but there is this difference made, when He speaks of ruin and destruction; He turns from "you" and says "a man." In the middle of His exhortation He drops the "ye" and says, "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned"; there it is positive destruction.

279 In "if ye abide in me," the "abide" is to "hold fast in dependence and communion." "Without me [that is the opposite], ye can do nothing." He does not say, "I will abide in you, and so ye will abide in me." He puts His people first all through, for it all rests on responsibility. Only in verse 6 it changes to "a man," and speaks of destruction, which could not be of a true disciple in Christ. Judas was taken away. There they were, all branches in the vine; for I do not think anything of the expression, "men gather them," because He is speaking of the figure. There is another point in verse 7: "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you" I can dispose of all power, when the words of Christ govern my mind and will. "Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."

In verse 2 taking away is utter destruction; for He is taking in all there who were associated with Him; they are all branches there till they are broken off. "If ye continue in my word," He says to the Jews, "then are ye my disciples indeed"; they were His disciples, but did not continue. Hebrews 6 is in analogy with it.

Then I have another point still. I have the service and fruit-bearing, and then, "Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit." But then, further "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: abide in my love" - the divine favour of Christ. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." There I get a plain proof that it is no question of divine delight in the person only, but of the path in which the Son enjoyed the Father's love, and the path in which we shall enjoy it too. Now we have the "joy"; we had the "peace" before; now it is joy walking in His words, and abiding in His love. The love of grace seeks a sinner, but "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That is not grace for a sinner; here it is for His friends. It applies to the disciples only, and is not here grace for sinners. "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you." A friend is a person with whom I communicate, not because I have business with him, but I tell him my thoughts and feelings as to that with which he himself has nothing to do. He puts them into the place of fruit-bearing, and tell them to ask of the Father whatsoever they would, and He would give it them.

280 Fruit that "may remain" is fruit to this day, you are it, if you please. We are here part of the fruit, and shall be to eternity, though the fruit is more down in the world in this passage. Now comes a third principle. Abiding in Christ and His word, and abiding in His love; and then "love one another." But now the converse: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you; if ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." The world never can stand being outside; they will stand your having a religion, but they cannot stand a peculiar people "purified to himself." This puts the disciples in a very blessed place, for it puts them in His place - "If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

And then the history of Israel on the ground of their responsibility closes. He being the true vine, the old vine is judged. As long as anything was not done to Him, all was forgivable, as it were; but now "they have both seen and hated both me and my Father." In verses 22, 24 it is again His word and His works; and then the Son had been manifested, and the Father in Him, so that their conduct had been really hatred of the Son and of the Father, and what was to be done? We have fellowship with the Father, and with the Son, but they had hated both - and that without a cause. It was all gone now, and then you get the Comforter and the disciples in the world. He says now, "The Comforter whom I will send unto you," because He has gone away. The difference is clear; before the Holy Ghost came, they could not tell of Christ's glory in heaven, but they were to testify what Christ was upon earth. Still it was by the Holy Ghost. He shall "bring all things to your remembrance" (chap. 14: 26), when the Father is spoken of as sending the Comforter; but in this place Christ sends the Comforter, and He is the witness of the glory in which Christ is sitting. You have a humbled Christ, and a glorified Christ, and the disciples bearing witness through the Comforter. But the Comforter Himself brings down the heavenly glory. Then you get in chapter 16 the Comforter on the earth. Read verses 1-3.

281 A person may be perfectly sincere, just as Saul was, in trying to blot out the name of Christ from the earth, but it is only proof that they have hated "both me and my Father." Where there are truths held that go to make part of my religious credit, there I can go on; but the truth that comes to test my heart, to that I object. A person might be a Protestant boasting of justification by faith, and do it to trample on a Romanist; but if you talk to him of the living presence of the Holy Ghost down here, and of the Lord's coming, he will persecute you from the bottom of his heart. A Jew could boast in the unity of the Godhead, for it was part of his own credit religiously; but the moment he was asked to own the Father and the Son, he would stone you for it. It was the thing that was then testing a man whether he was right or not. The Jews were blind in the darkness of unbelief, yet they held what was very true all the while. Romanists hold the divinity of Christ, and His manhood, and the Trinity, and atonement; they would burn a man if he did not hold them, if they had their way; but if you come and say, A man is not justified by sacraments, they will burn you too, if they can.

Then another thing. He says, "I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? but because I have said these things, sorrow hath filled your heart." In one sense it was very natural. God deals with the thing we are resting in; and takes it away, as now His Son from the disciples, it is not a thing that springs from the dust. God must have some intention in it. Christ is going, and they do not ask where; they felt the trouble of their loss and that pressed on them. He was not going to die like an ordinary person put in the grave, but they never asked Him where He was going. God has an intuition of love in our sorrows, our hearts should look beyond our sorrow to His hand and ways in it.

282 Peter did ask Him at the end of chapter 13, "Why cannot I follow thee now?" But it was the general state the Lord refers to here. Peter did not think of going through death and up to heaven with Him. He was not thinking of God's mind in Christ's going away, but of some place where he could follow Him. It is a glorified Christ who has gone on high, and who sends the Holy Ghost to build up the disciples while He is there. Sometimes one is afraid of getting truth through mere feelings. I say merely, that is not power. I do not believe that anybody before, ever got the knowledge of divine truth that the church has now; but if you look at power, it is like none at all. It is right according to God, as God's way with us; but it is only a "little strength" indeed, incomparably less power, though so much truth. The Thessalonians were waiting for God's Son from heaven, which is a very superior state; but they had not the word, as we have it, to study. Certainly they had not got this Gospel, they might have had Matthew's perhaps. I think there is always a danger of awakening and decaying, and that you have to watch. I speak merely of the whole character of the thing; not that I do not believe it is God's mind, for all the evil is seen by Him, but we have to recognise in a certain sense where we are. And even as to truth, we must get it really. I feel the word of God is an immense thing, "thou hast kept my word and hast not denied my name" - Christ's - the word of His patience too; and there was then the confession of Christ in the midst of a people that would not receive Him, just as in not denying His name when professing Christianity are apostatising.

Then remark, the coming of the Holy Ghost is a distinct definite thing consequent upon Christ's exaltation. There was no coming of the Son until the incarnation, though He created everything; and the Holy Ghost in the same way, though working, did not come until Pentecost. We were looking a little at that before. All direct action as to the creature was by the Holy Ghost, but He did not come before Pentecost, unless you except His coming as a dove on Christ. And there it was personally on Him alone. You get Him acting, as at the beginning of creation, but Christ says, "if I go not away the Comforter will not come." That is of immense import as to the character of His presence. The world is judged, and the Holy Ghost is not sent to the world, "whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him; for he abideth with you and shall be in you." The world ought to have received Christ, the Holy Ghost it cannot; and He comes consequent upon a rejected Christ and a glorified Christ, and it is a Man who sends the Holy Ghost, sends Him from the Father. You get His action when down here. He demonstrates to the world, sin, righteousness and judgment. If He convinces a man, he is a believer; that is not the power of "reprove" here in chapter 16: 8; it is used much to that effect, but it does not suit this place, and there is no English word that has so wide an application as the Greek word has. He does not reprove the world of righteousness. His presence is the demonstration to the world that the whole world is guilty of the death of Christ, just as if God were saying to Cain, "Where is Abel thy brother?" That is to the whole world; this world is a world that has rejected the Son of God. So that it is a very solemn thing to the world that the Holy Ghost is here.

283 It is the "world," just as "he came into the world." What I see in the history is that God takes out of the nations one man and his family to be a nation for Himself, and He tests them and tries to find any good thing at all in them, as a specimen of the whole, to tell what the mass is, and they are shewn by it to be bad altogether. Suppose I find a "slob," as you call it, in Lough Foyle, and I take out twenty acres, and spend an immense amount of labour upon it, but all to no good; well then, I do not try the rest. So Israel was but a sample of what all were, children of wrath. In saying the Gentiles, "which do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves," the apostle is reasoning in the first place thus: "if you have the law and do not keep it, the Gentiles who have not the law but keep it, are better than you." But as Gentiles also they are without excuse upon the ground of the testimony of creation, and the fact that when they had the knowledge of God, they would not retain it. I will tell you the result of a pagan acting up to his conscience, if you first shew me such a one. Cornelius was a converted man before Peter saw him. We have the sample of what man is in the Jews.

Let us go back: - God calls Abraham when the world would have the devil and idols instead of the one true God. Then comes law, and that was all broken; then Christ and then the testimony of the Holy Ghost as we read in Stephen's case, and they resisted that. I do not believe a thing about Gentiles, that I do not believe about myself: my flesh would go and do lawlessness. But they are not condemned for not having received Christ when they have not heard of Him. But the Holy Ghost not having been presented to the world, they have not so rejected Him, but the world is convicted and judged because it killed Christ, and in the testimony to Him where that is it now resists the Holy Ghost. The Jews had the law, and the prophets, and the Just one, and Stephen charges them, "ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so do ye." That is the demonstration of sin. Then "of righteousness." If all the world is under sin, where am I to find righteousness? You will find it in two things, which are, "I go to my Father," and the other "you will see me no more." Christ's going to the Father is proof of righteousness, for He is the one that deserved to go; and I see Him no more, is proof of righteousness against those who have rejected Him.

284 In "and ye see me no more," it is you see Me no more in that character of mercy come as a Saviour; every eye shall see Him in His new character as Judge. If I receive the demonstration of the Holy Ghost convincing of righteousness because Christ has gone, I have ceased then to belong to the world, and have become a believer. The demonstration of sin may come fully to the conscience, in a certain sense of the word, but if the will is not changed, I gnash my teeth on the man who brings it to my conscience as they did to Stephen. Then there was conscience with a bad will. The sin of Christendom is the practical denial of the Holy Ghost; I say "practical," because orthodox people own Him as to statement. The root of the gospel is here, "righteousness, because I go to my Father." I do not get a man's sins dealt with in this demonstration, that is not the point; but it is the broad general truth of the general standing of the world. The One righteous man having gone to the Father, the world will never have Him here again as such, though believers may go to Him there. The world was judged in chapter 12, and the prince of the world is judged in this chapter. You do not see righteousness fully displayed anywhere save in the glory. The cross is the declaration, not of righteousness, but of the contrary. It is the ground of righteousness. But if I look no farther than the cross I see the only righteous man that ever lived forsaken of God. The "judgment" is not come. It is not merely Satan is judged but the world; the whole world, having come up against Christ whom God put at His right hand. But I see Satan the prince of it all, and the whole thing is bad from beginning to end, and the whole is judged.

285 The judgment was not actually come; there was a demonstration of judgment because the one who had the power of the world had committed himself fatally against Christ; but the presence of the Holy Ghost shewed it was against One who had broken his power and gone up to heaven. The presence of the Holy Ghost shews that Christ is in heaven, and righteousness is shewn in setting Christ there. The same thing demonstrated that judgment was there; for the one who had allowed it was in direct opposition to the one God had set at His right hand. But it was not the execution of this judgment yet. The prince of the world was cast out, for the world had fatally committed itself against the One whom God had set at His right hand. All this demonstration is in the world; what follows is among the saints. "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now; howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will shew you things to come; he shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto you." We have had the testimony borne by His presence in the world and now His work among the saints. First He guides into all the truth. That is a present thing. Then things to come are shewn. In all He glorifies Christ, taking His things, all the Father has, and securing them to them. It is for the world from verse 8. I take it that the expression "because I go to the Father," which He employs everywhere in John, flows from His speaking everywhere as the divine person who was come and went back, not as the dying man, though going through death, when all was over. He says, I am going away, and to the Father. No man takes My life away, Satan has nothing in Me. I am a divine person going to My Father; and when the proper time has come you will see Me again. They did not understand, and He says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice, and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." It is not thus death and going to Him that He sets before them, but seeing Him again, which is a totally different thing.

286 In verse 13 "of himself," is "from himself." He will speak from the Father and the Son. The distinction between verses 13 and 14 is that the one is what He does, and the other is the object of it. He does two things - gives you all present truth, and shews you things to come, that is prophecy, of which there is plenty in the epistles and the Revelation, to say nothing of what He explains of earlier writings, and of Christ's teachings, which was more bringing to remembrance, but all part of the truth of course. Verse 14 is what He does: "He shall shew it unto you." But it is Christ He glorifies. The Holy Ghost reveals all that the Father has, and that can be, revealed, and all these things are part of Christ's glory. He specially speaks of Christ as gone. "He shall receive of mine," is not Christ's history as on the earth, so much, but all this new scene, though He does the other also. Here it is the new. They were wrought on by the Spirit to remember themselves what had passed on earth. They had seen it all; but here the Holy Ghost comes down, and, coming down brings the things they had not seen, that is, everything which the Father has and which belongs to Christ.

The point in the "little while" is that the Lord is not going to be lost, but as soon as God's purposes are accomplished He will come again. It is a great thing to take what is in a passage. And it was accomplished as far as resurrection went. The statement is that they would see Him again, for He was not gone and lost. The world rejoiced when He went away, as gone and done with. As far as it went, it was verified when He rose again, His disciples did rejoice greatly then; but it was not confined to that. It says, "your sorrow shall be turned into joy." And it was. In the sense of verse 16 we have seen Him. It does not say, we are sorrowing at His being lost; but they did sorrow, and it speaks of the condition of the disciples in their place. The world was delighted to get rid of Him, but He comes up again, and His disciples see Him and rejoice. We have not got into the one or the other case entirely. Christ is gone in a certain sense, and yet we have seen Him so that we are always rejoicing. The entire fulfilment will not be until Christ returns.

I was referring to verse 22. As to the present they have lost Him again, after they had been glad when they saw the Lord, but they never got back into the sorrow they had had. I think the passage refers mainly to the resurrection, the then present thing, though it is not entirely fulfilled until we see Him. As we were saying before, I have eternal life, and am looking for it, and even for justification in one sense as in Philippians 3, "that I may be found in him not having mine own righteousness." The disciples then were wonderfully dull of heart about it, and they had no understanding because the Holy Ghost was not given. The point to me is, they would see Him again which they did when He arose. The world would see Him no more, but they see Him again, and have a consciousness that, instead of a lost Saviour of Israel, they had got a complete one for the eternal purposes of God.

287 He is putting them here, as being Himself with the Father and having everything in His hands, in contrast with being a mere rejected dying man on earth as in the other Gospels, and puts them in the presence of the Father in grace, saying, "the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world and go to the Father." He is not here a dying man but a divine Person; I come from the Father and go back to the Father, and shall come again. The disciples got that, or part of it, when they saw Him raised from the dead, although the full result will not be until He comes again. They did not understand it then though they professed to do so, for they say, "by this we believe that thou camest forth from God." From the Father they have not entered into. The Father is looked at as giving Him all things, not merely is it that Christ came from God and went to God - that was the moral connection, He was going back to God in all His perfectness, but now He takes His headship over everything. "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name"; we ask the Father as brought into immediate relationship with Him, and in His name, as the one in and through whom we are thus in relationship with the Father. What title else have I to go to God? As to the Lord's prayer, here is one reason why it should not be used now: it would not be asking in Christ's name.

There is often great failure in going directly to the Father; it is in Christ's name, but people go not in Christ's name, in the Spirit of adoption, but to Christ if they could not go to the Father, like Martha: "what thou shalt ask of God. he will give it thee." They go as sinners, but inasmuch as Christ is there, they can go. Now that is not at all where Christ puts them here; "the Father himself loveth you"; all for Christ's sake, it is true.

288 Then the passage has been used for a very bad purpose indeed, "ye shall ask me nothing," as if you are not to look or pray to Christ Himself, a mere abuse of the words. They were not to come to Him like Martha and say, "I know that, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." The Lord says, "do you come yourselves to the Father and do not be asking Me that I should go for you." But in all that concerns the administration, of what concerns His lordship on earth, the Christian prays to the Lord, not to the Son in that character. As a child and son I go to the Father, but it is to Christ I go, not to the Father, in matters that relate to His service. If I am a child, I go to the Father, but if I have something of administration in the church, I go to the Lord. It is a definition of a Christian that he calls on the name of the Lord Jesus; and you have Stephen's example, and Paul besought the Lord thrice. You cannot properly address the Spirit, but this is for another reason, the Holy Ghost being the One who is in me, and so He cannot address Himself. It is the different place the Holy Ghost takes in the economy of grace that is the reason of this. He is the agent in us to sustain us in prayer, for by one Spirit we have access unto the Father.

It is not intelligent to use that hymn, "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove." God does not make a man an offender for a word, but it is not intelligent. "These things have I spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." "In me" not merely, not apart from me, but "in me." Godly persons have prayed for an outpouring of the Spirit. It was a mistake in divine knowledge. That was done on the day of Pentecost. But they meant well and earnestly desired really the more abundant action of the Holy Ghost. I have no feeling of attacking what is merely a want of apprehension, though I have no doubt such lose greatly by it. I believe too, it is necessary for the church of God that there should be the clear truth seen.

Chapter 17 is different from all other chapters in Scripture. It is not all a prayer of intercession but the thing that is peculiar, and which there is nothing else like is, that Christ is not speaking to His disciples but to His Father in their hearing. So He opens out all His mind to His Father while they are there to hear it, or, if you please, we are there to hear it. Of course this is a wonderful thing to be admitted to listen while He is unfolding to His Father all He has to say to Him about His disciples. And firstly He lays down the position. "These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." Christ always has His Father's glory in view. And when He says, "glorify thy Son," we may remark these two points: He never, though Son of God having become a man, goes out of the place of receiving all from the Father. He does not say, Now I will glorify Myself; but glorify Thou Me. When glorified His object as such is to glorify the Father in that higher place and way though all was perfect here. Then he continues, "as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." He has title over all flesh, but with a special object too in that. He has power over all flesh; but the special intent is that He may give eternal life to as many as have been given to Him of the Father. "And this is life eternal that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." That is, as I was saying, when you come to grace, it is Father and Son; it is the name that eternal life and blessing come in; it is the only full revelation of God Himself.

289 You get the three names we were speaking of brought together in Corinthians: "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord [that is, Jehovah] - Almighty." Almighty, Jehovah, and Father. Abraham's God Almighty, Israel's Jehovah, Father is God's name with us. Most High will be millennial. Father comes out in John 17. Almighty did not give eternal life, but kept Abraham from one people to another; and Jehovah was faithful to His promises, making them all good to His people. But this did not give eternal life, nor is it eternal life; but the moment the Father sends the Son, here is the grace that gives eternal life. God sent His only begotten Son that we might live through Him. We do not live through the first Adam. The Almighty watched over Abraham, but that did not give life, nor yet the government of Jehovah, but the name of the Father sending the Son does, and, receiving Him, we get it; that is eternal life. The Most High goes on to the millennium, and we have not come to that yet. "Father" is the special name that we have; it was revealed while Christ was upon earth, but not understood, because they had not yet the Spirit of adoption. Then comes the position we get this in; that the Father glorifies the Son, all power being given to Him to give eternal life to as many as God gave Him; and that eternal life was in the knowledge of the Father, the true God, and of Jesus Christ as sent.

290 Then comes another point. His work: "I have glorified thee on earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do, and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." He had glorified God down here, and finished the work given Him to do. It is wonderful how the work itself is all passed over, but it is finished and He is looking at the one passing out of the world to the Father; and that is what has made the difficulty of understanding the seeing Him again, for He did not actually go to the Father till the forty days were ended: the work is finished, and then He goes back as Man into the glory of the Father. And then it is He makes us sons, glorifying God by His work, and we have part in the effect of it as sons. So you get the whole framework of grace in this chapter. He takes the glory as man having accomplished the work. "Glorify thou me with thine own self." "With" means "with Himself, along with Himself." He has just the same glory as the Father, but He never goes of Himself out of the place of humiliation. He was with the Father before the world was - one with the Father. You get that equality all through the Gospel. So here, "I have glorified thee," now "glorify thou me"; but He never says, "I have glorified thee, and now I will glorify myself." He receives everything, and will take everything as receiving it from the Father.

As to Isaiah 53: 11, "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many," the meaning is very different. Christ does not justify us by His knowledge. The Hebrew word has two meanings. It is to justify; but it is also to "instruct in righteousness," though it goes farther, for He might instruct, and they not learn. But the meaning is they are really instructed. To justify by knowledge is very crooked. "It pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand; he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct the many in righteousness, and he shall bear their iniquities." It is "instruct the many," but in the last verse it is "bare the sin of many," without "the"; there is a "the," or article, when it says, instruct the many in righteousness.*

{*Compare Daniel 11: 33, and 9; 27; and the end of Romans 5.}

291 Notice now verses 4, 5. Christ receives as Man, what He had been in as a divine Person before ever the world was at all, and then you come to the next step, to bring out the part of those who were given Him. "I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world." It is the Father giving to Him as Son of man, and He gets the whole place as receiving it of the Father, and having finished the work, He brings us into it, and then He manifests the Father's name to bring us into relationship in which He is as Son. He has communicated to them all the communications of the Father to Him as Man down here, so that they should enjoy the relationship as exercised in these communications. "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me." Thus we get their place settled. First, He manifests the name; and next, whatever the Father had given Him He passes on to them that they may have the full enjoyment of it.

In verse 26 "thy name" is the Father. "I have declared, and will declare it." If I think of God as thus revealed, I think of the Father; because that is the name He has taken with me. Christ having become a man, has "emptied himself," and He looks up to the Father. To deny His deity is to take the opportunity of His having humbled Himself for our sakes and sins to deny the glory due to Him because He laid aside the form of it in love to us. He made Himself of no reputation and then as Man humbled Himself. Still, though He said, Freely do I come; when a body was prepared Him, yet He therein took the place of the sent One. But His moral glory was the greater; therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down My life that I may take it again. Now, He could say, is the Son of man glorified. When I get the perfectness of the love, I find the Father sent the Son forth into the world. If I get a man sent from God, whose name was John, he has a mission; but when I see the Father sent the Son, I get the infiniteness of the Son in love, become a servant. If you go back, you will see the thing the devil sought was to get Christ out of the place of servant, and lead Him to command - "Command that these stones be made bread." "No"; as it were, He says, "I have taken the place of service, and I will keep it."

292 The sent One, as such, is not equal to the one who sends Him. But then you get Him, the Jehovah, and Jehovah says, "I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God." Isaiah saw also Jehovah in chapter 6; and in John 12, referring to that passage it says, "These things said Esaias when he saw his glory, and spake of him." What he saw was, "Jehovah sitting on the throne, high and lifted up."

But again, I do not admit that He came merely as man. He undertook to come and do this will of God, a place of distinct service. "Mine ears hast thou opened" ("digged" in margin); Psalm 40: 6. He undertook the service freely, and God prepared a body for Him. "He wakeneth mine ear to hear" as the learned, "the Lord God hath opened mine ear," that is, to learn down here; Isaiah 50: 4, 5. God formed the place of service, and prepared a body, and Christ says, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." We hear of the undertaking to come when the body was only prepared; He comes to take it and became flesh. Then His ears were opened morning by morning, and finally according to Exodus 21: 6, as He who had completed His full service, loving the One whose due service He had performed, His wife, His children, in death He became a servant for ever. Compare John 13. His present place, and Luke 12 when He comes and takes those who watch for Him to Himself. I came forth from the Father, and came into the world.

There is no such thing in Scripture as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It is in Revelation 13, "Whose names are not written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb slain." If people merely mean that the Lamb was slain before the world in the counsels of God, that is all very well, but in no other way.

293 Then He prays and first for the eleven; further on He says, "I pray not for these only" - all Christians are the gift of the Father to Christ; though the immediate application is to those brought in by the apostles. "I pray not for the world" stands in a way contrasted with Psalm 2. He leaves the world and does not pray for it. Intercession is only for those who actually believe. "I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me." He will ask for the world hereafter, but He does not occupy Himself with it here. It is in this verse that He begins to pray. "Glorify me" in verse 5 is not prayer. "And all mine are thine and thine are mine." It is precious to see these two motives given to the Father to keep us. If thou carest for Thine own thou must keep them, and if thou carest for My glory thou must keep them, for He adds, "and I am glorified in them." This gives two motives for keeping them, they belong to the Father and Christ is glorified in them. "And now I am no more in the world; but these are in the world, and I come to thee." There is His position taken. "Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are." As yet we have only got the disciples - the apostles. "While I was with them in the world I kept them in thy name, those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost." We get the name withal in which they are kept. Kept as by a Father, but as a holy Father, there is all the love and care of their being His own children, but the holiness of God's nature is the character in which He keeps them.

And now I have another thing to mark, and that is the three unities. First, it is the apostles "that they may be one as we are," and then the next is that they all may be one, as thou Father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me," and that is for the others who believe through their words - communion as 1 John 1. And then there is a third, "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." That is the glory. Display of the Father in the Son and of the Son in the saints.

294 The unity of the apostles was unity by the power of thought and work of the Holy Ghost. They were identical in counsels and purposes, being entirely under the Holy Ghost, they were all of one mind, and it was one thing. Then when the persons who had believed were brought in, they are brought into communion with the Father and the Son which the apostles enjoyed that they might be "one in us" as is said, may have communion with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. The apostles brought such into fellowship with them, and they then had communion with "us." Those who believed were brought into unity and communion, though they did not go out in action and counsel; but they are brought in to enjoy it in the Father and Son, and have fellowship with them. That would be the same as in John's first Epistle. It is unity of communion, not of divine action and counsel, and work. The third unity is simple; for there you have the glory, and you get what is descendible, so to speak, "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me."

The first is divine action and counsel and everything, referring to the twelve; the second refers to those who believe through their word, the Holy Ghost working by them, and these brought into communion, and all one that the world may believe; and then the unity in the glory, the glory given that they may be one even as we are one. The Father, glorified in Christ, and Christ glorified in us, and this glory He gives us that the world may know; for when they come out in glory the world will not "believe," but will "know" that God sent Christ, and, wondrous word! loved us as He loved Him, for they will see them in the same glory together. It is three steps, the giving out of the testimony by the apostles; the reception of the testimony through their means in the beginning; and the glory. The last is the same as in Thessalonians. "I am glorified in them" is also now, but He will be perfectly glorified in His saints. You get a picture of it in the Acts too. Well these are the three unities. "And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves." There you have them put in His own place with the Father "my joy"; nothing less.

295 "I have manifested thy (the Father's) name." I have brought them in here, and I am glorified in them, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. Even then, all the words His Father had given Him He had given them. He had put them completely in His own place before the Father.

And now He puts them in His own place, not with the Father, but in respect of the world; "I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them." It is in the same place of testimony that He had been in. They are in the same place as Himself with the Father to the end of verse 13; and then He begins to put them in the same place as to the world, and He prays, "not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." There I learn that He has made their place that which His was, giving them His testimony, the Father's word, not words here, and the world will not bear it; if you get into this place the world will not stand it. The world will bear a deal of religion, but not the Father. The Father dwells with the Christian; you are all outside, if you belong to the world and not to the Father. The Father has taken His Son up to Himself out of the world; and the Son says, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." "I have manifested thy name" and the effect is that I am rejected. The world has not known the Father, but the Father takes up the Son to His right hand, and the world is all left behind; but Christians are put in His place before the Father and before the world.

"Holy Father" is the name He uses in verse 11, where He asks for them to be kept; here it is "righteous Father" in speaking of the world. It is God, of course, but the friendship of the world is enmity against God, and God is righteous in reference to it. In verse 16 He says, "they are not of the world even as I am not of the world," and then goes on to how they are practically made not of the world as Christ was not of it. The Father's truth, and the Son at the right hand of God, these are the two great elements. "Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth." I want them apart from the evil, they are not of it, as I am not of it; thy word, the divine word, is truth, truth to separate them from it. And then "for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth." It is not only the Father's truth brought down by the Spirit so as to bring what is in His mind into ours and form us by it judging the evil; but Christ has set Himself apart as the One in whom all this truth is realised in glory, and as the object of their affections, so that they should be sanctified through the truth. Just as He had said before, "the truth shall make you free," and "the Son shall make you free." This is an important sentence; it is the way in which you are morally put in the place in which we are detached from the world. The truth shews us the divine nature, Christ, His death; it is the Father's word that comes from Christ who is gone on high, and it is with the additional fact that in Christ Himself it is all realised in glory. We have had now their place with the Father, their place in the world.

296 Then He prays "for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." And then comes the third position - the glory - "that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." The difference between believing and knowing is not sufficiently noticed. When the glory comes the world will know that we have been loved as Christ was, for we appear with Him in the same glory. What a wonderful sentence it is! The Lord delights to shew that we are in the same glory with Himself. Like Moses and Elias in the same glory with Him on the mount. In one sense this closes the teaching of the chapter.

The last three verses of the chapter alone refer to heaven. "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." He will have His disciples up there in the glory where He is; but this involves the question between Him and the world. And He appears to His Father to judge between the world and Himself. It is His direct desire for having them in the glory in verse 24, and then the decision as to the world comes in verse 25, and in verse 26 He says, "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them and I in them." That is a present thing. It is not "declaring," as before, that the world should know, but to the disciples; when the glory comes, the world will know that we have been loved as Jesus is loved. But we are to know it now, and for this purpose He has declared it, "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." He has made the Father's name known to us that the love wherewith He was loved may be in us, and He dwells in us as a kind of conductor of this love down to our hearts. There are two kinds of love known in the heart: God's love shed abroad there and the love of relationship in the Father; and different measures of it, according to our spirituality; but the living in it is the place we are in rightly, one child may feel its father's love better and deeper than another, but each is always in it. As a child, he has the Spirit of adoption and cries, Abba, Father; as to righteousness, he has it; and if I speak of a son, he is one. And he is all this through Christ. He has brought us into the same place with Himself. Such is the subject of the chapter. But you never find Christ taking us into the same place with Himself without His divine glory shining out and marking a difference in Him all the while. Still as to us and the ground of the relationship we are all in the same place. It is another thing whether the heart of the Christian in looking up has the consciousness of the same favour resting on him as rests on Christ; that may vary and in the same person too, but the settled consciousness of the favour is there.

297 In "He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one," we have the same thing. Before God we are of one, but He sanctifies, we are sanctified. And the nearer we are to Him the more we shall know it. You always get the difference kept up of the "sanctifier"; and they "sanctified"; but He does bring us into His own place, the same place in righteousness and life, and love. It is not merely that my sins are put away, through the work of the cross; that is not relationship, my debts are paid, and I have to be very thankful for it, but it puts me into no relationship with anybody. But Christ bring us into the same place as Himself, and then we come not only into relationship with Him, but also into His relationships.

Then just look a little at this expression - I feel it often in our worship meetings - "in the midst of the assembly will I sing praise unto thee." Christ is singing the praises, but He raises the song of praise as the consequence of His own place and ours being the same. He comes and brings us into this place and says, I will sing in the midst of the assembly He went down into the place of death and drank the cup of wrath, and comes out into all the blessedness of His Father's delight, not only as His eternal delight, but as having done the work for God - comes out and tells us His name, and then says, "you must come and sing with me." It shews how wonderfully He puts us into the place of relationship. And we cannot sing with Him unless we have found that deliverance which put the new song in His mouth. Even the bearing of sins and putting them away, though an everlasting ground of thanksgiving, is not a new relationship. What we are brought into is what the Father is to Him when He has accomplished the work: "thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee."

298 "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them and I in them." It is a very wonderful scheme of God, to be sure, to bring poor worms, sinners, into the place of His Son; and all His glory is in it, His love, His righteousness, His holiness, His majesty, all are made good in that by which we were; that is what we have here, Christ glorified His Father - things for the angels to look into. "Herein is love with us made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment" is different, in this, that there I have judgment before me, and you cannot have this here. That is the thing as I look at myself as a responsible being: responsibility leads me to judgment, but Christ has come in and cleared me from it all, and I am accepted in Him. But here I have another thing; what is He going to do with these redeemed people? He makes us "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," "and shew the exceeding riches of his grace in us." He must clear them from sins first, that is true, but He had this thought in His counsels to set us before Himself in love, "having predestinated us into the adoption of children (sons) by Jesus Christ to himself."

John's epistle is the other aspect of this, from the judgment side of it; it is not the union and relationship side but the other side so that, when I think of judgment, it is no judgment for me. "Boldness in the day of judgment," is a strong word, but that is what the epistle gives; it is in the aspect of judgment. If I am the same thing as my judge, I need have no fear of judgment if the judge acts according to what He Himself is, because I am the same thing as Himself. What I feel so important is, that consciousness of relationship should be insisted upon. It is more than that question of judgment, only here it is all the same position as Christ, as well as in the epistle. I find so many brethren who linger round the fact of clearing us from our sins, and do not enter into the consciousness of our relationship in Christ with the Father. Every Christian ought to have a sense of relationship, just as a child has on earth. The moment I take my place in Christ by faith, I say "I am loved as he is loved," and I understand the aspect of the Father's love towards me.

299 I do not say if we are sealed, that we should not say, "Abba Father," but such an one may not enter into what it is to be loved as Jesus is loved, and that Jesus would have it so, and dwells in him that he might. You will find many brethren who really know they are forgiven, and yet have never thought of being loved as Christ is loved. It is to be known by faith, in the power of the Holy Ghost looking up and being there - through the word of course.

The Lord says at the end, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee." These have come unto Me, they have received the message. There is "the world" on one side, and "these" on the other. "I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." And then comes what these souls get: "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." Before, it was the righteous Father, and He decides between the world, and Christ, and His disciples; and the love comes in and puts them in His place. He does so now, just as the Father had said, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" - as He had done in Lazarus, and would do again in Christ. As to the same glory: there is the divine end of it so to speak, and the other end of it. We are one with Him and He is one with the Father. Christ and His disciples go together, and the Father is to decide between them and the world, "O, righteous Father."

He goes over the brook Cedron, and still you get the same divine character. You have nothing at all, not a word, of what is called Gethsemane, or of the praying and crying to His Father; it is not that side that we get here. They came to take Him, and He puts Himself forward. You get a divine Person who is giving His life, and He says, "Whom seek ye? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also which betrayed him stood with them. As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward and fell to the ground."

300 It is all power. He had only to walk away then. As soon as divine power was manifested, they all fell to the ground. Then He asks again, "Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he; if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." He puts Himself forward, and all the disciples escaped, not in a very grand way, but still they are safe - the Good Shepherd puts Himself in the gap, and the sheep escape.

Now Simon Peter, who had been sleeping when he ought to have been praying, comes forward and resists. He cuts off the right ear of the high priest's servant, but Jesus says, "Put up thy sword into the sheath; the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it." This is not resisting; and it is all the Gethsemane you get here - a divine person as man, bowing to whatever is done as the Father's will. The Father has given Him the cup to drink, and He will drink it. He was a divine person, but a servant. Simon Peter denies Him; the high priest asks of His doctrine, and He answers He had ever openly taught in the temple; those who heard knew what He said. There is no recognition of authority anywhere though He submits to all. It is the Son of God who gives Himself. They lead Him to Pilate, and then what this Gospel so brings out is here again shewn, and that is perfect contempt for a Jew. Pilate asks, "Am I a Jew?" All through this is so. Our Lord says to the Jews, "Ye are of your father, the devil; ye have not the love of God in you." Pilate had the feeling of utter contempt. When the chief priest wanted to change the title on the cross, he says, utterly despising them, "What I have written I have written."

They claim that He should die. Pilate goes again, and asks, "Whence art thou"; and when He did not answer, he says, "Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivereth me unto thee hath the greater sin. And from henceforth Pilate sought to release him." The Jews cry, to work on his fears, "Thou art not Caesar's friend." "Therefore he that delivereth me unto thee hath the greater sin." Pilate had no power against Him really at all. If he believed that He was the Son of God, and there was at any rate fear in his conscience, he was helping on the devil's work against the Son of God, and any way he saw that in the Jews it was hypocrisy and envy.

301 Pilate's saying, "What is truth?" shewed he did not know what truth was. It is just what infidels say now. Their minds are always "open to truth," as they say, and this shews one clear thing - they have not got any. It is an old saying - "A fool can ask a question that nine wise men cannot answer." You will never find them state a truth; at best, everything is hypothetical. One said to me, "How can I get any good from anything I do not understand?" "Do you know how your heart beats?" I asked, "and do you not get any good by it?" He was confounded, but he got some good by it. And if I have truth, my love of truth is shewn by keeping it.

We find a complete apostasy of the Jews here. "It was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour; and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your king! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar." This was apostasy. It was denial of Messiah, their hope and everything else. That stamps their character.

They had a double council - one at night when He was taken, and then they came to a formal sentence in the morning. The narrative leaves much out here, as the interview with Herod, and many details. But it is all Christ in peace, who delivers His mother to the disciple, and then, knowing that all things were accomplished, He received the vinegar, and said, "It is finished." He was crucified at our nine, I suppose, and the darkness was from twelve till three, and then He died. There were six hours from the time when He was crucified, and the darkness was for three of them. Neither in Gethsemane, nor on the cross, have you a word of suffering in this Gospel. He bows His head, and gives up His own spirit.

He says "I thirst," that the scripture might be fulfilled. The suffering was all there of course, only this Gospel does not bring it out. In Matthew you get it all fully. In Luke you see a great deal more suffering in Gethsemane, and none on the cross. "Being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." There, and all through Luke, I get the Son of man, and not so much His divine person. As Son of man He goes through all sorrow, looked at as a matter of faith, in Gethsemane, and in spirit and heart He drinks the cup, so that, when He comes to die, the whole thing is perfectly calm. You get that side of it in Luke. And that is just what we ought to do - I mean, to go through all the sorrow and trial that is before us with the Father first, and when the sorrow itself comes, go through it in calm. Jordan overflows all its banks, it may be, but it is dry to us. Then in Luke it is simply said He expired.

302 Matthew gives us the sufferings on the cross fully: there I see the victim and the drinking of the cup. Is it not a wonderful thing to have the Lord brought down to us in this way - as Son of God and Son of man especially, all divinely developed for our souls to see what was going on? The vinegar was a kind of drink the soldiers had. Some have thought it mockery, but this is not the way in which it is presented here.

Certainly this is that death, where God and sin met in the sinless one, and death was what it could be to none but God, and yet He must be a man to die. He looked at it as the cup of the judgment of sin, God hiding His face, and yet there was perfect obedience manifest in man, besides the perfect love of God in it. There is no place like this; even the new heavens and new earth depended upon the cross, because God was perfectly glorified here as to the whole question of sin, and nowhere else; good and evil met perfectly; hatred against God and the devil's power and all possible evil in man to the highest degree. Christ, man perfect in obedience and love to His Father, having no sin, but made sin for us, while the judgment of God in righteousness against sin, yet in perfect love to the sinner; so that the question of good and evil might be settled and settled for ever, and by God Himself, the Son of God giving Himself as man for it.

Unrepentant sinners will be judged of course; will be judged, and justly, according to their works; but the cross has settled a great deal more than that; it has settled all that is in God's character as to evil and as to good. Christ says, "I have overcome the world," but also, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." And that work can never lose its value, and therefore I get the everlasting value of it when I get it at all. It was dealing with sin; but so as to put it away, and thus I get the new heavens and the new earth founded on it. Innocence was in the first earth, or garden of Eden, sin is in this, and righteousness will be in the next. The cross was to put away sin for God, and you get the new heavens and the new earth founded on sin being put away before God; righteousness then comes in. "He appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." The result is not produced yet at large, though it is in respect of our consciences. Heaven and earth shall bow to Christ, but that is things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth too, and that is final. Now God has been glorified finally, and this cannot change; and everything new is based on it.

303 The Lord's making John the guardian of His mother explains, "what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." But when His hour was come, and He had done the work, He could turn to recognise the relationship, seeing He was now no longer engaged in serving His Father on earth.

It was the scene that stands by itself. Pilate was alarmed and uneasy all through; his wife came and told him she had suffered many things in a dream because of Him, and he was to have nothing to do with that just man, but the Jews press Him on, though Pilate did it himself. Everything was exactly opposite to God; the disciples that ought to have been faithful to Him, run away, another betrays Him, another denies Him; the chief priests, who ought to have interceded for the guilty, plead against the innocent; Pilate, who ought to have justly acquitted Him and set Him free, condemns Him. Everything was exactly opposite to what ought to have been. The cross being there brought everything to the test.

Pilate represents the power of the world committed against Christ, and that has been fatally compromised there: it was the abuse of the power committed to the Gentiles by God. The Jews were the agents in it all, but Pilate was the government of the world recklessly rejecting Christ at the instigation of wicked men.

When the Lord returns, He will find the beast in power, and the Antichrist there. Evil will have all ripened into some positive shape, but otherwise it will be exactly the same. That is the reason why the Lord, as to circumstances, took the sorrows of the remnant upon Him. He had to do with the apostate nation, with the king Caesar; He had to do with them all, but did he find faith on the earth? The remnant will have to do both with apostasy and Gentile power, with this immense difference - that Christ went through judgment for them, and they will not have to do it.

304 The Jews have a tradition that Antichrist is to be of the tribe of Dan; and they look for Messiah Son of Joseph to suffer, and for Messiah Son of David to reign. Many now look for nothing at all. There is a rationalistic movement among them, and an attempt on the part of some to join the Socinians. Some will tell you that Christians have done a great deal of good, and many have read the New Testament, but many are infidels, and this is growing among them - on the one side the Talmudists, and the rationalists on the other, and some few in between these; but they are all uneasy.

In Revelation 13 we have Antichrist with two horns like a lamb, that is his royal character. In the first part of that chapter, the Roman power comes first, and they will both go on together, and play into each other's hands; but then the beast has not as yet actually come into Palestine; when he has, the second beast has truly his prophet character.

John alone of the evangelists mentions the flowing of the blood and water from Christ's side; he alludes to it in his epistle too. It is a beautiful testimony of divine grace, answering the last insult man could heap upon Him. They drove Him outside the camp, put Him to death on a cross, and then, to make assurance doubly sure, the soldier gives Him a blow with his spear. Salvation was God's answer to man's insult, sin in his rejection of Him, for the blood and water were the signs of it.

In John's epistle the water is named first, because, looked at on God's side, water comes first; in the history it cannot: "Forthwith came there out blood and water," in the epistle; "not by water only, but by water and blood." The point is that eternal life is not found in the first Adam but in the last; the witnesses to this are the water, the blood, and the Spirit. You want purifying to have eternal life; you will get it nowhere but in death, and in that of Christ in grace. You want expiation, and the blood of Christ makes that; you want the Holy Ghost. Christ is not only dead, but glorified, and the Spirit is given, the witness that there is no life in the first Adam but in the Son. Its power is found in that which marks the total breach of the first man with God and of God with him, save in sovereign mercy. In the epistle John is shewing that moral cleansing will not be enough. The Spirit is named first when God applies it. The word is the instrument, but it is by death itself: you must have cleansing, but the cleansing is death. The water, coming forth from the side, is purity; and you can have purity by death only, and by His death. Then Joseph comes before us, and Nicodemus too, when the thing comes to a point.

305 But in chapter 20 we get the whole picture of the dispensation, from the remnant of Israel that first received Him risen, to the remnant that will know Him when they see Him again, represented by Thomas. Mary comes early to the sepulchre, while it is yet dark; her heart is there, and she has no rest without Him. The others came when it was light - the natural hour to come. When they had been buying spices for the body and what they were going to do next morning, they come at the light. But Mary Magdalene has no heart to be without Him, and, before the light, she is there. The church began by a remnant, but John never gives us the church, but the remnant at the end, and in verse 17, "My Father and your Father, my God and your God" - two dispensations if you call them so.

First, Mary goes to the sepulchre and finds the stone rolled away. She runs and tells Peter and John, and they go to the sepulchre. Peter goes in first as usual; those two constantly go together, they both loved the Lord, but in very different characters. They do not shine in this history. They come and see and believe, and go away to eat their breakfasts, or for something at home. They did not know the scriptures, nor did they stay to be anxious about it at all. They saw and believed, for they knew not the scriptures. It was not faith in God's word but sight convinced them. The clothes all lay quietly there; there had been no stealing away, and they said He must be risen. Afterwards Christ reproaches them for their unbelief. At any rate like Mary, they might have inquired. Mary stays when they have gone off; and there she is weeping, and thinks when she sees Him He is the gardener, and says, "If thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." She feels she has a right to dispose of His body, and talks to the gardener as if he knows all about it - "Tell me where thou hast laid him" - just as I might go to a house where one is ill, and say, "How is he?" without stating a name, because all hearts are full of the sick one. Then Christ brings out (the angel had done so too) where her heart was; and, when that is done, He calls His own sheep by name, and she turns and says to Him, Rabboni, that is, Master. Then she would have taken Him by the feet, but He anticipates her, for she thought she had got Him back again for the kingdom. You must not touch Me, "but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." It is the highest expression of personal relationship, and she is the messenger of it to the apostles themselves. He has accomplished redemption, and they are His brethren, for He has put them into the same place as Himself. The women in Matthew touch Him, but they were no messengers of a higher calling in contrast with the kingdom. They thought nothing about the act save as a mere token of respect and attention, and He let them do it.

306 The Lord was not seen by Peter first. The women are not named in 1 Corinthians 15, because Paul is speaking of witnesses there; he speaks of Peter, and the twelve, and five hundred, and James, and that was all he wanted. "Then of the twelve"; that marks it.

It was written in the Book of Psalms, and his "bishoprick let another take." That was both reason and authority for choosing another. He has another to witness of His resurrection, because the Psalms said it was to be done. The number "twelve" is the perfection of human things in government; the foundations of the city, new Jerusalem, are twelve; so twelve apostles of the Lord. "Ye shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." There must be twelve.

Luke takes them all in a lump - Mary Magdalene and the other women, and puts them together; this is Luke's way - all in a lump together, and then he picks out perhaps a single circumstance in which deep and interesting moral traits are developed and that he gives at length. In verse 18 we get Mary Magdalene's testimony. The seeing and believing left the disciples at home, individually, but through her they receive testimony. Mary Magdalene is the figure of the remnant.

Then another point. We see them gathered, and Christ pronounces peace upon them. He had said before, "Peace I leave with you" - His own peace in the world, but here there is not only resurrection brought in, but the relationship. "My Father and your Father, my God and your God." And then He comes in a sense into the midst of the church gathered together, and, instead of saying, "Fear not," as He was wont while here below, the door was shut for fear of the Jews, and He says now, "Peace be unto you," for He had now made peace by the blood of His cross. As though to say, "I cannot stay with you, but I leave peace with you"; and He breathes on them too, and says, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." "As I cannot stay, here is a provision for you if I go"; such is the force of it. It is the Holy Ghost in the power of life in resurrection, not sent down from heaven. There is nothing special in the "eight" days, in verse 26. In one place you will find "after six days," and in another, eight. John never gives us the church as a doctrine, but we have historically their gathering together and He in their midst.

307 As to peace He says, "Peace be unto you; as my Father has sent me, even so send I you." It is characteristic now to be so. The word "peace" is an amazing word in scripture. "The God of peace shall be with you." He is never called the God of joy; it is never given as His character. He is, as God, always in peace, and never up and down as we are. Joy is a feeling that a man has when he is up, and presently it subsides, and he goes down again. Christ now brings peace - He has made absolute peace, perfect peace, and He brings it.

Then comes the breathing on them. It was the figure of the Holy Ghost coming after He had made peace; but as a fact it was the power of resurrection life. Just as God breathed into Adam's nostrils, so the resurrection Son of God breathes into them the power of the life He gives them as risen. In Acts 1 you get the sending of the Holy Ghost, not the breathing on them, not the power of life, but the Holy Ghost Himself received anew for others from the Father by the Son, and then by Him shed forth.

As to "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them." They were the administrators of it in the world; first in the preaching of the gospel if you like; but afterwards, in the proper administrative sense. Here it is the apostles. But Peter in a sense remitted Cornelius' sins. Paul says, "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also." And yet, if such an one is a believer, he has eternal life and forgiveness all the while. That is what I mean by administrative. Not the forgiveness in which the soul is justified, but the present conferring the forgiveness in the ways and government of God. James says, "And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." If discipline is carried out, there the sin is bound upon the person. It is spoken here of the disciples, that is the eleven. The question has been raised, I know, whether there were one hundred and twenty that obtained this power, or only eleven. The great thing is to get what the Spirit of God is at in the passage, and afterwards the context as much as you like. Thomas is not there the first time. There might have been more than the eleven present.

308 As to binding and loosing the only thing that I see it conferred upon, after Peter, is in Matthew 18: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name"; forgiveness of sins is not named here, though this is part of it. The thing He is here speaking of is their administrative capacity. In those early days there was no such thought as receiving in anyone, and he not having his sins forgiven. It is the very thing, they, the disciples, were "sent" out for - to announce the remission of sins to give knowledge of the salvation of His people by the forgiveness of sins: only He gives the administration of it to them. I believe that any assembly of two or three in Christ's name (provided they look to Him, and do it in His name) have the power to bind and loose, and forgive sins; only this is not eternal forgiveness.

As to chapter 18: 28, it is a question of whether Christ anticipated the Passover, for they began it in the evening, and among the Jews the evening began the next day, and was reckoned with it. It was dark when they went out. I did look into the thing once, but those things do not occupy me much. "That they might eat the passover," falls in completely with Christ being sacrificed on the paschal day; it is merely a question of why He ate the supper previously, and still it was on the same day. As to the title on the cross, here we get the whole - "Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews." One Gospel gives one part, and another another; but here you get it in full.

To return to the forgiveness of sins in chapter 20. He says "Peace [be] to you"; first by itself, and next, both on the Lord's day, says, "Peace [be] to you; as the Father sent me forth, I also send you." He brought the peace to them, and then He sent them out with the peace. Then He breathes the Holy Ghost into them, which, looked at as figurative teaching, in the dispensational teaching here given, is the same as sending it from heaven; but historically it was the power of life, and not the giving of a person.

309 When they brought the message of this peace and preached the gospel, that was the character of their mission; then there was restoring souls in details. The offering once offered, we have absolute remission, when it is a question of our acceptance with God; and then the administrative thing, as "Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins," to Paul. It is well to see that, as to forgiveness, it is not a mere perfect work by which I am to be forgiven, but I am forgiven. It is more than mere declaration. The woman in Luke 7 was forgiven in the mind of God, but she herself had it not until the Lord said to her, "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." I could not say that a person is sealed in the mind of God, because sealing is not a thing in a person's mind at all, and forgiveness is. I may have forgiven you an offence, but you are not easy until I tell you so; whilst sealing is a different thing in its nature. The woman did not get the forgiveness until He said so, though she saw the grace in Christ that drew her to Him. You find that constantly; you get it in pious souls, the sense of the grace that forgives without the sense of forgiveness. They love the Lord, but if I say, "Are your sins forgiven?" the reply at once is, "Oh, I could not say that." You find hundreds such. You see it as to salvation in Cornelius. He was to call Peter and hear words, whereby he and his house should be saved. He was safe really already. Justification is in the same way. People talk about eternal justification; but justification is not only what is in the mind of God, but in the man's receiving it, and therefore you get justification by faith. A person really is accepted, and there is the sense of the forgiving grace in the person of Christ, but the word of known forgiveness is not in the mind of the person himself. The same of justification. That is the force of the word, "He was raised again for our justification," because justification there is an active word in Greek - for our justifying - and then it adds, "Having been justified by faith," and so on. Faith must come in in order to our actually having it, and the man has not got it until faith. Suppose a thousand pounds given to me, I must sign my name for it. Actually I do not get it until I sign my name.

310 In Matthew 18: 15-18, the inheritance of binding and loosing is given to the two or three. Thus the binding and loosing power which is claimed by clergymen and others, and which was given first to Peter, has its succession in the two or three gathered together, and not in clerical successors. And that has its importance in these days. In Matthew it is not absolutely the same as in John 20: 23, for it may apply to other things. The main point is the same no doubt, and has always been considered so, though not exclusively that. It is almost always "heavens," not "heaven." The place is lost sight of when we say "heaven," because we talk loosely of going to heaven. It is the "kingdom of the heavens"; that is, belongs to the heavens and not to the earth. "Heavens" is the place more, but "heaven" is characteristic. You may use both so, but I should say, "The heavens are higher than the earth." We use the heavens more materially in a way. There are habits of that kind in language which are not absolute.

Peter is represented as having "keys," but it is an important point to notice that there are no keys of the church; that is a mere blunder. "I will build," says Christ; and Peter had nothing to say to it except the privilege of getting the name "Peter." The administration of the church was not committed to Peter, but of the kingdom. The church in this sense is not even built yet; whereas the keys of the administration of the kingdom of heaven upon earth were committed to him; and he lets in the Jews and the Gentiles. That is the force of "keys." "The key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder," Isaiah 22: 22, has the same meaning. It is the charge of administering the kingdom of heaven down here. That is where popery has made an immense blunder, though very natural to the state of that church. It has taken Peter instead of Paul; there is no successor to Paul, and they do not attempt it. Peter had to follow Christ, and Judaism came to nothing, and the circumcision church died away at Jerusalem. They take up with Peter because the church dropped into a Judaical state. You never hear of a pope as the successor of Paul. The entire thing is ridiculous, because after all you have no succession of Peter. As to successors to Timothy, whom Paul appointed in a way (but not to be his successor), nobody has thought of that, except in some general idea.

311 It is curious how and where things come out. There are those now and doctors of divinity too; one of them goes through all this, and declares there is no ordination to the ministry in scripture, and no sacraments in scripture, and that one person is as competent to administer as another, that certain things must be done, but there is no authority in any clergy from scripture. He says there was no such thing in the early church at all. And it is so - there was not. He admits that the apostles appointed elders, as indeed is plain, but it must be taken for granted that they did it with the concurrence of the people, because Clement says so. Clement owns no bishop. Vigilantius was cursed by Jerome in an awful way; but he stopped on his way back and stayed among the Vaudois. Tillemont says of Jerome, "we may learn from this what a church saint is." He is as abusive and vengeful as possible, only he praises celibacy. Chrysostom and Augustine fell under his lash.

But we were at forgiveness: and now we get the remnant in the last days, and the three times that Christ reveals Himself to them, as it says in chapter 21: 14: "This is now the third time." He had seen them ever so many times, but as to this kind of definite public and positive shewing Himself, the first time was on the Lord's day (chap. 20: 19); then when Thomas was there eight days after in verse 26; and then in the last chapter picturing the remnant at the end. Calling this the "third time" is a proof that the third time is used with a kind of specific figurative character. Thomas being absent the first time, had no part in this Christian mission, but he comes in afterwards, and believes when he sees.

Let us look now at the different missions in the different Gospels. In Matthew you have no ascension, and you get the mission from Galilee. The angels tell the women to "go quickly, and tell his disciples," not "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God," but "that he is risen from the dead, and behold he goeth before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you." And then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee unto a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when they saw him they worshipped, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth; go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." There you get the mission in resurrection from Galilee, and from the remnant of Israel looked at as thus gathered, and going out to disciple the nations or Gentiles. And that never was carried out in scripture, except it be a hint in Mark at the utmost. And not only you do not get it carried out negatively, but you also get positively the going to the Gentiles given up to Paul. The apostles gave it up, and agreed that they should go to the Jews, and "that we should go unto the heathen." You find it in Galatians 2. And then you get the church an entirely new kind of thing. As Matthew's mission, everything was provisional, not carried out.

312 But there is another thing which gives an intimation about it, and that is, when the Lord sends them forth, He tells them (Matthew 10) "If they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another; for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come." But in Acts you find that, on persecution arising, they all fled, except the apostles, and that must be taken into account as to the way in which the instruction was practically carried out. For the Gentiles there is an entirely fresh start from Antioch when Paul is sent out by the Holy Ghost. There was then very nearly a split between Jerusalem and Antioch, but they were united and kept together as you find in Acts 15.

Well, the mission in Matthew starts from Christ's connection with the remnant in Israel. In Mark, it is more general. You get more the service of Christ there; and in chapter 16: 15, He said unto them, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature"; that is the largest and most general commission you have, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." It is the more remarkable because that is the part of Mark which the learned Germans reject from verse 9 to the end. In what precedes you get this Galilee revelation of Himself, but no heavenly revelation, no Bethany revelation at all. In what they consider genuine in Mark you do not get the ascension; they only go to the instruction in verse 7, and stop with "They were afraid" (v. 8). But in Mark they are sent to Galilee, and the history is pursued regularly on that basis up to the end of verse 8, but if you stop at verse 8, it stops all of a heap, and you get no mission at all. In these last verses you get His appearings to them, and the facts are what are recounted in Luke and John, and the mission is added in verse 15; it is not said in what connection, and then He is received up into heaven. They go forth, the Lord working with them, so that there you get the mission from heaven with power. It is the Luke commission from verse 9. In Luke you only get the last part of Mark, who gives Matthew up to the sepulchre, and parts of Luke and John. In Luke 24 "It behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." He, taking the mission from heaven as Paul did, takes in Jerusalem as much as the nations, "the Jew first, and also the Greek." Then "He led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lift up his hands and blessed them; and it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." So Luke's mission practically comes from heaven, it is in Bethany and not in Galilee. Galilee is the mission to Gentiles only from a risen Saviour in the place where He had the poor of the flock; Luke's commission is from heaven, and is Pauline in character. In Mark you have "Go to Galilee," but you have no Galilee mission at all. In John you get no going to heaven, but you get them sent out for the remission of sins: "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." It is a mission from the divine person, not from a place at all. And then it is by the Holy Ghost: He gives them the Holy Ghost and the forgiveness of sins; and so there is no ascension in John, for this would give a place, though a heavenly one.

313 And now it is all purposely mysterious in the end of John. It is remarkable - all the puzzling of men's minds about these things, when it is just an inlet into the fulness of truth. "After these things" (chap. 21: 1), it is all mysterious. Peter was going back to the old work from which he had been called. Peter might have wanted his dinner. But it was ordered of God for His own purposes. And they went forth, but that night they caught nothing. When the morning came, Jesus stood on the shore, and asks, "Have ye any meat?" They answer "No." He says, "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." And they were not able to draw the net for the multitude of fishes. "Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved [the secret of the Lord was still with him who loved and kept close to Him], saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea, and the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fishes."

314 But the Lord had fish already; He had got the remnant with Him on shore, and then you get the millennial haul. It is all purposely mysterious. Where did He get the fish He had? It does not say. But "Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three; and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken." Now when the gospel haul was depicted (Luke 5: 6), the net was broken; but here, the Lord being there, the net did not break. The gospel net gathered fishes, and does now; but as a whole, the net broke, and they began to sink. Here they haul them in, and the Spirit of God notices that the thing is complete. The fishes gathered out of the sea are the nations; but the Jewish remnant is on the shore already.

We may here remark how Augustine makes a mess when he gets on the unity of the church. It was settled at that time that they should not re-baptize heretics, and so the Donatists say to him, "You do not re-baptize those you call heretics because they have already received the Holy Ghost by our baptism, but how could we give the Holy Ghost if we have not got it?" And Augustine could say nothing, for it was a decided thing already. They confounded the outward thing with the inward. Augustine felt the reality of divine things, and was trying to unite the two - the outward and the inward He took the outward thing as the union with Christ, and said there was no salvation out of it.

"Jesus then cometh and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his disciples after that he was risen from the dead." And now He begins with Simon Peter and the mission He has for him. There is a mission that goes before Christ's coming - a kind of John the Baptist mission; and after that they go out and bring the nations in. The disciples had not yet the Holy Ghost, and understood nothing. Israel will be the head of nations, and the nations will take hold of the skirts of a Jew, saying, "We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."

315 The unbelieving Jews before that will join the Gentiles in total unbelief. Any who are converted will be persecuted horribly, and their blood will be shed like water. The Gentile haul will be for the millennium. Compare Revelation 7. The Jews will understand it, as everybody will then.

The net full is the millennium all through; it is merely a general idea of a whole body of people, but these passages refer to the beginning of it all. In the last of Isaiah you find the Gentiles will bring the Jews all in. Matthew 25 is the judgment on the nations. But the remnant, you remember, is distinct from the haul. Matthew 25 is at the beginning, and so is Revelation 7, where they come out of the great tribulation; both these speak of the beginning, but in the haul, the net not being broken the effect goes on. The gospel net is going on now. The net breaking is simply that the system gave way. Then we see the Lord and the disciples eating together. This completes the picture.

Then Simon Peter comes, and the Lord takes him and tests him as to his fall. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?" That is what he pretended to do. "He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love [am attached to] thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs." He asks a second time, and Simon replies the same, but the Lord changes the words then into "Feed my sheep," or properly, "Shepherd my sheep," not "feed." It is one of the defects of the English translation, that they have put the same word where the original has different ones, and different words where the original has the same. Then the third time, instead of using the same Greek word for "lovest," as in the first two questions, the Lord changes the word, and uses the same word [phileo] that Peter had used in his two answers. He took Peter up as it were on his own expression, and asks him, "Art thou attached to me "; Peter answers, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love [am attached to] thee."

The Lord never reproaches Peter for the fault, but He probes him - probes the root that produced it; and when He has thoroughly humbled him so that he is obliged to appeal to divine knowledge that he did love, then He commits all that is dearest to Himself to Peter. He had said to him before (Luke 22) that He had prayed for him, "that thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted [brought back], strengthen thy brethren. And he saith unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day before thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me"; and now, when Peter is broken down and the flesh proved, can He say, as it were, "you are fit to serve." You see how He takes that up, "when thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest," there is human will; "but when thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me." That is exactly what Peter had pretended to do; he had said, "I will follow thee to prison and death." Now He says, Of your own will you cannot. It is a beautiful expression of the Lord's love and a pattern of the Lord's restoring grace.

316 Everyone has to go through that, though you see many a person serving sincerely who has not been broken down yet. Yet I believe it must be got; if one does go and make messes, he gets it afterwards. There is a positive breaking down of flesh, and then when you know it can do nothing but mischief, which is all it can do, there is still the watching of it after its back is broken, so to speak. Peter's mission to the circumcision comes to nothing in the outward sense, and he follows Christ. As to outward work for the Jews, Christ's mission had come to nothing, and so had Peter's: Jerusalem was taken, the Jews were rejected, and the church as Peter had it was altogether nothing, being supplanted, as you may say, by Paul's. So with Paul himself, when Jesus spoke to him, and he fell to the earth, he asks, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Before, in his own energy, he had had no hesitation what to do, and went very vigorously about it. And afterwards he was away for three years to learn, though he was first allowed to give a full testimony at Damascus; "And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God." In that way Moses needed to have forty years in the desert before leading out the people.

Then Peter asks about John, "Lord, what shall this man do?" and Jesus says, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me." John does not come under "Follow thou me," but has to continue until Christ comes, and not be cut off as it were. John always speaks so of himself; there is a fitness for John's ministry in it. It shews a complete attachment to Christ personally. You never get the church in John's ministry; it is always the individual; and, Christ being personally the thing he clings to, all that is vital and essential to souls (supposing the church goes to the winds) is there still. And John was just the one to hang over the ruin of the church and carry out the essential of Christianity. John's ministry did tarry till Christ came, next the Antichrist in his epistle, and then the church spued out of Christ's mouth, and so on. The other disciples took the words as if John would not die, but this was not said. Then you have no Paul, no founding of the church, as a distinct thing, no ascension here: we are in Galilee with a mysterious intimation of what was going to happen, and Christ is in Galilee, not in Bethany when it ends, but He here gives no mission from Galilee; we have Peter following Him, and John tarrying till He came again, mysteriously, and meant to be so.

317 But Peter in his second epistle gets beyond this into new heavens and new earth. And you have the day of the Lord in which "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." Peter's epistles are the government of the Lord, the first being the government of the saints in the world, and the second more the government of the world - its judgment. And therefore he carries this on to the new heavens and new earth. But you have nothing of the Lord's coming except that the wicked despise it.

The first epistle is government for, and the second is government against; the first is taking care of the saints, the second is power over, and judgment on, the wicked. Peter forms in that way a connecting link. We are not of the world at all, but there is an application of the government of God while we are passing through it. We find the saints suffering for righteousness' sake, and suffering for Christ's sake, and God's care of them in it all. That is in the first epistle. The second is government in respect of evil. John's ministry was different; his life hung as it were over the seven churches.

"Whither thou wouldest not" means against Peter's will. With his flesh unbroken he could not follow Christ at all, but afterwards he would. It is in the fullest contrast with Paul in Philippians, a totally different kind of thing. It is just the opposite to Mark 10. The young man is righteous according to law, and, instead of counting all dross and dung, he goes away sorrowful because he has great possessions. Instead of the righteousness of faith, the young man was looking how he was to be righteous in his own way. It is a wonderful thing - God's mind being all brought before us in this way. The leaving out of Paul and all that belongs to his ministry strictly is very striking here. His was an extra mission, being "one born out of due time"; and even Peter speaks of him as writing "things hard to be understood" in his epistles. There is nothing about demons in John's Gospel: "ye are of your father the devil" you get, but no demons possessing men. You have the Lord in His own divine person, and the devil is the adversary.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

J. N. Darby.

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Introduction.

The Acts of the Apostles are a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, and are written by the same Evangelist. The discourses, whether of Peter or of Paul, have their source in the heavenly commission which is found at the end of that Gospel. It is not necessary, I hope, to say that the whole is given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, because each of the evangelists has been employed by God to present us with a different aspect of the history of the Lord; and each has accomplished, with the help of the Spirit, the work assigned to him by God. For example, in Matthew we find much more the dispensations of God, and the Lord as Emmanuel in the midst of Israel on the earth. In Luke, after the first two chapters, we have the Son of man, and the ways of God in grace and the blessings of the present time. Then again, in Matthew, the ascension of the Lord is not recounted, and the commission given to the apostles comes from a risen Jesus, and is addressed to the Gentiles as though the residue of the Jews were already received in grace. The Lord, in Luke, is about to ascend into heaven, and goes there while speaking to them, blessing them with a heavenly blessing; and the commission is addressed to all - first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. The disciples were to begin in Jerusalem; and this work - the accomplishment of their mission - is what is found recounted in Acts.

Let us follow the course of this story, which is essentially the history of the activity of the apostles Peter and Paul: the first among the Jews, and in the foundation of the church at Jerusalem; and the other among the Gentiles, although he always addressed himself first to the Jews. The first was one of His eleven disciples who had followed the Lord on the earth, till the cloud received Him and took Him from their sight. The last, Paul, an open enemy to the name of Christ, and converted in sovereign grace while he was occupied in the destruction, if possible, of that name, only saw Him in the glory, and went out to call the Gentiles to the faith: marvellous witness of the sovereign grace of God, and of a glory which renders a magnificent testimony to the perfect and accepted work of Christ, to which believers are led by faith in Him and in His work. Both these two great apostles laid the same foundation of the salvation preached, that there is but one Saviour and one work by which we may be saved.

320 Now the grand and important fact, on which all the history depends, is the descent of the Holy Spirit. Doubtless, in all Biblical history, the responsibility of man is found, as well as the ways of God, through the deeds and weakness of man; but nevertheless the presence of the Holy Spirit on the earth, sent by the Father and by the Son of man, and dwelling in the faithful and in the house of God, is of immense importance. It is only when God has accomplished redemption that He comes to dwell in the midst of men. He did not dwell with Adam in his innocence, nor with Abraham, nor with any, till He had brought Israel out of Egypt, and had rescued them from the hands of the king of Egypt, in whose hands they were prisoners; then He came to dwell in their midst in the cloud, and the tabernacle was filled with His glory.

Thus, as soon as the Son of man is gone into heaven to sit down at the right hand of God, having accomplished the work of redemption, the Holy Spirit descends according to His promise of the Comforter, and the baptism of the Spirit is realised. Sent from the Father, He cries, "Abba, Father," in the hearts of those who have received Him. Sent by the Son from the Father, He reveals the glory of Him, the man in heaven; and, more than that, forms the body of Christ joining the members to the head, so that he "that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," dwelling in the believer, and also in the universal congregation of believers, so that they are together the habitation of God. It is evident that this truth is of immense importance; the spiritual liberty given to the child of God, the unity of the assembly of God, and the union of the children of God, all depend on the presence of the Spirit, as all are founded on the work of the Saviour on the cross. Then this truth reveals the state of the external church where He dwells, because she has grieved the Spirit, and has been - and has acted - in a manner altogether contrary to what He would have her be and do, so much so that the judgment of God is ready to fall upon her.

Since I have spoken of the descent of the Holy Spirit, it must be understood that the "new birth" is not the point here (though that may be accomplished by the same Spirit), but rather the personal coming of the Spirit, when the Son of man ascended into heaven. The Holy Spirit has worked divinely since the foundation of the world. He it was who moved upon the face of the waters, who inspired the prophets, who has been the immediate instrument of all that God has done on the earth and in the heavens. But He only came here below when the Son of man went to sit down at the right hand of God (John 7: 37-39), and is only received when we believe (Eph. 1: 13; Gal. 4: 6). This is seen also clearly elsewhere: we are sealed when we have believed, and especially when we have believed in the value of the blood of Christ. Washed in this precious blood, we are fit to be the habitation of the Spirit of God. "Know ye not," says the apostle Paul, "that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit which ye have from God?" As when the leper was cleansed and purified under the law, he was first washed with water, then sprinkled with blood, then anointed with oil (Lev. 14: 8, 9, and 14-18) - clear figure of our purification by means of the word of God when we are converted and born again, then of the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, and finally of the anointing of the Holy Spirit by which we are sealed for the day of final redemption.

321 Also all gifts, the exercise of which is found in the church, are the manifestation of the Holy Spirit who works there. But here, in the Acts, the exposition of the operations of the Spirit is not found, but the fact itself of His coming in order to work.

Acts 1.

Let us now come to the examination of the narrative itself. This begins with the great truth of which we have already spoken. The disciples were to wait at Jerusalem for the baptism of the Holy Ghost. We shall find again the proof of another precious truth. The Lord, after His resurrection, gave commissions to His disciples by the Holy Ghost. We shall not lose the Holy Ghost when we are raised again: truth perhaps simple, but which makes us feel how great will be our capacity for happiness in that state. Now a great portion of our spiritual strength is employed to enable us to walk in integrity, in spite of the flesh and the temptations of the enemy; but then neither the one nor the other will exist. All the power of the Spirit in us will be employed in rendering us fit for the infinite felicity we shall find there. We shall enjoy it according to the strength of the Spirit, as Christ gave gifts by the Spirit to His disciples after His resurrection.

322 Remark now the intimacy of the Lord with His disciples. He spoke of the things belonging to the kingdom of God. Christ is now glorified, but His heart, full of divine love, is not removed, is not any the farther away from His own. When He appeared to Saul, He said, "I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest." He speaks to Ananias with authority it is true, but as with a friend, opening His heart respecting Saul, and sending Ananias to speak to him.

He was not ashamed to call His disciples friends on the earth; He is not ashamed to treat them as friends now. Immense blessing! To feel that the Lord of glory is near to us, that He holds us as friends and loved ones, and that He can feel compassion also for our infirmities.

The disciples expected still the visible kingdom of the Lord in Israel; their hearts were still Jewish. They quite believed that He had risen again, but expected that their hopes of the restoration of Israel as a nation would be realised by the Lord, now that He had come out of the sepulchre. The Lord did not tell them that the kingdom would not be restored to Israel; but that it did not concern them to know the times and seasons which the Father had put in His own power. The kingdom shall be restored to Israel - when is not revealed. The Son of man will come in an hour when He is not expected. He sits at the right hand of God the Father till His enemies shall be made His footstool. In the meantime He gathers His co-heirs, those who are content to suffer with Him; and caught up into glory we shall reign with Him. It is not revealed then, it was not revealed to the disciples - the hour of the Saviour's return; but they should receive, said the Lord, not many days hence, the power of the Holy Ghost, which should come on them, and they should be witnesses to Him in Jerusalem, in Judaea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth. And, having said these things, He was taken up, while they beheld, and a cloud received Him and took Him away out of their sight. They were to be eyewitnesses as far as this point of His heavenly glory. The Holy Ghost was sent after Him (see John 15: 26, 27). We shall find later that Saul saw Him in His heavenly glory for the first time, of which thing he was to be the special witness. How the Holy Ghost has rendered clear testimony to this glory, we shall see in the discourses in the Acts; and again it may be seen in the epistles of Peter and elsewhere.

323 But here is found, before the coming of the Holy Ghost, a very remarkable testimony rendered by means of angels. The disciples had their eyes fixed on the heavens while Jesus was going there. This was very natural. The beloved Saviour, given back to them from the grave, was, apparently at least, abandoning them again - for heaven, it is true, which ought to have strengthened their faith. He had left a promise of the power of the Spirit, which, however, had not yet come; and therefore the consciousness and direction of this power, which was to reveal all the truth, was wanting to them. He had gone away, and what should they do? They must wait.

And as their eyes were then fixed on the heavens, behold, two by appearance men, but in reality angels, stood beside them, asking why they looked up into heaven, and making them the revelation of His return. A fact very remarkable, since the Lord had, after the Lord's supper, made known to the disciples that He was going to the Father; and the first consolation He gave His disciples was that He would come again and take them to Himself in the Father's house, where He was going to prepare them a place; then He speaks of the presence of the Comforter which was to be accomplished. There He speaks of His coming to introduce His own into the Father's house; here, of His glorious appearing, when He will make Himself seen from the place where He has gone. There He Himself speaks of the special privilege of His own according to His personal affection which He had for them. He wished to console them, His heart had need of them; He desired to have them near to Himself, in the same glory, so that they might see His glory, but especially that, where He was, there they might be also. Here it is His return in glory, which would be like His going away.

This was the disciples' first consolation, once they were deprived of His presence. Then another Comforter would be given to dwell with them meanwhile here below. But whether in the declaration on the part of the Lord in His love, or in the revelation made by the angels, the first thing in the Saviour's heart and in the revelations of God is that He will come again. Immense is the gift of the Spirit during His absence, and for ever immense is the nature of the state in which redemption has placed the assembly of God here below: but its hope is, and the height of its joy will be, to see the Saviour as He is, to be always with Him, like Him, to see and to be for ever with Him who does love us and has washed us from our sins in His own blood, and to see Him face to face! Greatest blessing, too great for us, if not the fruit of something still greater - the cross and the sufferings of the Son of God.

324 Once this blessed Saviour has suffered, and the Son of God has been made sin for us, and has died as a man on the cross, nothing is too great; it will only be the fruit of the travail of His soul. He shall be satisfied; His love shall be satisfied in our happiness and in our presence with Him. Look only at Zephaniah 3: 17, where the love and the glory are inferior to this: "Jehovah thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will joy over thee with singing." The Father will rest in His love, and in the accomplishment of all His counsels for the glory of His Son; shewing, at the same time, in the ages to come, the excellency of the riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Such is our expectation.

The disciples return to Jerusalem, and live there together in an upper chamber. They persevered with one consent in supplication and prayer, with the women and with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and His brethren. But the effect of the promise of the Father is only found in chapter 2. All that we have at the end of chapter 1 is connected with a Jewish situation; that is, with the condition of the disciples before the coming of the Spirit, yet possessing an understanding which had been opened by the Lord to understand the word. They had not the power of the Spirit, but intelligence of the word; because their standing was in relation with Christ raised up from the dead, they were enlightened by the divine light communicated to them after His resurrection. These verses accord perfectly with verses 14-48 of Luke 24. Then comes the promise of the Spirit, the accomplishment of which is found in chapter 2.

The well-known active energy of Peter employs the knowledge given by the Lord, applying Psalm 109 to Judas, whose office, says the psalm, another should take. They drew lots, according to Jewish custom, leaving the decision in the hands of God. Matthias is chosen and added to the eleven apostles. Verses 18, 19 are a parenthesis. The sabbath-day's journey, the lots, and all the circumstances, shew clearly the actual state of the disciples and the thought of the Holy Ghost on this step. They work with intelligence of the word of the Old Testament; but the Spirit had not yet come. It is important for us to understand the difference. The Spirit gives now intelligence (1 Cor. 2: 14); but this is not of itself power.

325 The Lord is faithful to lead His own in the path of truth. His grace is sufficient, His strength is made perfect in weakness, and also He always gives us the strength necessary to accomplish His will; but the power of the Spirit is another thing. Now, we are specially called to follow His word, although we may be feeble (see what is said to the church of Philadelphia, Rev. 3).

It is impossible for Christ to fail us in our obedience, and His strength is sufficient for us. Faithful to His word, while we wait for Him in weakness, we shall be pillars in the temple of His God, when He sees the hour of glory. Yet the Holy Ghost dwells in the faithful, sealed with Him by the Father according to His promise.

Acts 2.

THE COMING OF THE HOLY GHOST.

But the great event of which we have spoken now claims our attention - the immense fact of the coming of the Holy Ghost to dwell with the disciples of Jesus, in each, and in the midst of all together. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 3: 16, the church as a universal assembly is the temple of God; and then, in 1 Corinthians 6: 19, the body of the faithful is the temple of God. All those who, steadfast in Jesus, habitually gathered together were thus assembled on the day of Pentecost. We have seen (chap. 1: 14), that they continued with one accord in prayer while waiting for the Comforter, promised according to the word of Jesus.

Suddenly an impetuous wind is felt, filling all the house where they sat, as the cloud filled the tabernacle, [temple] so that the priests could not enter there (1 Kings 8: 11). But now men themselves composed the tabernacle where God disdained not to dwell. The blood of Jesus had purified them, and rendered them fit to be the habitation of God through the Spirit (or in Spirit) Eph. 2: 22. Marvellous truth, fruit of accomplished redemption, and blessed knowledge, that a Man, much more than a man, sits at the right hand of God (John 7: 39). But how beautiful is the truth, this divine fact, that - such is the effect of the death and of the blood of Christ, and of our reconciliation and purification - instead of driving away the priests by His presence, God, in grace, makes us His habitation! What a contrast between the law and the gospel!

326 But, besides this, a marvellous testimony is found in this fact to the grace of God. The presence of the Holy Ghost depended on the sitting of the Man Jesus at the right hand of God; demonstration and fruit of the accomplishment of the work of redemption. Now this could not be limited to the Jewish people. This presence was in itself a testimony to that accomplishment, and the earnest of our inheritance, Christ being dead for all, and ascending into glory. For the moment, the patience of God fulfilled the work of grace among the Jews, people of the promises; but the gospel which should be preached was for the whole world.

When the judgment of God fell on man at the tower of Babel, it dispersed them, confounding their speech; but God took Abraham, separating him from his country and from his father's house, to have a seed and then a people for Himself. During many years God endured the iniquity and unfaithfulness of this people, sending prophets, till no further remedy could be found; at last He sent His own Son, and they, as we know, rejected and crucified Him. Then the nation is put aside till the sovereign grace of God - His church, the fulness of the Gentiles, being gathered out - commences anew on the footing of the new covenant, and of the presence of the Messiah on the earth.

In the meantime He gathers together the heirs of Christ, the heavenly assembly. Thus - although for a moment the Spirit had separated in the midst of the Jews, spared as a nation by the intercession of Christ on the cross, till they should have rejected a glorified Christ in the same way that they had a crucified Christ come in humiliation: and also to gather together all those among this people that had ears to hear - it is shewn by the Spirit how the God of grace was ready to overstep the limits of the chosen people and surmount the judgment of Babel, speaking to all the people in their own tongue - highest testimony of grace towards the world!

327 The barriers remained, but God surmounted them - passed over them - in order to announce the Saviour's grace and salvation unto the whole world. We also see this special gift every time that God intervenes anew, as in Samaria and in the house of Cornelius. In fact, it was impossible that a glorified Saviour should be only the Jewish Saviour. The history of this people, when they had rejected the Saviour, was finished, save by grace: and the eternal redemption of God could not be for the Jews alone.

The visible character that the Holy Ghost takes corresponds to this work. When it descended on Christ, the Spirit was like unto a dove, symbol of the meekness and sweet tranquillity of Him of whom it was written, "He shall not strive nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory" (Matt. 12: 19, 20). But to the disciples He said, "That which I say in the darkness, tell it in the light; and that which ye have heard in the ear, proclaim it on the house-tops."

The Spirit came then as an impetuous wind, filling all the house, and as cloven tongues of fire. The partition was symbolical of the diverse languages, the fire of the penetrating power of the word of God, discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It seems to us, that not only the apostles, but all the one hundred and twenty, were invested with this power. They were all together; and the explanation given by Peter of the prophecy of Joel confirms the matter (Joel 1: 14, 15; Joel 2: 1, 17).

They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak in strange tongues, according as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now, at Jerusalem, men of all countries were present, and the rumour of what had happened brought them together. This great crowd was astonished to hear each his own dialect, speaking together and saying, "Are not all these Galileans? How then do we hear each his own tongue?" They were in doubt, saying, "What meaneth this?" Others, cavilling, said, "They are full of new wine." These were, especially the Jews, always prone to incredulity.

To them Peter replies, speaking firmly in their mother-tongue, and makes them understand that this was what Joel had said, prophesying that these things should happen in the last days. It is clear, on reading Joel, I doubt not, that the Holy Ghost will be poured out anew when Israel is re-established in its own land. It will then be the rain of the latter season. Remark that verse 30 of Joel 2 should come before those preceding. These things will happen before the terrible day of the Lord comes: but the blessings are after that day. Peter says, in a general way, "in the last days," and speaks of judgment as yet to come, as in fact was the case.

328 But what is important in his discourse is the presentation to the conscience of the Jews of their actual position: because, whatever the case may be, God is always clear and positive in the declaration and in the setting out of the sins of those souls where grace works. In short, this was their position; they had outraged and crucified Him whom God had set at His right hand, His own Son. Him they had put to death, and God had raised Him up, besides what had been demonstrated by the power manifested in His works. Horrible position! and we say it not only for the Jews, but for all men. Their Messiah, foundation of all their hopes, rejected; the Son of God put to death - a rupture which seemed irreparable between God and man; and on man's side, it was in fact irreparable.

All was lost. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and mankind had refused it. Sin was there, transgression against the law was already there: God had come in grace, and man had not received Him. Now He had gone back into heaven; but, blessed be His name, the counsels of God were not frustrated: far from that, they were accomplished. Grace had won the victory; and where man had manifested his enmity against God, God had manifested His love towards man, and accomplished the work for the salvation of believers in Christ. "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by hand of lawless men have crucified and slain."

God has made use of the iniquity and enmity of man to accomplish the work of redemption. The enmity of man and the love of God were contrasted in the same fact on the cross, in the glorious manifestation that His love surpassed and surmounted the enmity of man. Woe to him who neglects and refuses this immense grace, this work alone efficacious for salvation!

329 Acts 3.

The third chapter of the Acts is remarkable in the ways of God. The declaration is not found, as in the second, of a present introduction of those who repent and confess the name of Jesus, into the blessings of the remission of sins, nor of the gift of the Holy Ghost. Peter shews, as in all his other discourses, that the death of Christ was the effect of the thoughts of God, though He was put to death by wicked hands: but rather as the accomplishment of prophecy than as the fruit of the counsels of God. The Spirit descends in virtue of the proclamation by the gospel of God's ways with Israel. The Lord, interceding on the cross for the people, had said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." His prayer was heard, and the judgment of God suspended in the design of presenting repentance to the people once more.

God knew well that the Jews, hard of heart, would not receive the merciful voice of the long-suffering of God; and had warned those who had ears to hear (chap. 2: 40) to save themselves from this untoward generation. But He would not come to judge till everything possible had been done, and they had rejected a glorified Christ, as they had rejected a Christ come in humiliation here below. The Spirit, therefore, by the mouth of Peter, starting from the intercession of Christ, proposes repentance to the people, saying, that then Christ would return. The apostle enters more particularly into the sin of the Jews, and presents the facts with great power to their consciences.

It may seem strange that the apostle should speak of the repentance of all the people, and of sparing them, when the Christian assembly had already commenced, and he had warned them to avoid the judgment which was ready to fall on a people which had crucified the Lord of glory. But God knew well that the rulers of the people would render His grace vain; and reject the testimony of a glorified Christ, as they had put to death a Christ present in grace. He prosecuted His counsels according to His own knowledge, but He did not carry out the judgment of His government till everything possible had been done to spare man, inviting them to repentance.

Thus Abraham was told that his seed must descend into Egypt because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet accomplished (Gen. 15: 16). And Jeremiah (chaps. 7-14, and in other places) does precisely what Peter does; he says clearly by his prophetical knowledge that the people and the vessels of the temple would go into Babylon: at the same time he exhorts the people to repent, and that thus doing they would be spared. And it is laid down as a principle, that when Jehovah had pronounced the condemnation of a people or of a city, if that people or that city should repent of its wickedness, He would turn away from the judgment that He had pronounced (Jer. 18: 7-11). Thus, then, the apostle exhorts the people to repent, and Christ would return.

330 Going up to the temple, the apostles Peter and John had healed a man, lame from his birth, who asked alms at the gate called "Beautiful." The man goes up together with the apostles, leaping and praising God; a crowd naturally gathers, as the man was well known. Peter takes advantage of the occasion to put before the eyes of the people what had been done. It was not by his own power. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of their fathers, had raised up His servant Jesus, whom they had put to death. Horrible position! what open opposition! fatal - if grace had not been there among the people of God.

It is thus that Peter always presents the truth. They had rejected Him, and God had recognised and glorified Him. And here he enters much more particularly into their sin, more than in chapter 2. He presents the facts with great power to their consciences. They had betrayed the Lord, and denied Him in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to let Him go. They had denied the Holy One and the Just, had desired a murderer, and killed the Prince of Life. But God had raised Him up - once more opposition between the people and God. The name of the risen Saviour at the right hand of God had given to the cripple the perfect health in which they saw him. And here the Spirit responds in grace to the Lord's intercession; and the apostle attributes to ignorance the terrible fact of having rejected the Lord, whether on the part of the rulers or of the people.

That which had been foreordained by God was now accomplished - the sufferings of Christ announced before by their prophets; and, if they repented, Jesus would come back: God would send Him from heaven. Those times of blessing that would be fulfilled on the earth by His presence they would have; times that might come on the Lord's side, but for which the repentance of Israel was absolutely necessary, and for which it is still necessary. That always remains true. Their house, said the Lord, should be left unto them desolate, until they should say, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of Jehovah" (Matt. 23: 38, quoting Psalm 118).

331 When Israel repents, the Lord will come, and they will own that He whom they had rejected was the Lord Himself; and they will be full of sorrow and shame, but be pardoned and liberated; and all the blessings, of which the prophets have spoken, shall be fulfilled. Meanwhile heaven held Jesus hid from the eyes of men. But Peter presents this repentance to the Jews, and the present return besides.

But before he could finish his discourse, the rulers of the Jews arrive, take possession of the apostles, and throw them into prison. Jesus glorified is refused, as completely as Jesus in humiliation. All is finished for Israel, with respect to its responsibility - the marvellous patience of God, and the grace that had made intercession for the beloved people on the cross. Nothing more could be done: it only remained to carry out the judgment of a people who would not have grace. Such is the history alas! of the natural man.

Let us mark this, that here the Holy Ghost is not offered, as in the discourse of the preceding chapter, which began the new order of the ways of God; but he speaks of the return of Christ Himself to accomplish all that the prophets had said. The presence of the Holy Ghost distinguishes the time between the first and the second coming of Jesus - the present interval. I do not say that the Spirit will not be poured out after the second coming; but the coming and presence of Jesus distinguished that period, and His absence the present, as moreover the presence of another Comforter instead of Him. And this reveals to us a Christ glorified in the heavens, makes Him the object of a living faith, unites us to Him, makes us understand that we are children of God, joint-heirs with Christ, that we are in Him and He in us, and makes us members of His body, while we wait for Him to take us to Himself. The love of God, too, is shed abroad in our hearts.

Although Peter never speaks of the rapture of the saints to be with Jesus, yet we may turn to 1 Peter 1: 11-13, where we find the testimony of the prophets, that of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, and the accomplishment of the promises to happen on the appearing of Jesus - the three things which appear here. It is not a question of gathering believers to Christ, nor of the coming of the Holy Ghost. We find ourselves entirely on Jewish ground. And God, having first raised up His servant Jesus, had sent Him to bless them, that is, down here in the world; and as they would not receive Him, repentance was offered them. But the rulers interposed, resisting the Holy Ghost, just as they had refused Christ on the earth, thus sealing their own judgment. The final sentence will be found in the history of Stephen.

332 Another truth is introduced here, which is not wanting in importance in the ways of God; though it may not be equal in importance to the moral state of men which led them to reject the Lord come in grace. After this moment the throne and the government of God cannot be found on the earth. The providence of God watches over all; not even a little bird falls to the ground without His hand. But this throne does not exist on the earth, and will no more exist till the Lord Jesus, the Son of David, establishes it, till He comes to whom it belongs. The throne of God, between the cherubim, was taken away from Jerusalem when the Jews were led captive into Babylon; but a little remnant of the Jews was brought back to Jerusalem, in order to present to them again their true King, the Son of David, Jesus of Nazareth. But they would not receive Him. Thenceforward the kingdom of God is changed to the kingdom of heaven; the King is in heaven, and the kingdom is like the grain of wheat, which, once sown, springs and grows, without man's hand being applied to it (Mark 4: 26). Christ works; without His grace nothing would be done; but He does not appear. He sits on the throne of God, and has not taken His own throne; He will take it when He returns.

Thrones are perfectly established by God; the Christian recognises fully the authority of princes and governors as ordinances of God, and submits to them. But it is not the immediate kingdom of God. From the captivity of Babylon till the coming of Christ are the "times of the Gentiles"; and God gathers the joint-heirs of Christ, who are not of this world, as He was not. They are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ; they will reign with Him in glory, joint-heirs by grace of the inheritance of God.

222 There are two great subjects in the Bible, after personal salvation; the divine government of the world with the Jews as centre, under Christ; and the sovereign grace that has given those who are content to suffer with Him the same glory that Christ enjoys as Man, predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the first-born among many brethren. Already we enjoy the same relationship with His God and Father. "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Already children and heirs here below, when Christ comes we shall rejoice with heavenly joy with Him, and we shall reign with Him.

The Jews, and with them the Gentiles on the earth, will enjoy the peace and blessings resulting from the reign of Christ. Chapter 2, though it does not go any farther than to the presence of the Spirit here below, speaks of the first and heavenly position; chapter 3 of the second. The word of God in chapter 2 brings forth its fruit in gathering souls for God's assembly, and for heavenly glory. In chapter 3 the call to repentance is refused on the authority of the people; and the Lord sits at the right hand of God in heaven till His enemies are made His footstool.

And the work of God goes on here below. The reign of Christ on the earth is deferred because of the unbelief of the Jews; and the presence of the Spirit, Christ being in heaven, to gather together the heavenly citizens, and to put them into a new, eternal, and heavenly relationship with God - this is the foundation of the history recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The following chapters unfold the progress of the work, its difficulties and their causes. "Unto you first God, having raised up his Son [servant] Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities."

Acts 4.

What we read in this chapter is very sad, but full of instruction. The state of Israel is frightful, and the contrast to the apostles, and to all the believers marvellous. There is ecclesiastical authority and hatred of the truth and of the Lord on one side, and the presence and power of God on the other. Authority, depending on public opinion, is timorous at this juncture, and for a moment by this means held in check by the hand of God; and the courage of faith, given by God, is sustained by the powerful presence of the Holy Ghost.

334 The priests deliberately resist the action of the Holy Ghost though admitting that the power of God had been manifested. Is it not frightful? Oh what audacity, of what malice, is the heart of man capable when abandoned by God and left to its own hatred against Him! "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquities be found to be hateful," Psalm 36: 1, 2. And for what follows see also Luke 12: 1-12. Horrible and vain opposition, for the word of God will be fulfilled in spite of men. If we suffer, it is our glory. Our portion is to be found in Psalm 27; and then in Psalm 37: "Fret not thyself - trust in Jehovah - delight thyself also in Jehovah - commit thy way unto Jehovah - rest in Jehovah, and wait patiently for Him - cease from anger and forsake wrath; fret not thyself in any wise to do evil."

We shall see the path of the apostles; what courage, what tranquility, what clearness of judgment, doing exactly what became servants of God - those who, in the testimony of God, represented Him on the earth! Doubtless an extraordinary power was displayed in them, but the principle is just the same for us all. Moreover the word did not remain without effect, the number of men who had believed became about five thousand.

We have seen that the chief priests had put the apostles in prison. The morning came, they meet at Jerusalem, and make the apostles appear before them. They demand by what power and in what name they had done the miracle. The old story is again repeated - official authority opposed to the power of God. Thus the high priests and the rulers of the people demanded of the Lord by what authority He worked. But what madness, what hardness of heart, what lack of conscience! A miracle had evidently been performed by the apostles: it was known by the people, and they could not deny it. It is God Himself who works, but they will not allow the knowledge of it to spread among the people. It was not convenient that the power of God should be manifested outside their office; for if divine power operated outside their office, they could no longer secure authority to themselves. But it was not for them to command God: and not only this, but they were directly opposed to that power which was of God.

335 In such cases absence of all conscience is always found, as when the Lord did not reply to their questions, but, in His divine wisdom, asked them what the baptism of John was. And they, fearing the people, dared not say that it was not of God, because public opinion was against them. They were forced to acknowledge their incapacity; evidently, then, the Lord was not bound to account to them for what He had just before done.

Here something more is found. What the apostles had done was an act of power and not of authority, and the priests place themselves in open opposition to God. They would have suppressed His power if they had been able; otherwise they were humiliated. This was necessary, for the miracle had been performed in the name of Him whom they had crucified. They were adversaries of God, and adversaries consciously and willingly, for they had acknowledged that it was impossible to deny the miracle. This was indeed the power of Satan, but also of an office destitute of the power of God. Whenever man finds himself in such a position, he is unwilling that God should work. But what a state of soul, what a frightful condition!

Let us contemplate the spectacle of an unlettered and ignorant man, but believing in Jesus and full of the Holy Ghost. He announces openly, and with frank candour, not only that it was by the name of Jesus that the man had been cured, but that He was the stone set at nought by the builders, now become the head of the corner, and that there was no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. The position of the rulers is clearly established, such as we have seen it. The man there present had been cured by the name of Him whom they had crucified, and whom God had raised from among the dead.

But alas! the will of men was not moved, though they had nothing to say against the facts. The power of God was there; the testimony could not be refuted; but they would not have divine testimony. And, having conferred together, they dismissed them, "straitly threatening them that they should speak henceforth to no man in this name."

Their part was taken against God and against His Anointed. They commanded the apostles, therefore, when they had brought them in again, never to speak again in this name. Peter does not boast, does not insist on his rights or on his liberty, does not threaten the priests and council, does not shew on his part any of his own will; he remains tranquil in obedience, but in obedience to God rather than to man. God was with them; the others were only men. They must obey God. He appeals to the priests and themselves, if it was not right to do so. Again they threaten them and let them go; witnesses were before them who glorified God for what had been done.

336 It is well to remark that the apostles do not assail the Jews - they do their duty; and when these oppose themselves, conscious of doing the will of God sent by Him, they declare that necessarily they were doing His will - that, when God willed and sent, they had to obey. It is the calm, the tranquility, of him who does not think of himself, either through fear or through human ardour. It is full of the Holy Ghost; what is said, what is done, comes from Him. Such a man works perfectly on God's side, because the man is put aside, and God by His Spirit works in him. Though it may be the man who presents himself perfectly in the position in which he finds himself, yet it is that Spirit who produces the perfection in him. "It is not ye," said the Lord, "that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you," Matt. 10: 20. If man works, then there is imperfection. God works in man, and then man is what he ought to be. Is it always thus?

But the miserable position of the Jews unfolds itself only too clearly. God was no longer to be found among the chosen people who had rejected their Messiah, the Son of God, in whom are all the promises of God; and now they were abandoned. God dwelt by His Spirit among the Christians. God will fulfil His promises to the nation in the last times, but then it will be in pure grace. He is faithful, whatever may be the iniquity of His people. What Peter proposed to Israel in chapter 3, repentance, will be accomplished in their hearts by grace, when the assembly of God shall have been taken up into heaven. Then they shall see Him whom they have pierced, and shall be blessed; but meanwhile they are put aside, kept apart however, till the fulness of the Gentiles be brought in. Then Israel as a whole shall be saved. But now they are displayed as resisting the Holy Ghost, as having rejected the Messiah. Now we see the power of the Spirit and His presence manifesting itself in the midst of the assembly.

337 The apostles returned to "their own"; for now there existed a company, a society, the house of God; composed, it is true, of Jews, but apart, outside the national pale. There they recount what has happened. Then, moved by the Holy Ghost, with one heart they raise the voice to God, acknowledging the accomplishing of Psalm 2, where the rejection of the Messiah, the Son of God is announced, and the absolute power of God, whatever might be the wickedness of men who did nothing but fulfil the counsels of God. Nevertheless they do not ask that the kingdom should be established, according to what is said in that Psalm, of which kingdom the Father has put the times into His own power (chap I: 7); but the manifestation of the power of the Holy Ghost is pronounced in the same place, whether in the full courage to announce the word, or in the works of power done in the name of the holy servant of God, Jesus, His Son.

After they have prayed, the presence of God is manifested in their midst, and the place where they are assembled shakes. Here too, is seen, in an exterior way, the difference between the new birth and the presence of God by the Spirit. Many more important proofs of it are to be found; but I speak of it, because here it is an outward sign, impossible to confound with the work of grace in the soul. Their prayer is heard. They are all filled with the Holy Ghost, and speak the word of God with great boldness. But it is not only in the gifts of speech; it is the faith which does it all, that shews the effect and the power of being filled with the Holy Ghost. We find a work of the same character in the description given in chapter 2: there was but one heart.

No one retained his own property, but distributed to those who were in need. With great power the apostles bore testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was on them all. None among the disciples lacked anything. Those who possessed lands or houses sold them, and laid the prices of the things that were sold at the apostles' feet, who distributed to every one according to his need. Beautiful testimony of the power of love, the love of God shed abroad by the Holy Ghost in the hearts of those who were filled with it! Among the others we find Barnabas, especially noticed here, because we shall find him soon occupied in the work of God, the companion of Paul; so that he is called an apostle. But God has not forgotten the others.

338 Such is the scene which passes before our eyes when the church was established in the beginning - when the Spirit, ungrieved, displayed all the effect of His presence. Most blessed scene, giving us to understand what it is to be filled with the Holy Ghost! He dwells in every true Christian; but it is another thing to be so filled with Him that He may be the source of all that is thought, of all that is done, and that all that the heart, which is His vessel, produces may be the fruit of His presence; that there may be no doubting, no shutting up in the career of love, that Jesus may be faithfully confessed before men. The heart is set free from its own love, and loves according to the love of Christ. Liberty, true liberty, is found, and the practical life, and its fruits are the fruits of the Spirit.

What a blessed state! And whatever may be the ruin of the church, in principle this state belongs to-day to every Christian; circumstances may hinder the form that existed in the days of the apostles; but the Spirit of God, at the bottom, is more powerful than circumstances.

Acts 5.

Although a man may be truly a Christian, yet the flesh always remains in him, which is just as ready to shew itself in the assembly as in the world. The desire to have a good reputation among men may arise in the heart, although such a reputation may merely be sought for among Christians. Thus too it happened when the assembly of God first began. Love produced the inclination to think of others rather than of themselves. But the flesh also would have the reputation of doing so, without denying itself, deceitfully thinking to keep back its money, and at the same time to gain the benefit of a reputation for giving it away. But here also the great truth of the presence of the Holy Ghost is the subject of God's revelation given in this book.

Ananias and Sapphira have lied to the Holy Ghost: this is the gravity of the sin of Ananias and his wife. God dwelt in the midst of His own in the assembly. Deceived in heart and conscience by cupidity, whether of money or of human glory, Ananias did not recognise His presence. But still another was acting in this sad event. Satan suggested to them the means of keeping back the money, and still of winning fame. But the Holy Ghost was there, and the folly of men and malice of Satan did nothing but make manifest the truth and the power of His presence, in a sad way it is true, but in a way that could leave no doubt of it.

339 Ananias, whose sin was thus unexpectedly to himself revealed, falls dead by the judgment of God who was there. But what a solemn judgment! And it is not surprising if, not only the Christians, but also the outside world, were terrified at such a testimony to the presence of God that was entirely unmistakable. Moreover the sin was not a simple failure. Ananias and Sapphira had agreed together in their eagerness of endeavour to deceive God, forgetting that He knew everything and that He was there.

But, however sad and solemn the fact might be, it was a testimony from which it was impossible to detract, that God Himself was present; a testimony to the great truth that God, in the person of the Holy Ghost, had come down to dwell in the midst of His people, and for ever (John 14: 17), so that they might be taken up to dwell in the Father's house. The apostles were filled with it; everything at that time was in the power of it. But the assembly of God has been unfaithful; the Spirit has been grieved, and therefore we see no longer those actions which bore testimony to His presence.

This, nevertheless, does not in any way render it invalid - that would be impossible. The word of Christ is - He shall dwell with you; and the Spirit is as able to accomplish the will of God in His children now as in the time of the apostles, though it may not be shewn in the same manner. But it is more blessed, says the Lord, to have our names written in heaven than to cast out demons: and by the true work of God in souls, and in all His ways, He manifests His presence in the assembly, and in Christians who depend on Him, and are filled with Him, just as much as He did in the days of the apostles. It is not proper that it should be shewn outwardly in the fallen church as in the faithful assembly long ago established by God Himself, as though He sealed its fall with His approbation. But God changes not, and His grace and power are the same, and are as available as ever for all that is necessary and all that is suitable to the state of the church; and He still does all that is requisite for His glory and our full blessing. He works in His own with the same power according to the circumstances in which they are placed.

340 Now many signs and wonders were wrought by the hands of the apostles, who were to be found habitually (it seems to us) in Solomon's porch in the temple. The great and the rulers did not dare to identify themselves with them; but the people, convinced in their simplicity, increased the number and importance of the Christians in the holy city. We see always fear on the part of the great and of the ecclesiastical rulers. They could persecute, but they could not join the Christians, because then their power would be compromised. As Paul says, "not many mighty, not many noble, are called." The reproach of Christ is always linked to His name, wherever there is fidelity.

But still the power of God manifested itself in such a way that in Jerusalem and in the cities round about they brought sick folks, so that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them; and the sick of the city and those vexed with unclean spirits were all healed. But all this excited the envy and indignation of the chief priests; the divine power and authority had evidently passed away from their hands, and they were unwilling that they should be found elsewhere. They could not prevent God from manifesting His power, but they could take possession of the persons who exercised it, at least when God allowed it. They do so, and throw the apostles into the common prison.

But this did nothing more than prepare the way for another display of the hand and power of God. When God is working, vain are the efforts of men. We have seen, and shall see, the internal power of the Holy Ghost. Here we find angels, the servants of God, in favour of the men who preach the good news of salvation through Christ. I do not doubt that they ever minister, according to the will of God, to all His children who walk in the way of His will; and they may be employed otherwise, if it please God, as it is written in Hebrews 1. But here they operate in a visible way. The angel opens the doors of the prison, leads the apostles out, and tells them to go their way, and to speak in the temple all the words of this life, which they do at once at break of day.

Meanwhile the high priest and they that were with him meet together in the great council of the Jews, and send the sergeants, commanding them to bring the apostles before them. They go therefore to the prison, which they find shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors, but no prisoners within. The priests, confounded, know not what to think. Who can make war against God, and not find himself discomfited? Satan can do much, he can persecute and exercise great influence over unbelieving souls; but, where the working of the power of God is present, he cannot surmount it. Confidence is found on the part of God's servants; and, at the bottom of their heart, the adversaries are afraid and perplexed. See Josh. 2: 9; Phil. 1: 23; 1 Pet. 3: 6. Satan had the Sadducees ready to resist the work of the apostles who presented the resurrection, as the Pharisees to oppose Christ who preached true righteousness.

341 But the work of God goes on in the midst of suffering. He allows His own to suffer; it is given to them to suffer for the name of Christ; but He accomplishes His counsels in spite of man. The officers then brought them without violence, fearing the people lest they should have been stoned. The apostles appear before the council, and the high priest reproves them, because they had preached Jesus, in spite of the prohibition, and that thus they thought to bring the blood of Jesus on them. It is apparent that their conscience was ill at ease. The simple truth was that they were responsible for the blood of Jesus; but when a man is spurred on by Satan to commit a crime, he does not fear to do it, but, once committed, the deceit of Satan leaves him; the crime weighs on his conscience, and Satan cannot alleviate it, but often goads him to desperation, as he did with Judas.

The reply of Peter to the rulers is very brief and decisive; already they knew it well. "We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them who obey him." When they heard that, they were cut to the heart, and took counsel to slay them.

But here again the hand of God appears; and as He had miraculously used an angel to let Peter out of prison, so now He employs the hand of man to arrest the power and the malice of the elders and high priest. The human prudence of the Pharisee Gamaliel, a man much esteemed, gives them to realise, by several examples, the peril of putting themselves in conflict with God. The Pharisees were always opposed to the Sadducees, and the high priest belonged to the sect of the Sadducees, so that the Pharisee could always employ his human sagacity to gain a hearing. And God could use it to preserve His servants from the wicked hand of their enemies.

342 They consent to the counsel of Gamaliel, but without any fear of God. The will is not changed, the enmity against the testimony of God remains in all its force; but they are afraid of compromising themselves, and know not what to do. The apostles are beaten, and forbidden to speak in the name of Jesus. It is enmity without strength, without conscience, and without knowledge, blind from unbelief, and resisting in vain the power of God! The apostles continue their work, teaching and preaching both in the temple and in every house.

Acts 6, 7.

But the flesh manifests itself in Christians, and the more so if their number be large. Now we find a new event happening; in the multitude the power of faith and the fruits of the Spirit begin to grow feebler. Love and confidence - love's constant companion - diminish; but at the same time the strength of the Spirit found in the apostles takes its stand against difficulty. And not only this, but an opportunity is given for securing greater regularity in the daily ministration of the assembly. The preaching of the word is separated from the care of the poor. In this case the apostles desired that the people should choose those who might care for the widows. We shall see farther on that the apostle Paul himself, with Barnabas, appointed elders, but, when it was a question of money, neither the twelve nor Paul would take any part in it, nor confound the divine service of the word with the administration of the money furnished by the faithful; 1 Corinthians 16.

The twelve desired to be occupied only with the word, and Paul would not charge himself with the money for the poor at Jerusalem, unless brethren appointed for this purpose were with him. But, although the flesh shewed itself, the Spirit was enough to overrule circumstances. In the case of Ananias and Sapphira this power and the presence of the Spirit was manifested in judgment against hypocrisy; here we find it seeking to make its way in the assembly, producing order and right where danger of disunion was manifested in the midst of the disciples.

343 But another principle respecting the Holy Ghost, easy to believe but often forgotten, is now made evident - His full liberty: as we read in 1 Corinthians 12, "dividing to every man severally as he will." We have seen up to this moment the activity of the apostles, established in their office by the Lord Himself, if we except Matthias. We find now seven men, full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom, chosen by the people to serve at the tables where the distributions were made to the poor widows; and among these were two specially used by the Holy Ghost in the preaching of the gospel; and, at this moment, Stephen. In 1 Timothy 3: 13, we find, "For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good decree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus."

Stephen was already a man full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, but now his gift is unfolded. He does signs and wonders; even his adversaries could not resist the power and wisdom with which he spoke. The Holy Ghost here works freely as in Philip. He also was obliged to give up his office for the work of evangelisation, for he went to Samaria. By the liberty given by the Spirit he is a minister of the word, and not of the tables. It is a new phase of the work of grace and of the Spirit. We shall find still other proofs. It is a very important principle, the truth and force of which extend to the present day. They are not sent by the apostles but directly by God. It is the strength of the Holy Ghost that urges them to the work, consecration to Christ, and love of souls.

It seems also that Stephen had said more, and spoken more openly, than Peter. The latter ever bore testimony to Israel's open opposition to God, for they had crucified Him whom God had exalted to His own right hand. We know not how Stephen spoke; but at all events he gave rise to the accusation of having said that Jesus would destroy Jerusalem, and change the customs which Moses had established. Evidently he always preached Christ and His glory, as did Peter; but he said more - he warned the people of the consequences of their sin. Peter laid down the fundamental truth that shewed the state of the Jews before God. Stephen, taking lower ground and speaking more familiarly, announces the consequences of non-repentance. Both testimonies were fully of God, and inspired, but differed in character.

344 The accusations being brought before the council, Stephen is seized and forced to appear before the high priest and his accusers. To these there only remained enmity against God, and the power of death, for God allowed them to fulfil their purposes. But the occasion produces the magnificent defence of Stephen, indicating the position of the Jews with the utmost precision, and closing the history of humanity, of man before God here below. Before the flood God bore testimony, but He established no institution. We have perhaps Adam, Abel, Enoch and Noah, godly men, but not one of them was the head of a race according to God; but after the flood God began in the new world to found institutions for the government of the world, for the blessing of man, and to unfold truth and His ways.

At first no promise was made to man. In the judgment pronounced on Satan we find a prophecy of the final work of Christ, the object, by grace, of Adam's faith, and also of ours, the everlasting gospel; but God made no promises to the first man. After the flood God began to unfold His ways. In Noah He established government in order to restrain violence. Then, when man fell into idolatry (Josh. 24), not only was he wicked, but he chose demons as the power of the world in place of God; and God called Abraham to be for Himself, and the father of a race that He might on earth recognise as His, whether after the flesh or after the Spirit. The great principles of election, of calling, or of the promises are established. Then the law is given on Mount Sinai, by which man is put to the proof in a still more definite manner. Then, after long patience, in which prophets were sent to recall the people chosen according to the flesh to the obedience of the law, and sustain the trust of the few faithful by the promise of the Messiah, God sent His only-begotten Son, His well-beloved, saying, in the words of the parable, "They will reverence my Son"; but we know what happened. The history of man was finished on the cross. Not only had he sinned, but he had rejected grace when the Saviour had come.

Now they reject the testimony that spoke of a glorified Saviour, sent in virtue of His intercession on the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." As we have seen, God replied to this intercession in the testimony of Peter and of the apostles; and in the announcement of the Holy Ghost of a glorified Saviour, Him whom they had rejected; but, as we have again seen, they refused the testimony of the Holy Ghost by the mouth of the apostles.

345 And here we have a kind of resume, an explanation of their state, their history from the time of Abraham till that day. It is the history of man from the moment that God began His dealings with him - in the beginning, in giving the promise, whether to Israel or to Christ, the true offspring; then in the law, in the prophets, and, finally, in Christ Himself. All this time the Spirit was working, and now especially, after Christ had been glorified in heaven, as we have seen. Stephen recounted this history; grace in the call of Abraham; what happened to Joseph and to Moses, wherein the Spirit worked and had been rejected by Israel; then the law violated at the outset in the calf of gold; then the prophets; then Christ Himself; and, finally, the testimony of the Holy Ghost. They had broken the law, persecuted and put to death the prophets who had spoken of the coming of the Just One, of whom now they had become the betrayers and murderers. And more than this, they still resisted the Holy Ghost, as their fathers had always done.

All the dealings of God pass before our eyes; the law, the prophets, Christ, the Spirit. In all, the people are found in enmity against God. Meanwhile they confided in the temple, of which God had declared by the prophet that the Most High dwelt not in temples made with hands. Such is the history of Israel - of man. Conscience is hardened, will is unchanged in the Sanhedrim, and nothing but hate and opposition to the testimony of the Holy Ghost is revealed; their hearts are goaded to resistance, and put the witness himself to death. They were unable to answer him; it was indeed their history of which they so loudly boasted - and what a history! Man always resists the testimony of the Spirit; and, if the conscience be stung, hatred breaks out violently against the witness.

On the other hand we see a man, a Christian, full of the Holy Ghost, doubtless here manifested in a very special way; but that which was visible to Stephen is the object of faith for us. Mark first the perfect tranquillity of the servant of Christ. With beautiful simplicity he tells a story familiar to all - a story, however, which carried with it the condemnation of the Jews. To reason with him was needless, for they could not deny the facts. Then, kneeling down quietly amid the stones which fell on him, he prays for his enemies. What moral power! How entirely it overcomes all circumstances, and displays the man of God in the presence of the fury of his adversaries!

346 But let us examine not only the character of Stephen's testimony against his enemies, but his own state. He is the embodiment of a man full of the Holy Ghost, and his enemies are the embodiment of men who resist the Spirit. First, heaven is opened to him; he is enabled to keep his eyes fixed on the heavens - touch-stone of the state of the soul - and sees the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. He saw indeed the glory of God, but does not speak of it; the new and blessed thing was, that Man, in the person of the Son of God, stood there.

I believe that here He does not sit, because, until the Jews had refused the testimony of His glory, the Saviour was expecting to come back according to the address of Peter. As soon as Stephen is slain this testimony is at end; and, a single soul in heaven, the gathering of the spirits of the redeemed begins, which will continue till the Lord comes to re-unite the bodies and spirits of His own, and bring them into heavenly glory. Thus, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is said that Jesus is set down at the right hand of God, expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. He sits down on the throne of the Father, and not yet on His own. This is what rouses the hatred and fury of the Jews. They cry out "blasphemy!" and stone the witness of God, of the glory of Jesus.

For Stephen heaven is opened, and Jesus is seen in divine glory; and this is what forms his soul in such a beautiful way into the likeness of Jesus. As He prayed for enemies, so also Stephen prays for his; and as the Lord Jesus commended His spirit to His Father, so Stephen exclaims, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Not only does he pardon his enemies, but quietly kneels down to do so. The view of Jesus transforms the heart into His likeness. That which was seen by Stephen is the object of faith for us, made clearer by what happened to him.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

J. N. Darby.

<25035E> 347

Acts 8.

An important fact, which renders the signification of our narrative still clearer, is here presented to us. Here we find Saul taking part in the death of Stephen. We have seen that the death of Stephen was the end of the history of the enmity of the human heart against God, when God had done everything to try it, and also to restore it; its incurable enmity was manifested, and the end of man before God. There was no longer hope of finding any good since God Himself has made use of everything - judgment in the deluge, the law, the prophets, His own Son, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost. All was in vain. The more God worked, the more man's enmity manifested itself.

Here for the first time we find Saul. Not content with taking part in the death of Stephen, he goes into distant cities in search of Christians to bring them bound to Jerusalem. He is the apostle of man's enmity against Christ. If the history of man was finished, that of the sovereign grace of God was beginning. The spirit of the first martyr takes its place in the presence of Jesus. But the entire number must be completed before Jesus can come and re-unite them with their bodies.

Here we find the first general persecution, which, however, in the hands of God, served to scatter the seed of the gospel. This also is a proof of the free activity of the Holy Ghost to make use of whomsoever He sees fit to select. Still another important fact: while all the Christians are scattered by the persecution, the apostles remain at Jerusalem. The special mission of Matthew 10: 23 was not accomplished. It will be by the power of God hereafter, I doubt not; but not at the moment of which we read here. It is the multitude of Christians scattered by the persecution who preach the gospel in Palestine, and afterwards among the Gentiles. Saul persecutes the assembly with cruel zeal; and the Christians leave the city. It was neither the settled design of man, nor the spiritual zeal of the apostles, but the fury of the enemy, which according to the wisdom of God first disseminated the gospel outside the gates of Jerusalem. The spirit of Stephen gone up to heaven, the gospel of grace is carried into the surrounding districts by means of the enmity of man, and the providence of God who makes use of it leads the scattered ones to communicate in love the gifts they possess. What is man? and what the wisdom and grace of God?

348 Another example of the free activity of the Spirit is found in the person of Philip, chosen to take care of the widows. His service is finished with regard to the widows; but he has acquired a good degree, and great liberty in the faith in Christ Jesus. Setting out from Jerusalem, he goes down to Samaria; and there by the power of his word, and by the miracles given him to do, the people are liberated from the influence of a notorious instrument of Satan - Simon, who exercised the arts of sorcery and had been held to be the great power of God. "Then Simon himself believed also; and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done."

It was the miracles which had exercised this influence over his spirit, not the seed of God, the divine word which had entered into his heart. To believe by means of miracles alone is not the faith which operates by the Holy Ghost, although God may work miracles and signs in order to confirm His word. The end of John 2 shews that Jesus did not trust those who had believed in this way. When the Spirit of God works, requirements are produced in the soul which Jesus alone can satisfy. Thus Nicodemus was under the influence of the miracles when he went to Jesus. To the others reasonable conviction sufficed, and they remained where they were.

The sole desire of Simon is to possess the power of conferring on others by the imposition of his hands the ability to work miracles and signs. He wished to buy it with money, thereby shewing that there was no work of God in his soul. He had "neither part nor lot in this matter." He was in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity; his heart was not right before God. His sin excited the indignation, not the compassion, of Peter. "Thy money perish with thee," said he. But still his heart is not touched with compunction. He asks only that what had been said might not come upon him; not that his thought might be forgiven, or that the state of his heart might be changed.

Here we find still other things which we shall do well to consider. The difference between the operation and the sealing of the Spirit is very clear. The Samaritans had believed and had been baptized, but had not received the Holy Ghost; for He had not yet descended upon them. He had worked by the word in their hearts; men and women were converted, born again, had confessed the name of Jesus; but they were not yet sealed. Then it belonged in a special manner to the apostles to impose hands, and confer the gift of the Spirit. In Acts 19 we see that Paul conferred it; he was a true apostle. Ananias was sent that Saul might receive it; this was a special mission of the Lord Himself. The Spirit might also come without the laying on of hands, as on the hundred and twenty, and on Cornelius; but not one had the power of conferring it save the apostles. It is said, "of the apostles' hand" (v. 18).

349 It is possible, too, that the Spirit might come on a man in this way without an internal work giving life. The Lord does not habitually work thus; but cases of it are not wanting in the Old Testament, such as Balaam, king Saul, and others, where the question of conversion is not raised, shewing that that is another thing altogether. In the New Testament we do not find a case of it, but the thing is supposed (1 Cor. 12; Heb. 6), and the power to do miracles with the aid of the Holy Ghost and without conversion and life, is clearly presented by the Lord Himself (Matt. 12: 26, 27); the Lord does not deny the fact, but declares that He knows not those who have done them; Matt. 7. See Deut. 13. Judas at least was sent to do such.

We see then a new character of the apostolic authority; then the free activity of the Spirit clearly displayed in Philip. By his means the gospel is communicated to a distant country through a proselyte come to Jerusalem to worship the true God; a man in whose heart the word of God possessed full power. It is beautiful to remark in Philip the readiness of his obedience - how he allowed himself to be led by the will of God. He is the object of all attention in the city of Samaria: a notable work had been done by means of him. "Arise," said the angel of the Lord, "and go unto Gaza, which is desert"; but he was not told what he was to do there. And he goes there immediately. There he finds the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia. The Spirit says to him, "Go near and join thyself to this chariot"; and he runs immediately to it. The treasurer was reading the word of God, but the key of faith in Jesus was wanting. Philip mounts the chariot, and preaches faith in Jesus to him. All was ordered by God. He was reading what was immediately connected with the sufferings of the Lord; and by the power of the Spirit the explanation of the passage is sent him by the mouth of Philip. The eunuch, with the heart prepared by grace, and already having faith in the word, becomes a Christian. He is baptized by Philip, and goes on his way rejoicing. It is remarkable that the name of Christianity remains to this day in that country, much corrupted (it is true), but in the form which this man implanted. They believe as to the profession of Christ, but practise circumcision - (verse 37 is not authentic).

350 The Spirit of the Lord catches away Philip, and by the miraculous power of God he is found at Azotus. Time and space are nothing to God. From Azotus he evangelises in all the cities till he comes to Caesarea. Further on we find him stationed with his family at this city. He had by this time obtained the fair name of Evangelist.

Acts 9.

We have glanced at the history of the free activity of the Spirit in those who were dispersed by the persecution, in Stephen, and in Philip. Then follows the deeply interesting narrative of Saul and of his conversion. In that of Stephen we saw that man had reached the extreme end of his iniquity, not only in crucifying the Lord, but in refusing the offer of grace, and of His return in virtue of the Saviour's intercession on the cross. There, for the first time, we find Saul; but he is not content with this quiet hatred. "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that, if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem."

He is the apostle, of his own will, of hatred against Christ, and of the persecution of God's children. Now the Lord allowed this, in order to make him the witness and apostle of the sovereign grace which opened his eyes, converted and pardoned him. Here it is evidently sovereign grace meeting the fury of the ardent enemy of truth and grace, who sought, as he himself says, to destroy Christianity, and banish the name of Christ from the face of the earth. While occupied in this very purpose, the Lord stops him on his way, and reveals Himself to his soul, and also to his eyes, so that he might be an eye-witness of His glory. A light from heaven shone round about him - "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"

351 But two very important truths are contained in this remarkable scene. The Lord's glory is revealed. Saul had not seen the Lord - had not followed Him when present in the flesh. The twelve apostles had known Him in the days of His flesh, and had seen Him disappear in the cloud; they knew by faith that He was seated at the right hand of God, but they could not be eye-witnesses of His glory. It is then that Paul begins. He saw the Lord's glory, but knew not who He was. One thing he was certain of - the glory and the voice of the Lord Himself had appeared to him. He asks therefore, "Who art thou, Lord?" Then the Lord replies, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." He was not a man of the earth, nor the Messiah gone up to heaven, but the Lord of glory recognising Himself still as Jesus, and also Jesus of Nazareth.

The starting-point of the doctrine is different: the same redemption, the same Saviour; but the revelation given to the twelve is that the man Jesus is gone up to heaven; God has exalted Him. The revelation given to Saul is that the Lord of glory is Jesus of Nazareth. It begins with heavenly glory; then, in the second place, that all Christians are united with Himself, members of His body. This doctrine is not unfolded but it is not said, "Why persecutest thou My disciples?" as a doctor or a rabbi, but "Why persecutest thou me?" And this is the Lord of glory. "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest."

Such are the fundamental points in the history of Paul, the enemy of the Lord of glory, converted, pardoned, justified, necessary witness of sovereign grace. The gospel of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, of the glory of the Lord, is confided to him; then the truth of the union, of the unity of Christians with Christ, glorious Head in heaven. Peter preached that God had glorified Him whom the Jews had crucified, and invited the rebels to come to God by the sacrifice which he had perfected; and to those who repented Jesus would return. Saul preached that this salvation was for all men; and that God, as Saviour, could not limit Himself to the narrow bounds of Israel, but that He announced Himself to the whole creation under heaven; then, that the assembly of God was united to Jesus, His body.

We shall see that God did not permit disunion, but desired that there should be a single assembly. But it is not the less true that Paul was a witness that there was no difference, that all men were lost, all children of wrath, one just as another; and that Jesus, by the gift of the Holy Ghost, had united all in one body - a truth which the Jews (and also the Christian Jews) always resisted, tormenting the apostle in his work. Peter himself dissimulated, so that all the Christian Jews, led by his authority, which was only the fear of man, sided with him. Not one of the apostles speaks in his epistles of the assembly, the body of Christ on earth, save only Paul. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; sovereign grace, by which he was the example to all those who should afterwards believe in Christ Jesus; and the whole in virtue of the cross - such was the gospel confided to Paul.

352 His travelling companions were witnesses to the truth of the vision, but did not know of the revelation confided to Paul. The bright light shone around them, but they did not see the Lord. They heard a voice, but not the words of Him who spoke. Paul was a witness of that which he had seen and heard. Paul's companions were able to testify to the vision, which was a real thing, and not an invention of Paul for his own glory. The whole was confirmed by the mission of Ananias, to whom the Lord revealed what had happened, sending him to Saul to open his eyes, and receive him into the Christian assembly by baptism, and by the gift of the Holy Ghost; for the sudden light had blinded Saul.

God had drawn him away from all communication with the outside world, in order that he might be entirely occupied with his soul, and with the state in which he found himself. In fact his situation was without a parallel. Externally he was a man without spot, of irreproachable reputation according to the law; he had a good conscience. He believed it his duty to do much against the name of Jesus, and he did it. The authorities of the religion of the fathers encouraged and sent him, in every way supporting him in what he did with such zeal; conscience, legal justice, religion, all that formed his moral life, had made him the fierce enemy of the Lord of glory. But at one blow all the foundations of his moral life were ruined. It was by these very foundations that he became the enemy of the Lord, and resisted the Spirit who called men to repentance by the testimony rendered to His glory. Saul had assisted in an active way in this opposition, when the Jews stoned Stephen. But this did not satisfy him. His zeal required that he should persecute also those who believed in distant parts. Thus occupied he meets with the Lord, whose name he was seeking to extirpate. He was therefore the head, the chief, of sinners; in ignorance it is true, but nevertheless willingly. Where was his good conscience according to man? Where his legal justice? Where his religion, of which the priests and religious authorities had for him been supreme before? All had led him to discover himself an enemy of fiery zeal to the Lord, face to face with whom he found himself now, but still the object of His grace, at the very moment when he was occupied so thoroughly in destroying His glory. What a revulsion! What an overturning in his heart! Who can tell what passed in him during those three days?

353 And yet the Lord does not send Ananias to him till this internal moral work was completed. Old things have passed away, and now all things have become new in his soul, in the bottom of his thoughts; all is of God who has revealed Himself in the glory of the face of Jesus Christ. He is no longer a Jew, although he may be one externally: but he has not become a Gentile; joined to the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, he knows henceforth no man any more after the flesh. He knows the Lord, he knows His people as united with Him, Gentiles and Jews alike lost sinners, children of wrath; but he knows the sovereign grace towards himself which has called him, has revealed the Son of God to him, and has given him eternal life, even while engaged in destroying His name. All was grace, pure and sovereign grace, grace which went so far as to make of Christians one body with Christ in heaven, and to give them to know it. How marvellous the revelations we find unfolded in the epistles of the apostle! The gospel of the glory of Christ is easily understood when we realise how and when the apostle was converted.

But it is worth while considering some of the circumstances which accompanied the conversion of the apostle. The Lord made use of a converted Jew, hated by his countrymen, to convey to Paul the formal testimony of His grace, and receive him into the bosom of the assembly, in order that, as we before said, he might never more fear, the vision having passed away that might be mistaken. Here is a quiet man who had received a communication from the Lord, fully confirming what had happened to Saul. Moreover, Saul is made by another revelation to expect Ananias so that he may receive his sight by the laying on of his hands.

354 But I should like to call attention to still other circumstances - the full liberty, and, one may say, the familiarity with which Ananias speaks to the Lord (with reverence and submission, of course); and, in the same way, the Lord with him. When the Lord calls him, he replies immediately, "Here am I." Nevertheless the Lord, the Man who interests Himself in His own as friends whom He loves, speaks with an open heart to Ananias; shewing him not only the way, the house where Saul was to be found, but that which was necessary to identify him, namely, that Saul prayed and that he had seen Ananias coming to him to lay hands on him and restore his sight - just as one tells a servant what to say, or to a friend what is in the heart.

Thus the Lord took knowledge of what Paul was doing, and speaks of it to Ananias. And we see in the answer of Ananias a perfect trust in this goodness of the Lord. He begins to reason with the Lord. He had heard that this man was come to bind those who called upon the name of the Lord. And the Lord does not reprove him. Of course he had to go and do what the Lord desired; but He explains the matter to him, and communicates to him His thoughts concerning Saul, that he was a chosen vessel to bear His name, and that He would shew him what things he should suffer for His name's sake. In a word the Lord opens His heart to Ananias, as a to friend whom He treats with full confidence, speaks naturally, but confidingly tells all He feels to Ananias.

It is very important to remember that Jesus is always man. If He were not God, His humanity would have no value; but, being God, the fact that He interests Himself in us as a man, as men whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren, is infinitely precious. He can feel with us, take part in all our circumstances, trials, difficulties, and troubles. He loves us as the Father loved Him, a man and Son on the earth. His love has divine perfection, but He feels as a man, as a man on the earth, tempted in like manner as we are apart from sin. He is ever a man; He thinks of us as One who has passed through all these things with divine love and human sympathy. Not only does He know everything as God, but He has had the experience of a man. Precious truth, unfathomable grace!

We have no need of saints - if they could hear us - to move His heart to favour us, to render His love warmer, His interest more profound, or His knowledge of our condition more intimate. But He has had the experience on purpose to be able to understand and sympathise with His own in every circumstance of the life of God in man on the earth. How great is the intensity of the Saviour's love! How near to us! How intelligent and intimate is His heart in the conflict of faith! He knows all, feels all, and is with us in everything to help us. Blessed be His love!

355 It is possible that He may not reveal Himself to us in visions, but His heart is not colder to us than to Ananias; His wisdom is not diminished; His willingness is not weakened to help us, neither is His arm shortened. The intimacy and the confidence of our hearts ought to be the same to tell Him everything; certain it is that His ear is open to listen to us.

Thus sent and encouraged, Ananias obeys, goes in perfect confidence towards him who not long before breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the Christians; and lays his hands on him, saying, "Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." Saul immediately receives his sight, and rises, is baptized, eats, and walks with the disciples at Damascus. Without delay he preaches Christ in the synagogues, declaring Him to be the Son of God. Although the lion had become a lamb, yet he had not lost his energy; but his object is different; now he preaches what he had formerly sought to destroy. The subject of his preaching differs a little from that of Peter, and responds to the revelation of Christ, which was made to him. Peter preached that God had exalted the Jesus whom they had rejected; Saul, that Christ was the Son of God.

But the pungency of Saul's preaching stirs up the animosity of the Jews. It is always the religious who oppose the truth, because their own importance and traditions are compromised. The rancour of the flesh, particularly in religious things, knows of no giving way. They seek to stone Saul, making conscience and religion their plea. But God watches over His servant; their plot is made known to Paul; and, while they wait day and night for him at the gates, the disciples take him by night, and let him down over the wall in a basket. Thus he escapes out of men's hands.

356 The following verse (26), does not, I think, apply to an immediately succeeding period. When, however, he arrives at Jerusalem, they are still afraid of him, not yet knowing all that has happened to him; but the good Barnabas introduces him to the apostles, and makes known to them the whole truth of his conversion. Here again the apostle bears faithful witness, and again religious men seek to put him to death. But the time had not yet arrived for his own special mission. The brethren bring him down to Caesarea, and he sets out for Tarsus, his native city.

The narrative now returns to the work of Peter. Although Saul was called to preach the gospel to the nations, and was set apart to this mission by a special dispensation of God founded on a more perfect revelation; which left the Jews behind as sinners by nature as well as the Gentiles, and taught that there was no difference, since all had sinned, bringing in the new creation, and knowing Christ no more after the flesh; yet there were not to be two assemblies; the oneness of the church was to be maintained.

Peter is employed, after the conversion of Saul, to bring the first Gentile to the knowledge of Christ. But he never taught what the church was as the body of Christ: this is not revealed in the case of Cornelius. That the Gentiles should take their place among the Christians without becoming Jews, or being circumcised, was something that Peter and the other Jews had great difficulty in believing.

As to the progress of the gospel, let us see what is taught us in the sequel. We shall find that those who had been scattered, being Hellenists, or Jews who had lived in foreign countries, and were accustomed to maintain daily intercourse with the Gentiles, spoke with these: so that the free action of the Spirit also communicated by this means the gospel to the Gentiles. Paul had a new formal mission to every creature under heaven, and then he taught what the assembly was - a truth set forth by no other. See Colossians 1. And he himself was to be a member of the assembly, already founded and established on Christ, which was His body, the habitation of God through the Spirit, though he alone taught this doctrine.

It is not without importance to remark that the Romish system is founded on the authority of Peter, and draws all its pretensions from him; but the doctrine of the church was never confided to Peter. Peter was not the apostle of the uncircumcision, but of the circumcision (Gal. 2); full of power for the work among the Jews, he left that among the Gentiles entirely in the hands of Paul. Peter does not speak of the body of Christ, we who are Gentiles; and the instrument whom God adopted to establish the church among the Gentiles was Paul; 1 Cor. 3.

357 The foundation is one, that is, Christ; the gospel of salvation, one (1 Cor. 15: 2). Moreover, God Himself founded the assembly on the day of Pentecost by the gift of the Holy Ghost; but, as a human builder, Paul it was whom God employed to establish the church among the Gentiles, and unfold what it was. The other apostles never speak of the body of Christ, nor of the presence of the Holy Ghost on the earth. Peter then goes about continually, and the power of God manifests itself in him. Aeneas is healed; Tabitha is restored to life. The effect, however, of the first miracle is greater than that of the second. All that dwell at Lydda and Saron, rich countries on the sea-shore, turn to the Lord. At Joppa many believe on Him; and there Peter tarries many days.

Acts 10.

While Peter remains in Simon's house, God is occupied with the Gentiles, of whom Peter was not thinking and, even when he did think of them, not at all disposed to admit them among the believing Jews. The angel of God appears to Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, faithful according to the knowledge he possessed, fearing God, and praying continually. He was then converted, but did not know that salvation which had been announced by grace in Jesus, obtained for us on the cross. There are many people who, though they may have learned more than Cornelius, and who bear the name of Christians, have not got beyond this state. These are like the prodigal son (Luke 15), when he repents and arises to go to his father. He was on the right way, but he did not know how he would be received by his father. Such people possess perhaps more light, but as to their relation with God, they are in the same state.

But the conversion of Cornelius, and his introduction to the Christian assembly, was evidently of great importance. The Gentiles were to participate in the grace and blessing of the gospel. The promises had been given to the Jews - none of them to the Gentiles; but the revelation of the grace of God could not be limited to one people. In His government of the world God could choose a people for Himself, when mankind had abandoned Him and had altogether fallen into idolatry, in order to maintain on the earth the knowledge of the one true God, and to put the heart of man to the test, shew what it was, and unfold His ways in the midst of mankind. But God, revealed in grace according to His nature, could not in any way be the God of a single nation.

358 Hidden behind the veil, He could give a perfect law, promises, and prophecies; but at the death of Christ the veil is rent in twain, God is fully revealed in grace and justice, and could no longer be the God of the Jews only. Moreover, at the death of Christ, the Jews as a nation were set aside till they should repent. Yes, it was God's will that the Gentiles should take part in the new blessings of grace. All were sinners; but God purified by faith one as freely as another.

Independently of the Jews, He sends His angel to Cornelius. His prayers and alms are recognised as being acceptable to God. He is told to send men to Joppa to call for Simon, who, the angel tells him, lodged with one Simon, a tanner. He would tell him what he ought to do. Here is a new and important fact. God was thinking about the Gentiles, and desired to admit them to the assembly without their becoming Jews or submitting to the law. Cornelius, a truly devout man, humble, and fearing God, acts immediately according to the word of the angel, and calls two of his servants and a devout soldier, and, having declared to them all that had happened, sends them to call for Peter.

As they travel, God prepares Peter's heart for a mission, to accomplish which he, till then, had been by no means ready. But God desired to have the Gentiles. Peter was praying on the roof of the house where he lodged, and becoming very hungry, he would have eaten; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw as it were a great sheet let down from heaven to earth, full of all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air, which it was not lawful for the Jews to eat. And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Rise, Peter, kill, and eat. Peter, faithful to Judaism, refuses to do so; he had never eaten anything common or unclean. Then the voice said to him, What God hath cleansed, that call thou not unclean.

359 As Peter seeks for the interpretation of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius come to the door and ask for him; and the Spirit tells Peter to go with them, doubting nothing; for, said the Spirit, I have sent them. Peter, therefore, brings them in and lodges them, and on the morrow goes away with them, only taking the precaution of getting certain brethren to accompany him. Arrived at Caesarea, Cornelius throws himself at his feet as the messenger of God. Peter lifts him up, and asks for what reason he had sent for him.

Many relations and intimate friends of Cornelius were gathered together. All doubt as to the meaning of the vision was now removed. By the authority of God Himself, Peter found himself in the society of the Gentiles, which was unlawful for the Jews. He acknowledges God's willingness to receive those that feared Him and worked righteousness among all nations, not only among the Jews. While Cornelius and his friends listen with godly faith, he recounts the mission of Jesus, how the Jews had crucified Him, and God had raised Him up, of which thing the apostles were the witnesses, having eaten and drunk with Him after His resurrection; the proof that He was still a true man, though He possessed then a spiritual body, and that He was the same Jesus whom they had known alive on the earth. At the end of the Gospel of Luke, the basis of every record of the Acts, it is remarkable how Jesus in perfect grace, takes pains to make the disciples certain that He was the same Jesus whom they had known. There we are told, that He ate and drank in order to demonstrate it (Luke 24: 36, etc.). "And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy and wondered he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honeycomb; and he took it, and did eat before them," Luke 24: 40-43.

Still the principal thing remained. Cornelius was already converted, devout, faithful, and full of the fear of God, according to the light he possessed. But he did not know salvation, the work of the Saviour, and its efficacy. Led only by the grace of God, he received with faith what Peter told him. Now it was declared to him that, according to the testimony of all the prophets, he who believed in Jesus received the remission of his sins. The Holy Ghost seals by His coming this truth received with simple faith into the hearts of Cornelius and his friends. The Holy Ghost is given then to the Gentiles, without their becoming Jews or being circumcised. Henceforth it was impossible not to receive them into the Christian assembly. God had received them, and had put His seal on them. Peter commands them to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

360 We have here four distinct points: the conversion of the soul by grace (Cornelius was already converted, and his prayers and alms accepted by God); then the testimony of the remission of his sins by faith in Jesus, the victim by whom propitiation was made for us on the cross; then the seal of God in the gift of the Holy Ghost; and, finally, the formal reception among the Christians. This order is not that which is found elsewhere; because God was here shewing that it was His will that the Gentiles should be received. But it is important to distinguish the four things, and to observe the true force of each of them.

Acts 11.

The difficulty to the Jews of receiving the Gentiles was a great one. To do so was to give up all their privileges, all that remained of the ancient glory of Israel. Peter therefore, on his return to Jerusalem, is reproved; he had eaten with the Gentiles. Peter narrates all that had happened, and how God had given them the gift just as to believing Jews; how then could he hinder God? The Spirit had sent him to the Gentiles; the Spirit had been given to them. It was the accomplishment of the words of John the Baptist; and other brethren were witnesses to the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Jews could no longer resist the clear evidence of the will of God. Grace overcoming in their hearts, they exclaim, "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life."

It is important to ponder deeply the difference between conversion and salvation. I have already spoken on this subject, but it is one that is so much neglected, and Christians are so accustomed to be content with a low state of soul, and are so uncertain with regard to salvation, that I shall take the opportunity of adding a few more words. Cornelius was already converted; his prayers and alms were acceptable to God. He was to call for Peter, who would tell him words whereby he might be saved. God had been working in his soul, but he did not yet know the value of the work accomplished by the Saviour. It is the same in the case of the woman in Luke 7; she loved the Lord deeply, had felt the height of His grace and the depth of her sins; but knew not that all was pardoned. The Lord tells her so. The prodigal son was converted, confessed his sins, and turned towards his father, but he was not yet clothed with the best garment. His father had not yet fallen on his neck, he knew not his love; he hardly hoped to be admitted as a servant, and was not in a fit state to enter into the house. Every privilege awaited him, but he did not possess them.

361 I doubt not that He who has begun the good work will continue it till the day of Christ Jesus. As long as a soul reasons about its state, seeks to know whether it is saved or converted, and judges by its own heart of what is in the heart of God, it is under law; salvation for such an one depends on his own state, not on the love of God and the efficacy of the work of Christ. He may perhaps say he is truly converted; he feels the need of salvation, and believes that others have found it; but he does not himself possess it; just as Israel was not out of the land of Egypt till the sea was crossed. Two things, which cannot be separated, are necessary; faith in the work of Christ, and the knowledge that it is finished. I say they cannot be separated, because, when we believe in the work of Christ, and by faith trust in it, we are sealed by the Holy Ghost; we enjoy peace (the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts), we are reconciled to God, and in Christ are made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; and we know it by the Holy Ghost given to us. In spirit we are in the Father's house, partaking of the food with which He nourishes His beloved children. Not only has the heart turned towards God, but Christ is our righteousness, who also appears for us continually before the face of God.

Before the narrative of the mission of the apostle Paul, we find once more the free activity of the Holy Ghost in all the members of the body of Christ. Those who had been dispersed by the persecution raised against the Christians on the death of Stephen were preaching everywhere, but for the most part to the Jew only. It never occurred to them that the grace and the thoughts of God could overstep the limits of His people after the flesh. A few of them, however, who, living in Gentile districts (especially at Antioch), daily came in contact with the Gentiles and desired their salvation also, preached the Lord Jesus to them. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number, having believed, were converted to the Lord.

362 Thus we find that no sooner is the unity of the assembly secured by the admission of Cornelius to it by means of Peter - he first making use of the keys of the kingdom to admit, according to the Lord's promise, the Gentiles also - than the free action of the Spirit is reproduced. The gospel is spread among the nations, not by means of Peter, nor of Paul, who afterwards became the great minister of God towards the Gentiles, but by means of the faithful, stirred up by the love of Christ reigning in their hearts, and giving them the desire that His name should be glorified. It was not a question of ordination, nor of human consecration. All, except the apostles, had been scattered, and all were preaching. That there are especial gifts is evident in the word, but it was love to Christ and souls that opened their mouths.

And observe, the fact is not merely recorded in the word, but their activity is approved by the Lord. "The hand of the Lord was with them." The gospel was first preached to the Gentiles by private Christians, moved by the grace of God to communicate to others the blessing which they themselves enjoyed; and they sought to establish the authority of Christ over mankind, and glorify His name - an important principle clearly demonstrated in this narrative.

Let us bear in mind that the first dissemination of the gospel among the nations was effected, not by means of official preachers, but by ordinary Christians, not sent out by men; but moved by love to Christ. Subsequently Paul was sent expressly by the Holy Ghost, and received apostolic gifts; but he was not sent by the other apostles but directly by God and by Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Ghost. Moreover, in the providence of God, the free activity of Christians became the occasion of his mission. "Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem; and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch: who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith; and much people was added unto the Lord." Then Barnabas goes to seek for Paul, whom the brethren had brought to Caesarea, from whence he had gone to his native city, Tarsus. We have seen that Barnabas was a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, but he was not a man capable of taking the initiative, of starting and maintaining such a work as that of the conversion of the Gentiles. Thus, though blessed by God, he is not His instrument for this work. He was himself conscious of this, and so, with kindness and simplicity of heart, and doubtless led of God, seeks the instrument chosen and called by God. He had already introduced him to the Jews at Jerusalem, who were afraid of their late persecutor.

363 The power of Saul's call had separated him from everything to be for Christ alone. He awaited only the formal message from the Lord, a new source of courage and the effect of the spirit of humility and obedience. In our times, it is a difficulty that there is no clear and open call like that of Saul, but we have seen that all were free to evangelise; and moreover that they were bound to accomplish the work according to the strength of the love of Christ working in their hearts. And if there is a special gift, this gift is unfolded in the exercise of it. Besides, we have the promise and the precept, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." Such were the first disseminators of the gospel among the Gentiles. Apostolical gifts are indeed wanting, and that is a great loss; but it is an honour to be thus dependent on God, and that activity should be the fruit of the spiritual state. We shall experience our own weakness, but also the unwavering faithfulness of God. We have also the warning of the same James, "Be not many masters." The word of God is enough for all times; if it is not enough for us, it will be for our condemnation. The grace of God must work in us. Let us bear it in mind.

We see, however, the greatest liberty in the exercise of the ministry. Barnabas seeks Saul; Paul takes Silas, Timothy, and others; he wished Apollos to go to Corinth, but Apollos did not wish to go there. Saul then, and Barnabas, exercise their ministry together; they assemble themselves with the church, and teach much people. It was thus that a Christian assembly was founded at Antioch, the capital of the Gentile world in that quarter, and the point from which the Grecian world was evangelised.

364 But it was important that this assembly should not be separated from that of Jerusalem, and so we are suddenly taken back to that city. It is still lovingly recognised; and we shall see that God makes use of the very strength that sought to bring the Gentiles under subjection to the law, to set them free, maintain unity, and preserve liberty. Now the union is strengthened by the fruits of love. A prophet (and there were such in the new assembly) announces that there should be a great dearth throughout all the world; and the disciples determine to send aid to the brethren in Judaea; which is done by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Acts 12.

The Spirit now takes us back to Jerusalem. He was willing to forget neither it nor the testimony of God found there. The Spirit here records an event which sets forth the care that God, in His providence, had of His own (and especially, by means of the angels, for Peter), working in them by His Spirit. He permits that James, the brother of John, should succumb to the malice of Herod, the enemy of the gospel. That this was pleasing to the Jews gave the king a further pretext for continuing in the path of his opposition. Little mattered the death of a few Christians, if their death gave him popularity with the Jews. He therefore seized Peter and put him in prison, purposing after the feast of the passover to give him up to the people.

But the thoughts of God were otherwise. The night before he was to be led out to the people, Peter slept in perfect peace under the protection of God, although, so that the hand of God might be shewn in his liberation, he was strongly guarded by men. He slept between two soldiers, bound with two chains. Sentinels before the door guarded the prison likewise. But we are more secure in the hands of God than when exposed to the violence of men, even though they may seem to have us firmly enough in their grasp.

The angel awakens Peter, and at the sound of his voice the chains fall from his hands. Every detail is minutely recorded. At the word of the angel Peter binds on his sandals and girds himself. The care of the angel is most minute. And when, after having passed the two guards, they reached the outer gate, it opens to them of itself. The angel accompanies Peter through one street, and then disappears. Peter, who till this moment imagined he saw a vision, now becomes conscious that God has delivered him from the hands of Herod and from the expectation of the Jews. Observe here how visions resembled the reality, since Peter believed the reality to be a vision. Thus, considering the things, he comes to the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, a place probably often the scene of the meetings of the Christians. It was the home of the sister of Barnabas. Mark had gone with Barnabas on his separation from Paul: but Mark is again found in Colossians; and in 2 Timothy 4: 11 his service is recognised as profitable for the ministry. Sweet it is to see how grace, shut out for a while by failure, hastens to recognise the brother brought back to the path of devotedness, and to renewed usefulness in the work of the Lord.

365 Peter does not remain there, but, telling them to make known to James what has occurred, departs and goes to another place. But here we shall do well to remark a few particulars. The refuge of the faithful is in prayer. They had come together to ask God for the preservation of Peter, and God had heard their prayer. They did not know how, but they had put trust in God. It seemed to be the natural resource of the hearts of these believers; and the feeling was a common one. In the difficulty which had occurred, the danger of the beloved apostle, they meet together to look to God. Prayer was given to their hearts by the Holy Ghost as a refuge in adversity; and though they might not know how God would respond, yet they were always answered according to His own counsels. Peter is set free according to their desire; but we see how little the heart, though by grace it may have confidence in God and turns to Him in its need, believes that its supplications will be granted. Here their need had been expressed to God, but when the answer came, they could not believe it was possible.

Peter is set free by the intervention of the angel, and Herod is struck by the judgment of God when he sets himself up against Him. Can we expect similar intervention now? I do not believe that miracles are performed to-day; angels no longer appear; it was not a gift that could continue. In Ephesians 4 no miraculous gifts are to be found. But I fully believe, according to the Lord's promise, that prayer is heard, and that the angels work in favour of the children of God as much now as in those early times. As to prayer, the word of God is clear. The condition is made, however, that what we ask be according to the will of God, and that prayer be made in faith; and we are told that, if the words of Christ abide in us, we shall ask what we will.

366 The Lord and the apostles exhort us to prayer without ceasing, in confidence, never letting our faith fail. We do well if we make known our requests to God in every case; but it does not follow that we shall always receive what we ask - as, for example, it happened to Paul with regard to the thorn in his flesh. For him it would not have been good for God to have answered him. But the result of our prayers is that the peace of God which passes knowledge shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Phil. 4). His throne is not disturbed, neither is His heart burdened by our solicitations; and the peace in which He dwells continually shall, when we have placed these requests on His throne, work effectually in our hearts. The outward manifestation of the power of God, the testimony rendered at the beginning to the word of God, does not repeat itself; but God's care, His answers to prayer, and the blessed service of angels, still remain to the children of God. (For the angels, see Heb. 1: 14.)

Here we find then God's care for the assembly at Jerusalem; but we shall not again see any activity on the part of Peter. That such was to be the case is demonstrated by the fact of this intervention. We know that he went to Antioch, probably for the work of the Lord, but this is not stated. There he was unfaithful to the Lord, and is reproved by Paul. He wrote to the Jews in the provinces of Asia Minor, but it is not known whether he went there. It is possible that he lived in Babylon, but it is uncertain; many Jews lived there. In his epistle he salutes on the part of the saints there; but we possess no account of any of his doings. He was the first to introduce the Gentiles to the public Christian assembly, in order to preserve unity.

At this period ordinary Christians, in their dispersion, disseminated the truth among the Gentiles. Unity was still preserved; and the wisdom of God declared, by means of the assembly at Jerusalem, that the Gentiles were not under the subjection of the law. But as for Peter no more is heard regarding his activity; for the divine work was now to leave Jerusalem. He is fully recognised here by the care of the angels, but the power of the Holy Ghost is only found in Paul and in his companions. Antioch is the starting-point, and not Jerusalem; as for Rome, it is the last place where the church is established, and it was not founded there by the apostles. Before the arrival of Paul Christians, who, like many others, had gone to the capital of the world, met together there; and Paul wrote to them before going. What became of Peter is not recorded, and, save in chapter 15, where what he had previously done is mentioned, he now entirely disappears from the narrative. Paul, sent from Antioch by the Holy Ghost, is the instrument of God for the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles, and to teach what the church was, the mystery which had been hid from ages and generations. See Colossians 1: 23-27. It is his history which follows in chapter 13.

367 Acts 13.

Barnabas and Saul, having accomplished their mission, return to Antioch, from whence they had gone to Jerusalem with the contribution for the poor. Now in the assembly at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers. These ministered to the Lord and fasted. While thus engaged, with hearts consecrated to the Lord, the Holy Ghost said - "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." Doubtless the command was given by the mouth of one of these prophets, for this reason called such; but the important fact to remark is that these two apostles were called by the Spirit Himself.

Then, under the impression of the seriousness of the call, having again fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them and sent them away. And it was on a mission of the greatest importance. The gospel, and the revelation of the assembly, is now formally given to the Gentiles, they and the Jews, as believers, being united in one body on the earth and for the heavens. Let us consider a few particulars.

Already Paul had been called by the revelation and the authority of Christ, and more precisely by the revelation of a glorified Christ. Saul had not known Christ on the earth. Of this we have spoken. He had been separated both from the Jews and from the Gentiles. As regards religion, he did not belong to the one class any more than to the other, but was united to a risen and glorified Christ. Henceforth he knew no man after the flesh, not even Christ - that is, as a Jew who awaited a Christ on the earth, according to the promises given to the nation. As a witness called by God his starting-point was the glory - Christ in heavenly glory, the same who had suffered by the hands of those who were still persecuting His members on the earth. For him the cross was the end of his Adamic and Judaic life. He was dead to the world, to the flesh, to the law. He laboured as an apostle of, and one who belonged to, a new creation.

368 Moreover, he drew neither his authority nor his mission from the apostles who preceded him; his mission did not even originate at Jerusalem, and was not dependent on the sanction of the apostles there, nor of the church at that place. His mission was given directly from God and from Christ. Personally called by Christ three years before, he is now sent by the Holy Ghost, and departs from Antioch, a Gentile city, from the bosom of an assembly where the Gentiles had first gathered together. He did not go to or from another assembly. The superstition and legality of the Jews very nearly did so, but God did not permit it, as we shall see. His mission was nevertheless entirely independent; it was dependent on the authority of Christ alone, and on the power of the Holy Ghost. The apostle insists much on this point in the first two chapters of the epistle to the Galatians.

He desired to be absolutely independent of Peter and the others; and not only did he assert his having been sent from God Himself, but he was obliged to rebuke Peter, who, for fear of those who came from Jerusalem, had been unfaithful to the truth and to his own convictions. Paul was free from all men, subject to Christ, and in love the servant of all; a model and example for all Christians, as indeed he himself tells us. He fully recognised the mission of Peter to the Jews, as well as that of the other apostles; but though he preached the same gospel as they, his mission was directly from God Himself.

Barnabas and Saul are not only called, but sent by the Holy Ghost. They depart therefore to Seleucia, and from thence sail to Cyprus. But here the state of the work is manifested - a new aspect of affairs. The Gentiles are disposed to listen. Judgment falls on the Jews for a time, on account of their opposition to the gospel, especially on its proclamation to the Gentiles. See 1 Thessalonians 2: 16. Till now all the light that was in the world the Jews possessed; but, having rejected the true and perfect Light of the world, they had fallen into darkness, and hated the light, and all the more because jealousy filled their hearts. The apostle never denied their privileges. In Salamis he began by preaching in their synagogues. He did not give up the Jews till the Jews rejected the gospel.

369 Now John Mark, the son of her in whose house the disciples had met together to pray for Peter, was with them. The relationships of the apostle were still Judaic, for, though himself free, Paul profoundly loved his nation as the people of God. Having gone through the island, they find with the governor a certain Jew, a false prophet. The governor, a prudent man, desires to hear the word of God. The sorcerer Elymas, however, withstands the apostles, seeking to turn the deputy away from the faith. But if the hurtful power of the enemy was with the sorcerer, the power of God was with the apostles. They strike the false prophet with blindness. Such is a remarkable picture of the state of the Jews, and of the power of God shewn in the propagation of the gospel. The deputy, astonished at the doctrine of the Lord, believes.

Saul now assumes the name of Paul, having (we are not told how) changed his Jewish name for a Roman one. The moment was a convenient one. The word literally signifies "to work"; but I do not think this is either the source or the intention of it.

After crossing the sea, John Mark leaves them. His relationship with Jerusalem was too strong for him, and the difficulties and dangers of the work of the apostles too great for his faith. Barnabas was his uncle; Cyprus, the country of Barnabas. Alas! how many there are whose faith depends on circumstances! They go on steadily while surrounded by these circumstances; but when the path leads to simple dependence on the faithfulness of God, their steps at once begin to flag.

The power of the Spirit of God creates His instruments, and adapts each for His work; and, set forth by the energy of the Spirit, they are sustained by His power in the midst of all circumstances, whatever they may be. We shall see that even Barnabas could not continue always with Paul, nor consent to know no longer any man after the flesh. But it is sweet to see how, as I have already said, Paul in the end recognises Mark as profitable for the ministry (2 Tim. 4: 11). So Mark goes away, and Barnabas and Paul continue their journeying in strange lands, where the gospel is unknown.

370 Leaving Perga, they come to another Antioch, in Pisidia, where they enter into the synagogue of the Jews. Called on by the rulers of the synagogue to exhort the congregation (for the ministry was freer among the Jews than in modern Christian churches), they announce Jesus and the resurrection. Let us notice certain points in this address. As was generally the case, it was composed of facts. The apostle briefly relates the history of Israel till the time of David; and then lays down the two fundamental parts of the gospel - namely, the fulfilment of the promises, and the powerful intervention of God in the resurrection of Christ, by which He was shewn to be the Son of God. In this way also he begins the Epistle to the Romans. All the narratives of the Acts depend on the mission given at the end of Luke. The subjects are repentance and remission of sins. For Israel the way had been prepared by John the Baptist. Then God, according to His promise, raised up (not raised from among the dead) a Saviour.

But they of Jerusalem had accomplished all that the prophets had spoken, knowing neither the Saviour nor the voice of the prophets, which, in crucifying Jesus, they had fulfilled. But God had raised Him from the dead, and He had been seen for many days by those who had accompanied Him from Galilee. Thus was the promise in Psalm 2 of the coming of the Son of God, the King of Israel, accomplished. But, we would add, as to the responsibility of Israel, it is lost on account of the rejection of Christ; yet on the part of God all the promises were firmly established in His resurrection according to Isaiah 55: 3, and as to His person, the prophecy of Psalm 16 is accomplished. All that the Jews were now to receive was to be given in pure grace. On this foundation the doctrine of the gospel is established. The remission of sins is announced, and justification from all things, from which the law of Moses could not justify. The basis of the new covenant has been laid, and the blood of that covenant shed, though the covenant itself be not yet established. It will be with Judah and with Israel in the last days, but founded on what has been already accomplished.

The apostles then exhort their hearers not to neglect the salvation which had been announced to them. The fundamental truths of the gospel ever remain the same; the remission of all sins to believers; the person of Christ proved to be the Son of God by His resurrection; and the fulfilment of the promises made to Israel, though that people be for a time set aside. But this justification being for believers, it was for the Gentiles also.

371 The Gentiles then ask that these words may be preached to them on the next sabbath. The fame of this new doctrine quickly spreads, and nearly the whole city comes together to hear it. But the poor Jews, moved with jealousy, cannot bear to be surpassed in religious influence, and that another religion than theirs should work on the Gentiles. Oh, poor human heart, always stronger in religious people! The truth it has already believed in (and believed in because received by many, themselves unconverted; and because, besides being the truth, it does them honour to profess it) does not put the heart to the test. But truth is always truth, even though it be not received by the many; it does put the heart to the test, and must be received only because God gives it.

The Jews now begin to contradict and to blaspheme. Paul at once takes his stand, and acknowledging that the gospel ought first to be preached to the Jews, as heirs of the promises, openly declares that he turns to the Gentiles, taking the remarkable prophecy in Isaiah 49 as the commandment of the Lord. There the Spirit presents Israel as the nation in which God should be glorified. But then the Messiah had laboured in vain, for Israel was not gathered in. Still it was but a small thing to bring back the tribes of Israel; the Messiah should be a light to the Gentiles, and the salvation of God to the ends of the earth. On the ground of this declaration of the will of God, the apostles turn to the Gentiles.

Such was free grace, poured out on all, leaving the strict confines of Judaism, and directing itself to the whole world. But still the grace of God, mingled with faith, was necessary to make the truth enter the heart, so that it might be born of God. This is what happens here. The power of God accompanied the word and "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed." The result is this: - opposition on the part of the Jews, testimony throughout all the earth (except at Jerusalem, chap. 15), and the operation of grace in the heart, whereby it is led to the acceptance of the gospel.

372 Already, on the first sabbath day, many Gentiles and proselytes had followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God. The Jews, however, on account of their failure, are put aside. The spiritual energy of Paul now places him at the head of the work. Till this moment it has been Barnabas and Paul; henceforth we shall find Paul and Barnabas.

The gospel is shed abroad in all these regions; but the opposition of the Jews increases. They "stirred up the devout and honourable women, and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts." Similar scenes are enacted everywhere. By the permission of God (He, however, still holding the reins in His own hand) the devotees of the old religion, and the devout women, with the chief men under their influence, seek to cast out the gospel. The apostles shake off the dust from their feet, in testimony of the justice awaiting those who rejected the grace and salvation of God. "And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost."

Such is the varied picture of the work of the gospel in the world, and the first public exhibition of its result, when announced in the face of the opposition of the old religion, which still exercised its power over unconverted hearts, in presence of the need and unbelief of mankind. And such, in spite of conflicts and difficulties, is the power of the gospel under the influence of the Holy Ghost. It is first preached to the Jews, because they had the promises; then it is given to the Gentiles, because all believers are justified by faith in Christ. A dead and risen Christ is for all. Opposition springs up from the hatred of the Jews, of the devout women according to the old religion, and of the principal men of the city. Judgment, though not executed, is pronounced; and then grace, working in the hearts of the believers, leads them to faith and joy in the presence of the Spirit, those who do not believe being left under judgment. Expelled from Antioch, the apostles prosecute their labours elsewhere

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

J. N. Darby.

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Acts 14.

At Iconium many believed, but the Jews renewed their efforts against the gospel. As God worked by the word, however, the apostles abode there a long time. But, the city being divided, and their adversaries desirous of doing them injury, they set out for Lystra and Derbe, where they preach the gospel, as also in the regions round about. At Lystra the power of God was manifested by the hand of Paul in healing a cripple who had never walked. Here we find that the faith of the cripple had to go with his restoration; in other cases this does not appear, the cure being effected by the power of God alone, by him who was His instrument.

373 The people, astonished by the miracle, call Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury, because he was the chief speaker. Barnabas (as Mercury was servant to Jupiter) is mentioned first in the narrative. The priest of Jupiter desires to do sacrifice with the people. The apostles, Barnabas and Paul, vexed in heart at seeing the purpose of the people, and far from desiring any honour for themselves, rend their clothes, and running in among the crowd to stop them, announce the one true God (not here salvation), who, till then, "had suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness."

Such was the beautiful description of what God was, even among the Gentiles, and of what He gave to be known by them; I do not say that they did know Him, for they preferred the imaginations of their own hearts, and the gods who favoured their evil lusts. Nothing could be more horrible than what man shewed himself to be, when God left him, on account of his perversity, to himself. What they did every day in their idolatry is unfit to be written. The account of it may be found in Romans 1. The apostles seek to persuade the Gentiles of Lystra to give up their idols, and to believe in the one, true, and bountiful God, whom they had come expressly to declare to them, to lead them to His knowledge and to faith in Him. Scarcely, however, do they succeed in preventing the people from sacrificing to them.

But the Jews (not satisfied with having driven the apostles from Antioch and Iconium, and moved by an animosity, grievous to the heart, against the gospel) come to Lystra also, and persuade the people, who, ignorant and fickle, now seek to stone those whom, shortly before, they had been ready to adore. Paul, the more culpable in their eyes because the more active in the work, is stoned, and, apparently dead, is dragged out of the city. Such is man - such the religious, when they have not the truth; Paul himself had been such - but such also is the power of the gospel, when active in an unbelieving world.

374 But it was not in the thoughts of God that His servant should then perish. "As the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city; and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe." Much blessed in this city, he goes on his way and returns to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, from whence he had been expelled. Outrage and violence neither impede the work nor enfeeble the courage of the servants. When the Lord so wills it, they return in peace to the very places from whence they have been driven. It is beautiful to see the calm superiority of faith over the violence of man, and how God conducts the heart of His servants. They submit to, or, if possible, avoid violence; but if the work requires it, God opens the door, and the labourers are there with it again.

Now another part of their work is here presented. They continue to preach the gospel; but it was now necessary to establish assemblies, and put them in regular order (v. 23). They give the disciples to understand that Christ was not come to bring peace on the earth which would meet with the opposition and enmity of the world, but that through much tribulation they must enter the kingdom of God. It was a warning for all times to make men understand that persecution was not a strange thing. "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" - not, however, all Christians. If a Christian conforms to the world, he will avoid persecution; but he will lose the joy of the Holy Ghost and communion with God; he will be saved as by fire, and an entrance into the eternal kingdom shall not be abundantly ministered to him. If we walk with God, we shall not be barren in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

I speak thus, because for many the time of open persecution has passed away; but, if we are faithful, we shall most surely experience persecution both from the world and from our own families. The world cannot tolerate faithfulness. If the Christian walk with the world, instead of winning the world to Christ, he himself gets at a distance from Him, and will lose, I do not say life, but his spiritual privileges, his joy, and the approval of Christ; and his testimony is against Christianity. By his ways he declares that the friendship of the world is not enmity against God. The Christian when with the world is in no respects at ease; and when in the company of spiritual Christians his conscience reproves him because he is walking badly, and that which is a joy to them, he cannot enter into. May all who are disposed to or in danger of being let to mingle with the ways of the world give heed to this exhortation!

375 The apostles chose elders for the assemblies in every city. It is neither chose by common vote, nor ordained; this is not the true rendering of the word, but "chose." The same word is employed in 2 Corinthians 8: 19, where the assemblies chose brethren to accompany Paul with the money collected for the poor of Jerusalem. The same word occurs again in Acts 10: 41, where it is used in respect of God, and "chosen" is necessarily the sense. The apostles then chose elders for the assemblies. The epistle to Titus is another proof that the authority of the apostles was the source of that of the elders. I do not dwell here, however, on this question, though it is an important one, since the ordinary translation leads to putting the truth in a false light.

We have not in these days apostolic authority; and election made by the assembly is a thing unknown to the word. The authority descended from Christ to the apostle, and from the apostle to the elder. The word Bishop, in its present acceptation, is also unknown in the word. All the elders are really called bishops, as in Acts 20: 17, 28; no other bishops are found in scripture; and at the beginning Paul and Barnabas chose them for every assembly among the Gentiles, as afterwards Paul sent Titus to establish them in every town in the island of Crete.

It is important here to observe that the apostle not only preached the gospel for the salvation of souls, which was his principal work, but that he united the converts in assemblies, to which he was afterwards able to write; and that the church or assembly which he founded in every city was properly ordered and represented the universal assembly, of which those who in each place composed it were members 1 Cor. 12), with the promise that Jesus would be in the midst of them. But the wickedness of Christians, or of Christians so-called, and forgetfulness of Christ's return (Matt. 24: 48-50), have corrupted Christianity according to the prophecies of the New Testament. See 2 Tim. 3: 1-5; Jude 4; 1 John 2: 18, 19; Matt. 13: 28-30. All is disorder, confusion, and corruption.

376 But we are here learning the primitive order, before the assembly became corrupted. John tells us that the last time has already come; and Paul that "the mystery of iniquity doth already work" (2 Thess. 2: 7); Peter, that the hour has arrived to judge the house of God; Jude, that those who should be judged at the end had already crept in unawares.

The testimony is as clear as day, if we have ears to hear what is written in the word; that in the time of the apostles the corruption of the assembly of God had already commenced, and that, when the apostolic energy of Paul should be absent, evil from within and from without would inundate the church like a deluge. Matthew 13: 29, 30, teaches us that the evil effected by the enemy in the kingdom of God should not be taken away till the judgment. It all exists still, while the patience of God gathers in His own.

Then, when they had prayed with fasting and had commended them that believed to the Lord, the apostles go down by Pisidia to the sea-shore, preach in Perga, and pass on to Antioch. Here we see the true force of what had been done in chapter 13: 3. They had been recommended to the grace of God, for the work they had now fulfilled. This is repeated in chapter 15: 40; so that Paul would have been twice ordained, if this had been ordination; and he would moreover have been an apostle ordained by the laity. This, however, he stoutly denies (Gal. 1: 1); "an apostle," he says, "not of men, neither by man." The Judaizers sought to have it so, but he refuted it with all his power. These insisted that his mission was from the church at Jerusalem, and opposed him precisely because it was not. He was not willing to be an apostle at all, if not from God, and from Jesus Christ.

It is to Antioch they go, not to Jerusalem; they return to their starting-point, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God. The work of the Holy Ghost connects itself with Antioch, in its earthly relationship; the power is all from above. There the apostles recount the great things which God had done for them, and how He had opened the door among the Gentiles. "And there they abode a long time with the disciples."

In the preceding narrative we find this history of the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles, by formal apostolic mission, the difficulties, the position of the Gentiles and of the Jews, the circumstances under which it was propagated in the world, and that independently of Judaism and of Jerusalem, a work in which Peter took no part. God worked mightily by him among the Jews; but, except that he was employed to introduce the first Gentile, he had nothing to do with them. He was the apostle of the circumcision, and with the other apostles formally gave up the work among the Gentiles to Paul and to Barnabas; Galatians 2.

377 Acts 15.

But the Jews - those at least who made a profession of Christianity with Satan as their instrument - sought to place the Gentiles under the yoke of Judaism, and destroy the work of God within, if they could not hinder it without the church. They went down from Judaea to Antioch, teaching the brethren that they must be circumcised, and observe the law of Moses, in order to be saved. The moment was a critical one. It was necessary, according to them, that the Gentiles should submit to the law of Moses, and become Jews, or that two separate assemblies should be formed. Paul and Barnabas, however, oppose themselves to these exactions. But God did not permit the question to be settled at Antioch.

It will readily be understood, that, had the cause of the Gentiles been vindicated by a decision given at Antioch, and, in spite of the Jews, they had preserved their liberty, the danger would have been imminent of two assemblies being formed, and of unity being lost. All the spiritual and apostolic power of Paul therefore was insufficient to overcome the opposing spirit at Antioch, and decide the question. It was God's will that it should be decided at Jerusalem, and that the Christian Jews themselves, the apostles, the elders, and the whole assembly, should pronounce the freedom of the Gentiles; and that thus holy liberty and unity should be secured. It is decided, therefore, that Barnabas and Paul shall go to Jerusalem concerning this matter. We learn from Galatians 2: 2, that Paul went thither in obedience to direct revelation.

God permitted that these Jews, without mission, zealous without God for the law, the authority of which over the conscience had been terminated by the cross, should raise this question, so that it might be definitively settled. The apostles and elders, therefore, meet together. It seems that all the believers may have been present, since verse 12 speaks of the multitude; however it is the apostles and elders who meet together. Paul and Barnabas relate what has happened in their journey - the conversion of the Gentiles - and the brethren rejoice with great joy. Here the most simple hearts enjoy with simplicity the grace of God. But at Jerusalem they met with greater difficulty. Nothing could be more opposed to grace than the doctrine of the Pharisees, which asserted that righteousness must be obtained by works, and by the administration of ordinances.

378 Arrived at Jerusalem, they declare there also all things that God has done with them. But here God in His grace manifests the question as having been produced by the hardness of the heart; that is, that some of the sect of the Pharisees who had believed demanded that the Gentiles should be circumcised. I do not believe, however, that it is Paul or Barnabas who relates this fact, which had happened at Jerusalem. The apostles and elders then meet together. After much disputing (for the principals, led doubtless by the Holy Ghost, were wise enough to allow all who thought themselves capable to give their opinion; and in order that after the thoughts of men the voice of God might be heard) Peter reminds the assembly how God had chosen him first to bear the gospel to the Gentiles, and that the Spirit had been given to Cornelius without his being circumcised; that God Himself had borne witness to them by the Holy Ghost just in the same way as to the believing Jews; that He had made no difference between them, purifying their hearts by faith. He acknowledges the yoke of the ordinances, and warns them not to tempt God by putting it on the neck of the Gentiles. For did not they themselves believe that they had been saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, and not by ordinances?

Then all the multitude kept silence, and Paul and Barnabas declared what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them. (Here, at Jerusalem, Barnabas is always mentioned first; it is probable that he spoke more than Paul, relating what had been done. Paul had laboured more than any other; but at Jerusalem it was natural that Barnabas should be more forward than Paul.)

Then James, who held the first place at Jerusalem (see Acts 12: 17; 21: 18; Gal. 2: 12), gives a summary of the judgment of the assembly, which no one opposes, and, by the aid of the Holy Ghost, a definite form to the thought of God, expressing His will respecting the Gentiles. The work of the Holy Ghost is here in the first place remarkable; and also His full liberty, so that all the thoughts of men are brought to light, and given utterance to. In the next place, what God proposed to reveal by Peter in the case of Cornelius; and then the wonders that had been wrought by the hands of Barnabas and Paul among the Gentiles. Such is what seemed good to the Holy Ghost, who was given to Cornelius, and who wrought also among the Gentiles with signs and wonders by the hands of those who were sent out from Him.

379 Then James (who, as we have seen, represented the Judaic spirit, and in whose mind the feelings of the assembly at Jerusalem concurred, but who was fully under the influence of the Holy Ghost) expresses the thought of that assembly, and of the eleven apostles of Jerusalem, whom we may call Judaic, the judgment of God on the vital question under consideration; namely, that the Gentiles should not be subject to the law of Moses. The word of the prophets supported this sentence, for they had declared that there should be Gentiles on whom the name of the Lord should be called. It is with this intention that he cites the past.

Thus the Gentiles were free. The things they had to observe were duties before the publication of the law. The worship of one God, and the purity of man, were always obligatory. Noah had been prohibited from eating blood, in testimony that the life belonged to God. These great principles are established by this decision - the abstaining from idols - that life belongs to God alone, purity of life in man. They were principles necessary for the Gentiles, and corrected their evil habits; principles recognised by the law, but which had not been distinctly laid down by it.

The assembly did not vote. All consented, under the influence of the Holy Ghost to what had been expressed. All agreed, apostles, elders, and the whole assembly, to send men chosen from among them to confirm by word of mouth the account of Barnabas and Paul, and the written decision which they took with them from Jerusalem. The apostles and elders assembled together to examine the question, but all the brethren joined with them in the letter sent to the Gentiles. Thus it was not the Gentiles who maintained their rights in spite of the assembly at Jerusalem, but by the wisdom and grace of God, the assembly at Jerusalem which acknowledges the liberty of the Gentiles as to the law; and unity is thus preserved.

380 We may add that it was not a general, or other assembly, for it was the assembly at Jerusalem, and the apostles and elders of that city, who met together, with a few from Antioch on the part of the Gentiles, to consider the question. The Councils, for many centuries called "general," were convoked by the emperors to settle the disputes of the bishops: first in the east, on which occasions there were never more than six bishops present from the west; and afterwards when the Greek church separated from the Latin church, when there was no emperor from the west, councils being assembled by the popes without a single bishop from the east being present. These popes, without one bishop from the east, and profiting by the need of the emperor of the east who was menaced by the Turks, sought to unite the east to the west in the fifteenth century at Florence, but the attempt failed.

What we have here is that the apostle and the Judaic assembly, by which God had begun the work, set the Gentiles free from the law; and unity is preserved. We learn too how the Holy Ghost gives unity of thought concerning the questions which had arisen, since the gathering was waiting on the Lord. Thus is the liberty of the Holy Ghost preserved to the Gentiles, and, by the goodness of God the unity of the whole assembly maintained. It is declared that no commission had been given to those who had disturbed the Gentiles, subverting their souls. Subsequently, after much long-suffering on the part of God the Jews are called, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to give up Judaism. The law and Christianity cannot be united.

Paul and Barnabas, then, taking leave of Jerusalem, come to Antioch, assemble the multitude, and give them the letter The brethren, having read it, rejoice for the consolation. Thus was the state of the whole assembly settled, and also the relationship between the Jews and Gentiles. The necessary rule for them is established. They are to walk well, avoiding certain things. Judas and Silas remain for a time with the disciples at Antioch, exhorting them, and rejoicing in this new fellowship of the love of the assembly at Jerusalem for the brethren among the Gentiles. Then Judas leaves them, but Silas, drawn towards these new brethren, remains at Antioch. Paul and Barnabas also remain there, teaching the brethren; and many others likewise interest themselves on their behalf; for the power of the Holy Ghost was working in their midst. Life was fresh in those days.

381 After some time Paul, active and full of love, his work accomplished for the moment at Antioch, turns towards the gatherings he had founded, desiring to know how it fared with them. But now Barnabas, like Peter before him, disappears from the scene. Not that he no longer worked for the Lord, but he did not maintain himself at the same level of service of Paul. Eclipsed in the work when with him, now he disappears altogether. A good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, he was yet not detached from everything as was Paul, for whom, according to his call on the way to Damascus, Christ glorified and His own was all in all.

This remarkable servant of God knew no longer anything after the flesh - a consecration necessary to the founder of the church of God. He had given up Judaism that he might become a minister of the economy of the church. See 1 Cor. 3: 10; Eph. 3: 1, 2; Col. 1: 23-25. This economy had always existed in the counsels of God, but after the delay granted by His patience till the preceding mission of Paul from Antioch, which mission was then only put into execution, it is put on its true footing, on account of the attachment of Barnabas to things which were only objects of natural affection. John Mark was the son of the sister of Barnabas, and the island of Cyprus his native country; Col. 4: 10; Acts 4: 36.

Barnabas was quite disposed to accompany Paul in his journey, but he wished to take Mark with him; this, however, was displeasing to Paul, for Mark had left them in the preceding journey at Perga. He had not courage sufficient to confront the difficulties of the work outside of Cyprus. Paul only thought of God, Mark of the circumstances; but it is not thus that difficulties are to be overcome. It is possible that the flesh may have manifested itself in Paul; but at all events he could not boast of being in the right. Paul did not think of the economy entrusted to him, but of what according to faith suited the work - the principle of life and heart necessary to accomplish it. He did not know the results, but what was necessary to produce them. Separation was necessary, and that God had wrought out in him. Still acerbity was unnecessary. At the bottom Paul was right, and the hand of God was with him. Even where the purpose of the heart is just, the flesh may very soon manifest itself.

382 Barnabas separates himself, and sets out for Cyprus, his country, taking Mark, his nephew, for the work of the Lord, but no longer the companion of Paul in the work to which God had called him. We do not forget the real worth of Barnabas, a true servant of Jesus, to whom the Holy Ghost Himself has borne witness; only he was not suited to that work. We learn ourselves that a heart consecrated to the Lord, without other attachment, separated from everything, is alone suited to represent Christ in a ministry such as that of Paul, and indeed in every true ministry.

Affection is good, but it is not consecration. Woe to us if we have not natural affection - it is a sign of the last times (2 Tim. 3: 8); but these are not suited to such a work, a work which demands that one should not know anything after the flesh. Natural affection is not the "new creation," though fully recognised by God in Christ Himself, when He was not in the work; neither is natural affection the power of the Holy Ghost, which alone produces the effects of grace in the work of God.

Barnabas then goes his way; such was his will. Paul chooses Silas, and is recommended by the brethren to the grace of God - a second ordination if it were a question of that, but it is quite another thing. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches. Remark here that many had been formed where the apostle had not before been, as he found the first time he passed through the island of Cyprus.

Acts 16.

Now from the beginning of chapter 16 down to the end of chapter 20 we have the public ministry of Paul among the Gentiles during many years when he has commenced his apostolic ministry (as under the grace and direction of the Lord, head of the work), having undertaken it, it being laid upon his heart by the power of the Holy Ghost, and taking with him first of all Silas, and afterwards other co-labourers - but always to help him - in a work, in which by the authority of the Lord and led of the Spirit, he held the first place; the activity, the direction, and the movement proceeded from him, the others who accompanied him being only co-labourers and being under his direction: but he stands alone now as apostle of the Gentiles. Rom. 11: 13; Eph. 3; Rom. 1: 13, 15; Gal. 2: 7, 8.

383 We have seen that now Barnabas has separated himself. Paul (1 Cor. 3), as a wise master builder has laid the foundation; others worked independently, as Barnabas, Apollos, etc. But Paul had the revelation of the mystery of the church, and the administration of the economy among the Gentiles to found and set in order everything. See 1 Cor. 16: 1; 7: 17: and many other passages. Timothy, and Titus; and Silas; and many others named in his epistles, laboured under his direction; and he sent them wherever the exigencies of the work required. He had already taken with him Silas; and now, having returned to Lystra and Derbe, he chooses Timothy to whom the brethren bore a good testimony.

It appears that Paul laid his hands upon him (2 Tim. 1: 6), the young man having been marked out by prophecy, as he had been himself; then the testimony of the elders was added, and they also laid on their hands; 1 Tim. 4: 14. It is possible that Paul may have laid his hands upon him when he visited Derbe on his first journey.* That; however, is not said: at the same time, it was known by the brethren of Lystra and of Iconium, as also at Derbe; prophecy had marked him out; and the testimony of all, manifested by the laying on of the hands of the elders, confirmed it. Paul conferred on him the gift of the Spirit (2 Tim. 1: 6, 7) by the laying on of his hands, although it may not be said openly when. It is quite possible that he might have been active already in that locality, but he was specially gifted for the present work by that imposition of hands of the apostle.

{*In chapter 22: 4, the reading should be: "and Gaius and Timotheus of Derbe." Gaius was not of Derbe. The difference is only in the punctuation.}

There yet remains a special fact to remark upon. Confusion had entered into the practical life of the Jews, as among the Christians. The mother of Timothy was a Jewess, his father a Greek; a thing unlawful among the Jews. His mother was pious (it is not said if it was before his conversion or after); also his grandmother was so; 2 Tim. 1. Now such a marriage was totally contrary to the custom of the Jews. See Neh. 13: 23-31; Ezra 9, 10. According to these books the sons and daughters were heathen, and ought to be rejected and sent away, as well as the wife. It was a disorder. Paul availing himself, not of the law but of the privileges of grace, and thinking of the Jews, of whom there were many in those regions, circumcises Timothy. This was not according to Judaism; on the contrary, it was against its order, but he took away what would have been a stumbling-block for the Israelites. It was pleasing to the Jews: he did it to gain them; in a word, it was not a legal act, quite the contrary. It was an act of superiority to the law. The Jews all knew that his father was a Greek; and the position of Timothy, his mother being a Jewess, was scandalous for them, and the apostle takes away the scandal. The hearts of the Jews would find themselves contented; and they would have had something to say if the son of a Greek, by whom his mother had been rendered impure, had presented to them the gospel. It was an arbitrary act, but the scandal was taken away, and he went against the prejudices of his people. But when the Jews wished to force him to circumcise Titus, he yielded to them not even for a moment; Gal. 2: 3-5.

384 At the same time, as they passed "through the cities they delivered the decrees of the apostles and the elders for to keep"; a perpetual testimony, if the Christian Jews should wish to put their brethren from among the Gentiles under the law of Moses, that they acted against the thoughts and authority of the apostles and of the elders, of those whom the Lord had established for Christ by the Holy Ghost, who in the Jewish church itself were as an authority. That the Judaisers were not in any way authorised by the chief men gives a source of joy to the Gentile brethren thus established in the faith.

And remark how the Christian faith is now spread throughout all the regions where Paul prosecuted his labours; and the number of those gathered together increased daily. Now we follow his labours in other countries and regions.

Here we find another precious truth: the perpetual direction of God by the way, be it directly by the Spirit, or be it by other intimations. Paul was sent to preach the gospel to the entire creation under heaven; but that field is large, and so he labours under the authority of the Lord, the Son, who is over the house of God; as also He was announced as Lord and Saviour to poor sinners. They execute then this mission in Phrygia, and in the regions of Galatia. He had already commenced in Phrygia on his first journey, but now he enters Galatia, a large province, for the first time. These had suddenly gone astray from the right way, through the means of Judaising Christians: people who wished, as we have seen, to join the law to Christianity. We possess the epistle written by the faithful care of the apostle to deliver them from their error: an epistle more severe than all, since they had taken away the divine foundation of righteousness and true holiness - more severe than that to the Corinthians, who had committed nevertheless sins more horrible than the heathen, and had got into deplorable disorder. He says all the good he can to the Corinthians, although he does not spare them as regards their deeds, but reproaches them; and also he did not wish to visit them until they repented. But as to the Galatians he says nothing loving to commence with, but sets himself at once to reproach them, and at the end salutes no one. Troubled in his heart he does not know how to take them (chap. 4: 20), he would wish to be among them in order to speak according to their wants. His love had not grown weak, but he travailed again in birth of them until Christ was formed in them. We see the power of the love of the blessed apostle. Moses, weary, fatigued by the unbelief of the people, asks if he had brought forth all this people that he should carry them as a father. Paul, full of the love of Christ, is contented to do it a second time rather than lose them. He was their father in the faith; so powerful is the love of Christ in the heart!

385 After having crossed Phrygia and Galatia, the Holy Ghost forbids them to preach in Asia. Later he dwelt about three years in Ephesus, the capital of the province; and all Asia* heard the word of God. Arrived in Mysia they essay to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit of Jesus suffers them not. Having passed by Mysia, they come to Troas. There Paul has a vision in a dream. It was not the open direction of the Spirit; it was left to spiritual intelligence to understand the meaning. A man of Macedonia appeared to him, beseeching him to come and succour them.

{*Then it was the name of a province of the Roman Empire.}

As Paul lived in the things of God, he interpreted the vision as his mission, by the knowledge he had both of the thoughts of God and of the wants of men, and passed over therefore at once into Macedonia. Perhaps it is not very important, but we may remark here, that for the first time we find the writer speak in the first person: "We endeavoured"; that is to say, Luke, who has written the facts, becomes now the companion of Paul in his work.

386 Here the question presents itself: In what manner and to what extent can we expect the direction of God in our work? The answer is analogous to that which we have already given with respect to the intervention of God in order to liberate us from dangers. We cannot expect visible and sensible interventions; but we can expect with certainty the care and direction of God by His Spirit in the heart, if we walk with Him - "To be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding" - to be led by the Spirit if we walk in humility. See Rom. 8: 14; Col. 1; also Psalm 32: 8, 9. I do not doubt that, if we walk with God and look to Him, the Spirit will put in our hearts the special things that He wishes us to do. Only it is important that we keep in memory the word of God, in order that it may be a guard against all our own imaginations; otherwise, the Christian who lacks humility will do his own will, often taking it for the Holy Ghost. That is but the deceitful folly of his heart; first, that it knows them; secondly, taking it for the Holy Ghost: but. I repeat, he who looks with humility to the Lord will be conducted by the Lord in the way; and the Holy Ghost who dwells in him will suggest to him the things which He wishes him to do. "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no one . . . . We have the mind of Christ, 1 Cor. 2: 15, 16.

Here then the apostle gathers that the Lord had sent him to Macedonia, and goes there. He stops at Philippi, the principal city of the country and a Roman colony. He commences, as he always does, with the Jews. It appears that there was not a synagogue there. It was the custom of the Jews to have their worship in such a case, as it is still, on the banks of the river - I believe, for the sake of purification. There were but a few women there: Paul contented himself with them, and spoke to them of Christ, and of salvation through Him. There was Lydia, a proselyte who worshipped the true God; she was among these women, had not the knowledge of Christ, but the piety which does not neglect the worship of the Sabbath day in a far distant country, where it was not the natural occasion to observe it. The blessing is accorded at least to that one in whose heart this faithfulness is found. The Lord opened the heart of Lydia to attend to the things spoken by Paul. She was a Gentile, but brought to the knowledge of the only true God; and she is another example of the difference between conversion and the knowledge of salvation in Christ.

387 There were many such worshippers - their souls were wearied with the folly and iniquity of paganism, which was insufficient to satisfy the needs of the soul, and through grace they were turned to the only true God known among the Jews, and they frequented the Jewish worship, without being circumcised. They were called religious persons, persons who served God. They listened to the apostle more than the Jews, and were often the occasion of their jealousy; of this class was Lydia. See chap. 17: 17; and 13: 16; where it is said, "and ye which fear God." They are found without being named, in chapter 13: 1, and distinctly verse 43, and also elsewhere. Lydia is baptised with all her house: and Paul and his companions enter her house and dwell there. It may be said that now the assembly was founded at Philippi.

But the enemy is not satisfied to allow the work to make progress, without doing anything to oppose it. On the contrary he works with deceit; he does not assail the work openly. He has the appearance of helping it, certainly not recognising Christ as Lord, because then he would no longer be Satan (the adversary), but flattering the apostle, in order to be able to mix himself up with the work of the Lord, to accredit himself with this union, and to spoil it at the same time. He acts thus with more finesse in order that Christians may be less wise to refute him. To be supported by the world (and Satan is the prince of it) will appear to be a great help to the progress of the gospel. The enemy disguises himself, makes himself the friend of the servants of God and of the work, transforms himself into an angel of light. The Gibeonites with deceit made themselves the friends of Israel, and in consequence they were never conquered, as our friends are not conquered. Thus, when the Christian or the assembly, mixes itself with the world, the loss is always on the side of the Christian, because the world in its nature is always with its motives, but the flesh is always in the Christian. He may draw near to the world, but not the world to the Spirit. The testimony, however, is lost. Wine mixed with water is no longer pure wine, it has lost its taste. The friendship of the world is enmity against God.

388 The world seems amiable when it draws near to Christians and their testimony, but it draws near to Christians to spoil their testimony, and to put itself in esteem; but to Christ it cannot draw near. The spirit of Python can flatter the servants of God in order to gain them; it can speak of God, of the most high God, even of the way of salvation, but not of Christ Lord and Saviour, of the state of sin and guilt in which man is, in which he is lost. That would be to confess that he who says such things is lost. That is quite another story. When the world unites itself to Christians, their testimony is lost, and the fault is always that of the Christians. They accept the world, because they have already lost true spirituality, the love of Christ rejected by the world, the love of the holy glory of His cross in which His heavenly glory was exhibited in this world.

But the apostle does not seek to excite the enmity of Satan, he does not accept that testimony, he keeps himself ever separate, neither does he act so as to change it into open opposition. He continues quietly on his way. At last he can no longer bear the voice of the unclean spirit, it being so grievous to his heart that he associated himself with him; he casts him out by the power of the Holy Ghost. Suddenly the enmity of the natural heart under the influence of the world is revealed. And that influence is more fatal for man than the possession of the body and faculties.

The Lord drove out the legion with a word; but the world, frightened by the manifestation of divine power, cast out Jesus from its confines. Similarly here, the demon being cast out, the masters of the damsel through human motives to which the demon lent himself, seeing that their gain was lost, stirred up a persecution against Paul and Silas.

What the servants of the most high God do is now of no consequence. Man's god is money, power and human glory. Satan never wishes that the power of God should be cast out. To be recognised, accredited, to join himself to the excellency of the truth pleases him, because he knows well that true power is with God, and thus that which remains of the truth in effect increases his influence. for that is now only increased, not destroyed. He will speak sufficiently of the truth to deceive Christians if it were possible, in order that, such as he is as prince of the world, he may not the less be in light.

389 The pure light manifests him, and thus is it that Christianity, and Christians, less wise than the apostle, have mixed themselves with the world, and the result is that Christianity lies under the power of Satan. The apostle did not act thus; but now it is quite possible persecution will arise, and that is what came to pass here. If the enemy cannot accredit himself with the gospel, he will oppose it.

The motives were purely human, the influence that of Satan. The motives presented to the magistrates were nothing but false pretexts. They worked on the pride and the fear of the authorities, who desired peace, and that was disturbed by the enemies, not by the Christians. Besides the gospel did not oppose Roman dignity which possessed the city, it being a colony. The magistrates ask no more; they had stirred up a multitude which strove for its privileges. Rending their clothes, they command them to be beaten, and then send them to prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely. He, having received such a charge, thrusts them into the inner prison, making their feet fast in the stocks.

All then was tranquillised; but the magistrates thought nothing of justice, nor of paying costs* for poor evangelists. But God has not forgotten them, and bears marked testimony to His servants. He permits them to be punished unjustly, and it is their glory to make no resistance. It is a means by which still brighter testimony may be given to His word, and to His servants.

{*Feeing counsel.}

They are thrust then into the inner prison, and there sing praises to God, and the prisoners hear them. Suddenly there is a great earthquake, the doors of the prison are opened, and every one's bands are loosed. God intervenes for His own, and to bear testimony to His word. When persecution is allowed, the wickedness of man can do much, but he cannot hold against the power of God those who fall into his hands. The jailor wishes to kill himself; but Paul crying out that they were all there, prevents him from doing so. Leading out Paul and Silas, he asks them what he must do to be saved. The answer is simple, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." The word is then announced to him and his, and he is baptised with his house. He then cares for his prisoners, and washes their stripes, being filled with joy and peace with all his house.

390 Tranquillity restored, the magistrates, believing that all trouble is thus ended, send word to the jailor to let Paul and Silas go. But it was a struggle between the testimony of God and the power of Satan; it was necessary that the unjust magistrates should own their fault, and the rights of the gospel of God. Paul did not wish to excite this struggle (an important warning to us), but to continue his work peacefully. The devil was seeking to mix himself up with the work, to associate himself, to the eyes of the world, with what was done by the servants of God. This provoked the apostle. It was necessary either to receive the testimony of the devil, and join his name to that of Christ, or to enter into a struggle. He casts out, therefore, the unclean spirit; and open war is thus at once declared.

Satan is the prince of this world; and the world, stirred up by the present power of God in the work of the Spirit, is, unless kept down by God, stronger than His servants. Here God permits the world to manifest itself in violence and injustice, in the multitude as much as in the magistrates. The servants of God submit to this injustice, are beaten and cast into prison, their enemies being the guilty ones, as is nearly always the case. I say nearly, because it is possible for Christians to fail in wisdom, and to provoke a struggle without cause. They do not resist; but here the power of the Holy Ghost and the state of their souls shew complete superiority to circumstances. Full of joy in prison and in the stocks, they can sing praises. Testimony is rendered even to the prisoners. As far as the body is concerned, the world is stronger than the Christian, if God allows it to act; but in soul, the Christian is always above circumstances, if he can realise the presence of God. His presence is the greatest of all circumstances, and overcomes the others. One can rejoice even in sufferings, as we see in Acts 5: 41; Romans 5: 5.

Moreover, God makes use of the circumstances, and enters, so to speak, into the struggle Himself; the doors are opened, and the bands are loosed. In body man is powerless, unless God see fit to intervene; and often He does so by His providence, if not in a miraculous way. All were witnesses or convinced that God was victorious in the struggle - though some, in spite of themselves. The magistrates had taken part in the wrong with great injustice, and it was necessary, therefore, that they should own their fault. Now that all was calm, they sought, in the wisdom of the world, to let the affair blow over in silence. But when God works and shews Himself, He makes it plain that He has rights in this world.

391 Paul and Silas were in prison against all the rights of God and of men; and the magistrates are obliged by the firmness of Paul to own their fault, and to ask the servants of the Lord as a favour to depart. This, as it suited them, they do without delay; only, being perfectly free, they enter into the house of Lydia, see the brethren, comfort them, and depart.

When Paul sought to make use of his rights as a Roman in order to arrest injustice, he lost his liberty, and was sent a prisoner to Rome, although the Lord had directed everything. But here he did not attempt to arrest injustice; he submitted, only taking advantage of this right afterwards, when it was a question of the innocence of the gospel and of its conduct, and when it happened that the magistrates, and not he, were in the wrong.

But God has this peculiar work in the world, the blessings of grace; and makes sure of all this for the conversion of the jailor. He works as a man of the world at his post; but by this manifest intervention of God, he is awakened, convinced of sin, and given to feel his need of salvation. Now that all call themselves Christians, one asks if a man is a good Christian, truly converted; but then all were heathens or Jews, and became Christians. Now Christianity is salvation. The grace of God has brought salvation into the world in the Son of God; and by His work on the cross, it is announced by the Holy Ghost. The need makes itself felt when the conscience is moved by the Holy Ghost. What it seeks for is salvation, as here does the jailor. The answer is simple and clear: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

The object of faith is the person of the Lord Jesus, and the redemption accomplished by Him; and all believers, reaping the benefits of this work, are saved. Now one investigates and scrutinises in order to know whether one has faith in the heart, and whether it be true faith. We all pass more or less through this state, but true peace is never to be found there. It is perhaps, however, useful in humbling us, and teaching us that in us dwells no good thing. But we are not called upon to believe in the faith which is in us, but to believe in Christ Jesus; and God declares that all believers are justified, and have eternal life. I do not examine my eyes to know whether I see, but look at the object before them, and know that I see. People quote the passage in 2 Corinthians 13: 5; but those who do so deceive themselves, leaving out the correct beginning of the passage, "Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, . . . examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith." The apostle shews them their folly in doubting his true apostleship. If Christ had not spoken by him, since they had received his word, how was it that he had been the means of their conversion? For the same reason he continues to inquire, "Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you?" Christ therefore had spoken by his mouth. There were many proofs of his apostleship. Here he shews them their stupidity, because if he were not an apostle, they would not be Christians. Of their conversion they had no doubt. If we examine ourselves to know whether we walk as Christians, we do well; but if we do so to know whether we are Christians, it is not according to the word.

392 Faith looks towards Jesus, not towards self. The experience of the examination of the heart, in order to discover what passes there to make one believe, leads us to see that it is impossible thus to find peace, or even victory, for we are looking at what is behind us; but when we are convinced of this, the answer of God is there - He has given salvation in Christ, and he who believes is justified. The Lord says, "Thy sins are forgiven; go in peace, thy faith hath saved thee," Luke 7. The woman looked to Jesus, and believed His word, not thinking of the state of her own heart. The state of her heart, the conviction that she could not find peace and salvation in herself, led her to look to Jesus, and in Him she found peace. The gospel gives the answer of God to the heart clearly and fully. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."

I learn by experience that in me dwells no good thing, and that I have not the strength to conquer. I cease to look towards myself, as though I could become better. The flesh is always there; the will may be good (in a converted man), but practice does not correspond to will. Not amendment, but salvation, is needful to us: and that we possess in Christ by faith, and, in salvation, peace. Being unable to accomplish justice in ourselves, we submit to the justice of God. By the faith that Christ Himself is our justice before God, we learn by experience what we are ourselves. This experience is itself the fruit of the work of the word by the Spirit in the heart; but by this we learn that we are lost, that, looking to Christ, we are saved. "Believe, and thou shalt be saved." Good works are what suit the position we then occupy. It is the same in human relationships of children, wives, servants; it is necessary to be in the relationship, or the duties do not exist. When we are saved, we become the sons of God, and then we find the duty of sonship; but it cannot exist before we are sons. The duty of man as the creature of God existed, but on that ground we are lost. Christian duty does not begin till we are Christians. It is remarkable, here and elsewhere, how whole households are admitted to the Christian assembly.

393 Acts 17.

To suffer with patience, to sing in the midst of tribulation - this is power; then with the same strength we can, when free, carry on the Lord's work, with like courage. So says the apostle, referring to such circumstances, in Thessalonians 2: 2; having been stoned and shamefully entreated at Philippi, he boldly and energetically continues to preach the gospel at Thessalonica. It is there we find him at this point of our narrative. God leads through persecution just as by all other means. The Apostle selects localities where there were synagogues. Passing through Amphipolis and Apollonia, he stops at Thessalonica; where was a synagogue. It was a large city, where to this day many Jews are to be found. "To the Jew first and also to the Greek," characterised his work.

In Philippi we find Satan's opposition apart from the Jews, for, though Paul had there sought the Jews also, they had no part whatever in the conflict. The enemy had desired to identify himself with the work of the gospel, falsifying it in order to avoid the destruction of his own power: but he does not support open opposition. But when the religious element is present - that is a religion which boasts of possessing the rights conferred by God on His own on the earth, the professors of which do not submit to the truth - this is always a source of persecution. In Philippi it was simply an arrogant and self-interested people who spurned all religions which spoke of the true God, as well as everything else except its own superstitions, and only sought to preserve peace under the government of Satan. It was the world that cast out Paul, as the Gadarenes did Jesus. It could endure the manifestation neither of the truth, nor of the power of God.

394 In the narrative which follows we again find the religious element in enmity to the truth; the Jews jealous of the gospel of grace, and of the Gentiles, to whom it was announced, although the former had the first place in its administration. For three sabbaths Paul reasons with the Jews of Thessalonica in the synagogue, according to the custom, shewing them that it was expedient that Christ should suffer, and rise again, and that Jesus was this Christ. Some of the Gentiles, who worshipped the true and one God, whose need had led them to recognise Him who had revealed Himself, believed. They were many in number, and of the chief women not a few.

The blessing of God does not fail to excite the jealousy of the Jews, and to the enmity of the human heart all means are lawful. Stirring up the people of the baser sort, they assault the house of Jason, seeking to bring out the servants of God, but they do not find them there. Jason, however, and certain other brethren they drag before the rulers of the city, accusing them of teaching doctrines opposed to the authority of Caesar, and of saying that there was another king, Jesus. But the rulers, troubled, it is true, with the people, were wiser than those of Philippi; for, taking security of Jason, they let them go. The chief culprits, Paul and his companions, not being found, were not there; and the brethren, finding the door shut for the moment against the work, send Paul and Silas to Berea, a neighbouring city.

In the epistles to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 2: 14), where also the apostle speaks of the state of the Jews (2 Thess. 1: 4), it appears that immediately after the apostle's departure, a violent persecution sprang up, and that the converts suffered greatly, but remained faithful, so that their faith became celebrated everywhere. It was to these that the apostle wrote his two first epistles, immediately after his departure from Athens and Corinth, in order to encourage them to persevere, having sent Timothy from Athens, to know if they stood fast in the faith (1 Thess. 3: 1). In reading these epistles, and Acts 18: 6, we find that the first was written from Athens when Silas and Timothy had rejoined him (Acts 17: 15; 1 Thess. 1: 1). Then he had sent Timothy to Thessalonica, who, on his return, brings good tidings of the state of the Thessalonians. The first epistle is then written. It seems that Silas and Timothy had come back and again rejoined the apostle, when he had already left Athens and was come to Corinth; Acts 18: 5.

395 Of this journey we have no account, but it is the proof of the tender care with which the apostle watched over the new converts, and sought to establish them in the faith and path of Christ. The two epistles are remarkable for the freshness and affection of the communications, of which they are full, and especially the first, for the testimony which the apostle could render to the state of the disciples.

It will be useful to examine for a little what the apostle taught during his short stay at Thessalonica. We have very little, almost nothing, of the apostle's discourses outside of the synagogue. At Athens he makes a speech in the Areopagus, but he does not preach. He preached, it is said, Jesus and the resurrection. Let us gather up what is said here. In the synagogue he maintained that Christ should suffer and rise again from among the dead; moreover, he announced the kingdom of God, because He was accused of having taught that there was another king, Jesus (chap. 20: 25). Short though the time was in Thessalonica, yet during his sojourn there, he had taught the disciples the coming of the Lord; which, in reading the Epistle, is perfectly clear. The disciples had learnt that Jesus had delivered them from the wrath to come, the resurrection, and the expectation of the Son of God from heaven; that they were called to suffer with Christ, and to walk in holiness; the coming of the Lord with fire for judgment, and that with all His saints; that they should be caught up to meet the Lord; that the man of sin should be revealed, and that the mystery of iniquity was already working, but that they were called to share the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. He taught salvation by the truth and by faith through the power of the Holy Ghost who sanctified them for God; and all this by grace, to those who were chosen for salvation. Even the peculiarities of the last days were communicated to them; 2 Thess. 2: 5.

But all this was for the disciples; only the coming of the Lord in judgment of the living - this world - was announced to all, and they were exhorted to flee from the wrath to come, from which Jesus was the deliverer. It was necessary now to announce facts known to all; but if he speaks of salvation, the person of the Lord, as also His coming, has a far greater place in his doctrine than in that of the preachers of to-day. A present salvation is clearly announced, through Christ dead for us, so that we might live with Him. That which was everywhere presented for salvation is described with much simplicity and clearness in 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11, Christ put to death for our sins, buried, and raised up the third day. But here also the facts hold a greater place than now. We reason on the value of the facts, and this is necessary; but the more the facts are put in evidence, the more will the preaching be powerful.

396 While the people are occupied with Jason, Paul sets out for Berea, and with undiminished courage enters into the synagogue of that city. Here the grace of God is manifestly with him, to dispose the hearts of the Jews to listen, and to search the word, and many believe. But the unhappy Jews carry on their work, and come from Thessalonica, to stir up the people against Paul and the others. It is mournful to see their permanent hatred to the gospel. But it is ever thus with an old religion set aside by truth which its professors will not receive.

A few brethren conduct Paul to Athens, and he sends an order to Silas and Timothy to join him there at once. But with all this, the enemy does nothing but order the path of the gospel, according to the will of God.

Now at Athens the sight of the idolatry ardently practised in that city pressed heavily on the spirit of the apostle. He reasons in the synagogue with the Jews, and daily in the market with them that met with him. Athens had been a city famous for the glory of its arts and of its arms, and for its schools of philosophy. Having succumbed to the Roman yoke, it had lost its importance, and lived in idleness, seeking for some new thing, still philosophising, and boasting in the memory of its ancient glory in pagan philosophy, surpassed perhaps by that of Alexandria and Tarsus (where Paul himself had been educated), although where the leaders of Roman society studied. The fruit was not great in this vain and idle city, but the instruction for us is precious.

The apostle's discourse at the Areopagus was not the preaching of the gospel. It was his apology before an ancient tribunal whose decisions had, in times gone by, possessed great weight, but which then, though still allowed to exist, no longer retained its ancient importance. But the fact that the apostle was obliged to present himself before the tribunal, gave him the opportunity of manifesting the wisdom and grace he possessed through the Spirit of God. As we have seen he preached in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia. In the market-place, where the philosophers and townspeople met together, he announced Jesus and the resurrection, His person, His victory over death, the testimony that God had accepted the sacrifice of Christ, and moreover that in Him we are admitted into a new creation (a position which Adam, even in innocence, never occupied) the kingdom of the second, of the last Adam.

397 I do not say that all these points were unfolded, but the apostle announced the grand foundations on which all these truths are built up. He did so according to the need and capacity of his hearers; and nobody is so incapable as a philosopher, and those under his influence and who walk in the vain thought of being something, when in reality they are nothing, and such was the true character of the Athenians. Knowledge is blinding. Human intelligence does not know God. God enters the conscience when He speaks in order to make Himself known; and in proportion to the pretension of the human mind to intelligence, is the hardness and inaction of the conscience. It is as though dead, and man as though he had none, and therefore no capacity to receive the truth whereby he may know God. These wise men thought that Jesus and the resurrection were gods, so far were they from the truth. The mind of man, and the activity of his intelligence, when it is a question of morality and of God, can do nothing but always drive him farther and farther away. He finds no basis for morality, and consequently no true rule; and when God is submitted to the human understanding, He is no longer God in any sense. God does not present Himself to man in order to know what he ought to be. Conscience and faith put God in His own place, and man in his true relation to God; and the word is the means of doing so, the word in which God reveals Himself, and shews what man is.

Some mocked the apostle, saying, "What will this babbler say?" Ridicule is often a means in the hands of the enemy to turn away souls from the truth, because men are afraid to identify themselves with what others despise. Conscience and moral courage are the very last things to be found in the heart of man: grace awakens conscience, and gives strength to follow it. Still here was something new; and that was always enough for the Athenians, fatigued by the nonentity of their existence. Accordingly they lead Paul to the Areopagus, once honourable and honoured, in order to know what this new doctrine might be. Because however frivolous philosophical opinions may be, they cannot quietly endure either truth or Christ. One human opinion may be as good as another; but the testimony of God operates on the conscience, and demands the heart.

398 Paul, surely taught by the Holy Ghost, replies in the Areopagus with admirable wisdom, and a calm love which lays hold on the sole circumstance to which he could attach the truth he desired to communicate to them. His practised eye had observed in the city the only little remnant of truth by which he could lead them to recognise their true position. It was not simply a declaration of the salvation of the soul, which had already occupied him in the synagogue and public market-place; here he explains the true character of the religion of idols, but with perfect delicacy; and seeks to bind that remnant of truth which the enemy had not been able to destroy, with truth more positive, with the name of Jesus, and with that which appealed to the conscience.

The people of the city, idle and at heart sceptical, were given up to idolatry; and, the circle of the gods being exhausted, they had dedicated an altar to the unknown God. It is said that in former times a fatal malady had reigned in the city; and that the inhabitants, having prayed in vain to all the gods to remove the plague, had consulted an oracle, who directed them to dedicate an altar to the unknown God. It is unnecessary, however, to seek for any special source of this worship. At the bottom of all idolatry there is the idea of God, corrupted, and taken possession of by Satan, so that men may worship demons; but the idea cannot be eradicated from the heart of man. Infidels seek to do so, but it always remains at the bottom of the heart, in spite of all their efforts. It is born with the birth of man, and creation bears witness too clear and too strong to allow the heart to believe that everything was made by nothing. And then conscience speaks too loud to allow it to be unhearkened to. Man does not want God and tries to forget Him; he reasons, and seeks diversions; but the thought always returns, and possibility makes itself felt. He endeavours to get rid of the thought by every means, but still it is always there; and the thought of God always makes us feel guilty.

399 God is to be found in all idolatries, neglected and forgotten, it is true; but He exists in all mythologies, and is found in the conscience when awakened by fear. When men are in agony (so says a Christian of pagan times) they do not say, "Oh, immortal gods!" but "Oh God! a proof, I would add, of a soul naturally Christian." They made great gods and little gods, placed a god or a goddess at fountains, in woods, and wherever they could see the operations of nature; but behind everything remained the deep feeling that there was one only and all-powerful God. Thus among the Brahmins in India, in Egypt, among the Sabeans, among the Scandinavians, there were gods without end, yet one God not worshipped but owned as the source of everything. This God, the Author of all, rested in darkness. In India not a single temple was ever dedicated to him, but still He exists and is the source of everything. Among the Sabeans, the ancient Persians, there was another kind of pagan religion which recognised Ahrim and Ahrmasda, a bad and a good god, and in which God was worshipped in fire, and which had no idol; there was another god as the source of these. I say source, because a creation was not owned among the pagans. See Hebrews 11: 3.

The imagination, under the influence of Satan, created gods everywhere, but at the bottom the idea of God was there. And yet this God, the true, was unknown - deplorable state of mankind, deprived of God, of whom they stood in such deep need! thus enemies to His true knowledge, because the conscience, which makes responsibility felt, could not endure His presence, because the heart desired things which the conscience in the presence of God condemned. They made gods who would help men to gratify their passions. Man cannot suffice to himself; he has lost God, and fears Him; his heart stoops to that which is more degraded than himself. He seeks, but in vain, to satisfy the need of his heart by means of objects which degrade him, and make him forget God, of whom the thought is anguish to his heart.

God, the unknown God, now reveals Himself; and the apostle, with great happiness of thought laying hold of the inscription on the altar, announces the true God whom they did not know. This is not the gospel; but he identifies the God he had already preached in the gospel of Jesus and of the resurrection with the truth they themselves admitted, and, defending it, speaks to the conscience. The unknown God would judge the world by this Jesus, in that He had raised Him from the dead. This truth he applies to their conscience and to idolatry, under the yoke of which they were subjected. By the power of the Spirit in Paul they stood accused, convicted of having falsified the idea of God and denied His glory, the glory of the only Creator, for they had only recognised Him by the confession that He was unknown.

400 Here was what was done by the apostle. He announced to them clearly this true God, who had manifested Himself in the gift of life, and in the things necessary to sustain that life. Through the conscience He was then not far from each of them. During the times of ignorance, God had borne with the wanderings of man; He had passed them over without judgment. Now He was calling to all men everywhere to repent, because a day was appointed in the which He should judge the world; He speaks of the judgment of this habitable earth, in righteousness by the Man whom He had ordained; whereof He had given assurance unto all men, in that He had raised Him from the dead. In this way He reveals by the power of the Spirit the one true Creator-God, the Sustainer of all things, the knowledge of whom had been lost in the folly of idolatry, into which man had been deluded by the enemy, who, by means of the passions of deceived beings, had made himself God. Then he declares the approaching judgment of this world by Jesus, the risen Man, but that grace, in the patience of God, invited all men to repent.

Such was the apostle's defence; not of himself, truly; but he brings his hearers into the presence of God, and sets forth that which the conscience could not deny, and that this was what they ought to have known (Rom. 1: 19, 20). Then he reveals what was new, namely, that judgment was approaching, that it was to be executed by the Man established by God, of whom He had given assurance, in raising Him from the dead, as the public proof of His ways and power, which ended the path of man on earth, and overthrew the power of Satan. The accusers receive their own sentence To the existence of God they say nothing, but many mock at the idea of resurrection.

401 It is the present exercise of the power of God that man cannot receive; let there be a God, and it is well; but let Him do something, let Him intervene presently, and man cannot willingly receive it. But the mighty word of the apostle touches some hearts even among this frivolous people. The harvest is small, but God does not leave Himself without testimony. A few, believing the gospel, join themselves to the servants of God; but the testimony being rendered, the apostle remains there no longer. Philosophy and frivolity united, as is always the case, give a high opinion of self, are bad soil for grace, and do not deserve that God should wait long for the good will of vanity. Grace can be effective everywhere; but here testimony and judgment are given against philosophy and the pretensions of men.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

J. N. Darby.

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Acts 18

There was but little fruit in this gifted but frivolous city: for God has chosen the foolish, the weak, and the despised things of the world, to bring to nought the things that are; and the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. The apostle pursues his journey to the other important Grecian centre, Corinth, a commercial city in a superb situation, but deeply corrupt, being dedicated to Venus, whose priestesses were given up to vice. Even at this time wealth abounded, and the city had become proverbial for luxury and dissoluteness.

The ambassador of God appears in the midst of this luxury, as a poor workman of the world; and we know from his letters that he refused to take anything from the wealthy Corinthians, while he received with joy the offering sent as the fruit of their love by the simple brethren of Philippi. There was afterwards another special reason why the apostle would not receive money from the Corinthians. This was that false teachers, seeking to profit by the work of Paul, pretended to labour without receiving anything; and Paul desired to take away every occasion of influence from these evil men, and that they should not pretend to that which was not equally verified in him.

Arrived then at Corinth, he finds two people of his own trade, and with them he lodges and works. There, in the simplicity of Christian life, the work of God begins. The Jews had, and always have, a trade. We are apt to believe that the apostles soared above all difficulties, because armed with divine authority, and that they were free from all fear. We, no doubt, who believe they have the Lord's authority, receive them as sent by Him: but the Gentiles recognised neither the Lord, nor those sent by Him. They were in the presence of the enemy's power. God had committed His word to them, that they might convey it to the world, which lay under the power of Satan; and this word they possessed in the weakness of the flesh. By faith they knew that the Lord would be with them; and certainly His faithfulness did not fail. But this is known by faith; and they felt all the difficulty of a work which introduced the light of God and the authority of His testimony in the midst of darkness, where the enemy reigned over the spirits of men.

402 It is a serious thing to make and carry on war for God against the prince of evil. We must know what we are doing, what the enemy is, and what He is whom we represent in this war, so that we may consider it according to the rules of a war of God, that He may sustain us, that the consciousness of His call may be with us, and that thus our faith and confidence in Him may not be interrupted. See how the apostle speaks of his entrance among the Corinthians; "And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power," 1 Cor. 2: 3, 4. One cannot do better than read the first four chapters of the first epistle: and for the question of money, chapter 9; what was the testimony, the life, and the feeling of the apostle in 2 Corinthians 4, 6 and 10. And how deep and real his testimony in chapter 12 and especially in verse 9, the source of his power in the midst of weakness! For in this epistle, as elsewhere, we find what the apostle's own feeling were, and what his labours; his heart appears. In 2 Corinthians 11 the effect produced by sufferings is shewn.

With fear and much trembling then, he commences the work in this seat of Satan. First he reasons in the synagogue, as he did everywhere, "to the Jew first and also to the Greek." From Athens, Paul had sent Timothy, who had joined him there according to Acts 18: 15, 16; 1 Thess. 3: 2. Now Silas and Timothy return, and are found with Paul; Acts 17: 5. Pressed in spirit by their presence, he bears still stronger testimony that Jesus was the Christ. He had laboured faithfully during their absence; but the presence of other Christians gives courage and strength to his spirit according to God. The feeling of what Christianity is fortifies the heart, and the state of unbelievers is more present to the mind, and more urgent to the heart. But the rights of Christ hold the first place in the apostle's heart; and when the Jews contradict and blaspheme, he leaves them, and, shaking his garments, says to them, "Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles."

403 Leaving them he enters into the house of a Gentile, one who worshipped the one true God. There were many such among the Gentiles, who, weary of the folly and iniquity of idolatry, worshipped in the synagogue, although they had not become Jews. It seems that he had left the house of Aquila and Priscilla. The house of a Gentile who owned the one true God was suited to his work; and to him the work was everything. Still, he does not go far away from the synagogue; and Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, is converted with all his house, whether from the testimony rendered by Paul in the synagogue, or after he had left it. Moreover, the testimony now reaches the Corinthians, and many believe and are baptized. The work, rejected by the Jews, is now established in the city; for, notwithstanding its wickedness, the Lord had many people there.

Besides this, the Lord encourages Paul by a vision in the night, saying to him, "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace." The Lord was with him, and saw fit to hold the door open. All things were in His hands, and He would not permit the enemy to hinder the work because of wicked men. "He openeth, and no man shutteth." It is interesting to see how the Lord watches over the work, and over the hearts of His labourers. It is possible that direct communications and visions may not be given now as they were then; but God has not ceased to guide those who labour faithfully in His name, to manifest Himself to their hearts, and He holds still, as then, the keys; He opens, and no man shuts. It is sweet to see that, when we work for Him, He is with us, to speak to our hearts, and to direct us and regulate all our circumstances for His glory, and that according to a divine wisdom.

At Corinth the apostle remains a year and a half, teaching the word of God. The Jews, roused by the folly of their enmity against Christ and the gospel, seek to accuse Paul of a crime because he preached the gospel. They bring him before the judgment seat of the governor, a man profoundly indifferent to everything religious. The apostle is accused of having persuaded men to worship contrary to the law. The proconsul, Gallio, drives them from the judgment seat. He was right. His office was not to maintain the Jewish law, but to preserve order and peace in the country. It was only another proof of the unreasonable and unbridled hatred of these poor people, who had refused the grace of God, and nourished themselves in enmity against all.

404 The crowd take Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. And Gallio cared for none of those things. For him the Jewish religion was a miserable and contemptible superstition, because it separated its professors from all the world; for the human heart loves not the truth that condemns the falsity of the world and of its ways. If the chief of this religion were beaten, it was nothing to him; in his eyes he deserved it, and so they could do it. Unbelief despises superstition, and yet supports it; but it hates the truth, and, if it can, persecutes it. The poor Jews united these true characters - the truth of the oneness of God, and superstition in ordinances, which separated them from all the Gentiles. Contempt and persecution were the only fruits of their assault on the apostle.

The position of this people is shewn in a special way in the narrative before us. But Paul's relation with them is also shewn; we see to what an extent he was still bound to Jewish customs. He takes a vow and shaves his head in Cenchrea. He feels obliged in his heart to observe the feast at Jerusalem; and gives this to the Jews at Ephesus as his motive for not then remaining in their city. He is a true Jew, and acts like one; and the Spirit records these facts that we may understand the bonds which still held the spirit of the apostle. The state of a soul with regard to religious habits is a different thing from the energy of the Spirit of God in the declaration of the truth. We shall see the effect of these bonds strongly pronounced at the end of his career, whether toward the Christians at Jerusalem, or in his submission to their wishes.

He leaves Corinth then with Priscilla and Aquila, after a work largely blessed. The history of this assembly we read in the two epistles addressed to it. We may remark that it is an example of the influence which the world, in the midst of which it is placed, exercises on the assembly of God. Breathing the same atmosphere, it is always in danger of following its habits of thought; the effect on the mind of surrounding things, which ever resound in the ears of Christians, and, alas! too often in their hearts. It is difficult to avoid being more or less associated with what surrounds us universally. What we need is faith, which lives in things unseen.

405 Paul does not stop at Ephesus, where the Jews were disposed to listen to him, but expresses the hope of seeing them again. Leaving Priscilla and Aquila, two quiet people, but faithful and consecrated to the Lord, he goes on towards Jerusalem. There he salutes the assembly, and sets out for Antioch, the starting-point of the gospel for the Gentiles, and from whence he had been sent by the Holy Ghost. At Jerusalem he merely salutes the assembly, for here we are on Christian, not Jewish, ground.

Acts 19.

The apostles' work is now situated in another provincial centre in the capital of the province of Asia, which was then only the south-west canton of Asia Minor, Caria, Lycia, etc. Paul had before been prohibited from preaching the word in Asia, having been sent into Macedonia. Now, while he remains at the capital, all the province listens to the word of God. It is good to wait on God and to follow His direction; His work is then much better done, and with a certainty that human plans can never give us. Having passed through the upper portion of Asia Minor (the northern and central), Paul arrives at Ephesus. In this important city he remains nearly three years. Here also the power of his ministry is displayed in a remarkable way. It is the special subject of this chapter. We are ignorant as to how Apollos was fully introduced into the Christian position. He was doubtless baptized, and had received the Holy Ghost; but nothing is said about it. All we know is that he was instructed in the way of the Lord by means of Aquila and Priscilla through the word. It was independently of Paul, and had to be so.

In this chapter the apostolic power and the difference of the estate of the disciples of John the Baptist are clearly shewn. The apostle perceives something in the state of these disciples which did not correspond with the presence of the Holy Ghost - the essential distinction of the Christians. They believe that the Messiah had come, and that Jesus was that Messiah; but they had not followed Him on the earth; they had remained with John, and had not received the Spirit. John had told them that Christ would baptize with the Spirit, but they did not know whether that Spirit had just come, according to the promise of God and the word of John. It is not meant, "If there be a Holy Ghost," because all the Jews well knew that there was; but they did not know if the Holy Ghost spoken of by John had come. The words are the same as those in John 7: 39. Whoever became a Christian by baptism received the Holy Ghost. It was the seal of faith.

406 Paul explains to them that John had taught faith in Christ to come; but now He had come and moreover had been exalted to the right hand of God. They are then baptized in the name of the Lord. Paul lays his hands on them, and they receive the Holy Ghost, who bears witness of His presence by the gifts communicated to these disciples. It is a clear testimony to the apostolic power of Paul; Acts 8: 14-17. The Holy Ghost was given without the laying on of hands, as on the day of Pentecost, then in the case of Cornelius, and generally with others. But among men the apostles alone possessed the power of communicating the Spirit. The miracles done by Paul's garments, and also by the shadow of Peter, likewise testify to the power vouchsafed to them by God. God desired to bear witness to the word of His grace.

This became still more remarkable when others, who pretended to cast out demons, undertook to make use of the name of Jesus. This placed the reality of the Lord's power over that of the devil in the clearest light. Certain Jews sought to profit by the power of the name of Jesus preached by Paul, but without having faith in His person. But the devil knew well with whom he had to do. He knew Jesus, and did not dare to resist Him; and he also well knew that Paul was His servant. But under what pretence did these unbelievers exercise authority over the power of the devil? The man possessed by the devil rises up against these Jews, and drives them out, so that they flee from the house naked and wounded.

What a testimony to the truth of Paul's mission, to the power by which he worked, and to the war that goes on in man between grace and the devil! It was not, and is not yet, the time for the Lord to manifest His power and His rights, in binding the enemy. His desire is that war should be carried on by man in faith, and by the power of the Spirit who dwells in believers. But it comes out clearly here, what this war is; and the total difference between the possession of truth and of the Spirit, learned as a certain truth, and the employment of the name of Jesus, without faith in the heart. One cannot exorcise the devil by the name of Jesus, when true faith in Jesus has no place in the heart.

407 The people were terrified by what had happened; but this ought not to surprise us. They felt how near they were to the power of God and to that of Satan, openly manifested. The enemy is no less dangerous when he works secretly. A single word from Jesus had been sufficient to cast out a legion of demons, no more to enter into the liberated man. But the influence of Satan persuaded the Gadarenes to beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts, and He goes. The presence of God makes the heart tremble more when it perceives it, than that of Satan. Such is the condition of poor sinners. But Satan at bay is more to be feared than when he goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. "Resist the devil," it is said, "and he will flee from you." But we need all the armour of God to deliver from his snares.

The power of God in Paul is seen in three ways: first, the Spirit is communicated by the laying on of his hands; second, very wonderful miracles; third, the devils themselves are forced to own the power of His word, and the authority of Paul, when he makes use of the name of Jesus; and they make a difference between him and those who under false pretences employ that name. This was soon known by all, Greeks and Jews, and they were filled with fear. It moreover works on the conscience of the believers, who come and confess their deeds, bringing the books of their curious arts, for which Ephesus was celebrated, and burning them before all to the value of fifty thousand pieces of silver. When God reveals Himself in power, the heart opens before Him, and confesses sincerely all that the conscience knows, doing so openly for His glory. This is a special effect of the manifestation of His power. Man thinks no longer of himself, or of his shame, but is overcome by the presence of God.

But we must retrace our steps a little in order to observe the progress of the apostle's own work. For three months he reasons in the synagogue. It seems that the Jews were not so badly disposed as in other cities (for example, at Thessalonica and elsewhere). They had desired that the apostle should remain there some time, when he had gone to Jerusalem. However, the greater part did not long endure the preaching of the gospel. Many became hardened, and did not believe, speaking evil of the truth and of the Christian profession before the multitude. Paul then leaves them, separates the disciples, and continues to dispute daily in the school of one Tyrannus. Two years he spends in this way, so that all who dwelt in Asia, Greeks and Jews, heard the word of the Lord Jesus.

408 Thus was the Christian assembly formed outside the synagogue, the Jews (as ever) being contradictory and opposing. Their attempt to make use of the name of Jesus, without faith, was likewise turned to their dishonour. Though the goodness of God sought for them, yet their enmity against the name of Jesus, and against the grace which wounded their pride, they never lost. God then placed His blessing elsewhere. And when the Christians were separated from the Jews, and the assembly settled apart, this extraordinary power of the Spirit was manifested in Paul, as a testimony from God to his work, and to the growing assembly. Thus was this important gathering formed by divine power. For two years God held the reins, and kept the adversary in check, in order that the testimony of Christ might be firmly established in this capital of Asia, and resound in all the country round about. All had been under the direction of God. Formerly, Paul had not been permitted to go to Ephesus; but now, under the good hand of God, he labours there without hindrance - two or three weeks at Thessalonica, and two or three years at Ephesus. In the two cities the work is done according to His will. Now that the work is finished, as far as Paul is concerned at this time, he proposes to depart.

The enemy left free, and spurred on by the powerful effect of the word of God, raises a great tumult against Paul and the gospel (v. 23). But it is vain to fight against God. His fury expends itself in shouts and cries. But when God allows it, opposition manifests itself in its true character. The devil works on the passions, on selfish interests, on base motives, which rise up against the love, the grace, and the salvation which God sends to ruined men. God be praised, it was too late! It was the efficacy of His grace in liberating the slaves of a diabolical superstition, the worship of false gods, that is, of demons, which called forth all this tumult. We have seen that till the work was finished, the enemy was kept in check.

409 A certain man, Demetrius, gained large sums from the manufacture of little silver shrines to Diana, because this Diana was celebrated in the entire pagan world; and her temple was one of the seven wonders of the world (v. 27). Incited by the desire for gain, he assembles the craftsmen to oppose the truth which was destroying all their trade (v. 25, 26), the truth which shewed that gods made with hands were no gods. How deep the gloom into which man, without God, and by his very need of a God, throws himself!

Not only were their gains at stake, but the importance of their goddess and of their city was in danger of being destroyed. They do not say, "Great is Diana," but "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." The knowledge of the true God makes our own nothingness felt, and judges the state of the heart; but in a false religion there is an alliance with the passions of the heart. The worshippers are great according to the measure of their religion, and of that which they worship. If the Diana of the Ephesians was great, the Ephesians themselves were important according to her importance. To despise Diana was to detract from the greatness of her followers. Gain and importance were the two things which accompanied the worship of this goddess. Such was the source of the passions awakened by a few clever words from Demetrius. Such is the religion of the natural heart, which however feels the need of a God. It is a false religion which does not act on the conscience, unless perhaps to produce fear, if God be against it; but which nourishes human passions, and allies itself with the malice of the heart against truth.

The multitude rise in fury, and rush with one accord to the theatre. The brethren restrain Paul, and prevent him from going there, whither his zeal would have led him. God watches over His servant; there was nothing for him to do there. The crowd, however, take possession of two brethren, companions of Paul, and drag them to the theatre. Certain chiefs of the public festivals of Asia, friends of Paul, send to him, warning him not to present himself at the theatre, where there was only violence and tumult. But once more the poor Jews prove themselves without light. Walking in darkness in their own errors, they put forward one of their countrymen to defend the doctrine of the one God. But this only still further excites the fury of the people, who cry out for the space of two hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Without God it is impossible either to oppose the devil, or to maintain the truth; neither the truth of the one God, nor the name of Jesus associated with that of Paul who announced Him, had any power without faith and truth in the heart. The poor Jews had rejected the Saviour, and without their perceiving it, strength entirely failed them, as it did Samson, shorn of the Nazarite's hair. Although enemies to the new doctrine, yet they expected to be able to present amicably the doctrine of the one God. But, enemies to the grace of God and despised by men, all they could do was to excite the multitude to continue still longer their senseless and passionate cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

410 The town clerk, having appeased the people, gives them to understand that the authorities would most likely interfere on account of the tumult, and that the men (Gaius and Aristarchus) had done nothing contrary to the law. He then dismisses the disorderly and irregular assembly, which had done nothing but shew what man is under the power of Satan and moved by his own selfishness.

In short, we have in this chapter, presented in a remarkable way, the conflict between the Spirit of God working in the servants of Jesus, and the power of the devil, kept in check, however, by God, as long as His work was being performed; and the sorrowful position of the Jews, all their moral power being taken from them, since they were opposed to the gospel. The assembly of God being formed beyond their limits, they were no longer His people; when they sought to make use of the name of the Lord, it turned to their confusion; when they defended the doctrine of the one God, which they believed, it only made the people cry out the more, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Till the Lord comes, this conflict must continue; and though miracles have ceased, yet the care of His servants never grows weaker in the heart of Jesus. He works as really as ever, and the government of God orders everything for the good of His work. He may indeed permit Satan's rage to break forth, but He never forgets His own.

He can allow the apostles to be driven from Thessalonica and Berea, and then keep the enemy in check at Ephesus. But He always watches over His servants. He can hold the door open where He will, and shut it where He sees fit to do so. We can rely on Him! Only let us be directed by Him who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth. When we have "a little strength," He sets before us an opened door.

411 Acts 20.

From 2 Corinthians 1 and 4, it would appear that the persecution was more violent, and that it continued longer than during the public events recorded in Acts 19. But what these particulars may have been, we are not told. But after the stormy assemblage in the theatre, Paul calls the disciples together, embraces them, and departs into Macedonia. Going over those parts, he exhorts the brethren, and arrives in Greece. There he remains three months. He had thought of returning from Greece to Syria; but the Jews - ever envious, and enemies to the gospel, as well as to the one who preached it outside their limits, since they had rejected Christ, and hope for them was gone - laid wait for him. The truth which they had had was always the truth; but now that the Son of God had come, and the Father and His love been manifested in Him, that no longer possessed any power; for this revelation was one of life eternal, and of the satisfaction of divine justice. They could not endure the thought of being placed on one side on account of the truth they would not receive, and therefore laid wait for Paul. When this becomes known to the apostle, he returns by way of Macedonia.

Let us remark in this brief narrative, which is not accidental, that when Paul had planted the gospel in a country, he did not abandon the converts, but returns with affectionate solicitude, instructs, exhorts, edifies, and watches over the seed planted by his instrumentality, in order that it may be preserved, and grow in the knowledge of Christ. He does not neglect the Lord's garden, well knowing that tares may spring up where the good seed grows, and that the enemy can spoil the harvest, if it is not well guarded. It is more needful now than ever to do this, for we are in the perilous times of the last days. Though the enemy can never pluck the sheep out of the Good Shepherd's hand, yet he may disperse them; they may be subjected to the effect of every kind of evil doctrine, by which their growth is hindered, the Lord's glory trampled upon, testimony to Him destroyed, and the candlestick taken away. Let the Lord's servants take warning!

412 Paul then returns by Macedonia. It is not important, but in verse 4 we should read, "Gaius and Timotheus of Derbe." From verse 5 we see that many attached themselves to Paul in the work; and others, besides those in verse 4 went before. Luke, the author of this book, and perhaps others too, accompanied the apostle in his journey towards Troas. The others tarried for him at Troas. It is not without interest to see this emotion of hearts moved by the gospel which Paul preached. All were free; some, such as Apollos, labouring apart; the others, the companions of the great central figure - great for his faith in Christ, and as sent directly from Him by the voice of the Holy Ghost - occupied and sent by Paul to carry on and accomplish the work in places he would himself have visited, had he not been obliged to go elsewhere, when the opportunity presented itself for them to be thus sent.

Leaving Philippi in five days, they come to Troas, and there remain seven days. Everywhere assemblies had been formed. Here a door had been opened to Paul in coming from Ephesus, but he had not been able to remain long, being uneasy about the Corinthians, since he did not find Titus there, whom he had sent to them. It was at Troas that Luke, who wrote the Acts, had attached himself to Paul, to accompany him the first time he visited Macedonia. We do not know how the gathering at Troas was formed; but there was one, and we are given to see into it a little, not its discipline or gifts, as in Corinthians, but its ordinary walk.

The first day of the week the disciples met together to break bread. This was evidently their custom. It was the first day of the week, and the disciples gathered themselves together according to their habit, to break bread. It was the first object of their meeting, the centre of their worship. Other things were done; they spoke, taught, as Paul did, sang; but they met together to break bread. This is confirmed by 1 Corinthians 11: 20, where the apostle says that the Corinthians did not really assemble for the Lord's supper, since each ate his own supper, not thinking of the others, but eating and drinking for his own pleasure. Now this shews clearly that the object of the assembly was the Lord's supper. At the beginning they broke bread every day; Acts 2: 42, 46. When gatherings were formed everywhere, and zeal had been enfeebled, they met only on the first day of the week, the day of the Lord's resurrection. This was not a rule, but Luke speaks of it as a usage well known everywhere among the Christians. It seems that Paul had awaited this day to speak to the disciples, simply because it was the day of their meeting together; however, that is not certain. However it may be, he profits by the occasion to preach to them before setting out, and he speaks till midnight. They met, it seems, in the evening.

413 The discourse was long, and they had not yet broken bread; the weather was hot, and there were many lights. Such is human weakness, that all this so affected a certain Eutychus, that he was overcome with sleep, as Paul was long preaching, and fell down from the third floor, where he was sitting by the window. He was taken up by the men dead. Paul naturally interrupts his discourse, goes down and throws himself on him, declaring that life is still in him. The separation had not yet taken place; he was stunned by the fall, and if the power of God had not interposed, he would have been caught in the clutches of death. Life, however, had not yet gone out of the body; and by the Spirit, Paul so works on it, that the functions of life are restored. The bonds between soul and body are re-established. In the case of the child restored to life by Elijah (1 Kings 17: 21, 22) the soul had already left the body, and returned to it. From these cases, as always elsewhere, we see that the soul is entirely distinct from the body; and though in our present state it works by means of the body, yet it is in its habitation; that life in this world is the activity of the soul by means of the functions of the body, the activity of which is restored by sleep, because we are feeble; that when the soul leaves the body, the man is definitively dead, but that the activity of the soul by the functions of the body may be interrupted, as is partly the case in sleep; and this action is re-established if the soul have not left the body, if God does so or permits it.

In its highest part - the spirit, the soul in relation to God is alas! at enmity against Him: it will not and does not submit to Him. With its inferior part, it works in the body: marvellous creation! in relations with God above, and with nature before. It is a mixture of thoughts which seek to rise to God but cannot, and of creature thoughts. It is responsible to God according to the nature it has originally received from Him. When born of God, it receives a totally new life, in which it is in relation with God, according to grace and redemption, a life animated by the Spirit which it receives from above, and which makes of the body an instrument for the service of God. Possessing this life, we know that, "if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." I have said this in reference to Eutychus, because in these days the simplicity of the truth regarding the soul is lost sight of by many.

414 Paul then goes up again, and, having broken bread, talks still even till day-break, comforting much the souls he saw perhaps for the last time. He then departs leaving Eutychus alive to the joy of the brethren. Paul sends on his companions by ship, and goes himself on foot, desiring to be alone. For us this is often a wise thing; to be alone, apart from men, but alone too with God, where we can think of Him, of ourselves before Him, of the work, as He sees it, and where in His presence responsibility is felt, instead of activity before men. No doubt this activity ought to appear in His presence, because it is holy; but at all events the activity of man is another thing than to place oneself before God, such as He is for us. It is not less true that this communion with Him, as His servants, gives and sustains a blessed confidence in Him, an intimacy of soul with Him, full of goodness and of grace.

Paul had instructed his companions to take him in at Assos, which they do: from thence they proceed to Mitylene, to Chios, and finally to Miletus, half a day from Ephesus. Paul had determined not to stop there, desiring if possible to be at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. If he had stopped at Ephesus, he must have remained some time, as he had laboured there for a long period, and with great blessing. He passes on therefore, sending from Miletus for the elders of the assembly at Ephesus, the centre of the work in that region. It is evident that the apostle was pre-occupied with the circumstances in which he was placed - with the apparent end of his career. This thought, it is probable, exercised an influence over him, when he went alone on foot to Assos. And also it was the cause of his long speech at Troas.

It is not only imagination which suggests this idea; the apostle expresses (at the end of the Epistle to the Romans, written when he was about to leave Corinth, Rom. 15: 31) his fear that he might be an object of hatred to the rebels in Judaea; and he desires the Romans to pray that he may be delivered out of their hands, hoping thus to be able to see their face with joy, and from Rome to continue his work in Spain. We know that in Palestine he was taken, and after two years confinement at Caesarea, went a prisoner to Rome; that he remained there as such two years more; and that there, as far as the word is concerned, his history terminated. It is possible that he may have been liberated; I believe so, from what we find in the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon; Phil. 1: 25, 26; Philemon 22.

415 From 2 Timothy too it seems that he was set free, and that he returned to Asia. But as to the Biblical record of his labours, all is finished at the end of the Acts, which leaves him a prisoner at Rome. According to God's thoughts, such as they are communicated to us in the scriptures, that was the end of the apostle's work. And he felt that such was the case; and it is no more a question of going to Spain, or travelling anywhere beyond Rome. The Holy Ghost spoke of bonds and tribulations; and Paul's thought now turned towards his departure from this world.

The elders being come from Ephesus and assembled before him, Paul speaks of his ministry as of a thing accomplished. A little before he had told the Romans that he had no longer any place in those parts, his career there being over; Rom. 15: 23. Revisiting the scenes of his work in Asia, and the regions of Asia Minor, he shews us the character of this work, and the effect of his departure; and this renders his discourse very important. He had served the Lord with much humility, in trials and in tears, caused by the snares of the Jews, whose opposition was continual and without conscience. In spite of it, however, he never failed both in public and in private to preach and teach all that was necessary for them, repentance towards God, and faith in Jesus Christ, as the true state of a soul brought to God. Nothing is said, as to the order of these two things in the heart, although in such order there is something practical, but of the true character of repentance and faith. Repentance was to be preached in the name of the Lord Jesus (Luke 24: 47); so that His name might be owned, and that sinners might repent. It was founded on the ground of the grace and truth that came by Him; but true repentance takes place in the presence of God, and goes beyond sorrow for having done wrong, or shame, or the mere work of the natural conscience.

416 The soul revealed to itself through grace comes with open eyes into God's presence. All is judged according to Him whose presence is manifested to the soul; everything is judged as it appears in His eyes. The word of God is His eye in the conscience, and makes us feel that He has seen all, and then things appear to us as they do to Him. We no longer excuse ourselves, nor do we desire to do so. The result is confession to God by a conscience which feels itself in His presence (Heb. 4: 12, 13); while the heart restored desires holiness, and the soul feels its responsibility for all that we have done. We justify God in our condemnation (Luke 7: 29); though in such a case there is always some confidence in His grace, not peace but confidence; for He who has become light to the soul is also love, Himself being both these things. When He reveals Himself as light in order to shew us our sins, it is in love He does so in Jesus; and He is love. He cannot reveal Himself to the soul without being the two things, for in His nature He is both.

Take the case of the woman in Luke 7. The light and the love of God had penetrated into her soul; she did not yet know what it was to be pardoned, but her heart had confidence in Jesus; and at the same time her conscience was deeply convinced of sin.

Take again the case of Peter (Luke 5: 8): the prodigal son (Luke 15: 17-19); and of the thief on the cross (Luke 23: 41). Repentance thus is the effect of the revelation of God to the soul, which then shews itself; and up to a certain point it knows God as light, which manifests everything. "Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did." But as love to the soul, the Lord inspires confidence, though the remission of sins be not known. This is discovered by the soul by faith in Christ Jesus - not only that Jesus is the Christ, but that by Him its sins are pardoned, for He was dead for our sins; and if we receive the word of God, we believing in Him know, that He has taken all our sins on Himself on His own body on the tree. When He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high; because by one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified by that sacrifice.

417 Although faith in the work of Christ is necessary in order to possess peace, yet His person ever remains as the object of the heart - the Christ who has loved us, and given Himself for us, who now is glorified at the right hand of God, after having borne our sins, and submitted to death and the curse for us, but ever living for us now; who Himself will return to seek us, and make us perfectly like Himself in glory. We believe in Him, not only in the efficacy of His death. He is our righteousness before God, made such by God Himself, and we are accepted in the Beloved. John 17 tells us that we are loved with the same love wherewith the Father loves the Son. If true repentance is made in the presence of God, and in respect of Him, confidence and peace come by means of the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has made peace by His own blood.

Such was the testimony of Paul, the truth of the conscience, peace, and the knowledge of God by His Son Jesus come down here in love, ascended into heaven as man, having accomplished the work which His Father had given Him to do. So great were the truth and the revelation, and so like the apostle is the execution of his ministry! But this ministry was drawing to its close, without knowing that such was the case. The Spirit testified in every place that bonds and tribulations awaited him; and he foresees that they would see his face no more. This furnishes the opportunity to speak of the effect of His departure. The sheep of Jesus are safe in His hands; as to the life He has imparted to them, they can never perish - none can pluck them out of His hand. But a temple had been established, a house on the earth, of which the apostle was by grace the founder according to the will of God, the wise master-builder; 1 Cor. 3: 10. According to another figure, He has placed a candlestick on the earth to shine round about Himself, and this He can take away. There will always be a house of God built with His hand, and by His power which will never grow less - Christ the foundation, the stones living, by grace placed on this chief corner stone, and growing to an holy temple for the Lord; Matt. 16: 18; 1 Pet. 2: 4, 5; Eph. 2: 21.

Against this work of the Lord - a work carried on by grace in the heart - the gates of hell cannot prevail; for it is the fruit of the power of the Lord Jesus, working in grace. Moreover, this temple is not yet entirely built - it is growing. At least we may expect that by grace every soul can be introduced into it. God alone knows the moment when the work of grace which forms the assembly, the body of Christ, shall be accomplished. See 2 Peter 3: 9. But God's will has been to form an assembly on the earth. The work of Jesus, of which we have spoken, is done here below; but beyond this, as we have seen, God formed an assembly by the ministry of Paul, a temple on the earth, confiding the building of this temple into the hands of men, and under their responsibility. It is now the habitation of God through the Spirit, Jews and Gentiles being built up together, founded according to the will of God, but left to the responsibility of man. "But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon." "Now if any man build upon this foundation [Jesus Christ], gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is."

418 There are three kinds of workmen: a good Christian and a good workman, such as Paul; a good Christian and a bad workman, himself saved, but his work to be consumed; then he who seeks to corrupt and destroy the temple of God, whose work, as well as himself, shall perish. Such were the heresiarchs, who, moved by the enemy, sought to corrupt the faith. Three sects of them existed during Paul's own time; but as long as he remained in the world, his spiritual energy resisted and overcame evil; such as immorality among the Corinthians, and the loss of the doctrine of grace among the Galatians. But with his departure this energy disappeared. He had already said (Phil. 2: 21) that all sought their own, not the things which were Jesus Christ's. No soul was to be found like that of Timothy to care for the state of the Christians.

Paul tells the elders then that, after his departure, grievous wolves should enter in among them, and that even of their own selves perverse men should arise, and draw the disciples away. Till Satan be bound, and the Lord come to do it, there will ever be conflicts. Since the beginning of the world, whenever God has established anything good, man's first act has been to destroy it. First, there was man himself; then, in the world after the flood, Noah got tipsy, and his authority was lost. Israel made the golden calf before ever Moses came down from the mountain. Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire the first day after their consecration, for which cause Aaron could no more enter into the inner sanctuary with his priestly garments of glory. Solomon having loved strange women, his kingdom was divided. So in the assembly established on the earth, soon after the apostle's departure, evil presents itself; and it is of this that the elders are forewarned.

419 Where were the other apostles? At Jerusalem. Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, leaves the gathering scattered by the destruction of Jerusalem. The chief of the apostles abandon to Paul the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles, to which work the Lord Himself had called him at the first, and then again expressly, by the Holy Ghost at Antioch. To the other apostles, therefore, he does not entrust his ministry. Still less does Paul imagine that there can be successors in his office. He knows nothing of successors; but he exhorts the existing elders to faithfulness and watchfulness, commending them to God, and to the word of His grace, "which," he says, "is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified." Christ, ascended up on high, can still give evangelists, pastors, and teachers; and He does give them; but the office of personal apostolic care has disappeared. "After my departure," says the apostle. This is a departure without succession. It is sad, surely, yet true; and we have seen it in all that God has established among men. His grace continues, the faithful care of Christ can never fail. The Spirit has given His instructions for this time, as at the beginning, and the Lord is enough for the present condition, as He was faithful in the past. But such a thing as a succession to his apostleship is unknown to Paul when he speaks of his absence. God, and the word of His grace, are for him the refuge of God's people. They can meet together, and Christ will be in their midst; they can profit by the gifts He has granted according to His promise. The rules for our walk are contained in the word; but the apostleship, as a personal energy watching over the organisation of the assembly, has disappeared, leaving no succession behind it.

This is a solemn truth, which must be well borne in mind. But we must never forget that Christ is always enough for the assembly; that He is faithful in His care of it. and that He can never fail in strength, in love, or in faithfulness. What we have to do is to count on Him, and that with purpose of heart. Divine power is manifested more in Elijah and Elisha than in all the prophets of Jerusalem from the time of Moses himself. The Lord gives what is needful to His people. The word of God confirms sadly, but abundantly, what Paul says here. His testimony is that not only should evil appear in the exterior constitution of the church, but that it should continue till the Lord comes in judgment. Let us consider what the word of God says.

420 Jude declares that it was already needful to write to them, to exhort them to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, because certain men had crept in unawares who turned the grace of our God into lasciviousness. They were corrupting the assembly from within; and what is very remarkable, he declares that these are they (that is, the class of persons) who will be among the objects of the Lord's judgment, when He comes with ten thousands of His saints. The corruption, begun during the time of the apostles, will continue till the coming of the Lord. So much for internal corruption. But this is not all. Evil unfolds itself from the other side, as we find in the Epistle of John. Some had abandoned Christianity openly. "Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us," 1 John 2: 18.

Thus we see that though this apostle survived Paul for many years, and certainly watched over the assemblies, in Asia Minor at least, dwelling, as it is said, at Ephesus, it was only in order to record the fact that the last time was already come, which was shewn by the presence of these antichrists, and by the apostasy of many. If it be asked why God waits so long before executing judgment, the answer is to be found in 2 Peter 3: 9: "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." To Him a thousand years are as one day. In the time of the Jews, judgment was pronounced (Isa. 6), eight hundred years before it was executed, that is, when they had finally rejected the humbled, but also glorified Son of God.

The epoch of this ruin of the assembly on the earth is determined, namely, on the death of Paul - "After my departure." Doubtless, corruption had been rapidly growing. The mystery of iniquity was already working during the apostle's life; but his spiritual energy knew how to resist it. He being gone, however, it went on increasing without hindrance, except from the grace of God in individuals, and the chastisement by which God arrested the decline into ruin and corruption. The testimony of God, although hid under a bushel, has never yet been extinguished; and God has from time to time raised up witnesses in the midst of darkness, feeble perhaps, but true; and, at the time of the Reformation, delivered whole countries from open corruption. But we have seen that the evil, introduced in the time of Jude, was to continue till the judgment.

421 This solemn and humiliating truth is confirmed by other passages. The assembly has never been restored. Not only does John say that the last time has come, but that this is marked by the presence of antichrists. Now Antichrist shall be destroyed by the coming of the Lord. Paul reveals to us that the apostasy that began to shew itself in John's time will be fully unfolded at the last time; when Antichrist himself shall be manifested, whose coming shall be after the working of Satan, and whom the Lord shall destroy when He comes in glory. The mystery of iniquity was already working, even during the apostle's life, and the progress of evil was to continue from his days till the Lord should come. Thus too, the Lord says that the tares are to grow till the harvest.

It seems to us, then, that the death of Paul is the moment from which we must count the prevalence of evil. We say "prevalence," because evil was already working, though Paul resisted it by the power of the Spirit; and because this evil was to go on increasing till Christ should come; because in the last days perilous time should come, and the form of godliness without the power of it. Then in 2 Timothy 3 we also get the word of God set forth as that which is necessary, and sufficient to render the man of God perfect, and furnished unto all good works. All this truth is powerfully confirmed by what is said in Revelation 2 and 3, where the Christian who has ears to hear is called upon to hearken, not to the church, but to what the Spirit saith unto the church; and in His words we find judgment pronounced by Jesus Christ on the state of the church.

422 We would add that it is one thing to submit to the discipline, or practical judgment of an assembly, regarding evil, and quite another thing to suppose, when we are called upon to judge of the state of the church by the words of Christ and of the Spirit, that the authority of the assembly is the perpetual safeguard of the faith. The universal assembly, Christianity, is corrupted and divided, and cannot, even as an instrument in the hands of God, secure the maintenance of the truth. It is submission to the word of God only that can do it.

In order to shew how far the primitive church wandered from the truth, we shall quote from a book read in the assembly, one hundred and fifty years after the death of John, cited by one of the best fathers of the primitive churches as part of the inspired scriptures, and esteemed as such by another, who was less orthodox, it is true.

The author, pretending to have received a revelation says, "A man possessed a vineyard, and commanded his servants to gather the fruits. The servant, being very faithful, did what was entrusted to him, and besides, out of devotedness to his master, rooted all the weeds out of the vineyard. The master who was so much pleased with the servant, that he consulted his son and his friends as to what should be done for the faithful servant, and it was decided to make him heir with the son. Now the master is God, the son is the Holy Ghost, the friends are the angels, and the servant is Christ. God had sent him to establish the clergy for the support of the faithful; but He had done much more than this, and what God had not told him to do - He had taken away sins. Thus it is, according to the consultation of God with the Holy Ghost, and the angels, co-heirs with the Holy Ghost, who is Son and Heir of God." Such is what was read in the churches, written by the brother of Pope Pius, and pretended to have been inspired by God. And this a hundred and fifty years after the birth of Christ. What is recounted in the same book of holiness is no better. What is there related as holy in the visions of Hermas, it is impossible to transcribe on these pages!

Such then is the testimony of the apostle; after his departure, evil would prevail, active both within and without. He tells them nothing of the nomination of successors to the elders, any more than he does of a successor to himself. He insists on the faithfulness of those who were there, whom the Holy Ghost had made bishops (for bishops and elders were one and only one office); and commends them to God and to the word of His grace, which was able to build them up, and give them an inheritance among them that were sanctified. In fact, no means is established in the word for the continuance of the organisation of the assembly. People are mistaken on this point. The disciples were waiting for the coming of the Lord, the Lord Himself. See the parables of the servant, Matthew 24, of the virgins and the talents. But the apostle shews that this coming might be delayed till long after the life of those then on the earth. The sleeping virgins are the very same that are revealed; the servants who received the talents those found afterwards at the coming of the Lord. Paul says, "We which are alive and remain till the coming of the Lord." They did not know when He would come, but still they waited for Him; Luke 12: 36, etc. What has produced the moral ruin of the assembly is, that she has ceased to look for the Lord; but has said, "The Lord delayeth his coming," Matt. 24: 49. She has taken and beaten her fellow-servants, has eaten and drunk with the drunken. The hierarchy has been established; worldliness has invaded the assembly; and thus alliance has been made with the world.

423 The apostle recalls his own faithfulness, how he had been an example to the elders, labouring with his own hands, since it was more blessed to give than to receive. Then, kneeling down, he prays with them all. And they, weeping, embrace him sorrowfully, chiefly for the word that he had spoken, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship. Solemn departure, the end of the apostle's public work. He speaks of it as of a finished work, announcing that henceforward, in consequence of his absence, evil would prevail in the outward assembly of God on the earth, but assuring the faithful that God and the word of His grace would be enough to build them up, and give them an inheritance among those that were sanctified. This was certain. The power of Christ secures it; but the exterior system, Christianity, would be corrupted, having given up the expectation of the Lord's return. Paul teaches the same truth in 2 Timothy 3. John tells us that the last time has already arrived.

The patience of God continues to accomplish the work of grace; and Christ to supply the gifts necessary to the perfecting of the saints, and the building up of the assembly, although our coldness greatly hinders the Spirit. And this will be the case till the end of the gathering of the saints. Christianity has ripened in the midst of evil, as foretold by the apostles. It is evil which began in apostolic times, and which was already sufficiently mature in John's time, the last of the apostles; for he says that the last times had already come. We trust that the cry, "Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him," has already begun to go forth, and that many hearts will respond, and kindle their lamps. May the Lord add daily to their number!

424 Acts 21.

From Miletus, Paul sets out for Jerusalem. In this journey, nothing of importance occurs till the apostle's arrival at Tyre. There he finds disciples who tell him not to go up to Jerusalem; and this they do by the Spirit. We have already spoken a little of this. To tell him by the Spirit not to go up was more than to forewarn him that bonds and tribulation awaited him. He felt bound in spirit, and doubtless the hand of God was leading him, though it was not that free action of the Holy Ghost in his heart that had guided him in the Lord's work. He means by the state of his soul as a victim, and by this providence, not to preach to lost souls in order to save them, but to bear testimony to the Lord in the face of death. In such a testimony he answers for himself, and therefore for the Lord; but he was not seeking souls. He does nothing hurtful, but he does not work in the power of the Holy Ghost. To him the Lord Himself was everything. That was not changed; and the circumstances in which the apostle is found during these last years of his life resemble those in which the Lord was placed at Jerusalem. But in Him we see perfection in man; in Paul the grace of God with man, but man in his imperfection was not doing that work now. He was going to Jerusalem with money from the Greeks for the poor saints who lived there - a good Christian work, but not the apostolic work of the gospel. He could not bear witness as an apostle at Jerusalem. The Lord had told him so. Still as a prisoner he had a testimony, and the Lord was with him: and also towards those who had not otherwise heard the gospel, such as the governors and kings.

425 It is true that he followed afar off in the Lord's footsteps, being betrayed by the Jews, and placed by them with Gentiles to be put to death; but his true work as an apostle to the Gentiles was at an end, at least as far as we know from the word. We have seen that there is a certain difference between "they said to him by the Spirit," and "the Spirit said." If the Spirit Himself had said it, it would have been disobedience to Paul to have gone to Jerusalem: but it seems to us that it was rather a warning given by the Spirit, that he should not go there. Certainly it was much more than to say that afflictions awaited him. It was a solemn warning from the Spirit by the mouths of the brethren; and moreover he was "bound in spirit." But this warning the apostle neglects. He feels constrained to go to Jerusalem, but notwithstanding this, he is led by the providence and grace of God manifest towards him, faithful and blessed.

The Lord goes as a sheep, dumb before her shearers; and neither opens His mouth, nor replies to His accusers. Paul, however, claims Roman citizenship, and raises a tumult in the council by declaring himself a Pharisee. That he was a Roman, and also (as a Jew) a Pharisee, was true; but where was any testimony in these worldly facts? Christ was condemned solely for the witness He bore to the truth, to Himself before the Jews and before Pilate, although by the latter He was recognised as entirely innocent. Paul is betrayed by the Jews, and given over to the Gentiles as Christ was, and by them punished, though not put to death; but Christ is condemned by His own divine perfection, by jealousy and hatred against God, manifest in goodness. But Paul is condemned by the enmity of the Jews to the Gentiles.

The apostle follows the Lord, but it is afar off. With full heart we honour the apostle so faithful, so blessed, and own the power of the Spirit in his work among the Gentiles. But to Jerusalem he went neither to seek the Gentile, nor to bear witness to the Jews. The Lord had told him, "they will not receive thy testimony." And it is precisely when he reminds the Jews of these words of the Lord, that their fury breaks forth. But Christ was the object of the testimony: and though Paul witnessed a good confession, yet he was only the witness, honoured however, and following the Lord in the distance.

Let us follow now the sad history of the apostle's end. At Tyre he enjoys again Christian simplicity and affection. Then he and his companions, accompanied by the brethren of Tyre, go down to the sea, and there kneeling down on the shore, join in prayer. Then taking leave of them, Paul embarks in the ship, and the others return to their homes. Blessed by his faithful labours, Paul leaves the field for ever. It is possible, and also probable that he was liberated from his captivity at Rome, and that he recommenced his work, but we have not the history of this in the Bible. Arrives at Caesarea, he leaves the vessel, and enters into the house of Philip the evangelist, whose preceding history at Samaria, together with the treasurer of Candace, we have already perused. There a prophet comes from Jerusalem, who announces once more that bonds awaited Paul there. His companions and the brethren of Caesarea then beseech him not to go up to Jerusalem; but in vain, Paul declaring that he is ready to die there for the name of the Lord Jesus. "And when he would not be persuaded, they ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done."

426 Here we must draw the distinction between the apostle's service, in which he was the minister of God Himself, and guarded by the Holy Ghost, when his words were those of the Spirit conveyed by his mouth, and his individual walk when he is found in a place where he had not been sent to accomplish the work assigned to him. This distinction made, let us compare the path of the Lord with that of the apostle, and faithful as the latter was, mark the difference. The Lord, when He hears that Lazarus is sick, remains quietly for two days in the same place, and then, God's time being come, goes up to Jerusalem to do the will of His Father. The disciples, astonished, and fearing that death awaited Him there, warn Him, saying, "Goest thou thither again?" But the will of God was clear to the Lord, and therefore His path also, and He replies, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world." All is calm, all is in the light of a divine day for His heart. The Saviour is the object of testimony, perfect in Himself. The apostles, however great and faithful, were only witnesses of His perfection and His glory. In themselves, no matter how marvellously blessed, they were only men as others. Paul had to reprove Peter publicly, and to separate himself from Barnabas. Here, conducted by the hand of God, and strengthened by His grace, he is led, bound in the spirit, to pass through circumstances that put to the test his state of soul, and brought his public career to a close.

427 He goes up then to Jerusalem forewarned (though neglecting or resisting these various warnings of the Spirit), accompanied by the brethren who were with him, and an old disciple, Mnason, with whom he was to lodge. Arrived at Jerusalem, the disciples receive him gladly; and here begins the history of that submission to human forms and Jewish customs which terminated in his captivity at Rome. But he does not follow these Jewish forms and ceremonies that he may thereby attract his countrymen to the gospel, but because persuaded into them by the elders and James, in order to shew that he was himself a good Jew, faithful to the law, and to Jewish customs. It was precisely this that threw him into the hands of the hostile Jews, and then into those of the Gentiles. Jesus, on the contrary, in the dignity of His perfection, sits in the temple to instruct the multitude. All classes of Jews come to prove him; but all are judged, and reduced to silence by the divine patience of the Saviour, and none dare ask Him any more questions. Then, as we have said, the Lord is condemned for the witness He bore to the truth.

When Paul arrives, the elders assemble with James, and, attached as they were to Judaism, and surrounded by Christian Jews, in order to uphold the reputation of their religion and unite Christianity to Judaism, counsel Paul to satisfy the prejudices of the believing Jews by purifying himself after their custom, and offering sacrifices in the temple, so that he might appear a good Jew to their eyes. Paul accedes to their proposal; and we encounter the strange spectacle of the apostle offering sacrifices, as though all such had not been abolished by the Lord's death. He neither upholds nor wins the Jews who were not set free from their customs. Still God permitted him willingly to conform to these Jewish ceremonies. Being at Jerusalem, though warned by the Spirit not to go there, what could he do?

Let us remember, if we have been cast for the Lord's name out from a place where we have been under the authority of the governing power, not to re-enter it, so that we may not again be placed in the position from which we have been freed. The relationship has been broken by the authority itself, and if we have left it by the will of God, by returning we place ourselves anew under the abandoned authority; and if this be contrary to that of the Lord Jesus, under which we came when liberated from human authority, we re-established over us the authority which had been destroyed, and thus strife begins between the authority of Christ over us, and that which we have abandoned. It is impossible to go on well thus. We were free under the authority of Christ, free to do His will; and we have returned to the authority which prohibits obedience to Christ. For example, suppose that a son or daughter has been driven from home for the Lord's name; by this act the parents have renounced their authority. If this son returns to his father's house, he places himself under paternal authority, and what can he do when his parents oppose the faith of Christ? He is powerless; and moreover, has so lost his liberty as to renew over himself the authority which opposes that of Christ, has given up the latter to return to that which is contrary to it.

428 Mark again the power of ancient habits. For us it is as clear as the light of day, that the sacrifices of the Jews are annulled, and that the precious sacrifice of Christ has abolished them entirely. But here is a multitude of Christians at Jerusalem, zealous for the law, offering sacrifices, and their elders counselling Paul to do likewise. Let us remember that his submission to these customs put an end to the public testimony of the apostle. Still, as we follow Paul's history, let us ever bear his work in mind, all his labours, and the blessing which accompanied them. In this submission to Jewish ceremonies, he was not guided by the Spirit; he followed the advice of the elders; they were tenacious of the law; and his position was theirs. Paul does what they desire; and joining himself to four other men who had a vow goes with them to the temple to signify the days of purification, when a sacrifice should be offered for each of them.

But before the end of the days, certain Jews of Asia recognise Paul, and stir up the people against him, crying out that he taught everywhere against the law of Moses, and that he had profaned the temple. The doors are shut, and the crowd begin to abuse and beat Paul. While they are thus engaged, the Roman captain learns that all the city is in an uproar, and comes to liberate Paul from their hands. Such is the result of the attempt to conform to the superstitions of others, not made with a view to winning souls by guarding against offending them, but in order to convince these superstitious Jews that he walked as they did, thus only confirming them in their darkness!

429 If here we think of the Lord ever perfect, we shall perceive the difference of His path. Paul is taken by the hands of the Jewish rabble; Christ, when the band arrives, gives Himself up voluntarily, saying, "Whom seek ye? I have told you that I am he; if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." It is not in any way to disparage the Lord's blessed workman, unequalled in his labours, caught up into the third heavens, that I point out this difference, but only that we may realise the unique perfection of the Saviour, the witness in His ministry of divine perfection in man, always, no doubt, but especially during His last sojourn at Jerusalem, when this perfection was proved to the end, then only shining more brightly, and found wanting in nothing.

Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles

J. N. Darby.

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Acts 22.

The captain permitting Paul to speak to the people, the apostle relates the story of his conversion, then that which brings to light his submission to the superstitions of the Jewish Christians. This was the result of personal amiability, grace, and condescension to his brethren, but not of the direction and power of the Holy Ghost. His position was a false one; and in a false position it is impossible to do well. Though the grace of God may support, and sustain those so placed, yet the Holy Ghost cannot act in free power by their means. It is in sovereignty that He acts, and the instrument is like blind Samson, the power exercised being the end of his own career, as well as that of his enemies.

What is seen clearly in Paul is the absence of this power. The Lord's grace was always there. Thus, what he did in the temple was the effect of the counsels of the elders, not of the direction of the Spirit.

Captured now by the captain, he is allowed to speak to the people. As Paul addresses them in their own language, they listen in silence, while he relates the story of his conversion, of the revelation he had had of the glory of Christ, as well as that given to Ananias, a devout Jew. The moment he reaches the cardinal point of his discourse, however, the fury of the audience breaks out with a violence which the presence of the captain and soldiers cannot check. "I send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. And they lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth." It was precisely what the Lord had said to him, "They will not receive thy testimony concerning Me." What then was he doing at Jerusalem? The word that had sent him away from Jerusalem on his glorious mission is fulfilled when he re-enters it, to the ruin of his work, making him once more a Jew, bound by the law.

430 Like Jesus, Paul is condemned on account of the truth of his mission; but in the apostle's case, in a position that contradicted the mission itself. But the Jews complete their sin by rejecting, and giving up to the Gentiles, the grace offered to them. The word that raised the tumult was also the occasion of his imprisonment among the Romans. This was the proof, that as an apostle he had nothing to do at Jerusalem. He loved his people, and that deeply; for he had returned to Jerusalem, in spite of all that had been said to him. Desiring to bear witness there, he had reasoned with the Lord; but the Lord had replied that he ought not to go there. He excuses himself to the Jews, without doubt; but if they would not receive his testimony, what was the necessity of saying that the Lord had sent him? This discourse is the main point of the apostle's history, on which all the rest depends.

Paul justifies himself before the Jews, declaring how like themselves, he had persecuted the Christians even unto death, and that they and the high priest were witnesses of it. Then he relates how all had been changed by the appearing of the Lord in glory, who had declared Himself as Jesus, and shewn him how, in persecuting the Christians, he was persecuting the Lord Himself; and lastly the part that Ananias, the devout Jew, had taken in the affair. All this they tolerate, but when the apostle speaks of a mission to the Gentiles, their wrath breaks forth. They complete their sin. "Forbidding us," had said the apostle, "to speak to the Gentiles - to fill up their sins already; for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost, 1 Thess. 2: 16.

There are three degrees in their sin. First, they crucified the Lord of glory, and were guilty of the ten thousand talents (Matt. 18); but Christ intercedes for them on the cross, and the Holy Ghost responds to this prayer by the mouth of Peter (chap. 3), declaring that if they repented of their sin, Jesus would return. But they stopped the mouth of Peter, and then stoned Stephen who bore testimony to the glory of the Son of man at the right hand of God. This was the second degree; they would not believe in a glorified Saviour, when the Spirit bore witness to Him.

431 All this happened among the Jews. But Paul had a mission among the Gentiles, since the Jews would not have the grace offered to them. They would have been willing enough to enjoy the promises made to Israel, although they had rejected Him in whom all the promises were fulfilled; but of having compassion on His servant, they did not even think. It was the end; all was finished; the debt of the ten thousand talents weighed down on them. Jerusalem would neither have grace itself, nor leave it to others. Judgment will come upon it. The patience of God, long-suffering patience, at length came to its end for hearts that refused to surrender to the perfect grace of God. But the judgment of God is only pronounced at Rome (Acts 28); a judgment already announced eight hundred years previously (Isaiah 6). But in the patience of God, this was not executed till they opposed themselves openly to His grace.

But judgment had to be executed. Christ in humiliation worked by the power of God; then Christ having been glorified, the Holy Ghost was sent into the world. Paul was afterwards raised up to carry the gospel to the Gentiles; and all having been rejected, nothing remained but judgment. The mystery of the union of Jews and Gentiles in one body was promulgated by Paul, and was the true point of progress of his testimony. It was grace itself that was rejected. God permitted the journey of Paul to Jerusalem, so that all might come to an end. Grace ever continues, even during the period of his captivity at Rome; and the mystery itself is fully unfolded by him in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians: and then he has given us the true Christian character, the practical fall of the system (Phil. 2: 21), and the superiority of faith to all the circumstances in the Epistle to the Philippians. In 2 Timothy, the walk of the faithful Christian amid a scene of ruin, is clearly taught.

It will be worth our while to notice a few particularities in the apostle's discourse. The Lord still calls Himself Jesus of Nazareth. We know that He was glorified, but this makes Him shine with a light more brilliant than that of the sun. He is ever the same benign and gentle Man who learned human sorrows in the midst of men. He thinks of others, and considers all Christians as part of Himself. "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." Infinitely precious truth! Then we find in Paul the same liberty as we have seen in Ananias. He reasons with the Lord (v. 18-21), saying that more than any other he was fit for testimony at Jerusalem. And this makes his sincerity evident. Yet in this he might perceive the Lord's wisdom, for he is bearing witness against his own presence at Jerusalem. And here too we see what a perfect conscience is, by grace and by the blood of Christ. He recounts to Christ all his sins, and the hatred which at the beginning had been in his heart to the Lord's name; how he had persecuted the members of Christ, and taken part in the death of Stephen; and all this he presents to the Lord as a motive for his mission to the Jews. But his conscience was pure now.

432 I believe we have spoken of a little difficulty which Paul's words present here, but I shall not err in repeating it. The companions of Paul saw the light, but did not hear the voice of Him who spoke with him. In chapter 9 we read that they heard the voice, but saw no one. They did not see the Lord, nor did they hear His words, but they saw a great light, and heard a voice without being able to distinguish the words. This is just what was necessary. They were undeniable witnesses that the vision was true and real, but the communication was for Paul alone. Only he saw the Lord (Acts 22: 14, 15). For he had to be taught by Him, and bear testimony as an ocular witness that he had seen Him.

Moved by the violence of the multitude, the captain desires that Paul should be led into the castle, and commands him to be examined by scourging, but, already covered with stripes, Paul takes advantage of his rights as a Roman citizen. It was not lawful to bind such. He is not scourged therefore. On the morrow, loosed from his bands, he is brought before the Jewish Council, that they might know of what he was accused. And now Paul, who a little before had represented himself as a Jew in order to escape the prejudices of the Judaizing Christians, declares himself a Roman citizen in order to avoid unjust punishment from the Gentiles. It was not a sin, for he was really a Roman; but where was the power of the Spirit? Where is the Christian who would not do likewise?

433 Acts 23.

Brought before the Council, the apostle begins by declaring his innocence. "And the high priest, Ananias, commanded them that stood by to smite him on the mouth." This undoubtedly was violence; yet produced not by testimony borne to Christ, but by self-justification. Paul replies with an insult, calling the high priest a "whited wall." He had merited this, it is true; but such an answer did not display the meekness of Christ. Being reproved, Paul owns his fault; but his defence tells us of the absence of the power and of the knowledge of the Holy Ghost. "I knew not," is not what the Holy Ghost would say. All is true; but we do not find the energy of the Spirit of God. Moreover, he is not now merely a Jew and a Roman, but also a Pharisee. Such a title he counts no longer dross and dung, it has become once more a gain.

However, God makes use of this to liberate Paul from the hands of the Jews. Full of zeal for their opinions, and of wrath against one another, the Council begin to dispute; and the discussion becoming warm, the captain fearing Paul might be pulled in pieces amid the tumult, commands the soldiers to go down and take him by force from among them. In the hands now of the Gentiles, he is taken by the soldiers to the castle; there we find the perfect grace of the Lord towards his faithful servant, in bringing him through trying circumstances without the consciousness that he was suffering for the testimony of God. For Jerusalem all was finished; and the Lord, knowing that Paul must go to Rome, appears to him the night following, saying, "Be of good cheer, Paul; for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome." What grace! He encourages His servant. It is possible that his position was not the effect of the action of the Spirit; nevertheless, even had he not drawn down the hatred of the Jews on himself, he would have been in peril.

The cross, and grace towards the Gentiles, had made him the object of the enmity of this people. He had confessed Christ glorified, as revealed on his way to Damascus, and declared his mission to carry the name of Christ the Saviour to the Gentiles. The Lord does not remind him of the faults he had committed, but of his faithfulness. He encourages him, and makes him understand (and this was the more necessary, since he was a prisoner, and might say, "I have failed, I have not hearkened to the warning of the Spirit") - makes him understand, I say, that whatever might happen, he was under His hand and His care. Watched over in Jerusalem, he would arrive in safety at Rome, and there be permitted to bear witness to Him. What consolation for the heart of His poor servant! And what grace on the Lord's part! The apostle might have said to himself, "Now my testimony is over, and I myself am the cause of it. Ah! why did I not follow the counsel of the Spirit? The end of my work is come, and I have done it!" But the Lord manifests Himself. Paul is in His hands, and Jesus owns him still as a witness to His name. And shall we not recognise him whom the Lord owned? Assuredly. It is possible that the spiritual power of the witness is not displayed; it is possible that such a warning ought to have stayed his steps, and made him ask the Lord what he should do; but still the hand and heart of the Lord were with him. The grace is the more remarkable, as such a position had deprived him of the power of the Spirit of God.

434 The hatred of the Jews only hastened the liberation of Paul from their hands. Many conspiring for his death, the captain sends him to Caesarea, the residence of the governor. God has everything at His disposal. Here, therefore, for the first time we learn that the apostle had a nephew and a sister. Though he knew no longer anyone after the flesh, yet God knew his danger, and made use of the natural affection of a relation. Paul concerns himself little either about the young man or the peril he was in, but sends him to the captain, and the conspiracy is frustrated.

But amid the circumstances in which he was placed - though the lowest in his history - how grand the figure of Paul appears! if we compare him with those by whom he was surrounded - priests dominated by base passions, without conscience and without heart, and seeking only their own importance. In the captain, bound to subdue the passions of a people whom he despised, we see, in his sending Paul to the governor, a worldliness full of duplicity and contempt for the rights of others. Such, alas! are everywhere the ordinary, though base feelings of poor mortals. In Paul, though oppressed, and occupying a false position, integrity and grandeur of soul shine out; from a soul sustained by the great things with which he had been in relation; from the thought of a glorified Lord, and of a mission from Him for the salvation of poor sinners. Such things his persecutors could not understand (which shews that his position was a false one), but which issued naturally from a heart filled with them. But all he does is to throw what was holy to dogs, and pearls before swine. Nevertheless these things enlarge and illuminate the apostle's figure in the scene we delineate, where, though scorned and trampled upon, he stands out in relief from among all the great ones, for the beauty and grandeur of his moral figure.

435 We now find the apostle in the hands of the Gentiles; and though there may have been no free action of the Spirit in Paul himself, yet the providence of God cares for him, ordering everything for the testimony he was to bear; and His favour is with him. The implacable enmity of the Jews only produces the fulfilment of the counsels of God, and debases them in the eyes of all who possess a noble heart. Though their desire was to gain possession of his person, yet he was to remain no longer in their power, and he is therefore conducted to Lysias, to Felix, to Festus, to Agrippa, and at last to Caesar. Such was the intention of God. Such too the means employed by Him to present the gospel to the governors and to the great; not by raising up, as many frequently think, men of the world to do so; but God makes a prisoner His servant, in order that the gospel might be carried to the knowledge of governors and kings. "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence," 1 Cor. 1: 27-29.

Paul then, under a guard, journeys by night (for the captain was distrustful of the Jews), with a letter representing matters in a light favourable to himself, introducing him as a Roman, and preparing a good reception for him by the governor.

Acts 24.

Instead of abandoning their inimical endeavours, the Jews go down to Caesarea to accuse Paul. The accusation is what our narrative itself suggests - his acts among the Jews in countries beyond Palestine. and his profanation of the temple. For confirmation of their allegation, they refer to the captain. The dignity of Paul's reply is self-evident. While speaking with the respect due to the governor, he does so with perfect independence, with simplicity, and with a good conscience, as one innocent. His faith as a Christian - which the Jews called heresy - and particularly his belief in resurrection, it is not requisite to confess. Formally denying what they accuse him of, he demands that his adversaries prove what they say. The only thing of which they could accuse him, was of having spoken of the resurrection in such a way as to raise a tumult in the council, and this they were little disposed to bring to light. Their violence on that occasion had obliged the captain to rescue Paul out of their hands. Felix, accustomed to Jewish habits, and knowing that the dispute arose out of the doctrine of Christianity, which had by that time acquired publicity, defers his judgment till Lysias should descend from Jerusalem to Caesarea. Meanwhile, Paul is set at liberty, and his friends are permitted to minister to him.

436 Some days later, Felix, who seems to have been absent with his wife Drusilla, a Jewess, calls for Paul, to hear him concerning the faith in Christ: for now the new doctrine had spread everywhere, and was attracting the attention of all. Felix, as well as his wife, being well versed in the things of the Jews, desired to know from its original source what Christianity was; and therefore summon Paul for this purpose. But Paul, ever occupied with souls and Christ, speaks to the conscience of the governor, telling him of judgment to come. Felix then, trembling, remands the apostle till "a more convenient season." Thus divine testimony is borne to the council, Lysias, and to the governor. Besides this, the governor hoped that Paul would give him money to be liberated. But to such dealing Paul does not consent, and therefore remains a prisoner. Felix, having to go away, and desiring to leave a favourable impression on the minds of the Jews, leaves Paul bound. Though aware of his innocence, and able to set him free, he cared nothing for justice. Money and public opinion were of more importance to him. God's intention, however, was that Paul should appear before other governors and kings, and at last before the Emperor himself. And this therefore is what happened.

437 Acts 25.

Festus, the new governor, after three days goes up to Jerusalem. There the chief of the Jews inform him against Paul, and propose to have him brought to Jerusalem, intending to kill him on the way. But Festus will not consent, saying that he would return soon to Caesarea, and that then they could go there and accuse him.

Here again, God, in His providence, watches over His servant. Arrived at Caesarea, Festus makes Paul appear before him, and in order to gratify the Jews who accuse him, proposes to him to go up to Jerusalem. This he had before refused to the Jews; but now, in order to gain popularity, he proposes it. These two years had neither lessened the hatred, nor awakened the consciences of the Jews; and in the Roman (Festus), only base motives existed - love of self and of his own importance.

Paul upholds his integrity, and is watched over by God. He denies once more the things his accusers could not prove. Festus thinks nothing of justice, but only of gratifying the people. Paul replies with great dignity, that Festus was well aware that he had done nothing amiss, that he had not the right to give him up to his enemies, and concludes by appealing to Caesar. Such was the fulfilment of God's purpose, that, conducted to Rome by His providence, Paul should there bear witness before the Emperor himself. This was not the thought of Festus, nor of the Jews, nor yet the testimony of the Spirit in Paul. But the will of God is accomplished without that of men.

We have seen that Paul was both a Roman and a Pharisee. With him it is no longer the weak things, the base things, and the things which are despised, the things that are not, that bring to nought the things that are. All is no longer dross and dung. Paul now makes use of these things to avoid injustice and death; and God employs them to conduct the apostle to Rome there to be a witness of the truth before the great of the world. Such too the cause of his audience with Agrippa, and of his journey to Rome. Having appealed to Caesar, he must of necessity be sent to Caesar; and Festus therefore decides accordingly.

But while these things are happening, the king Agrippa and Bernice come to salute the new governor. The latter relates to them the history of Paul, giving himself (as we find everywhere in the world, as well as in this instance) a character for equity and fidelity to the principles of justice and honour. But the story of the resurrection was only a Jewish superstition. Agrippa, one of the Herods, and king of the southern part of Palestine, was by race an Edomite, but a Jew by profession. He was consequently well-informed as to the religious questions of the country; and curious to know clearly, and from a reliable source, what the Christianity might be that had produced such a movement of spirit in the people of his country, asks to hear Paul. Festus, well knowing that the accused was not guilty of anything, and anxious to obtain some pretext for sending him to Caesar, accedes to his request. Of Paul's innocence we have the testimony of the governor, in his address to Agrippa, as well as of the others who listened to him. He did not know what to write to the Emperor, and so brings Paul before this audience in the hope of discovering something to say.

438 Acts 26.

Paul now shews that it is on account of the promises made to the fathers that he stands charged, and this too was the ground of the Jews' accusation. "Why should it be thought an incredible thing with you that God should raise the dead?" He had thought that he should do many things against the name of Jesus, and zealous like the other Jews against the Christians, had persecuted them unmercifully, even into strange cities. Then he relates the appearing of the Lord Jesus on the way to Damascus, whither he was going to imprison Christians - how he had been arrested by the glory of the Lord in heaven, and learned that it was He Himself he was persecuting, since all Christians were one with Him. It was then that the unity of believers with Jesus was for the first time declared, a truth more fully unfolded afterwards by means of the apostle.

But the conversion itself was effected by two things; first, the heavenly glory of the Man, Jesus Christ the Lord; Paul, seeing this first, and then learning that it was Jesus; and secondly, that all Christians were united in one body with Him. Paul was persecuting Jesus Himself. But thenceforward he was to be a witness both of the things he had seen, and of those in which He who had been revealed to him would yet appear unto him. He had been separated from his own people, the Jews, and from the Gentiles, to whom now he was to be sent. He was no longer a Jew, but yet had not become a Gentile. He was associated with the Lord of glory, and was sent out from Him as a witness of His glory, and of the grace that could take up an open enemy, and make him the expression and witness of the perfect grace that had converted and saved him. His mission, as God's workman, was to open the eyes of the Gentiles, and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they might receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified - the whole by faith in Jesus. "By faith that is in me" (v. 18), applies more particularly to forgiveness and inheritance, though as a matter of fact, the words extend to the entire sentence. Obedient to the heavenly vision, he had preached repentance everywhere, beginning with the Jews, exhorting them to turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. Though the Jews had sought to kill him, yet by the help of God he had continued till that day, saying none other things than those which the prophets had said should happen - that Christ should suffer, rise from the dead, and shew light to the people and to the Gentiles.

439 To Festus, all this was mere fanaticism. But Paul replied with perfect dignity and propriety, in a way which was the best proof that he was not beside himself, but that he spoke the words of truth and soberness. Such a testimony, however, to an unconverted Gentile, whose conscience had not been reached, was nothing but pure madness. At all events, Festus felt that these things were entirely beyond his knowledge. He saw that Paul could not be charged with any misdemeanour. He understood nothing about the matter. The formal politeness he had at first shewn now disappears, as well as the propriety of his position. The power of what Paul had said has sufficed to reduce him to his natural state of soul. But Paul maintaining both dignity and propriety, places Festus anew in the position of governor, and addresses himself to Agrippa, who knew the truth of these things, and before whom therefore he could speak freely. Turning towards the latter, then, he asks, "King Agrippa," appealing to his conscience, "believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest."

440 Being above all circumstances, Paul is completely master of the occasion. Agrippa is confused by the apostle's question, since he was a Jew by profession, though nothing in heart! and ashamed of being placed in a corner before such company by his simple but powerful words, tries to parry the blow, and says jestingly, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." But Paul, whose large heart is occupied only with the reality and happiness of Christianity, replies, "I would to God that not only thou, but all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am except these bonds." Such was the beautiful expression of a heart full of grace, and therefore of love for others, and of the consciousness of a happiness that two years' captivity had rather strengthened than weakened. But how highly by his nearness to God, is he, the poor prisoner, the despised Jew, elevated above both governors and kings! He treats them with deference and respect, as was his duty, but because he was able to do so from his place of moral superiority to them, which he had by faith in a glorified Saviour. Humble, and at peace, when the opportunity presented itself, he could display the greatness of what was in his soul, and utter desires for the great who only possessed outward splendour.

For the pagan Festus, who only relished human grandeur, he was nothing but a madman; for Agrippa, nothing but a trouble and vexation of spirit. He had desired to know what this Christianity that was attracting the attention of all around him, and that pretended to come from God and demand the submission of all with His authority, might be; but he did not expect himself to be challenged so personally. For Paul the prisoner, it was eternal life and the presence of God who had saved him, and the earnest of the glory to which he was heir. His testimony had been given.

The effect on king Agrippa is evident. Not that he was converted - far from that - but his conscience was touched. He speaks to Festus as a little king to a governor, not as feeling lightly, nor despising the truth and Christianity, but is careful to declare that Paul might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed to Caesar. Two things are thus made manifest; the innocence of Paul, since Agrippa fully understood the truth of his case, and that his appeal to Caesar was the only hindrance to his liberation. It was the will of God that he should go to Rome, but if he had not made use of his worldly rights to regain his liberty, he might have gone there free. Yet the hand of God was in all this, for the one who had given his decision in the matter had listened to the testimony through this appeal to Caesar; and from his knowledge of the ways of the country, was able to declare with confidence, that it was only the appeal that prevented him from being set free. It is manifest in what light the apostle's faith considered the effect of his captivity; Phil. 1: 12, 13, 19. Moreover, the Epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and to Philemon, are the precious fruit of his captivity at Rome. But his mission to the Gentiles, as far as the Spirit speaks of it, is now at an end. Yet, though his mission is over, the apostle remains a bright and blessed object. We shall find the condemnation of the Jews closing our history.

441 Acts 27.

It having been decided that Paul should be sent to Italy, he is consigned with other prisoners to the charge of one Julius, a centurion of Augustus' band. They set out with the intention of sailing along the coast of Asia.

Aristarchus accompanies the apostle. He had already been with Paul in former journeys. We have met him at Ephesus (Acts 19), with Gaius, who at Corinth was the apostle's host. Julius treats Paul courteously at Sidon, giving him liberty to visit his friends. God cared for his servant, and granted him leniency on the part of this officer. Besides, the authorities were well aware that he was not guilty of anything. They were obliged to send him to Rome in consequence of his appeal to Caesar.

They continue their voyage then, though slowly, the wind being contrary, till they reach a place called "the fair havens," in the island of Crete, and near the city of Lasea. It was already the month of November, and the navigation dangerous; and the port belied its name, being much exposed to the wind. The port and ruins of Lasea are still discoverable. Human wisdom advised departure, the master of the ship hoping, with a favourable wind, to reach Phenice, a better port, and there winter. This place has also been recognised in modern times. Of the two winds which prevail in that latitude, the one is soft but capricious, and the other very violent.

442 Here again we discover the apostle's nearness to God, his intimacy with Him, and the Lord's abundant grace towards His servant; and through this communion, Paul becomes master of the situation. On the authority of God, he is able to forewarn the sailors and captain of the vessel what is to happen. But this revelation was expressed in general terms, and the centurion placed more confidence in the owner and pilot than in what Paul said. To him, this was a mere human prediction. And when the south wind blew softly, they thought they had gained their desire of reaching Phenice. But God holds the winds in the hollow of His hand. The soft and favourable wind that tempted them to set sail, did not continue; and soon a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon, which blows from Greece, and even more from the east, sprang up, and drove them towards the south-west, threatening to cast them on the quicksands of Africa, which lay almost in the direction in which the wind was driving them. After much difficulty, they succeeded in getting the boat on board, but this after all, proved useless in saving them. God was not willing that the many souls in the vessel should be saved by human means, but that Paul's word should be accomplished, and he himself be the occasion of the safety of all.

It is useless to enter into the details of the voyage. Everything possible was done to save the ship, but in vain. The description given us is perfectly exact, and even technical. Carried by the tempest, they are cast on the island of Malta. But what is important for us is the position which the apostle occupies. All hope of escape was gone. But now God interposes, and by means of a revelation made to Paul, revives the failing courage of the sufferers. The apostle reminds them of what he had said at the "fair havens," telling them that they ought to have followed his advice, and that now they were reaping the fruit of refusing it, and trusting to the knowledge of the sailors. But they were to be of good cheer, for there would be no loss of life, but only of the ship. As before governors, Paul, the servant of God, held morally the superior position, so now he occupies the same place, amid perils sufficient to reduce the crew of the ship to despair. God was watching over Paul. It was necessary that he should appear before Caesar; and full of grace, the Lord had given him all those who were with him.

The ship being driven by the force of the wind near to the land, the sailors cast four anchors out of the stern. Then, as all are looking anxiously for day, the crew, thinking only of themselves, endeavour to escape in the boat, under pretext of getting out an anchor from the forward end of the vessel. But Paul is there, observes all, and directs everything on the part, one may say, of God. It was necessary that he should save them. Paul had now acquired full influence over those in authority. The presence of God, and the divine knowledge he had received of what was to happen, had gained for him the confidence of all. Cutting therefore the ropes of the boat, the soldiers let her drop off. Their salvation was to depend on God, and this had to be owned. If any could have been saved by human means, all might. But all would have perished if the sailors had not remained on board. All the work had to be performed by God.

443 If we follow the counsels of God through His word, we shall avoid many mistakes. He can save us still when we err, but it will be through suffering and loss. Israel refused to ascend the hill of the Amorites, and had therefore to remain thirty-eight years in the desert. Here, Paul's companions would not listen to his words, which were those of God, and they lost everything, except life. Their deliverance, it is evident, came from God alone, and was effected for the honour of His servant, whose words they had despised. It is always important for us to ascertain the will of God before entering any untried path. If we are assured of this, the difficulties will be only difficulties; and the help of God is enough to overcome them. But if we are not sure about His will, then doubt and weakness arise in the heart, because faith to count on God for help is not there, since we are not certain that the path is according to His will.

Paul then comforts them, and persuades them to eat, for the storm had prevented them from taking any regular meal for fourteen days. On the authority of God, he assures them that not a hair of their heads shall perish. He then gives thanks, and eats himself, in order to encourage them. Then all take heart, and eat also. Sufficiently refreshed (for they eat with the more courage, being cheered by that of the one who walked with God, and with whom was His secret), they begin to lighten the ship by throwing the grain overboard. It was not wrong to do so. God can take up the means and the intelligence of men and use them; but these means did not do much good; the hand of God did everything. The ship is then run aground at a place where two seas met, and while the fore part remains fast the stern is broken by the violence of the waves.

444 But God is faithful to His promise. The soldiers desire to kill the prisoners, so that none may escape; but the centurion, moved by all that had happened, and guided by God, wishes to save Paul, and therefore does not permit them to do so. According to his command, those who can swim cast themselves into the sea, while the others reach the shore on pieces of the ship. God paid this tribute of honour to His servant. He who governs the winds and seas, brings all through the tempest, though through their own fault, in order to manifest the apostle's nearness to Himself, and saves all, as Paul had foretold, who therefore shines here as elsewhere, for the power of his faith, and the simplicity of his confidence in God. The wisdom of man went for nothing in the deliverance of the crew and the others. All had to resign themselves to God for salvation; and they were saved. All power to avail of this necessity was frustrated by the word of Paul.

Acts 28.

God honours His servant on the island where he and his companions had been cast. He works miracles, and receives no hurt from the viper which fastens itself to his hand. Paul had brought captivity on himself by his appeal to Caesar, but still God was with him. It was necessary that he should bear witness before Caesar. God made use of his journey to Jerusalem (where, it is true, the power of the Spirit was not manifested in Paul) in order to bring him before Caesar himself; and this could not otherwise have been accomplished. Far from abandoning him, He displays His grace and power to him most fully.

I have already mentioned that his public testimony, as far as we learn from the Bible, was now at an end. The last testimony to the Jews had been given, and their judgment sealed; but the Lord's grace does not fail now; He comforts and sustains His servant in every circumstance in which he is placed. The weakness of man is found, it is true, even in Paul; but also the grace and the wisdom of God. It is remarkable that the church of the city of Rome was not founded by any apostle. Before Paul's arrival, there were already Christians in Rome; and the gospel in its apostolic power came in captivity.

445 The voyage is continued without incident of importance. Brethren, however, are found at Puteoli, and here the apostle remains for seven days. From thence, he goes on to Rome. The brethren there must have heard that Paul was coming, as they come out to meet him. He was probably left at Puteoli, while the centurion made known his arrival in Italy to the authorities. The rumour of this would then reach the brethren. But here we meet once more with the apostle's experiences. The love of the brethren constrains them to go to meet him. Paul, seeing them, thanks God, and takes courage. He was then cast down - I do not say discouraged - but he needed to take courage. Here we find a difference in the experimental state of Christians, which it is important to remark. On the one side, there is the state of the soul in itself, and on the other, its strength in the presence of difficulties and the power of the enemy, and in the labour required for the gospel in a world the prince of which is the devil; although these two things react on each other. Though we may have a deep sense of feebleness, and be filled with perplexity, yet, if we walk with God, if confidence in His faithfulness and His goodness do not fail us in the work, and before our enemies we lose sight of self, then the power of God will work in us, and act against that of the enemy, and amid the unbelievers among whom we labour.

Thus it happened to Moses. Leaving Pharaoh's court, he went down among the people of God in slavery. Faithful and blessed, he was owned by God in what he did; but he carried human power with him; and when he had killed the Egyptian, he fled for fear of the king's anger. Forty years in the desert dissipated this human confidence, though lack of faith in God was mingled with the sense of weakness. He was not eloquent, he said, not fit to appear before Pharaoh. But when sent from God, he presented himself before the king, it was neither in false fleshly energy, nor in the sense of weakness. The power of God was there; and as we read, he represented God to Pharaoh, overcame all obstacles, and delivered the people from his oppression.

Paul himself, when called to labour amid a rich and corrupted populace, said, "And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling," 1 Cor. 2: 3. Feeling the difficulties and the power of the evil, he threw himself on the aid of God, and the work was accomplished in demonstration of the Spirit and in power. It is in human weakness that the Lord's strength works, and is made perfect. How the Lord, perfect in everything, went through all the sufferings of His heart with His Father in Gethsemane, before drinking the cup! He did not then drink the cup, nor make propitiation for our sins: but as man, He contemplated all that lay before Him. The power of Satan was there to hinder Him from persevering till the end in the path of obedience. His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; but He told all to His Father; and when the enemies came, was as calm as in the days of His service. Here our wisdom is to present all to God, in the conflicts that may be before, as in our service. Then He will be with us when the work is over. Though our weakness may be sensible to us, yet the power of God will be with us. Paul, full of this when with others, and in the most difficult circumstances, feels the painfulness of his own situation, and is encouraged by the presence and love of the brethren.

446 Paul goes then to Rome, where the centurion places him, with the other prisoners, in the hands of the captain of the guard. But the apostle is under the care of, and guarded by the hand of God. He is allowed to live by himself, with a soldier to guard him. The conduct of the Jews had not alienated the apostle's noble heart (I say noble, because he was a chosen vessel; compare Matt. 25: 15) from his people, the people of God. He sends and calls for them; but only that they may hear for the last time their condemnation foretold. Still, some believe. Here we find the end of the ways of God towards Israel, and that of the labours of Paul, the prisoner at Rome. The threatenings of God, prophesied by the mouth of Isaiah, eight hundred years before (Isaiah 6) are now accomplished. His long-suffering, the gift of His Son, the many warnings of the prophets, all had been in vain. And though judgment had been deferred for a time through the intercession of Christ on the cross, yet they were not more willing to recognise Christ glorified, than in humiliation. It was mercy that prolonged the testimony of grace, sending it even to countries at a distance from Jerusalem, among those of the dispersion, after Jerusalem had rejected the divine blessing. But no effect was produced on these; and judgment fell on the unbelieving nation, till the sovereign grace of God shall call them to enter into the privileges of the new covenant, and the Lord Jesus shall come, bringing the better blessing of pure grace. But the history of Israel in its responsibility is over, as well as that of the gospel in its free power. God has never ceased to preserve a testimony on the earth; and has given power and fruit according to the good pleasure of His will; His name be praised! But the work of liberty and apostolic energy is over.

447 The gospel is captive at Rome! But the providence of God watches over the truth, maintains testimony, and does not allow it to be entirely hidden. There have been evil times, in which iniquity and superstition have prevailed, and truth has been persecuted; and others in which God has held the door open, and given full liberty. Often, however, faith and steadfastness shine more brightly in evil days that in times of peace and tranquillity. Elijah, who was caught up to heaven without dying, is not found in the reign of Solomon; and when he himself could find none faithful in Israel, God maintained and guarded His seven thousand in the midst of the unbelieving and apostate people.

Though it pleased God to allow Paul to remain a prisoner, yet He held the door open for souls. For two whole years he dwelt in his own hired house, preaching the kingdom of God, and the things of Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.

Such is the touching end of the public career of the apostle of the Gentiles, faithful above all, large of heart, able by grace to understand the wonderful counsels of God as a grand whole, and to feel their perfection and their greatness; and equally capable of entering into the circumstances and relationships of a fugitive slave with his master, with an affection and a delicacy without example. Bound to the Lord with a heart that led him to suffer all for Him, and for souls dear to Him; bold even to fearlessness; tender and affectionate as a mother for her babes; energetic and patient, he suffered all things for the elect's sake, that they might obtain salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. As truly risen with Christ, he knew no man after the flesh, being separated from both Jews and Gentiles, and united to a glorified Christ, his strength and hope, his all in all.

If he possessed a fault - he was a man, and displayed his manhood fully - it was in loving too much the ancient people of God, his brethren after the flesh. For this fault he was made prisoner, but the ways of God were carried out according to His wisdom. If we would know the effect of his confinement, at least of his being made prisoner, let us read the beginning of the Epistle to the Philippians 1: 12 to 20. It is beautiful to see the faith and courage of the apostle after two years imprisonment. He might have reproached himself, and said, "Ah, if you had not gone to Jerusalem, if you had not appealed to Caesar, you might still have been preaching everywhere, have gone to Spain," etc. But such was the will of God; and He was with him in his trouble. Submitting to this will, he rises above circumstances, renders thanks to God for all, finds that His wisdom is better than liberty, and works where God has placed him. Faith and confidence through grace raise him above his position to be with God, to act on His part, in whose presence he dwells.

448 We ought to be thankful to God, we and the church, for ever, for the fruit of this period, in which the apostle was free from constant labour. The epistles to the Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, were written at this time. Two are profound dissertations on the privileges of Christians and of the assembly. Another is the expression of the experience of a godly soul led entirely by the Holy Ghost. Then the fourth is the outflow of the apostle's personal affection for a soul he has won to the Lord and to eternal life - a poor slave, it is true; but he says, a son whom he has begotten in his bonds. Generally speaking, they are letters in which the highest truths of Christianity are unfolded, and in which we learn what is not to be found elsewhere in the New Testament - at least, not fully taught, though the truths themselves are spoken of, but only in part, and introduced by the way. These scriptures complete the circle of the revelation of God.

The career of the apostle Paul was more remarkable than that of any other. His fellow apostles accomplished the work of the Lord within the narrow limits of Judaism. The starting-point for him was the Lord in glory, and that all Christians were recognised as being one with Him. "Why persecutest thou me?" the Lord had asked him. This glorified Lord, salvation, and the kingdom that was to come, he preached to every creature under heaven. Then, for the completion of the word of God, he unfolded and taught what the church was. He developed the truth as to her position, the union of believers with Christ, the presence of the Spirit in believers and in the church, establishing them as the temple of God on earth. The revelation of the church, or assembly, put an end to Judaism, since there were no longer either Jews or Gentiles, but Christians united in one body to Christ. Paul was thus the head, as servant of Christ, and founder of a new economy; and he also presented himself as a model whom converts were to imitate in their walk and ways.

449 No other apostle held such a position. The twelve followed Jesus Christ while He was in the world; but this Paul did not do. Then they saw Him taken up to heaven, and believed that He was glorified at the right hand of God. Paul, till then an enemy to Christ, but converted through sovereign grace, while acting in the violence of his enmity, began with the vision of the Lord in glory, who had made Himself known to him as Jesus of Nazareth. What he preached, he called his gospel, the gospel of the Lord's glory. The knowledge and revelation of the counsels of God were confided to him; and he was caught up to the third heaven, and there heard unspeakable things which it was not lawful for a man to utter. His apostleship was to the Gentiles, to the whole world; and to this he was called by the Lord in glory, and sent expressly by the Holy Ghost. He began with the Jews, the people beloved of God, the possessors of the promises; but, according to the prophecy of Isaiah 49, he turned towards the Gentiles, when the former rejected the testimony of God. Of the church, as the body of Christ on earth, and habitation of God through the Spirit, no apostle except Paul speaks. See Col. 1: 23-29.

In the apostle's character, we find both good and bad features which stamp him a man as we are. None of these things were seen in Christ, entirely and alone perfect in every respect. But as a man of like passions to ours, Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ, had no equal. Although in captivity at Rome, the word of God was not bound. God watched over it, and Paul, dwelling in his own hired house, received all who sought after truth, and taught them with perfect liberty the gospel so dear to him. In all times, God has made it public, more or less, in order to give life through faith; but its history, begun by the marvellous power of the Holy Ghost at Jerusalem, terminated at Rome, where, in the person of Paul, to whom it had been entrusted, it lay a prisoner. Judaism crucified the Lord, and imprisoned the gospel of the glory, but God, in spite of the efforts of Satan, disseminates it, especially in these times - His name be praised! In respect to the church, it remained bound till the present day. But though preachers have little strength, yet the Lord holds the door open, and no man can shut it.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL. 4.]

Outline of the Epistle to the Romans

J. N. Darby.

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{see also files 26005_7e & 26008_9e}

Rome was the centre of the universal empire of the world, the Gentile metropolis; and Paul had not been there; but God had made him apostle and teacher of the Gentiles; 2 Tim 1: 11. In fulfilling his apostolic function, his heart was naturally drawn toward that seat of the empire and the Christians living there, or who flocked thither from all sides, to confirm them in the faith, and to establish the church forming in that important locality on the foundations of divine truth. This is what the epistle to the Romans presents us with. It is a summary of the great truths which form the groundwork of the gospel of Christ.

Let us consider a little the position of man, and of the world, before God. Christianity, it is evident, was not introduced at the beginning of the history of the human race. Already nearly 4,000 years had elapsed before the Son of God appeared among men. How many things had taken place under the eye of God during that long period!

Let us examine the grand traits of this history. God had created man innocent, and had placed him in a state of happiness in a terrestrial paradise. He, following the sad example of his wife who had listened to the seductive words of the tempter, disobeyed God, and lost at once his innocence and his happiness. He dares not to present himself before God. A bad conscience leads him to avoid His presence, even before the just judgment of God drives him from the garden, and from Himself, source alone of true happiness. Man, ungrateful, disobedient man, who had taken Satan for his friend and his counsellor, in preference to God, having believed him rather than God Himself, was the slave of Satan and his own will, was lost! Being driven from the garden was but a natural consequence of his fall. The way to the tree of life was closed to him. He stays in the world outside, the slave of sin and death.

But God, in driving man out from His presence, had not forgotten to be gracious; and, in pronouncing sentence on the serpent, He speaks of a Redeemer who should destroy the power of the enemy of man. It was pure grace; and testimony was given of it in the very title of the Deliverer, "the Seed of the woman," of her who by listening to Satan had plunged man into ruin; but before sending the Redeemer for the accomplishment of the work of redemption, man must be tried, and in every way, to see whether, such as he is, he could attain to the power of life eternal, or secure himself in a state of happiness. God knew well what he was. Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. But we are prone enough to entertain a good opinion of ourselves for it to be salutary for us to make trial of what we are, that the conscience, convinced of sin, may be willing to profit by pure grace and the goodness of God. So, during centuries, God left man without checks to the inclinations of his own heart. The Saviour had been announced, it is true, and a living testimony had been given on the part of God.

2 The names of Abel, Enoch, and Noah, shine in the pages of the holy scriptures, like lights in those remote ages. But the light itself shone in vain. Man corrupted himself more and more, so that after long patience God was led to wash corrupted humanity in the terrible scourge of the deluge. But He who is ever remembering His mercy in the midst of His judgments, pointed out a means of salvation to those who alone had listened to His word; and Noah, with his family, becomes the parent stock of a new world.

But the terrible lesson of a world destroyed was lost upon man. Chastisements do not change nature. We soon find that idolatry is introduced and propagated in all quarters of the world. That is to say, to avail ourselves of the words of the apostle Paul, "the heathen sacrificed to devils and not to God." God called Abraham in order to preserve in the midst of the world the knowledge of the true God, and that he might be the depositary of the promises of God, and that the promised seed should rise from his family. And Abraham, as well as Isaac and Jacob, his son and grandson, were strangers and pilgrims on the earth through faith. Of his posterity the Lord raised up an earthly people (called Israel, known generally, in the present day, under the name of Jews), that it might be a witness and preserver of the doctrine of the unity of the true God, against the errors of the heathen. In Abraham the call of grace from out of the world, and free salvation through faith, had been signally shewn in the ways of God. Now, a striking testimony as to the deliverance by the blood of a victim, substituted for the sinner whose penalty it bore, was presented in a figure; and this thought, this answer to the needs of conscience harassed by the conviction of sin, was spread through all nations; disfigured, doubtless, by the gross and abominable ideas of idolaters, who falsified the character of God in worshipping demons; but, in its first principle, as in its origin, a divine provision for the necessity of the sinner before a just God. When God called Israel to Himself that they might be His people, He put ransom as the ground of their deliverance. The blood guarded them from the just judgment of God, and guarded them perfectly.

3 The people, come out of Egypt, are led through the desert to be tried, and at last are brought to Sinai. And now a principle quite new is presented to them. The covenant of the law is offered to the people; that is to say, the blessing and the enjoyment of promises under condition of obedience to the law of God. "If ye obey my voice," said Jehovah to the people; "thou shalt be a peculiar treasure unto me." "Do this, and thou shalt live." This then is the principle of the law of God, a principle perfectly just, like the law, which was the rule of conduct which God proposed, and which the Lord Jesus summed up in those holy words: "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." It was a perfect and admirable rule of what man ought to be, and which would secure happiness to the creatures living according to its requirements. Jehovah therefore proclaimed the law, under the form of Ten Commandments, with His own mouth to the people, at Sinai. If they kept it, they should be blessed; if not, they would be condemned and cursed.

Now the law, as it ought, proposed to them a perfect obedience, even (what is in fact alone such) the perfect obedience of the heart. "Thou shalt not covet." It is evident that, if God was entering into relationship with man, He must look to the heart. "Thou shalt not covet." To act otherwise would be to justify the hypocrite. The law was thus given. It was a holy, just, and perfect law, which declared what man ought to be, in order to please God, and to have life eternal. If God was pure, holy, and just, man must be so to be happy. But mark here, if the law described what man ought to be, it did not at all declare what God was, except that He was just, and would punish the sinner. It is the gospel which shining, while it fully recognises this justice and the perfection of the law, reveals what God in grace is to him who transgresses it. We shall speak of it presently. Here let us follow our subject. The law, which required perfect righteousness and obedience in man, had been given - to whom? To man already a sinner? What can a perfect law do (and the law of God must be such) for a sinner? Condemn him in convincing him of his sin. Was it the law which was in fault? Quite the contrary: it was its holiness and righteousness which did thus. It was the necessary result of a perfect law given to a sinner. A rule gives neither life nor strength; it requires certain things, it gives nothing.

4 There is another result of the law. There is a will of his own in man. One knows it, one feels it, one sees it. The law forbids the gratification of our will. It is the expression of the will of God which we ought to obey. Our wills kick against the will of God. We always desire to do that which is forbidden. Forbid a child to look into a basket to see what is therein, and a longing will begin to stir at once in its heart. It would not have thought of it, had it not been told not to look inside the basket; but now it wishes to examine it. Sin finds an occasion in the law. The unbeliever will say, perhaps, "How unjust to give us a law which can only condemn us!" One might say so indeed, however useless it would be to contend against God, if it were true that God had given it in order that we might be saved through its means; but this is what He has not done. God gave the law that sin might be made manifest, and that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful - to shew, not only that man had committed sins, but that his will was wicked and corrupt, and so audacious, that he would commit them in spite of God's prohibition; and so wicked, as a will, that a prohibition was only an occasion for this will to wish to leap clean over the barrier which might oppose itself to it. It is Christ who saves, not the law. Israel, to whom God committed the care of this law, had transgressed it in making a golden calf even before Moses had come down from the mount with the tables upon which God had engraved it. The patience of God, however, still shewed itself in sending prophets to put Israel in remembrance of the requirements of the law, and of the goodness of God, proclaiming with increasing light the accomplishment of the promise of the Messiah. Israel despised their warnings and their testimony. At last John the Baptist, herald of the King of Israel, of the Christ of God, arrives; and soon after the Lord Himself appeared on the scene. "I have yet my Son, my only Son," said God, proclaiming Himself under the figure of a parable - "they will reverence my Son."

5 We all know what happened to the Man of sorrows. "Behold," said the husbandmen (to use still the words of the parable), "Behold the heir! come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." The Son of God appeared - they spat in His face, and crucified Him. Such is the history of the world: is man wicked or not? And consider what the Son of man was - it was no more the law; for, although the Son was born, in His grace, under the law, He was the manifestation of the love and of the goodness of God, even towards those who had transgressed it. He did them good - He did not impute their sins to them. It was God in the midst of men and their misery - God delivering them from it without imputing to them the sin that had brought them there. He required nothing, bore everything, and healed their sick. He gave to eat to those that were hungry; He raised their dead. It was power and divine love; but it was the light, it was God Himself; and whatever His goodness might be, man would not have Him.

The Jew alas! hated Him; the Gentile, despising Him, rid himself of Him, to avoid the tumult raised by the jealousy of the Jews: all, unknown to themselves, accomplished the will and the counsels of God. The crime, without parallel, which the sin of man committed, was the testimony and the accomplishment of the perfect love of God.

The victim of propitiation was sacrificed. The blood which redeemed, which accomplished our salvation, was spilt. Man had been left without law - corruption and violence had characterised the world. Man had been put under the law, with all the privileges of the presence of God in His temple, with the testimony of the prophets, the ordinances and the direct government of God; he had transgressed the law, despised the prophets, and forsaken God for idols of his own choice. The Son of God Himself, God manifested in the flesh, had appeared on the scene of misery which man had created for himself by his own sin, the testimony of the infinite goodness of God. The world knew Him not, the Jews would not have Him - they all united together in rising against the Lord and His Anointed. They spat in His face and crucified Him; they hated Him without a cause. Sad picture! We prefer our own way to everything. Thus man has been tested in every way - the tree was bad. Now comes the question. What will God be with regard to man, wicked man? A just Judge doubtless, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, to look at sin. Grace and love will He be before He begins with judgment.

6 It is here that the epistle to the Romans begins its instruction, addressing the Gentiles on the one hand, and the Jews on the other. Let us sum up in a few words the thread of thoughts which the Holy Spirit presents us with in this important part of the word of God.

In chapter 1, after having announced Christ as the Son of David, heir of the promises made to Israel, and Son of God in power, addressing himself affectionately to the Christians at Rome, he proclaims at once the gospel as the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first; and also to the Gentile, because a righteousness of God is revealed therein. Man had none for God; God has one in His grace for man, sinful and wretched man.

Now, if God has revealed it as a righteousness which is His own, and which He has made available for man; if God, I say, has revealed it as a righteousness perfect and accomplished on His part, it is through faith that we must receive it. It is faith which receives a revelation; it is faith which lays hold of and trusts to an accomplished fact. The apostle Paul asserts that the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness. What was there else amongst the heathen? Against all ungodliness in men who held the truth in ungodliness. Had not such been the case with the Jews up to that day? And may we not add now, alas, with many of the most orthodox persons who call themselves Christians. The patience of God had lasted long, but He has fully revealed Himself in Christ, and every sin whatsoever, put into the light, is unbearable.

In the course of chapters 1 and 2, the apostle shews the horrible iniquity which characterised the state of the heathen, and the culpability of the Jews. Noah's family had known God; his descendants would not retain this knowledge. Proofs also of scripture, and of the power of the only true God, surrounded them everywhere! They were inexcusable. They had degraded the very idea of God. They were left to degrade themselves. Philosophers and moralists judged well of this state of things. Were they changed themselves? By no means. Could God accept of such things? Surely not. What of the Jews who boasted of the law, and wished to be the instructors of the ignorant? They transgressed the law of which they boasted, and the name of God was blasphemed among the heathen through their means.

7 It was not the outward appearance of man that was of any value in the eyes of God. He looks at the heart. Did the apostle deny then the privileges the Jews had above the heathen? By no means. But the possession of religious privileges renders those who do not profit thereby more guilty; so likewise the doctrine of Christ renders more culpable those who possess it, if they are not real and living Christians. Now the apostle shews to the Jews, by passages taken from their own scriptures, that they were condemned; so that, he says, every mouth is stopped, and the whole world stands guilty before God. By the works of the law shall no man be justified before God, for those who had the privilege of that law were so much the more guilty in that they had transgressed it. Who can stand before the law of God? Who can say, "I have not transgressed it!" How can one justify oneself by a law one has transgressed? By the law is the knowledge of sin. What is to be done? Hear what the apostle says: "But now the righteousness of God without the law is made manifest, being witnessed to by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood."

It is the precious blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, which is the only answer (which God Himself has furnished to us) to the demand of the justice which condemns the sinner. It is the righteousness of God by Jesus that makes righteous the man who has no righteousness to present to God, so that God is just in justifying him that has faith in Jesus. What grace! What a blessing for the poor sinner who has a heart broken enough and cleansed, sufficiently true for him to condemn himself! Boasting is excluded through faith in Jesus. We have now summed up the great principles of the first three chapters.

8 In chapter 4 the apostle, in reasoning with the Jew, presents to us other considerations in support of the divine thesis which he treats of. What shall we say of Abraham, the honoured and recognised chief of Israel, and the father of the faithful? He was justified by faith before the law was given, before even he himself was circumcised. But this is not all. On what did he himself rest? On the power of God who raises the dead. For there he was, as to the promise that was made to him; and this was imputed to him for righteousness. "If we believe in him who has raised Jesus from among the dead." That is to say, faith is in Him who, not only by the blood of the precious Saviour has satisfied the demands of the justice of God; but (when Jesus has borne in our place the punishment due to sin, has borne our sins in His own body on the tree, has been delivered for our offences and died for us) God, in His mighty power, raised Him, and has there done with our sins once for all, and has placed us (who believe in Jesus) in Him, in His presence, fully justified by means of what Jesus has done, since He has done it for those who believe. In believing, therefore, in this work of Jesus, we know that He has taken away our sins, and has placed us in the actual enjoyment of the favour and of the grace of God, before whom we find ourselves according to the efficacy of the work of Christ, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. This is what chapter 5 reveals to us. There also we find two principles of infinite importance.

The love of God does not find any motive in us, but in Himself, in His nature, all the while that it finds the occasion of displaying itself in our misery. The gospel is the glad tidings, that the love of God has made provision of a perfect righteousness in Christ Jesus for poor sinners who had none-a righteousness which we enjoy through faith in Jesus, so that all is a gift - all is gratuitous - to Jesus belongs all the glory-He alone is worthy. We are made partakers of it through grace. Perhaps a man would die for a good man. It was when we were yet without strength that Christ died for the ungodly. We may reckon on that love. If God has reconciled us by the death of Jesus when we were enemies, He will save us to the end through His life.

The second principle in this chapter is, that the question is not only concerning the law, we must go back as far as Adam, the head of the human race. All fell and were ruined in him, having superadded, at the same time, their own sins - "The law entered to make the offence abound." Sin was already known as a principle: the law in forbidding it, made of it an offence, a positive and formal transgression of every act which sin has produced in us. But God be blessed! Where sin abounded, grace has much more abounded. But as by the disobedience of one (that is to say, Adam) many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one (we are made just through the obedience of Jesus) many shall be justified; so that as sin has reigned in death, grace has reigned through righteousness unto life eternal by Jesus Christ our Lord.

9 Now the unbeliever, man's wicked heart, may be ready to say here, "Ah! since it is through the obedience of One that we are constituted righteous from being unrighteous, which I am; and since where sin abounded grace has much more abounded, let us sin that grace may abound." Doubtless that is what the flesh likes. Here is the answer of the apostle. How are you made a partaker of this divine righteousness in Christ? It is because He has died to sin, that He has done with sin in His death (He, who always was without sin), and that He is risen; and that you have been baptised unto His death, in order that you might thus have part in His resurrection. Now if you are dead to sin by faith in Him (and that is what faith would say, that is the meaning of your baptism), how live in sin? You have no part in the death of Christ if you still live in the flesh. If you are made partaker of justification, it is in Christ, by the power of the life in which He is risen. To have part in Christ as being dead and risen, is not to live in sin, but quite the contrary. So that to enjoy this perfect justification in the soul implies necessarily the death to sin and the life of God in the soul, because we possess this justification in Him alone, who, for us, has died to sin once, and lives to God always. But what is to be done with the law? Here is the answer. We have shewn that the true Christian is dead with Christ, being made a partaker with Him who died on the cross. Now, the law knows not how to accuse a dead man: so that instead of being condemned by the law as sinners, we live (as of a new life) unto God, in order to glorify Him by good fruits, which we bear by His grace, being already fully justified by the work of Christ Himself.

10 At the end of chapter 7, the apostle pictures the inward conflict which is found in a soul, which, being renewed, loves the righteousness of the law; and in its desire to fulfil it, makes experience of its own weakness and want of capacity, and which has not yet learned, notwithstanding its sincerity, to submit itself to the righteousness of God - a righteousness already accomplished through grace. The moment it submits and seeks (not to do something to make itself better, but) the Deliverer, it is made free. The soul is made free - fruit of grace - when, instead of looking to itself, it looks to Jesus and to His work. It will never be satisfied with itself if it is sincere, and if it recognises what it ought to be before God. But God Himself is satisfied with Jesus, and with the work He has done for that poor soul. He has been fully glorified as to His love, as to His righteousness, as to His majesty and His claims for the obedience of man, as to His truth, in every way. God has been glorified in the work of Christ on the cross, and the soul can trust itself to it fully before God. There is, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

Now if they are in Jesus Christ, what belongs to them? what characterises them? "NO CONDEMNATION." - Then they are made free from the law of sin and of death. Sin, as a principle of their nature, is no more a law to them. The conflict still continues; but sin is no more a law to us, because the power of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus has made them free, which the law could not do because of the flesh. God has made for us, by the coming of Jesus, sacrifice for sin. He has condemned sin in the flesh. That is to say, the law could not get to the end in condemning this criminal, this rebel, who always justified himself in the flesh which nourished him, and which the law could not change. Now Christ, as sacrifice for sin, in delivering us from the imputation of sin, having taken it upon Himself, succeeded in condemning sin in our nature, while making us ourselves free from the condemnation.

Having life in Him, sin is no more really as it was before; the believer, born of God, and quickened by the Spirit of life, loves the things which are of the Spirit; as those who are of the flesh love and seek after the things which are of the flesh.

Now we thus make this solemn discovery, that the affection of the flesh (that is to say, our whole nature before we are renewed) was enmity against God, and thus it was impossible that we should please God. Now it is evident that a real change of heart is necessary when the question is about enmity against God. For what art thou that provest that we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit? It is not something of man, it is that the Spirit of God dwelleth in us. But if it be thus, the body is not the source and the motive power of our life. It is considered dead, for it produces nothing but sin. It is the Spirit who is life, for He produces righteousness. Now we have this precious confidence, that if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus dwells in us, this same power operates likewise in us, and God will raise up again our mortal bodies by His Spirit which dwells in us.

11 It is those that are led by the Spirit who are real children of God. And what a blessing! Children of God! This is no vain title. It is to enjoy the love of the Father - it is to be assured of His favour. It is to be accepted in the Beloved. It is to be able to trust ourselves (without the thought that He is imputing to us our sins from which Christ has washed us) to the goodness, to the fatherly affection, of God. The Holy Spirit dwells in the children. He can do so since they are washed in the blood of Christ, He gives them the full assurance that they are the children of God. This is then Christian life. Washed from our sins in the blood of Jesus, the Spirit that dwells in us leads us by spiritual affections, and at the same time gives us the perfect assurance that we are children of God.

Now see the beautiful reasoning of the Spirit of God. If I am a child, then am I an heir, an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ. What titles to the glory! Then the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Afterwards the creation itself, not only the soul, at the time of the glorification of the children, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Grace delivers the soul from it now. Glory is about to deliver even creation itself. We have salvation. We are waiting for the redemption of the body. While waiting we have the earnest of the Spirit who dwells in us, and He groans in us according to God, and gives a voice to the actual sufferings of the creation, although often we ourselves know not what we should pray for - to help us in our infirmities. Now God who searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit when He intercedes thus in us. Thus, in the real believer, who has submitted to the righteousness of God accomplished in Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells, as the spring of a faith holy and infinite, while giving me the consciousness of being a child of God and heir of the glory, and as Comforter amid the sufferings of the present time, urging the soul to seek relief in God, with groanings that cannot be uttered.

12 Now in all this, that happy soul is the object of the thoughts and of the counsels of God. It is not of our own will that this has happened; neither the Gentile nor the Jew sought Jesus according to the Spirit. It is of grace. It is the counsels of the God of love. He makes all things work together for good - for the very best - to those who love Him, whom He has called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son - what grace! - that He might be the firstborn amongst many brethren. Those whom He did predestinate, them He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified, and whom He justified, them He also glorified.

What precious links in God's ways to assure our blessing! So that as there is no condemnation for those that are in Jesus Christ, there is no separation from the love which has placed them there - never. Behold where grace, where the love of God, puts us. Through Him we are more than conquerors in all the difficulties and sufferings which happen to us on the road.

Here terminates the doctrine of the epistle properly so called. In the three chapters which follow, namely, chapters 9, 10, 11, the apostle answers an objection which an unbelieving Jew might very well make to trouble a sincere believer of his own nation. "If you say that there is no difference; that Jew and Gentile are equally sinners, and that we must, as being in the same abyss of condemnation, submit to God's righteousness; what do you do with the promise made to Israel? How reconcile the privileges of that people, as descendants of Abraham, with the complete levelling of everything, in order to make of all men, without distinction, a race of sinners in Adam?" In chapter 9 the apostle answers, "You cannot support your own thesis. If you trust to your descent from Abraham, without having respect to the sovereignty of God, you must admit Ishmael to the privileges of Israel; moreover you must admit the Edomites as the posterity of Esau.

13 "God has been sovereign to your profit, and it is well He is so. Now, He will exercise this sovereignty in favour of some poor Gentile sinners, in calling some to participate in the salvation by Christ. But if you will have righteousness, you have made the golden calf. God did spare you on the principle of His sovereignty - the passage is quoted from Exodus, and it is what God told Moses on the occasion of the idolatry of Israel at Sinai - 'I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion; and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.' Now, if He spared you on this principle, He will do likewise towards some poor Gentile sinners."

Afterwards, it is proved by the prophecies, how God had foretold that there would be only a little remnant that would be saved from among the Jews; that the nation would stumble upon the stumbling-stone, that is to say, upon Christ (He being the end of the law for righteousness to every believer), and that God had declared at the same time, that whosoever should call on the name of the Lord should be saved. Precious promise! Thereupon He shews that consequently the gospel was to be preached to all, that they might all call on the name of the Saviour. And he quotes the testimonies of the prophets against Israel as a proof of their rebellion against the gospel of Christ. In chapter 11 He asks, "Will the promises of God fail towards this people?" By no means.

1. "Already," says he, "there is a residue according to the election of grace."

2. God called the Gentiles to provoke the Jews unto a holy jealousy: therefore it was not to reject them.

3. In the latter days they will certainly be brought back to the enjoyment of their privileges according to the promises and the testimony of God. But that God had shut them up in unbelief, as were the Gentiles by nature, in order that it might be pure grace on His part towards all, whether Jew or Gentile.

In the chapters following the apostle rests on these principles (mercy in God) - exhortations to a walk that responded to this goodness, and that sought only His perfect will with the intelligence of a renewed mind. He exhorts them to moderation, to meekness, to use their spiritual gifts, whatever that might be, with diligence, confining themselves to what God had communicated to each of them, to the spirit of grace - of kindness towards the saints that were in want, to patience when they suffered wrong ("vengeance belongeth to God"), to submission under the authorities as being ordained of God; in short, to imitate Christ in their walk, and not to seek to satisfy the flesh. He sums up his doctrine in chapter 15, and confirms it by quotations taken from the Old Testament, and sends affectionate salutations to the Christians whom he personally knew at Rome.

Introduction

The following little work is composed of notes taken down from lectures, which had an entirely practical object. They have been corrected, as such notes generally need to be; but I have thought, as the aim was entirely practical, a short analysis of the structure of the epistle might help the reader in understanding it.

There are two great subjects in scripture, when the truth is fully brought out as in the New Testament: the responsibility of the first Adam and his children; and the purposes of God in the last Adam. The work of Christ accomplished in His infinite love meets both for those that believe. He has met their responsibility in dying for them, and bearing their sins; and, glorifying God in that death, laid the ground of the accomplishment of those purposes in their favour. Of this latter part, the epistle to Romans only just leads us to the edge in Romans 8, and the very last verses of the epistle. The epistle to the Ephesians unfolds it fully. Hence the epistle to the Romans considers men as walking in sins - the Ephesians as dead in them, and establishes the truth of a new creation, not the justifying of a sinner, though sealing that truth. Colossians is between both. This I cannot go farther into here. These truths are incidentally mentioned in other parts of the New Testament. But the structure of the epistle to the Romans is very important as to the truth it contains, and this I will now endeavour to point out.

The first 17 verses of Romans 1 are a kind of preface, in which, in the first instance, the person of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, is put forward as the primary subject of the gospel: seed of David according to the flesh, and so fulfilment of the promise, and proved Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, in which, while His life was according to that power, resurrection was the proof of it, so that power was witnessed as well as promise fulfilled, and that in the place of man's weakness and Satan's power, and even where man in life was tempted.

At the close of this passage he declares he was not ashamed of the gospel, for it was God's power to salvation to every one that believed, Jew first and then Greek. Because God's righteousness was revealed in it on the principle of faith, and so to faith wherever that faith was found. He was a willing debtor in grace to all, according to this gospel. He then shews why God's righteousness must be revealed, the only ground for man to stand on. Because the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness where the truth was held in unrighteousness; not governmental judgments, as in the Old Testament, in Israel, and even in the flood, but the necessary rejection and judgment of all sin by the very nature of God. He then proceeds to shew the state of sinfulness which called for this wrath, and made this righteousness necessary.

16 All are under sin. This reaches from Romans 1: 19 to Romans 3: 20, when he returns to the righteousness of God again. Gentiles are proved guilty, chapter 1: 19 to the end; moralists, chapter 2: 1-16, where responsibility and the place of conscience are dealt with; the Jews, Romans 2: 17 to 3: 20 (in the last section, verses 1-20, admitting their claim of the law as theirs, and addressed to them, and shewing what it said of them). Then, from verse 21, the righteousness of God is treated of, and declared in propitiation through Christ's blood for Old Testament past sins of believers, and present revelation of it, so that God was just, and justified believers. This only confirmed law in its requirements.

Romans 4. The resurrection of Christ is applied as the seal of this work, but it does not carry righteousness farther than forgiveness, and all applies to sins and offences - things done when each individual has his own place.

Romans 5: 1-11 draws the blessed conclusion, peace, favour wherein we stand, and hope of the glory of God; then glorying in tribulations, God's love being known for the profit derived, and finally in God Himself, through Jesus, through whom we have received the reconciliation. Here first the Holy Ghost, as given to us, comes in.

From verse 12 of chapter 5, the apostle treats not of sins, where all must be individual, but of sin, and so heads all up in Adam and Christ, the disobedient man and the obedient man, and distinguishes the law as that which came in by the bye to make the offence abound; but what were really in question, were sin and grace - grace reigning through righteousness by the obedience of Christ. The question here is not of sins, but of sin; one man's disobedience. not each man's offences, though the obedient man had to meet these too. But if one man's obedience made us righteous, might we live on in sin? This leads to the truth that the profession of Christianity was the profession of having a part in death, hence not of living on. Christ died to sin once and lives to God; we are to reckon ourselves dead and alive to God in Him. Thus the old man is counted dead: how shall we live in it? This sets us free - free to live to God.

17 Romans 7 applies this to law, because law has power over a man only as long as he lives. We are dead to it by the body of Christ; and are married to another, Christ risen. The end of the chapter gives the salutary experience of the state of the renewed mind under the law, which leaves a man captive under the law of sin in his members. In Christ all is changed, the man is delivered, though the flesh, as such, would serve the law of sin; but (Romans 8) there is no condemnation in Christ, the power of life in Him has set us free, and sin in the flesh has been condemned when He died a sacrifice for sin. Then comes the Holy Ghost in us; first as the power of life and the new man, and deliverance into resurrection (v. 9-11), then His presence in us, a person dwelling in us. Being sons, He gives witness with our spirit that we are so, shews us the glory in hope, and helps us in our infirmities on the way, gives a voice in our hearts to the sorrows of a creation subject to vanity, of which we are a part as to our body.

From verse 28 we have the security and portion in every respect derived from God's being for us, from His own foreknowledge, to glory itself.

Romans 5: 1-11 gives what God is for sinners in grace and its fruit; chapter 8, the state of the delivered soul before Him. What leads up to the former being our sins met in grace, in Christ's propitiation - to the latter, our sin from which we are delivered by our having died with Christ, and so being freed from it, and alive in Him. In the former case the sins are forgiven, in the latter the sin has been condemned, but in a sacrifice for sin, and we, having died with Christ, are delivered. This finishes the doctrine of the epistle - the way in which God in grace has met the sins, and the sinful nature of man, his whole condition in Adam, through Christ.

The place of Romans 9 to 11, as reconciling the obliteration of Jew and Gentile in Christ with the special promises to the Jews, is sufficiently indicated in the notes themselves. On the hortatory part which follows no notes were furnished me. I give here a general idea of the contents: the details must be learned from the chapters themselves.

18 It begins with the principle of all practice connected with the doctrine of the epistle, which supposes man a sinful creature, and dealt with in grace. The Ephesians takes higher ground, as the Christian is there simply a new creation, and so associated with God; and as dear children, God's own ways and dealings are the principle and pattern of the Christian's walk. His works are fore-ordained, as is his place. See Romans 4 and 5, where God, as love and light, gives the measure of our ways. In Romans we have sinful man dealt with in mercy, the death of the old man being alone the means of walking aright. In both Ephesians and Romans Christ is the pattern in absolute giving up of self. "I beseech you," says the apostle, "by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice." The two hinges of all Christian service - the mercies of God, and our presenting ourselves, made free by grace, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. The unity of the body is then assumed, which is no part of the doctrine of the epistle; any more than our resurrection with Christ, which involves it; on this are grounded our duties within amongst the saints, and as such.

Romans 13 gives our duties to those around, with a double motive: love to the neighbour fulfils the law, and the night far spent, the day at hand, full deliverance drawing near. Then in chapter 14 is our relation to Christ, and consequently to all who belong to Him, that we should not put stumbling-blocks before the feet of those with whom we are alike subject and responsible to Him, and for whom He died. This part goes down to the end of verse 7 of chapter 15. Then he sums up what he had been teaching concerning Jew and Gentile, to whom reference had been made in what precedes concerning the weak in faith.

The whole closes with the statement of his thoughts and plans, and his salutations, which are more numerous than usual, as forming a link between him and the saints at Rome, whom he had never seen. The last verses of all are a statement of what the work was that was going on by his means according to eternal counsels, and now made known for the obedience of faith by prophetic scriptures.

19 Romans 1.

I take up this epistle to the Romans, not with intention of entering into every detail, but to trace the general idea of the purpose of the Spirit of God in it, and the course of the apostle's reasoning. We have before noticed the distinction between the epistles of Paul and those of John. The main subject of John's epistles being the character of the divine life which was with the Father, manifested in the Son, and communicated to us through the Spirit - so that the divine nature in us should be able to realise the affections of the child of God; of Paul's, the presenting of man to God. Thus the general scope of John's epistles is, first, the manifestation of the divine life; second, the communication of it; while Paul's epistles have another character altogether - insisting on justification, and revealing the counsels and ways of God, and the consequent relationship in which the redeemed are put before Him.

The great subject of the New Testament, besides the blessed person of the Lord and the revelation of God in Him, is the manifestation and communication of the divine life, the making us partakers of the divine nature, and the bringing man to God according to His righteousness and counsels in Christ. The child derives his life from his father, and there results not merely likeness of character but a peculiar relationship.

I would just advert here to the four truths prominent in the New Testament:

first, the manifestation and communication of life;

second, the accomplishment in Christ of all the promises given from Adam downwards, presented in Christ to the Jews, His people;

third, mercy to the Gentiles (as in Romans 15: 8, 9, Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles should glorify God for His mercy);

fourth, our place as sons, and the church as united to Christ, its Head.

The first is especially in John's epistles - the manifestation, then the communication, of the divine life.

The second and third are found in Romans, with the groundwork of our place as sons, and only a glance in the second part at the fourth, which is fully brought out in Ephesians. The character of this is only hinted at practically, not taught, in Romans.

The fourth point of truth, which is revealed in the epistle to the Ephesians, is distinct from the promises to the Jews and the mercy to the Gentiles, being a new thing, though connected with the latter. The seeing these distinctions greatly facilitates the understanding of the epistles, and clears up passages, otherwise obscure.

20 In Romans we have two great subjects brought out: the accomplishment of the promises made to the Jews; and mercy to the Gentiles; and, in so doing this, Paul lays the foundation of all relationship between God and man. The beginning of this first chapter is thus an introduction to all that is afterwards unfolded in the epistle. Remark here, that in the first presentation of the gospel, it is the person, not the work, of Christ which is found in grace, but important as to the claim of subjection to Him, Son of David and Son of God with power. Then, in verse 16, he is not ashamed of the gospel, because the righteousness of God is revealed in it. The epistle to the Romans has this large character naturally enough, as it consists well with the address to the great centre of the world's empire; for Paul was writing to the Romans, whom he had never seen, as the apostle of the Gentiles, and takes his stand on the high ground of being the one to whom God had committed His counsels. So Peter, in addressing the Jews already scattered in the world, presents resurrection as a living hope, and, speaking to them on this new principle of resurrection, says, "as strangers and pilgrims," etc., thus carrying on what was consequent upon it, in reference to those who are to participate in it.

In a great many of the various epistles we see the instructions and exhortations suited to the varied need of those addressed and called out by their state: as, in Corinthians, moral evil is treated of; in Colossians, warning against slipping away from the Head; in Galatians, falling from grace through the adoption of the law, is insisted on; in Thessalonians, the coming of the Lord and the errors into which trouble of mind had thrown them in this respect. But the epistle to the Romans, being addressed to the capital of the world and to those with whose circumstances the apostle was not familiar, takes the wide scope of man's responsibility, Jew and Gentile, and how grace has met it, and lays the sure foundation of the relationship of man to God.

There are two parts in the doctrinal teaching of this epistle. Up to the close of Romans 8 forms the first part; and Romans 9, 10, 11, form the second part; while the concluding chapters are occupied with precepts. In the first part you get Jews and Gentiles reduced to the common condition of sinners; but the Jew would object, and say, If this be so, that there is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile, how then is God to make good His promises to the Jews? This difficulty is answered in chapters 9-11, the infallibility of the promises of God being shewn in chapter 11. But the common ground, on which both Jews and Gentiles are set, is in perfect salvation in Christ Jesus, and remains in all its force. It is important to remark in this epistle the way in which Paul sets man aside as being proved a sinner, poor, vile, and lost, and that he does this to bring God in. It is not merely that he introduces man as a sinner, but man must be thoroughly put down, in order to bring in God Himself instead of man, that God may act toward man in His own way and according to His own character.

21 We see a striking example of the same way of exhibiting grace in Ephesians 2. After the Jews and Gentiles had been spoken of as alike children of wrath, all is passed over, and God is brought out in His own character as rich in mercy, shewing what He has done, and what He is to such as they are. We can have no settled peace or rest of heart till we are on this ground; nor can we know God so as to trust Him, to rest in Him, and adore Him, till we prove Him thus. Then it is a settled question: our hope and trust are in God, as it is written, "who by him do believe in God." Therefore the apostle does not say we are justified before God, though it be true, but it is God who justifies, that the heart might be brought to rest in God Himself. Paul, though righteous as to legal righteousness, had gone to the extreme extent of what sin really is: it was not a mere looseness of expression when he called himself the chief of sinners, for Paul in heart was the wickedest man that ever trod the earth; not, of course, guilty of immorality (as he says of himself, as touching the righteousness which is of the law he was blameless) "After the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee"; but he was the ardent enemy of Christ, and it was when he reached to the highest point of his wickedness, "being exceedingly mad against them," that at that moment he was "separated unto the gospel of God." He knew what grace was.

I will now rapidly go over, without entering into detail, what man is, and has shewn himself to be. Though cast out of paradise, God had borne with man, but at first left him to himself, though not without a testimony; but the result of leaving man to himself was such corruption and violence, that he must be destroyed from off the face of the earth. God put a close to his abominations by a flood. The promise having been given as a witness that grace was the true source of blessing, the law followed, and it was broken. The prophets came next, and they were rejected, stoned, and slain. And last of all God sent His Son: Him the world killed. It was not merely that man had broken the law, and slain the prophets, but when the goodness of God came, they hated Him revealed in goodness. Well, Jesus prays for His murderers, pleading their ignorance, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"; as in the case of one who owed ten thousand talents, and, forasmuch as he had nothing to pay, his lord forgave him the debt. (And this is what I take to be the meaning of the parable, though it has a general application.) So the Holy Ghost takes up again and carries on this very intercession of our Lord, when forgiveness of sins is preached by Peter at Jerusalem, saying, "And now brethren, I wot, that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers . . . repent ye therefore and be converted." And what was the result? Did they repent? No; not only had they killed the Prince of Life, but they now fill up the measure of their iniquity in stoning Stephen, thus rejecting the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the grace and goodness of God in the gospel of Christ glorified, as in His humiliation.

22 At this point it is that Saul of Tarsus comes out, and so mad against the followers of Christ that he was the very apostle of the enmity in the heart of man against the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the grace and goodness of God. But here God meets him in the way, and his mouth is closed as to goodness in man; for while all God's means were used to bring man's heart to return to Himself in blessing, Paul was found in the most active hostility to Him, being determined to put a stop to this testimony of grace and goodness if he could. Then the Lord appears to him in glory in connection with the church, owning all the saints as Himself, "Why persecutest thou me?" - "for he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." Thus Paul sets out as being the leader of the active energy of man in opposition to God, that he might be a perfect witness of the grace that overcame him, as he anew sets out on his way testifying that there is grace and forgiveness for one such as he. Everything that could have religiously sustained his heart was broken down when God met him by the way. Take conscience, for instance: outwardly he was blameless, yet thought he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. How terrible must it have been to Paul to find that his natural conscience, blameless as it was, had left him all wrong, as of no avail! We know that he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink, so terrible was the upsetting of his soul. Then take the law, his boast and glory as divinely given: it had been his ruin before God in self-righteous enmity to Christ. The religious teachers he had looked up to, the priests and Pharisees, and his own zeal, had only brought him into opposition and open rebellion against God. Everything in which his heart had trusted left him a mere sinner, naked in the presence of the glory of God, his enmity only the greater by that trust. Thus ended all means, leaving Paul a "child of wrath," as he says, "even as others."

23 Thereupon Paul starts, not from what he is, but from what God is; he starts as the Lord's servant: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" He starts as a called apostle, separated unto "the gospel of God." It is not merely the gospel of Christ, but the gospel of God. It is a wonderful expression, as the gospel of God is the activity of God's love going out into a world of men as hopeless and bad as Paul had been; it is now dealing with man, through Christ, on the ground of what God is. The gospel of God is God's own good news in giving His Son to carry this message of mercy and grace to lost man, made effectual in His work.

The Jews accused the Lord of breaking the sabbath, the sabbath being the sign of the covenant between God and His people, and to be kept the seventh day, a rest connected with the first creation. God's rest is at the end of labour. It was founded in Israel on the principle of the law. Man's labour in righteousness gave him rest at the end. But in fact, when divine truth came in, we find in John 5: 17 there was no sabbath for Christ in this world. Sin had come in, and there is no rest for God where sin is: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Thus He had come down where sin was, and He was working in the accomplishment of that grace, which gives a better rest to man. Paul comes in here as the servant, or slave, bound to the work: a bondman to Christ, separated unto the gospel of God; that was his business, and if he could further the gospel by making tents, of course he would continue to make them; but he was an apostle called to the gospel of God. And where God gives ministry, it is as the vessels of God's activity in grace, for the calling of sinners and the building up and edification of His saints.

24 It is very important to distinguish between teaching the church, and the testimony of grace to the world. The Old Testament is full of mercy; but even so there could yet be no proclamation of an accomplished work of redemption. But further, that is not the church (nor indeed is the church the doctrinal subject in this epistle). It was what He had promised afore by His prophets in the holy scriptures. The church was not the subject of promise, but the "gospel of God" was: from the beginning it had been said, the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. The Gentiles had not the promises, though there were special ones to the Jews. The promises of God were made to the second Adam, and not to the first; the promise in Genesis that the serpent's head should be bruised was made to the Seed of the woman, which Adam was not. So it is said: to Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed; and that Seed was Christ. The promises, then, were entirely connected with Christ, who is the Seed in whom all these promises centre. The person of Christ, as we see here, is the great subject of the gospel even before His work, though we could have no part with Him without His work. This is of all importance, as God is now claiming subjection to His Son. There is not an infidel or a rebel, however great, who shall not bow the knee to Jesus; if in grace, it is salvation: but, if the heart does not bow to the grace, the knee must bow under the judgment.

In verse 3, "concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh," the apostle is bringing out the double character of the Lord. In verse I we have the person of the Son as the subject of the gospel; then, secondly, as the seed of David according to the flesh, according to promise. Then Paul brings out definitely the character of the Son, "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Thus we have the Son of God with divine power, though clothed with humiliation. Then, again, we have the Son coming down in the midst of defilement with divine power, passing through it according to the Spirit of holiness. This was shewn through all His life by absolute separation from all defilement. He passed through the whole scene of evil untouched and unsullied by sin, though in contact with it, touching those in it all around, yet separate Himself. He touches the leper, who saw His power, but was uncertain of His goodness: and was He defiled? No! but in touching it He chases away the uncleanness without becoming unclean Himself, and none but the Son of God could do this. But His was perfect grace coming down into the defilement, banishing and dispelling it, without receiving it Himself.

25 But, besides sin and defilement in us, the manifested power of Satan was this - that he had the power of death, and this Satan had on man by the judgment of God Himself; for God had said, "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Thus man was under the power of him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and if the Son of God is to deliver man from under the power of Satan, He Himself must go down to his stronghold, this last citadel of Satan. He must Himself go down under the power of death, if He could not be holden of it, that He might "deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage"; and He, the Son of God, feared it, as He piously should, as the judgment of God (Heb. 5); but He was heard in that He feared; He bore it as the judgment of God, but He broke all the bars by which Satan held us, and He has set us free. Satan committed himself entirely by putting his hand on the spotless person of the Prince of Life, who bore our sins; and in His rising from the dead, the sins, and Satan's power, were all gone before God and for faith.

The resurrection shews the divine power of the Son of God. When Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!" the Lord said, "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." That is, all Satan's power over the first man manifested in death shall not prevail against it: for that is the meaning of the gates of hell. Man had been tried by every means - without law, and he was lawless: by the law, but he only brought forth wild grapes: but all this depended on the responsibility of man, not on the power of God. Satan prevailed against man by his lusts, and led him on to the second death. But if it is the Son of the living God who has entered into the conflict, and founded the church on His work and victory, the gates of hell, the power of death, shall not prevail against it.

26 The Spirit of holiness always displayed in life is demonstrated by the resurrection from the dead, and here observe that it is "from amongst," or "from out of," the dead. The twelve believed, as did Martha, in the resurrection of the dead, as there will be a resurrection of all the dead, good and wicked; but they were questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean; Mark 9: 10. It is the coming in of God's own living divine power, breaking through the bands of death, and taking up those that are God's from amongst the wicked dead. This resurrection, realised in the power of the Spirit, is our present standing, though we still wait for the redemption of the body. The very same power, we learn in Ephesians, which raised Christ from among the dead, has wrought in us - "quickened us together with Christ."

The Son of God goes down in grace for us to the very place in which we were by sin, and by His own divine power breaks the bands of death, and takes us up from under its power, and places us, according to the efficacy of His own work, in the presence of God. Thus, all that my sin could do has been met by divine power and put away, rendering void of power him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. How marvellous the grace! The consequence is not merely that there ought to be holiness in us, but that there must be holiness in nature, though vigilance be needed to maintain it in practice.

How did Christ rise out of the grave? By His own divine power, as by the glory of the Father, and in the power of the Spirit; and it is the same divine energy which is the spirit of holiness in walk, raising me from the dead now in spirit, that is, the power of the new life in me, and by reason of which even the resurrection of my body will take place. All that He has done is mine, but I enter into it by virtue of a life which is a holy one. It is not merely a duty to be holy, but there is holiness in us, because we are partakers of justification, of the whole efficacy of His work, by means of a life which is essentially holy, for it is Christ's.

This is the gospel of God, that He, in the activity of His own love, in the person of Christ, has come down here, and walked in holiness where sin was, and gone down under the power of death, though He could not be holden of it, that He might deliver us from the power of him who had the power of death. I am now raised spiritually and morally by the very same divine power that will raise up my body. "By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith," etc. All will be called to bow to the revelation of Christ, who was dead and is alive again for evermore.

27 "Called saints," or "saints called," v. 7. It is the same principle here as the apostle called. We are saints called, thus shewing the grace of God, as it is not to us by birth or descent as the Jews, but it is all of grace. So Abraham was called, and chosen, and faithful. If we are called, it is not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God; and we are bound to give thanks, in that "God hath saved us and called us with an holy calling." What a very different thing it is in our souls, for what a different thought we have of God when we believe the activity of God's love! It is not only that "God is love," but that God is active in His love.

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Alas! we pass over these gracious words very lightly. The apostle felt what he said in the power of the Spirit; favour and peace from the Father and the Son. Mercy is only added when the epistles are addressed to individual saints, but when the saints are looked at as a whole, they are seen as the fruit of mercy shewn; being seen by the eye of God as under the influence and energy of the love and grace that had saved them: but as individual saints they need mercy every moment. The apostle looked at them as under the eye of a Saviour God, and he wished them to have the full manifestation of what was in the God that had saved them. All the effect of there being no cloud between them and God.

God is never called the God of joy, though He gives joy; but constantly the God of peace, and the apostle desires their peace from God should be undisturbed - having perfect peace in Him in the midst of this whirlwind of passion; he desired for them all the effect of the consciousness of their position, all the affections suited to this relationship. If a child feels towards his father as towards a master, he does not know his position; if we have not unlimited confidence, we have not found our place. The saints in filial love will address God as their Father. In the government of the church it is the Lord Jesus we shall address; this distinction should always be marked. In all our petitions, failures, confessions, and need, we go as individuals to God as our Father; but in everything relating to church conduct, we go to Him who is the Head of the church. If we have not the unlimited confidence in God to go to Him with our very follies even, we do not know Him as "the Father."

28 If Christ said, "It is my meat to do the will of him that sent me," Paul could say, through grace, "whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son." It is not service at all, if it be merely outward; unless we can say, "Of thine own we have given thee." All true service must flow from communion with the source of service; it is no service if we are not drinking in Christ, and conscious that we are doing His will; if I should take up any service, without being confident that God would have me do it, there would be no power in it Service then, if real, must flow from direct communion with God. We may go on in a course of action as a consequence of communion for a good while. Thus, for instance, we may compare the state of the Thessalonians with that of the church of Ephesus in Revelation. To the Thessalonians it is said by Paul, that he knows their work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope: here we see the three cardinal points - faith, hope, and charity, as springs of work, labour, and patience; but not so in the address of the Lord to Ephesus - it was work, labour, and patience; but there was not the present spiritual power, which comes from God direct, therefore the candlestick was threatened to be removed. How often do our attempts at service flow more from thought of something we may have to do, than from direct communion with God! It then becomes, or is in danger of soon becoming, the mere activity of the flesh, and at any rate is the drudgery of duty without power, instead of serving with the spirit; what a comfort that all my life through I may be serving the Lord with my spirit!

This world is a wilderness, a labyrinth, but God is guiding us through it. When Israel were in the wilderness, was there any path for them? None! "They wandered in the wilderness where there was no way." We read that Moses said to Jethro, "he might be to them instead of eyes." No, says God, I will be as eyes to you; for as Israel departed from the mount a three days' journey, the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them, to search out a resting-place for them, not merely to bring them at last into the land. Now, the place of the ark was in the midst of the camp, and they were to keep the charge of the Lord; but when Israel journeyed from Sinai, it went before them. Again, God says of Israel, "Though I have scattered them amongst the countries, yet will I be to them a little sanctuary in the countries; Ezek. 11: 16. Is God less than this to us? No; He is leading us through this world's labyrinth, where there is no path, no way but Jesus; for He is our only track in this wilderness of sin and sorrow; but what an unspeakable comfort to have such an One! Yet we need perfect dependence that we may discern the perfect path that has in it the track of the Lord's own footsteps: to this end, flesh must be mortified, and the will subdued.

29 "Without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers." See the apostle's wonderful energy with God, and this is one mark of spiritual power, the capacity of keeping up our interest in all saints everywhere, in our soul, in intercession for all saints in every place; and this leaves us in entire dependence on the will of God, for no real spiritual power ever takes us out of the place of waiting on God: so with Eliezer, he says, "Lord, let the damsel to whom I say, Let down thy pitcher," etc., "be the same thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac"; and when the woman had given him drink and his camels also, he does not yet say, Oh, here is the answer to my prayer, but he is still waiting on God, and, wondering at her, held his peace, to wit, whether the Lord had made his journey to prosper or not; and when the camels had done drinking, he said, "Whose daughter art thou?" and when he found she answered the description of that which to him was divine direction, as the word is to us, he bowed his head and worshipped the Lord. Success often takes us out of the place of communion, because it is our success when we do not acknowledge God in it. The faith which waits on God turns to God when the blessing comes, and the joy is much greater.

"I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God unto salvation." God coming in, in power - this is the gospel character, it is complete, and it is of God; no mixture. The "wrath of God, moreover, is revealed from heaven"; not merely governmental wrath here on the earth, as bringing Nineveh against Israel, or carrying Judah to Babylon, but wrath from heaven. It is not yet manifested, though it was seen to a certain extent in the deluge; faith sees it in the cross.

30 Now, it is the nature and character of God that is brought out to meet what man is. God now looks upon what man is, in the presence of what He is, in respect to the very perfectness of His nature, and the activity of grace that has brought out what man is. This can only shew man utterly a sinner. Is it claiming righteousness? No; for now man's righteousness is entirely set aside, as the ground of his standing before God. But we have God's righteousness made known, meeting the necessity which the proof of man's utter sinfulness brings before us, not something to grow up to righteousness, but perfect now. It is revealed from faith to faith, it is said, that is, faith is the principle on which it is revealed. God's righteousness, being a perfect and an existing thing, complete in itself, is revealed, and that not on the principle of man's working, but of faith, and so to faith; so that the man, be he who he may, that has faith, gets it. If it were given on the principle of human righteousness, the righteous man would have it, and the law be the rule; if on the principle of benevolence, the poor man would have it; but it is neither. It is on the principle of faith.

I would desire that our hearts might rest on this wonderful truth, the activity of God's love coming down into a world ruined by sin, and under wrath. God Himself is the rest, as He is the guide all the way; His divine favour and unchanging love and goodness accompanying and abiding with us all the journey through. There is no rest but in His own way. The more pains God has taken to set man right, have only proved the more that the tree is bad; the more you dig around a bad tree, the more bad fruit it will produce. It is all God's working and God's righteousness, not of man's working nor man's righteousness, though that working of God will alone produce fruits of righteousness in man.

Romans 2 - 4.

I take the close of chapter 3 as being the summing up, and application of the apostle's argument, drawn from the sin of the Jews and Gentiles; then in chapter 4 he passes on to another principle, as brought out in the testimony of Abraham and David. But in this first part of the epistle the apostle opens out man's need, and the way in which it had been met by redemption, as that on which alone the soul could rest. Having in chapter 1, from verse 18, gone through the horrible evil of the Gentiles and man generally throughout the world, and shewing that without any subsequent revelation, through the knowledge of God possessed by Noah, and God's dealings with men through the creation, God being to be understood by the things that are made in His eternal power and Godhead, they were left (chap. 1) without excuse, conscience itself telling them what was right and wrong, and that hence, as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, He gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts; for if a man is left alone of God, he always turns to the lust of his own heart. Thus God in judgment brought upon them, that as they had not discerned what became God, they should not be able to discern what became man.

31 It is God's way, when the light He gives is rejected, to give men up to blindness, and this giving up by God is an act of judgment on God's part; as these Gentiles, not liking to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. It was so with the Jews; rejecting the testimony God had given them, God says by the mouth of the prophets "make the heart of this people fat, and their ears heavy," etc.; of the Gentiles it is said, "who changed the truth of God into a lie"; so of the professing church, fallen from the light, God says, "I will send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." Thus we see, whether Jews, or Gentiles, or nominal Christians, the effect of man being given up of God - what man is when left to himself, and the judgment of God in his neglect or abuse of light. Natural light was given in the beginning in the testimony of creation, and man began with the knowledge of God as thus dealing with him; but men did not like to retain God in their knowledge. There is the pleading, too, of conscience, for every man has a conscience, distinct from grace. But conscience cannot bring us to God. Conscience is the sense of responsibility, united to the knowledge of good and evil, and this last part acquired in the fall. But we must remember, if the conscience becomes awakened, it is not life and peace, and therefore only drives us away from God, like Adam in the garden hiding himself from God.

As the Gentiles did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. So the Jews, having been disobedient to God's testimony, sentence is passed upon them by Isaiah seven hundred years before it was accomplished: "Make the heart of this people fat," etc., for such is the patience of God; as Stephen also says, "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did [in the past dispensation], so do ye [in this dispensation]." Both guilty of the same sin, and according to Peter's testimony of the witness given to Jesus, those very things by which Christ was testified to have come from God, will be the very thing that will lead the Jews to receive the false Christ in the latter day. "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know," Acts 2: 22. Compare this with 2 Thessalonians 2: 8, "Then shall that wicked one be revealed . . . with all power [miracles], and signs, and lying wonders." Thus as the Jews rejected what God did in their midst by Jesus of Nazareth; so they will receive what Satan will do by that wicked one; and all this, as the apostle goes on to say, because they received not the love of the truth.

32 As in Romans 1: 18-32; and Romans 2: 1-16, all the Gentiles are brought in guilty, so, in spite of real privileges, the Jew: from chapter 2: 17, and then from Romans 3: 9-18, we find all are under sin - the Jew under law, as well as the Gentile without law. Both are alike equally guilty; for if the Gentiles be given over to a reprobate mind, the Jew is proved by his own scriptures, which he boasted belonged to him only, to be just as bad. Thus, there is none righteous, no, not one; there is no understanding; none that seeketh God, the will being gone wrong; blind in mind, and perverse in will, and guilty before God; not only as to the nature being sinful, but as slighting the testimony, rejecting the light which God had from time to time revealed to them. But the God of judgment was there, and now it is proved that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be saved, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Thus we see how those under the law are brought under condemnation, as well as the heathen they despised; it is useless for a Jew to attempt to get in by his own condition, for the law he boasted in condemns him. If it applied to him, it condemned him it applied to. The Gentiles have no right to put themselves under the law; but we all do so somehow or other; and as a process it may turn to good in the conviction of sin; but as a position, and if we stay in it, see where it brings us! "The Lord looked down upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek after God." No; they have all gone out of the way; and the Jew learnt by the law which he claimed, and with reason, to belong to him only, that on his own ground he was utterly guilty, though the apostle does not here bring against them their hardness of heart in rejecting Christ; and thus both Jew and Gentile are alike thoroughly guilty, and every mouth stopped. Such is the end of man's righteousness.

33 But now by grace all is changed. The righteousness of God without law is revealed, and the apostle then develops this truth very fully, as far as its principles go. In point of fact, this joins on to chapter 1: 17, the intermediate verses giving the proof of what made God's righteousness necessary. He states the nature of this righteousness in a direct and absolute manner, and in contrast with man's. It is altogether on a different principle; it is righteousness, not even mercy, though the fruit of grace, but it is a righteousness without law at all; it is God's righteousness, and who can give law to Him? Had it been man's righteousness, law would have been the measure and principle of it; but being God's righteousness, it is altogether on a different principle from law, As man stood in sin, God's law only condemned him, and it cannot give life. Put a man under righteous obligation, and it is all over with him, because man is a sinner. Man has a will (I speak practically, not metaphysically), and law brings it out; and man's will never submits, for it would cease to be a will if it did; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. God never meant righteousness to be by the law; it would have been cruelly mocking man, who is a sinner, to have proposed it to him. The law was given, that the offence might abound - not that sin might abound, for sin was there before the law was given; but it is not offence, or transgression, until there is a law; and thus it is that the law worketh wrath, for where no law is, there is no transgression.

It is not said there is no sin; but where there is nothing to transgress, there can be no transgression. Thus every mouth is stopped, and all the world becomes guilty before God. And now the righteousness without the law is manifested, not merely it exists, but it is manifested; it existed long before in the counsels of God, none being ever justified otherwise, but it was not manifested till the gospel was brought out and preached; therefore the apostle says, "to declare at this time his righteousness." No sinner ever stood, or ever could stand, in God's presence, from Adam downwards, save in God's righteousness; but it had not been manifested until now. "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." Thus the law and the prophets only shewed what God was going to bring in, but did it not in themselves; but the gospel of God on the contrary is founded on God's righteousness, and therefore it is manifested at this time, but witnessed by the law and the prophets; it was witnessed to, before it was manifested.

34 In Romans 3 we get all brought in guilty, and then it shews how we are to get into the presence of God. Can man that is a sinner approach God? No; nor can he make out a righteousness by law, by which he could; but then God's righteousness appears in its stead. Christ has been made a sacrifice for us, He has answered for all we have done in the old man, and as man now He is in the presence of God for us, and we are there in Him, in all the favour and acceptance in which Christ Himself is - always there as He is. This is how man gets the righteousness of God; but in chapter 3 only the former part is distinctly stated. The claims of God against the old man have all been met in Christ Jesus, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. God's righteousness, though in fact including all, is yet more particularly viewed here as meeting the guilt of the old man. In the end of the chapter we have the answer to God's perfect demands. The sin, whether of Jew or Gentile, is put away by the blood-shedding of Jesus, and God's righteousness manifested in forgiving. This righteousness is now the starting-point of faith: we have met God here. But this shewed the righteousness of God in His patience with, and forgiveness of, the sins of Old Testament believers. The patience had been shewn of old. The work of Christ shewed the righteous ground of this patience. We, or they, are all fully justified by Christ's blood.

In Romans 4 we have another thing, resurrection in principle. Abraham believed God. This is faith in its groundwork. God is believed. Next, in its object, not only did he believe in the resurrection, but in the God that raised. So with us; we do not merely believe in Jesus, who rose from the dead, but in the God who raised Him: the power that came in to give Christ, as man, a place before God, which was the plain witness to the value of His work, in putting away our sins.

35 In referring to Abraham, who had nothing to do with law, we find the double character of faith, its nature, and its particular object in the Christian; in the second character of justification, he says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." It is not here said that he believed in God, but he believed God. Such is faith in its subjective elementary character; we set to our seal that God is true; and that is how Abraham got his righteousness. It was not man's working, but one that worked not. But the word of God reveals God Himself, and God in grace; hence, though there may be much struggling first, when we simply believe God, we believe in Him that justifies the ungodly, and of such David describes the blessedness.

But the character of our faith is carried farther here; the object is God who raised the dead. Our confidence is a righteous one: we believe on One who raised up Him who had been delivered for our offences - raised for our justification. But there is this difference between Abraham's faith and ours. He believed in God's power to fulfil His word. We believe that God has raised up Jesus after He had stood in our place 'as sinners. We have thus the resurrection of Christ applied to our justification. Yet in all this part of the epistle justification does not go beyond forgiveness, as chapter 4 plainly shews. Righteousness goes farther, but not what we have here. Here we have the active clearing away of all the guilt that attached to the deeds of the old man. This completes the work of grace for us, as responsible beings. The effect is, we have peace, stand in divine favour, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God; we glory in tribulation by the way, for it is for our good, and we have the key to all in the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us. Besides, we joy in God Himself, thus revealed in the perfectness of His grace towards us when we were sinners.

Having shewn thus the result of grace, in the beginning of Romans 5, in the way in which God justified each individual sinner, passing by sins, the apostle turns to the headship of the two Adams, and shews where the law came in. Our place is not in the first, not under the law, but in the second, according to the efficacy of the work He had wrought. What went before applied to our sins. Now he speaks of our nature and place.

36 I will summarily review his reasonings founded on this, before entering into detail. The disobedience of one made the many sinners - the obedience of One constitutes the many connected with Him righteous, and thus we are righteous by the work of another. In chapter 6 he goes on to notice that some will say, "Oh, if Christ has done all, it is no matter what I do: if it is righteousness without works, then we may walk as we like." The answer is, not "That ought not to be," but "That cannot be," for we speak of death - I have part in righteousness by death. If the thing be real, I cannot live in what I am dead to, and that makes this become impossible; if I live, being thus dead, it is by being alive to God, in Jesus Christ our Lord. A new and holy life (for it is Christ in the power of resurrection) brings with it, not only hatred of sin, but deliverance; the same principle is applied to law in Romans 7. If I am dead to the law by the body of Christ, I am delivered from that which had power over me while I was alive, that I may walk in newness of life.

We have the application of Christ's death and resurrection to man, for his justification before God, in the beginning of Romans 5; as dead to sin and consequently leading a holy life, in Romans 6; as dead to the law in Romans 7. The law, as Galatians also teaches us, has killed you, therefore it can do no more; its greatest work was, so to speak, to kill Christ, as in grace taking its curse; but He rose again, and we are in Him beyond the law - in Him who had borne its curse. Thereupon Romans 8 brings out the Christian in perfect liberty, in the last Adam of chapter 5 in virtue of His being risen. There is no condemnation for him who is in Christ. The Christian is necessarily viewed in Christ in chapter 8, but resurrection with Christ is not developed in Romans as a doctrine. The power of a new life in the Spirit is stated in verse 2; the condemnation of flesh on the cross, so as to put an end to that for faith and before God; our affections consequently shewing our life in Him. Being thus fully and freely justified and accepted in Christ, we are only waiting for the redemption of our bodies.

It is now not man's righteousness; if it were, it must be by the law and for those who have it. It is God's righteousness for all, and is upon all who believe, and no man can come in any other way; if it is God's righteousness, He cannot accept a Jew in preference to a Gentile, and as it is His "to all," it is as free for sinners of the Gentiles as the Jews. As regards the standing and peace of the soul, it is deeply important to see that while what we are ever struggling for is to get something in which we can come before God, it is God who comes before us in the gospel with His, as our only righteousness; it is unto all, but upon those who believe. Mark here another thing that is connected with peace of soul: some may say, "I do not deny His divine righteousness, I believe it; but how am I to know that I have a share in it? Is it applied to me? I want it applied to my soul." Well, God has applied it to you, if you believe, if, in the consciousness of your sinfulness, you have believed the record that God has given of His Son, then you have had it applied to your soul, for it is upon all them that believe; you are righteous. If you go on tampering with sin, or the world, God must work this out of you, that is true; and the same is the case, if there be much of the pride of self-righteousness. But the thing that is believed is what His Son is, and has done; if there is tampering with sin or the world in our souls, it prevents our laying hold of the truth; nor even if we have found divine righteousness, can we have the joy of the Holy Ghost in our hearts, for God must be real to us. But what we have to rest on is Christ's dying for our sins, and the acceptableness of Christ's person.

37 Many a Christian would be glad to rest, and, as they think, to rest there. But in the last thought they deceive themselves; they look for something better in themselves than they found; but that is not submitting to God's righteousness, not resting in what Christ is. They have not learnt the value of the cross, nor its meaning. If they had learnt its value, they would not be trembling for fear; for how could they be trembling if they knew that their sins are put away? How could they be looking for good in themselves, if they knew that the cross was the final condemnation of all flesh in itself? You say you have no other confidence than the cross; that may be as to your conviction of the truth, and you may feel your need of it in a certain sense, so as to know you cannot do without it. I suppose you do, or you would not look to it; but you have not yet learned the value of the cross, which purges the conscience by the absolute putting away of sin. And the secret of it is, that you still look for something besides sin in yourself; that is, there is still the looking for, still some hankering after, your own goodness lurking within; you do not think yourself as thoroughly bad as the cross proves you to be, for you are what needed it, you are sin in your nature as in your acts. God has condemned sin in the flesh, as needing that abhorrence on His part, and that is all you are in yourself, Rom. 8: 3. You have yet to learn that it is the ungodly whom God justifies; you will have more than that, but you must come to that first. It is "being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"; it is not mere justification from sins, but actual deliverance - entire redemption. Thus, in the figure of Israel, it was a question between God and Pharaoh: "Let my people go." It is real positive redemption, not merely a forgiveness, but Christ has brought us out free from all the title Satan can have against us, or power he can have over us, according to the righteousness of God, and for Him. If I buy a slave, he is mine, and no one can have any right over him, and that is true with regard even to our poor bodies - they are to be free from Satan's power: God will have us entirely for Himself, by the work of Christ, and that according to His own holy nature and life, and His divine righteousness in judgment. Not even the smallest particle of our dust shall remain in Satan's kingdom, and this is why redemption is mentioned last in Corinthians 1: 30: as it is brought out, too, in the similitude, as to this, of Israel in Egypt. It was one thing for them to be screened from the destroying angel by the blood on the door-posts in Egypt, and another and very different thing for them to be brought clean out of Egypt by the passage of the Red Sea; thus being entirely delivered from the power of Pharaoh. And more than this: Christ has broken and destroyed all the power of death by which Satan held us, and taken him captive whose captives we were, and made us, who were Satan's captives, the vessels of God's power and testimony against Satan.

38 "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness." Here we have the connection of the blood of Christ with God's righteousness. It has been declared. It rested only in promise until Christ came in the flesh; it was not manifested till then; so that like Adam, Abel, or Job, they rested on the promises of righteousness, because the blood was yet to be shed. But now it is declared in having been fulfilled, in that Christ sits at the right hand of God, or rather, to confine myself to this epistle, that He is risen. And there is an amazing difference between resting on the promise (though this is most blessed) and on a fulfilment. A man in prison with a promise that his debt shall be paid is no doubt happy; but it is not the same thing as walking at liberty with the knowledge that it has been paid.

39 It is not forbearance now, but accomplished salvation, God's own righteousness declared. Can He forbear with that? The time of forbearance was in the time of the Old Testament saints; then God was forbearing, because of what He was going to do, and has proved His righteousness in doing it by the death of Christ. But that is not our condition. We have God's righteousness at this time, this present time. He is not speaking here of what is past before Christ's death, but of the fact of righteousness, and our present state of conscience, of the better thing God has provided for us, as regards our standing before Him. For if I sin, I do not want a prophet to come and tell me my sin is just put away, I can say I know the blood has been shed; therefore I know as a present thing that every sin is put away. It is a settled question. We can add much more even; because, though the fact is assumed of our being in Christ, and His resurrection mentioned in chapter 8, the subject of this epistle is Christ's death and resurrection, as justifying and delivering us, we can speak of being with Him. The Ephesians looks at us as dead in sin, and quickened with Him, and sitting in heavenly places in Him. Colossians takes up both, only it does not go on to our sitting in heavenly places in Him; but sets us as risen and looking up to heaven where He is. It is such a righteousness, that He, who accomplished that through which it was to be revealed and made good, has, in virtue of what He has done, sat down at the right hand of God; and our life is in Him there. Abraham could not say, "I am one with a man at God's right hand," for Christ was not there as man then. But the believer in Christ can say so; for as surely as the first Adam was turned out of paradise, so surely has the last Adam entered heaven, and that as man, in the glory He had with the Father before the world was; and I am as sure of my place in Christ, as of my place in Adam.

40 Well, then, it is such a work as God recognised in righteousness, and such an one as has fully satisfied God - nay, more, has glorified Him, as indeed it must have done, to satisfy Him in divine righteousness. Still, we can say it has glorified Him. See John 13: 31, 32; and 17: 4, 5. As regards the blood, He is just to forgive. It is His own righteousness which is upon the believer, and He must own it; and here too is the resting-place of faith. This is justice; but the opening of my heart is under the sunshine of grace at the outflowing of love. To see ourselves perfectly cleansed makes us hate sin, as a man who is thoroughly clean will not like to get a spot on his garment; while one who is already defiled will not care about getting a little more so. When the blood was put upon the lintels of the door-posts, it was to keep the judgment out, and God passed over; for had He come in, He must have judged them as they deserved, for they deserved judgment as much as the Egyptians, nay, more, for they knew better. Therefore it was grace keeping God out as a righteous judge, and according to His righteousness; but at the Red Sea they were to stand still, and see the salvation of God. It was God overriding every barrier, coming in and taking them completely out of the place of judgment and bondage, and bringing them to Himself. While the one was keeping God out, the other was bringing God in, or rather bringing them to God.

As an ungodly man I am justified by the blood; but as a Christian I am accepted in Him. But many, many Christians keep outside; looking at the cross only as an object of hope, they have not entered into God's presence by it. Has the cross then left me outside? No; it has saved me from judgment, and I have entered into God's presence by it, and therefore value it. How many do we see as sinners trembling at the foot of the cross, feeling their need of it, but getting no farther!

We are not under law as innocent beings, for man is a sinner, and the law cannot allow of even a lust; then where is the use of giving the law to man that is a sinner? What is the use of my giving a righteous measure to a man who is unrighteous? What the use of my giving a true measure to one who uses fraud in selling his goods, but to teach him where he is wrong? So God never gave the law to man to make him righteous, but to convict him and shew him where his sin is. Man may abuse the grace, to continue in sin; but that does not alter the nature of God's righteousness. If a law is given to man already a sinner, it can only be to make him know himself a sinner.

41 "Is he the God of the Jews only?" He will justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith; that is, the Jews who sought righteousness, obtained it only on the principle of faith; and the Gentiles, inasmuch as it was on that principle, possessed it through the faith that they had. Do we then make void the law, or more properly, law? No; we establish law, not Moses' law, but the principle of law. If a thief is hanging on a tree, is that making void the law? No; so far from making it void, hanging establishes it. But if after the punishment he rose, the law would have inflicted its penalty, and he would be beyond its reach. So then Christ died, and He established the law, and faith comes in and says, So far from making void the law, when Christ died for my sins, He established the law. But that does not put me under it: if under it I am lost, not merely as a sinner, but by the law itself. Nothing establishes the law like the death of Christ.

The Gentiles having been proved lawless, Romans 3, gives the Jew under law, condemned out of the law. Christ was under the law; He kept it, and died under its curse. And is He under it now? No; He is dead to the law, and risen from the dead. I am the sinner He died for; He has borne the curse, and it is all gone, and it has lost all power to touch me, for I am one with Christ, I stand in Him, in the presence and favour of God, as dead and risen again in Christ. He gave all His sanction to the law - suffered it, if you will.

In Romans 4, in referring to Abraham and David as believing God, he then goes on to shew the ground on which Abraham gets the promises. The blessing belongs to me in uncircumcision, as righteousness was reckoned to him in uncircumcision, and that on the principle of faith, thus stopping the Jew's mouth, and hence to the Gentiles. Then in David we have the same thing, "Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord will not impute sin." The law on the contrary worketh wrath. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of the faithful, before Him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead. The difference between us and Abraham is this: He believed God was able to perform; we believe He has raised up Christ from the dead. The deliverance has been effected, the power shewn, as well as our sins been put away. He was delivered for our offences. Was it effectual? He is raised again for our justification. All is complete and accepted, and Christ as man has left the dead - is out of and past all the consequences of sin; for judgment itself He has borne for us.

42 Beloved, in a day like this, what a thought it is for us that we are set in God's righteousness before Him! His righteousness has set aside all man's reasonings, as the rising sun not only dispels the darkness, but causes even the stars to vanish because of its brightness. When Christ is first revealed to the soul it is always humbling, because it displays what it really is before God, and brings the conscience into play, while the heart mourns its having despised and rejected such an One. I do not say that the affections may not be found towards Christ without this; but there must be sooner or later such a revelation of what Christ is, as to shew us what we are; and it is that which breaks down what is inside, foolish and vain desires, self-will, sinful thoughts and feelings, and everything that is the opposite of Christ, thus shewing us not only that we have committed sins, but that we are sin. Then He reveals to us the unclouded favour of God into which we are brought, according to the love which sought us, and gave His Son for us, and brought us there in righteousness.

Outline of the Epistle to the Romans

J. N. Darby.

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{see also files 26001_4e & 26008_9e}

Romans 5.

How the heart must rejoice in the wonderful way in which scripture is made so plain, as to all that is of greatest importance to our souls! While our minds might be wondering and reasoning about many things that may be, scripture is simple and definite as to what is; although there are depths in it which we cannot fathom. All the simple truths which are necessary to our finding forgiveness and joy, being at peace with God, are contained in this chapter, as the result of what we have been already considering. The general subject of the epistle shews how God and man can be together - how man can come in peace to God. The object of the epistle is not to bring out truths connected with the church as such, but the relationship of individual souls with God.

43 In chapter 3 we saw the way in which the blood satisfied God, to save us from judgment. Christ came down and made propitiation for our sins in His blood, and having gone through all that sin deserved, He rose from the dead, and entered, an accepted man, into the presence of God; and now all that was His by right is made ours in Him. At the close of chapter 3 the instruction as to the blood, as the ground of acceptance, is finished; and the epistle goes on with the result of this, and passes to the resurrection of Christ as God's public seal on the work so far.

Chapter 4 shews righteousness imputed through faith, but identifies it thus far with forgiveness; Abraham believed God, who could - we in God who has - raised up Jesus. Having exhibited the intervention of God in power in His love to bring Christ up out of the place in which He was for us, and so set us before God in righteousness, according to the efficacy of that which He has wrought (proved in the place He holds in resurrection) we have thus peace with God. We are indeed sitting together in Christ in heavenly places, but this is Ephesian truth, not entered on here; only we are said to live by Him, and it is assumed we are in Him. We stand in perfect favour, and rejoice in hope of glory.

This chapter 5 follows out the subject of our acceptance, as founded on the death and resurrection of Christ, shewing fully our condition before God. This, as founded on what precedes, closes with verse 11, and then begins quite a new subject; the contrast of our connection with the first and last Adam. This latter part treats of sin, not of sins; of man's disobedience, and one Man's obedience. Chapter 4: 25 is properly in connection with the first eleven verses of chapter 5.

Remark, that it is not said, He was raised because of our justification, as is often said, and it is in a certain aspect a truth, but here it is, "for our justification"; and the next verse shews this, for God never separates justification from faith. We cannot have justification without having our souls brought into living connection with God by the exercise of individual faith. The first result of this faith will be peace with God; the second, we have access into the grace, that present divine favour wherein we stand; and third, we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. All the past connected with the old man, all our sins and offences being put away, and a new place given before God, instead of the judgment we deserved, there is perfect peace. Secondly, we have present personal introduction into the full favour of God, but not all yet in possession; therefore we rejoice in hope. Christ has borne all that deserved judgment, and entirely left our sins behind as regards the believer, who can never come into judgment before God for them, although of course there will be the Father's chastening for sin. But it is impossible that judgment can be the portion of those whose sins Christ has wholly borne away, entering and placing them, in virtue of it, in a new place of righteousness before God. As impossible as it is that Christ's work should be inadequate, or that God should punish the same sin twice over, so impossible is it for God to punish the sins of those who believe. If any one had to be shut out of heaven, so to speak, it must have been Christ, because He had taken the sins; but He was accepted, received up to glory; therefore the matter must be settled for me, if I believe; Heb. 9: 27, 28. He did not hold back: our sins in all their horribleness were laid upon Him (as on the day of atonement the high priest confessed the sins of the people), when judgment was fully passed upon Him. The judgment of my sins has all been settled between the all-seeing God and His spotless Son. There we have not a hope merely, but settled peace. "He by himself purged our sins, and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." He must have failed, or else I have perfect peace; and I know He did not fail.

44 Romans 5: 1. The reference to faith here often deceives people, who would make their faith the object, and so turn back upon themselves for something to give them peace. Peace never rests upon experience. There will be experience, but peace is the answer of God to all the exercises of my conscience. I cannot trust my own heart, but I can trust God's heart, and it is in believing what this is that I find peace. The more Christ is worthy of being loved, if I bring my own selfishness into it, the more horrible must it be to God: "as dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour." I cannot trust my own heart or its feelings, for it is deceitful above all things; but I can trust Christ's - He has never deceived me. True, I shall have experiences - must have them, but I am not justified by experiences: it is the answer of God to them that gives peace. There may be joy at times, when there is not settled peace, but it rests on feeling. There is a joy which flows from a knowledge of forgiveness of sins, and this is justly called peace. But the solid security of the soul flows from the second subject of this epistle, beginning verse 12, not that Christ died for our sins, but that we have died with Him. Peace means that which is settled. Faith looks at its object, not on itself, and through our Lord Jesus Christ.

45 We are not called on to believe that we do believe, but to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, by whom we have access, and are brought into perfect present favour, every cloud that could hide God's love removed, and can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. "Thy favour is better than life, therefore I can praise thee while I live"; so that in the midst of wilderness weariness we can rejoice. There is a striking description in Revelation 4 of the scene in heaven - the twenty-four elders seated on their thrones in the presence of God revealed in this Sinai character. When terrible judgments are about to fall on the earth, they are sitting in perfect peace; and when it is said, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," instead of it making them tremble and fear, "they worship him that liveth for ever and ever."

"Rejoicing in hope of the glory of God." How could I think of being there, if it was not all of grace? He has not only given us blessings, but associated us with the Blesser. "The glory thou hast given me, I have given them." Here is the Christian position as such, and then all brought out: for the past, the works of the old man, peace; for the present, favour; for the future, glory. What more do I want? What more can I have? Yes, there is more, "not only so"; there are present realities for the saint to learn in the wilderness - tribulation. The more faithful the saint is, the more trouble he will have; the more blessings he has, the more trial, because there is much to be removed that would hinder the blessing when given. What need, then, in all the tribulation of the way, to know that my peace is settled; that the matter of my justification is a finished thing! Else, when I come into the trial, I shall be likely to think, How can I suppose now that I have God's favour. All seems against me, and I shall not be able to "glory in tribulation."

But see what the result of tribulation is - "tribulation worketh patience." I need my will to be broken, I shall expect to get a thing and never have it; I may have to cry to God three weeks, and fast, as Daniel: I have to learn patience, and in it learn the rashness of my heart that would expect everything at once. And so "patience works experience." A man in earnest to do right will, if his will be at work, be in a hurry, but he will have to find out that he must wait for God's help, as Moses had to do, who kills an Egyptian in his haste without God's bidding, and Pharaoh hearing of it, off he goes. He has, in blessed true-heartedness, chosen to leave the court of Pharaoh's daughter, where he had been brought up, and to take his place with the afflicted brickmakers. But though sincere and devoted, and with a right intention, giving up the high position in which providence had placed him, his flesh had to be broken down, and this was through forty years' tribulation in the wilderness, keeping his father-in-law's sheep. He was learning experience, and experience works hope; because what hindered and dimmed the hope is broken away by the process; earthly hope has died away, and the heavenly become more real and bright; and because in it I learn what God is. Moses had more knowledge of what the people were to be delivered for, when he went to Pharaoh by God's sending; he knew nothing of the Canaan they were to go to when he slew the Egyptian.

46 "Hope maketh not ashamed." In learning experience it may be I struggle against God; but we shall find it is of no use to struggle in tribulation against God's hand, for He will hold us there until we submit; but in the end it will cause me to hope, "because the love of God is shed abroad in my heart." This gives me the key to all the tribulation, and enables me to glory in it. It is the fruit of God's own love. I confide in Him. How do I get this? By the Holy Ghost which is within me, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." It is not mine but His, God's love shed abroad; God, who is love, is in me, God's own love: this brings us back to a strength of hope which nothing can shake. Notice, it is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who maketh intercession for us.

A man may say in the face of all this, But suppose I do not feel it? Well, then, you are going back from faith, and looking to your feelings. How do I know that I have it? Am I perfect? No; the love is enjoyed within, but God has graciously put the proof of it without me; I know it, because I believe that Christ died for the ungodly. I am simply an ungodly one and have no strength at all, no feeling at all, and Christ died when I had no feeling at all. Christ died when- I had no strength, and could do nothing at all. The greatest thing in heaven was given for the worst thing on earth, a sinner. I am a sinner, therefore Christ died for me. "For scarcely for a righteous man would one die." This is what distinguishes God's love from man's: while man must have some motive on which to act, something to draw out his love, God's love, on the contrary, springs from Himself; for God could find no motive in us, we were hateful.

47 How different is the Holy Ghost's reasoning from that of the natural man, or even it may be of the quickened soul, who, judging of God by himself, would say, He must judge me, for I know I deserve it! But "God commendeth his love . . . much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." The Holy Ghost reasons downwards from what God is in grace, to the full effect of that grace; not upwards as man does, from his responsibility to what God will be. The Holy Ghost unfolds what God is, to meet the wants of my soul. True it is, the sinner deserves judgment, he needs not merely to be made better (that will not do), he wants a Saviour. Here is reasoning God will allow, He will allow it till we have got a Saviour; but here, when the Holy Ghost reasons from what God has done for the sinner, it is quite another thing.

It is much harder to learn that we are without strength than that we are ungodly. If a dead Christ is made a Saviour, a living Christ will be a friend to you. A dying Christ for you (the weakest thing, as it appears in nature, though it was God's strength), and now how will He not do all you want of Him in His life? If He died for you when your sins were on you, how much more will He care for you now your sins are gone! A living Christ cannot be to destroy you, if a dying Christ has saved you (mark, not only the power of the argument, but its grace in taking away all torment from the heart, for "fear hath torment").

Verse 11. "Not only so, but we also joy in God," not only joy and happiness for ourselves in our security and in what He has given, but we can joy in God. We first rejoice in the things given, but do not rest here, we rejoice in Him who gives them, and delight in the things that God is in Himself. He is holy; He is love; He is great in goodness. I can boast in Him who has so loved us, and say what a God I have, what a God to me. Holiness would naturally terrify us: but we are in the light, and we can sit down with joy in the presence of Him who is the source of all our blessings.

48 If my will is not broken, it is true I cannot joy in God, I cannot even joy in tribulations; because He has to deal with me in such a way as to break my will, and we never like that process; but afterwards, when we are walking with Him, when He has broken it down, we can joy in Him. And so if I stray in practical walk, I do not doubt my salvation, but I cannot joy in God, though we know joy is there; we only joy in God when walking with Him. If I stray I can reflect about the joy, but I must take a double step in getting back: I must judge the sin according to the judgment of sins on the cross, where the sin I have committed is put away, and return to God's unchanging grace, before I can again joy in God.

This closes the whole subject of our sins, and God's justifying us from them by the death and resurrection of Christ, and the blessed fruits which flow from it, which, as to the revelation of God, go higher than the demonstration of my state in Christ, which follows to the end of chapter 8. The Holy Ghost is going to shew in whom we get our place before God, and draws now the contrast between our headship in the first and in the last Adam, thus laying a great foundation for the principles He is going to bring out, and in which, having treated our sins and individual responsibility, He treats the question of sin, and the nature common to us all.

Verses 13-17 are in a parenthesis, and the notice of this makes the passage clear; read verse 18 in connection with verse 12. He heads all up in the obedient Man and the disobedient man. There is no longer the distinction between the Jews and Gentiles as families, nor even between man and man, each one of whom has his own sins and responsibility, but the living ones are all headed up in Christ, the unbelieving ones not, but in Adam only. We have no allusion to the bride, or union of that character here, but it is the individuals all seen in their Head. We get then the doctrine of these two men, from verses 12-18, sources of life to all connected with them, and the obedience of one, and the disobedience of the other, constituting us righteous or sinners, though each of us may have added his own sins.

But before turning more particularly to that, we will look at the contrast of grace with the law, of which the whole passage treats: "until the law sin was in the world," but the times of this ignorance God winked at, inasmuch as He did not treat with them as breakers of the law, when there was no law; but when there was law, they were governed by the law, and therefore Israel had the rod held over them, they were to be chastened for breaking the law, and banished ultimately into captivity. But the Gentiles have sinned without law, and He will judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus; law never made sin, the sin was going on all the time from Adam to Moses, but law made the transgression. The sign of sins was present when there was no law, for death was there. My child may have a bad habit of running about the streets, but if I command him not, it is another thing, it is disobedience then, but before it was only a wrong thing that needed to be corrected. Though not after the similitude of Adam's transgression; that is, though not disobedience to a positive commandment men are sinners still, though they have not broken a given law. (It is a quotation from Hosea 6: 6, "They, like Adam, have transgressed my covenant.") Sin was always there, death was always there to prove it, but law was not always there. "Imputed," in the phrase "sin is not imputed where there is no law," is a different word from "imputed" for righteousness, and the like. It signifies a positive existing act reckoned to the account of a person, as in Philemon 1: 18.

49 The argument in this passage is, you are not going to shut up God to the Jews: sin was in the world before Moses, and the sin is not larger than God. If sin had been there God must go there. Christ did not come only for those under law; we must go up to the two heads, Adam and Christ, and so take in those who sinned without law, even between Adam and Moses. Grace overrides it all, "law entered that the offence might abound" - you (Jews) have added offence to offence, you need it all the more, for you have been guilty of positive transgression, but the free gift is of many offences. Verse 17. If God comes in, you will reign in life, not only sin having reigned, now life will reign, but you will reign in life. God's heart comes in, and it is greater in its effects than all the evil there has been. Verse 18. See the generality of all this upon all to condemnation, not in result, but in desert, for grace comes in to deliver.

50 By one righteousness the free gift came towards all, not in the sense of application, the meaning in each case is to or towards all (Greek eis), not upon all (Greek epi). As the one offence did not rest in its effect on Adam only, but run over to all, so the effect of the one work of righteousness did not end in Christ, but passed on toward all, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Verse 19. When it is a matter of application, it is the "many," not "all," that is, the many respectively connected with each head, therefore I can go to all to preach the gospel - to every creature, saying to the sinner, the blood is on the mercy-seat; but to the believer I can say, You are righteous, "so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."

What comfort there is in the simplicity of scripture!

In the next chapter we get, as the certain effect of this newness of life, the principle of death and resurrection brought forward. But if you do not see the need of your having righteousness in Christ you do not know yourselves, you do not know the holiness of God's heart, and the unholiness of your own. Christ's death may be considered as in itself glorifying God, apart from its results; but we have the double effect or aspect of the death of Christ shewn in the two goats, one of which was the Lord's lot, and the other was for the bearing away into a land of forgetfulness the sins of the people; the first was for the glory of God, the second for the sins of the sinner, in the conscience of what he had done - both were needed. I have sinned, says the awakened conscience; but all my sins were laid on Christ, says the believer.

Verse 20. The entering in of law was that the offence might abound; wherefore the law? not to make sin abound, but to make sin exceeding sinful, and that the offence might abound, "but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," and abounding grace has been shewn, for God gave His own well-beloved Son: and sin was suffered to rise up to its full wickedness, even in putting Christ to death, and then to shew how powerless sin is in the presence of God's grace, that very thing, in which its greatest evil was shewn as hatred against God, is that which puts it all away; God's grace rolls over it all, yet thus in righteousness. He has thus shewn the utter impotency of sin in His presence.

It is not said righteousness reigned: if it had, it would have been for the eternal condemnation of all (righteousness will reign when He comes in judgment), but now grace reigns through righteousness, grace goes on in spite of all the neglect in men's hearts to it - it reigns; it does not give up its ways and purposes; grace reigns over sin, man is unable to get the mastery over Christ's love but Christ's love overcomes man - it overcame everything that lay in the way of His fulfilling His Father's will, and His obedience overcame everything; grace reigned on the cross, yet righteousness was there; grace reigns in the subjection of our hearts - where sin did reign, grace reigns. Grace means love working where there is evil. How? By the obedience of One: hence, it is through righteousness.

51 Then if there is the reign of grace in the heart, there must be practical holiness, a righteousness consistent with it; if God's love works in the heart, it is to produce in it something like Himself. His love is such as has never been seen before in heaven or on earth. His perfect love and grace, and righteousness bring out what God is, Christ is grace reigning: and God has the upper hand even as to our sins, and has put them away.

CHAPTER 6.

We get in this chapter the practical application of the great principle of which the apostle has been speaking at the end of the preceding chapter, namely, our connection with the second Adam, as previously with the first. We shall see that it is practical in its nature, and we shall do well to see the double aspect of it; the power of practice and the real groundwork of that power. Liberty is always the ground on which grace sets us, and liberty is the only ground of the Holy Ghost's power. Liberty is that to which we are called, it is not slavery, even unto holiness, but liberty always, but that liberty death to sin. The apostle first sets forth the ground simply and clearly, and then proceeds to the fruits, for there is actual righteousness which bears fruit. As He says, "Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life."

There is wonderful depth and value in this chapter, as there must be in that which comes from God. This practical righteousness does not merely produce a fruit down here, that is man's thoughts, and man's thoughts end always with himself; but flowing from Christian life, as we shall see, and walking in the path suited to it here below, it frees from obscuring lusts, and tends to purify the heart practically, so that we see God. It has fruit unto holiness. The daily details of a Christian's life have thus the deepest importance, not only as doing right, but that this produces fruit that goes up in holiness to God, leads to a state of soul in which God is known and enjoyed, the soul being set apart for Him.

52 All that comes from God must go back to God again: so in the meat-offering - the frankincense which was laid on the meat-offering was burnt, and the savour of it all went up to God: the priest might eat of the meat-offering, but the sweet savour of all ascended up to God; just as Christ Himself came down from God, His whole life down here being one continued savour rising up to God, and at the end He offered up Himself, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God. The reality of the fruit of righteousness is that it is living to God, as the apostle says, "Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ hath loved us, and given himself an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." This is Christian morality, it is God's nature in man. Here, however, it is only seen as a fruit or effect - the divine life coming down from God, to God it must return, and where this is wanting, it is all nothing.

All the value of an action is in the motive. Fruit will be manifested; but it is not so much what a man does, as his motive for doing it. Even in nature, two men may do the same thing from very different motives; the motive of the one being himself and his own pleasure, will be evil; while the other, being the good father of a family, and doing it for their good, his motive will be good; it is in the motive of our ordinary actions that we have to be continually judging ourselves, that we be not judged of the Lord. The saint, in judging himself, must be grieved when he sees so many other things come in and mix up with that which he presents to God; self comes in, and like the dead flies, spoils the savour of the ointment. It may not be seen by others, but our own hearts before God know how very much of self comes in, making the ointment send forth a bad savour, yet we know God graciously and lovingly accepts all our service through Christ, being a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The great principle laid down in chapter 3 is that the blood meets our sins.

53 Chapter 4 brings out faith in the God who had come in, in power, and raised the One who was under death - raised Him from the dead. "Believing on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." Christ was put to death in the flesh; looked at as man, we see Him going down into death, and a divine power coming in, and raising Him up again. It is precious to our souls to observe in scripture the same divine power is attributed to the three Persons, thus giving us a proof of the Trinity being engaged in the work. The Lord Jesus said, "Destroy this temple (this spake he of the temple of his body), and I will raise it up in three days"; and again, "Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father," Rom. 6: 4. And He was "quickened by the Spirit."

In the former part of chapter 5 we get faith applied to justification; the conclusions from Christ's being delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification, and the results of this are given: we have peace, present favour, and hope of glory; we rejoice in tribulations, for God's love is shed abroad in our hearts, and finally, are able to joy in God.

Then comes, beginning with verse 12, the question of sin in our nature, where all heads up in Adam and Christ, and we see that the law was brought in by the bye, when man was already a sinner, with no thought of producing righteousness, but that the offence might abound and so manifest man's sin. The law is righteous, and comes in, convicting of unrighteousness those to whom it was given, because those to whom it was given could not keep it.

Man's only ways of being with God are, to be innocent, or to be saved. If a man is innocent, he does not want the law; Adam could not have known what it meant. If it had been said to Adam, "Thou shalt not lust, thou shalt not steal" - how would it have applied? Whom was he to steal from? But the law supposes lust to be there, therefore says, "Thou shalt not lust." The commandment which forbids, supposes the forbidden thing to be there, or the tendency to it, where the thing prohibited is a sin in its nature. The fruit of the tree was in the garden, which was the very thing prohibited to Adam; but till Satan got hold of Eve, there was no lust to eat of it. "Thou shalt not eat of it," was a simple test of obedience, but even then the object was before them. A right rule only proves a fraudulent thing to be fraudulent, it does not make it right.

54 It is impossible for a man to be saved by the law, as the law supposes the presence of sin; an innocent person does not know what sin is, but man by the law is addressed as a sinner, that he might be saved by grace; but God having now come in, He could not confine Himself to those merely under law, but extends His grace to all - grace is the only ground He can be upon. Again, the law was not given till four hundred years after the promise. The promise was first.

In chapter 5: 19, we have the two headships brought out in their results. By one man's disobedience, etc., and, note here, all are thus alike, the individual's sins do not come into account, though they do in judgment, for we are judged according to our works. But here, one man's disobedience made us sinners, and one Man's obedience makes us righteous. That seemed to make it no matter how we lived; but the subject of chapter 6 is just to meet such a thought as this. The perverseness of the flesh will turn the law to a different purpose from that for which God gave it, and grace for a different end from that for which God bestowed it. The law that was given to convict man of sin, man takes up to make a righteousness of his own out of it; and grace that was really given to make man holy, man turns into licentiousness. Though it is true that souls were quickened before Christ came, by virtue of His divine power to quicken whom He would, yet we get this great fact, that Adam became a fallen man, a sinner, and lost, before he was the head of the fallen family. So Christ finishes the work for righteousness before He becomes the head of the redeemed family.

We have not only come into the position of fallen Adam, but we have got a nature that likes sin; and where there is the life of Christ there is a nature which loves holiness: this is the argument of the apostle. But if a man naturally likes unholiness, how is he to get rid of this? His reply is, "How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" It is not an argument as to what we ought to be. That which forms the groundwork of Christian life is that we have died with Christ. It is never said to man, You ought to die to sin. The believer is placed in Christ. How? In a Christ who has died and is risen. That life which I have in Christ is after Christ is dead and risen again; thus I have life in a Christ who has died (that is where I exist), in whom I have died unto sin, for if we are made partakers of justification through Him, it is because we are made partakers of His death. But, if, as regards the old sinful Adam, we are made partakers of death - have our part in and by it - we cannot live on.

55 To follow more precisely the apostle's argument: If I am a Christian, justified by Him, it is that I have part in His death. It is my very profession. I have been baptised to His death. But if I have died to sin to be made righteous, I cannot live in it because I am righteous. You have died unto sin in Christ. There is more than that when we look into it, as to detail: the blood of atonement was put upon the tip of the right ear, the thumb of the right hand, and the great toe of the right foot of the priest, thus shewing that we are not only saved by the blood, but that nothing was to be allowed in thought, word, or deed, discordant with its holy claim. There is that which becomes a Christian, but that is not what is brought out here, but the truth of our having part in His death, so that we are to reckon ourselves alive to God through Him, not through the first Adam in his flesh.

How have you got your place, your life, your character in Christ, but through a dead and risen Christ? Well then, if I am dead, I am not still alive. Hence it is that the exhortation is never to us, to die, for we have died with Christ. How then can a man live in that to which he is dead? It cannot be. If I am dead to sin I cannot live in sin, God forbid! There is putting to death, for practically we are to mortify our members, that is power, but we are never told to die to sin. You may try to die to it, but it will not do. It is still there. But the cross of Christ has for faith killed your sin, when He put your sins away.

We first get a new life and a new nature, and then we can begin to kill the members of the old nature, reckoning oneself dead, otherwise it is hopeless. I can now deal with this old thing as not me, for now I have a new thing which is me, therefore I do not admit that old thing to be me at all. I have for ever done with it, having got this new thing by which the old is overcome. In this chapter 6, the apostle is speaking of our liberty, as scripture always addresses the believer as dead with Christ.

What Christ have you a part in? Not one living on the earth before death, but in His death, though He be now alive again. "Buried with him by baptism unto death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Thus we get the glory of the Father as all engaged in the resurrection of Christ, and in result, as the measure of our walk down here. "By the glory of the Father." I can rest upon that expression, because it is that which can feed the heart, for Christ, as man, is brought out by and into the full glory of the Father, and that which meets the subtlety of the world's pretension (for the world had rejected Him), and the subtlety in our hearts, for all that leans to what obscures that, is the old man, which would have, not that which is of the Father, but of the world.

56 The Christian is fed and settled by what shews the perfection of Christ, as raised by the glory of the Father. There is not a single thing that was connected with the glory of the Father that was not made good by the death and sealed by the resurrection of Christ. Take death, for instance, God's righteous judgment, but the ruin of His creature, and the present display of Satan's power. We had all come under the power of death. Divine power comes in, and raises Him who, in grace towards us, went down under death, and by raising Him makes good God's judgment, while it sets aside what it was exercised in, and destroys him that had the power of death, that is the devil. There was the power of God, the love of the Father shewn out besides, for it was the Son who was there; and yet His righteousness, too, for Christ had fully glorified Him there, where it would seem impossible, made sin - and in death, its wages - for us. Was ever the love of the Father drawn out in like manner, as in the resurrection of Christ? Never! There was in Christ's death a fresh motive for the Father's love, in the Son's sacrificing Himself to shew forth the Father's glory. Then the Father's own glory was concerned in it, because it was the Father's own Son, one with Himself, who was under death; therefore the Father must come in and raise Him up, for His own glory.

Then also the righteousness of God is concerned. The world was to be convinced of righteousness, therefore God could not leave His soul in hell, neither could He suffer His Holy One to see corruption. He was God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, received up in glory. The angels must be witnesses of this great work of the resurrection of the Son of God. There would have been a hopeless gap in heaven, could it have been possible (which it was not, He could not be holden of it) for Christ not to have been raised from the dead and set at the right hand of God.

57 Now we see (I do not say realise) what this newness of life must be. The character of this newness of life is that I know the Father. Ought I not to see divine righteousness in it? Ought I not to see divine love in it? Ought I not to see the glory of His person in it? When I see Him who went down into the lowest parts of the earth, I see the Father's glory going down, so to speak, there, to raise Him up to His own right hand, and this it is that associates my thoughts with, and gives me the knowledge of, the Father's glory. The soul, in the power of the Holy Ghost, entering into the knowledge of the Person of Him who went down into the grave, must be filled with adoring wonder and praise, for the heart, seeing the Father concerned about Christ, goes up to the glory of the Father. Where God has thus made the soul to comprehend that a once dead Christ has ascended up to God, that is everything. For how could you or I rise up to see the glory of the Father? Impossible! But His glory is brought near to me, when I see the Father raising up a dead Christ, knowing that Christ was in the grave, because of sin, though Son of God, and that He is now with God in heaven.

Thus my affections are drawn out, when I see who it was that went down to death for me. For how came He there? Because I was a sinner, yet He glorified His Father in all that He, the Father, was. And do I not see that He, who was there so laid, deserved to be raised? For who was it? The blessed Son of God, who had taken the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man. Do you think that a poor unconverted person sees that the Father must have raised up Jesus, even for His own glory, seeing who He was, and what He had done? No; and therefore, when speaking to the woman of Samaria, when He had said, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink," and she replies, "Give me this water," and there was no intelligence of what He presented to her; then He speaks to her conscience, "Go, call thy husband," and that opens her understanding. "I perceive thou art a prophet"; but when Jesus saith unto her, "I that speak unto thee am he," then the divine knowledge of the Person of the Son of God opens out to her soul. And the Person of the Lord filling her heart, she goes and tells others about Him. The revelation of the Person of the Son of God to this woman's soul, was the turning-point in her history. So it is with us. When we have intelligently received the Person of the Son of God, not as a doctrine merely, but as the object and power of a new life in our souls, then our hearts follow Christ, as it were, and go up after Him in spirit in this new life, and everything is dead to us below. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. I do not say there will be no conflict, but the heart has done with everything out of Christ. Then, how very near it comes to us, yea, is realised in us! "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death"; that is, entering into, and associated with Him in death down here. Grace comes down to us here, and Christ goes down to death for us.

58 Was divine love the less, because it was down here, and not above? No: it reached even to my state of sin, for it was to sin that Christ died, as He did for my sins. Was divine power the less? No: He has destroyed, on the contrary, the power of death, and him who held it. It is there I learn that the Son of God must go down unto death, if He is to deliver me from sin; and as His heart followed me down here to be made sin, so now my heart is to follow Him in resurrection (for if I have a portion in His death, I shall have also in His resurrection). For I cannot have a half Christ, and it is not merely that my sins are put away, because justification includes not merely the fact that He died, but also that He is personally accepted of God, and if He raised again, it is in the power of a new life. So that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, or as the word is, that you should not be the slaves of sin, for you were slaves unto sin, but now you are freed (justified) from sin. He does not speak merely of sins. But no one can charge sin, the activity of lust and will, on a dead man. You were slaves, properly speaking, under the title of dominion by another, for the slave is ordered wherever his master pleases, not knowing at night what he should do in the morning; naturally we are slaves to sin.

The passage in John 8: 33 is remarkable, as shewing that it was slavery to sin under the law, for the Jews being addressed as under the law, it says, the servant, or, slave, abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever; if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. So we are freed from the slavery in which we were held, and in perfect liberty, all having been left behind in death, for he that has done with sin must be dead to it. When a man is dead you cannot charge him with anything; his life has ceased to exist, he is out of the scene. If you say, How can I be free from sin, when I find it still in me? That is gone to which sin was attached. We are not told to die, for we are dead, and you cannot be charged with sin if you are dead, neither can you be under its power. Do you ask, How can that be, when I find I am not dead? Because it is in Christ you have died. Christ was put in your place. Is Christ in the grave? No; the thing to which sin is attached is gone, is done with, for He has died. Do not say it is not so. Are you wiser than God? for God says it is so. The tree and the fruit are both judged in God's sight. Christ has died for the tree and its fruit, as that which could be charged on you, and died to sin, so that you may reckon yourself dead to it. Christ attached sin to Himself on the cross, and it is gone for ever; there is an utter end of sin for faith; it is the vile thing I hate. Am I distressed about my evil deeds? They are the very things that Christ's death put away. Am I distressed about sin in the flesh? I am not in the flesh, I have died to it, for I have my life in Christ, who has died. "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin." I should have no need of such a word as reckon, if there was no more actual existence of sin in the flesh; I am called to mortify, in living power in Christ, the deeds of the body, not to die to sin, but to reckon myself dead. It is holy liberty from sin we have, and not liberty to sin. I am to reckon myself to be what faith shews me Christ is in my place; and walk in newness of life,* then there will be the fruit unto holiness.

{*Verse 1 of chapter 6 treats of continuing in sin, because of grace; since one Man's obedience saves me, I cannot, for I have my part in death. That is not living in it. Verse 15 supposes me free in the power of a new life. Am I to sin in this freedom, or give myself up to God? Which is the meaning and character of this new life I have through Christ?}

59 I would make two remarks here. First, the fruits are produced; still, the grand doctrine of Christianity is, that I am saved by a mediator; if I have to answer for myself, I am lost; "Enter not into judgment with thy servant," Psa. 143: 2. If God enters into judgment with me, all is over with me. The whole doctrine of grace is, saved by a mediator; for, "if I wash myself in snow-water, and make my hands never so clean, yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." The instant I see God's eye upon me, I shall see myself as one out of a ditch, yea, my clothes shall abhor me. Job wanted a daysman, to lay his hand upon both. My coming to God depends upon some one coming between.

60 The conscience should be delicate as to the slightest approach of evil, only let it be in liberty. The more delicate the conscience as to the sense of the least defilement, the more the need of a mediator is felt. But you say, I find that what ought to be dead in me is still alive. Well, did Christ die for the sin that you have not, or for the sin you have? The very sin you are daily finding out in yourself, this is the very sin for which Christ died.

Jealousy of conscience about sin is right, the more the better, only with it remember the grace which has put it away. Christ has set me in a new life through Himself, raised from the dead, so that death cannot touch it, because He lives beyond its power; judgment cannot touch it, because He has borne it and died, there is not a single thing that could ever possibly come against me, that the blessed One did not allow to come against Him. Yea, He took it all upon Himself, and we are clean out of the Red Sea, on the other side; that life which we now live, we live by Him, reckoning ourselves dead to sin, because He died unto sin; He died not for Himself, but to sin, to enter into a new state of existence as man, and we live through Him. See the holiness of Him who was "made sin." He was taken through everything, He was thoroughly tested in every way, to try if He were in anything unwilling to obey. What if He had shrunk? But no, every evil was refused by His blessed holy nature. He learned obedience by the things He suffered. He went through everything - the scorn of the world - the power of Satan, even to the wrath of God. He was tempted in all points, like as we are, sin apart - Satan found nothing in Him. It was His meat and His drink to do His Father's will.

But it is never said He took delight in suffering for sin, but He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me"; the having His Father's countenance withdrawn from Him, when bearing the sin, He could not find delight in; but He had said before, "I delight to do my Father's will." This cup, He asked that it might pass from Him; no other cup did He ever ask to be withdrawn, and now He said, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." He would rather suffer this than that God should not be glorified.

61 We can now share the suffering for righteousness' sake, but the suffering for sin we cannot share; He made an end of that, and now He lives beyond it all in resurrection. He had the Spirit of holiness (all His life through this was true of Him), and during His life down here it was fully tested, but now we see Him alive again, "raised from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness"; therefore He is no half-Saviour, for He died unto sin, and now He liveth unto God. Therefore we are to reckon ourselves to be dead unto sin, and live unto God. This is a very practical question, for it is not that you are to say, if you have not the realisation of this, you cannot have the value of the blood; no; you must first know the value of the blood, and so have it all in Christ. The groundwork of living to Him is to be dead to sin; but we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin in Him. It can avail nothing to exhort you to live to God, if you have not the life of God in you. There is the double thing, the position in which God has set you, and the fact that people expect to see what you really are manifested.

It is not said experience yourself dead to sin, but reckon yourself; nor is it said you may reckon yourself so, when you see yourself walking with God; neither does He say, when sin does not reign in your mortal bodies, then reckon yourselves dead to sin. No; that is not grace; but the Holy Ghost draws the practical consequence from all which faith teaches. This is the only means of living godly before the world.

Righteousness, as stated in the end of chapter 5, shews me how I am enabled by it to live before God; I can only be living before the world, then, as belonging to God; so I can only be living before God in the sense of acceptance, being justified from sins by the blood, and now dead to sin, reckoning myself so, because Christ who is my life died unto sin, and I am free. Then how blessedly comes in "yield yourselves," not merely to righteousness, though it be so, but to God, never stopping short of God. If I do a right thing, and do not do it to God, all is short of its true end and character; my heart is not right in its aim and motive. I should really therefore yield myself to God. Did Christ ever do anything for Himself? No; for in the gospels we see His was a life of love. He had not time even to eat; always living for others. He not only did things which were commanded, but because they were commanded; the will of God being not only the guide, but the motive of all He did. He gave Himself for us, but a sacrifice and offering to God.

62 Well, then, if you are delivered from sin, you are delivered from yourself, and what a blessed deliverance, to have a right to have done with myself! It is the best thing in the world to have done with myself. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." If we are under the law, we are under the dominion, as well as under the curse of sin. "Oh, but," you say, "sin has dominion over me, therefore I am afraid God will not have me." What are you doing with grace? How can you dare to come before God for anything, if you are not standing in grace? It is only as you are under grace, that you can have any power over sin. If you are standing in grace, you are under favour, because God is good - you are free, but you are under grace; therefore Romans 5 comes before chapter 6, righteousness before holy liberty in life, and if you try to reverse them, you get into chapter 7.

If, because I do not love Christ as I ought, which is a higher thing than the law, I then begin to doubt whether I am His or not, I am still under law, but with a higher standard, Christ being the law, instead of the ten commandments. It is not realising grace. God loves the holy angels, but that is not properly speaking grace. Grace is love towards those who do not deserve it. Oh! but you say, if a man is delivered from the law he may become careless; the subtlety of the heart is such that it is quite true it may abuse grace. Law is given to convict of sin; man uses it to make out righteousness; grace to free man from sin, and give him power over it, and he uses it to licentiousness. But a person is not to be licentious, because he is free from the law - "ye became the servants of righteousness."

If we are led of the Spirit, we are not under the law, but we shall be led in holiness; we have liberty, and not slavery, but it is divine deliverance from the power of sin; we yield ourselves wholly to God, because we are free to do so, and if God has given you liberty, will you be a slave again to sin? But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness. What is holiness? Separation from, and abhorrence of what is evil, and for us by separation of heart to God. I should not call Adam holy, but innocent; God is holy, for God abhors evil, having full knowledge of it, and delights in good; Christ is holy; we, too, are holy, for in the new man which we have put on, we hate the evil and love the good, though we cannot do it as God does. Holiness in us must necessarily have God for its object. In walking in righteousness, the heart has to say to God obediently; the will is not in activity, the lusts not at work. The effect, through grace, is growing separation of heart to God, and acquaintance with Him. Thus you have your fruit unto holiness. What fruit does sin bear? None; it only brings to death. I walk in what is pleasing to God, and thus, the new man being active likes what God likes; and what will be the consequence of this? In the moral activities of this new life, I get separated from the influence of evil, increasing in the knowledge of God; not only actual fruits produced (though that is true, as the tree will be known by its fruits), but this practical bringing forth of internal fruit is connected with righteousness according to the will of God, and a walk with Him in the light.

63 The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; I get drawn away from the spirit of the world - this practical walking with God is connected with growth in the knowledge of God, leads me on in likeness to Him: in every-day life to have a constant reference to God's will, leads into the light practically. "If the eye be single, the whole body will be full of light." Learning God - going on with God, not merely slipping and then getting on again. It is not simply desiring to live to Christ, but our hearts should be more withdrawn from everything around, a thorough consecration of the heart, a growing up in the knowledge of God in heart and spirit; and there will be this growing up unto God, if our life be yielded to Him - servants to God - having God's will as our blessed privilege. God's own will, flowing from His nature, should be our will. What is higher or more blessed than this? It is what Christ had; Christ thought it worth while to leave heaven to do God's will, that we might be drawn up there, and made to bring forth fruit unto holiness down here.

64 There is a positive joy in pleasing God, it is perfect liberty. The gift of God is eternal life; and it is sweet to see that while grace leads us through the path of righteousness, it is still all grace. I would rather have eternal life as the gift of God, than ten lives of my own, because it is the proof of His love to me. The Lord grant that our hearts may be so grounded in grace, that we may indeed yield ourselves unto God, and be growing up in the doing of His will - remembering it is founded on reckoning ourselves dead to sin, and alive unto God; thus we live out of the world, as to separation from evil. as He is.

CHAPTER 7.

You will remember what we have been treating of up to the end of chapter 3, all under sin, and propitiation made for our sins by the precious blood of Christ. All our actual guilt dealt with; so that we cannot overrate the importance of the subject. So in chapter 4 we have seen the apostle developing the grand doctrine of the resurrection - the believing in God as the One who raised the dead. It is not merely putting away sin from the guilty person, but it is God acting on the very Person who was delivered for our offences, and for a little moment under death.

The power of this raising the dead was first exercised on the Person of Christ, here looked at as delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification - that is, the application does not go beyond the justifying effect of resurrection, the new position of Christ as delivered for our offences, and so raised again by God, a witness of the efficacy of His work, and the new place He has thus entered into as Man. Elsewhere we learn what the exercise of the same power of God is in us who believe, so that we are viewed as risen with Him, but this is Ephesian teaching. There we see the saints quickened by the Spirit of God, in the exercise of the very same divine power that raised Christ from the dead and quickened together with Christ, the same being thus associated with Christ in resurrection.

In chapter 5: 1-11, we have the results of this resurrection of Christ. The justification of the sinner by faith, in putting away sins by the blood, and a full justification through the resurrection of Christ, peace, present favour, hope of glory, rejoicing in tribulations, rejoicing in God Himself.

65 From verse 12 to end of chapter, we get our connection with the first Adam, and the Last, so that not merely individual sins are in question, but a single head involving those connected with it in the consequences of his act, and in the partaking of a life or nature derived from that head - the one constituting his family, sinners; the other, righteous. The flesh says, if one man's obedience makes me righteous, I may continue in the sin of my old nature! No: you are dead to sin, and what you are dead to, you cannot live in.

In chapter 6 the objections of the natural man to the obedience of Christ constituting us righteous are all met, as the apostle connects practical righteousness and a holy life with being dead with Christ, and the reception of a new life to God through Him as a necessary result. This important point we must pursue a little more fully. The Christ in whom we have part, as thus interested in His obedience, is Christ who has died and is risen; and if we are associated with Him, we are associated with Him in death. The public profession of Christianity was baptism to His death. We have been planted in the likeness of His death, we cannot live in what we have died to.

This treats of our continuance in sin, the principle and condition of our Adam nature. But more, if planted in the likeness of His death, we shall be of His resurrection; that is, the power of His life will shew itself in us.

He does not say we are risen with Him; which would in itself suppose full redemption, with life, and a place and condition before God. Here it is practical, a new character of life - we are to walk in newness of life. I am, then, to reckon myself dead, and alive unto God, through, or in, Jesus Christ our Lord. Yet it is not as raised with Him, but quickened by Him or in the power of His life. When quickened together with Him, He is looked at as dead, and union is involved in it; not "with" here, but we have the new life through Him. Hence, I am free, for I reckon the old nature dead.

Here comes in the second point of the chapter. To whom am I going to yield myself, if thus free in life - to sin again? God forbid. I am a slave, to use a human figure, says the apostle, to Him to whom I give myself up, not therefore surely to sin, but to God; and my members as instruments of righteousness to God. The law I am not under; that comes requiring, and really addresses itself to me as alive in the flesh. But the absence of legal requirement does not lead me to sin, my freedom is to serve God, to be obedient. Such is life through Christ.

66 But there is more: what fruit had we in the things we are now ashamed of? None; and they end in death. But now we have, in the path of obedience, fruit - fruit unto holiness. "Shew me thy way," says Moses, "that I may know thee." In the path of obedience will is not at work, lusts are not at work; we are with God, we have His mind, our hearts are separate to Him, we know Him better. Hence, in increased spiritual discernment of good and evil, and conscious knowledge of God, there is fruit unto holiness, intelligent separation of heart to Him, ever better known.

The beginning of the chapter raises the question of continuance in sin, when another's obedience makes us righteous; the end, when set free, to what we yield ourselves, and its blessed fruit, yet bringing out all as grace. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And let us remark, that while it is for righteousness and for obedience - for the new nature loves both - it is to God, we yield ourselves to God. What a blessed freedom of heart and position, to be able to give ourselves up, and up to God Himself, in the knowledge of Him! In the chapter which follows he shews how, as dead, we are not under law, which claims, and is not freedom, nor delivers at all, so as to be free to yield ourselves thus to God.

Chapter 7, then, applies this doctrine of being dead to our position in respect of the law. The practical effect of the new nature in me, if not freed from the law, is to give me such a sense of what God is, and what self is, as to make me perfectly miserable. It gives me the sense of good and evil, but good unattained, and evil to which I am a slave. But this chapter 7 shews the effect of my being dead, on my relationship with law: I am delivered from it. It is not merely that we are justified, nor yet merely that we have a new nature, but that we are delivered from the law. The apostle takes care to shew that there is no fault in the law, but that we are delivered from it.

As many as pretend to take their stand with God, as being under the law, are under the curse, "for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." It is not that the works are bad, but the effect of our being under the law puts us under the curse. It is useless for you to talk of using the law, not for justification, but for sanctification, or as a rule of life: you cannot use the law for this or that according to your own fancies. It will use its rights over you as it pleases. God is saying by the law to those who are under it, "You have not obeyed Me, and I am going to curse you." You cannot deal with God's law as you like; for if you will have God's law, you must take it with all the consequences God has attached to it.

67 There is no power whatever in the law to sanctify. It is not in the capacity of the law to sanctify a sinner. It is holy, just, and good, but when applied it must condemn the sinner. It must condemn all under it. It requires from themselves obedience to it. Nothing ever so fully established the claims of the law as God's Son dying under it. Of course, the positive effect of our being under the law is, that it of itself puts us under the curse. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.

Assuredly, the law is good; it would be blasphemy to think otherwise. But the question is, what is the lawful use of it? It is never said that it is good to be under the law, though the law is good in itself. The law is good to detect the state of the heart. Who is there that has not broken the law? Who has not lusted? Who loves God with all his heart? No; you love yourselves better; and who loves his neighbour really quite as well as himself? Not one of us; then we are all under the curse, if we are under the law. The law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient

The law is useful as a weapon, but it is one that has no handle; for if I, a man in the flesh take it to use against others, it pierces me through quite as much as those against whom I wield it. It is as sharp for me as for them. See John 8, where the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman taken in adultery; their wicked hearts thought to prove Jesus to be in the wrong, whether in condemning or saving her. If He condemned, He was no Saviour - the law could do as much; if He let off, He had set aside the law - profound wickedness! They quote the law; very well; but it is as much a law to themselves as for her; for Jesus said unto them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," "and they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one." Christ having thus condemned them all by the law, He then takes up the woman in grace, and says to her, "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more." The law was made for unrighteous persons. Why do I say to you, that you must not lust? If lust were not there, where would be the use of it? But if lust is there, what can the law do but condemn it? As a system, the law was given 2,600 years after sin came in, and what could it do but condemn? It was never meant to do anything but to condemn, to prove the heart, and to give the knowledge of sin: we should thoroughly understand what deliverance from it is, if we would be truly free in Christ - children of the free woman. It is surely useful always, as God's weapon to convince.

68 In chapter 7, the apostle applies the doctrine of death to the law, and he opens it in this way, "Know ye not that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?" It is true even of human law, and physical death. He proceeds with the analogy of husband and wife. You cannot have two husbands at one and the same time - we cannot have Christ and the law both at once. We are bound up with one or the other, as a principle, to God. The woman cannot have two husbands. "Wherefore ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ." It is not that the law has died, we are dead; the image, so far, changes, but the bond is broken; and this difference is blessed, because I hold also my old evil nature for dead, and this is by the body of Christ. In His death, as we have seen, I reckon myself dead. The law was never abrogated, and the principle of it was sanctioned as of God, and those that have sinned under it will be judged by it. Verse 6 correctly reads: "but now we are clear from the law, having died in that in which we were held." It is not then, that the law is dead, but we are dead to that by which we were held. Hence, note, death to sin goes with it. Therefore, the apostle says, we are dead to the law by the body of Christ, because Christ was made a curse for us, and died under it, as bearing the curse. But how? Why the law applied its full curse to Him, as willingly offering Himself, and He died under it.

The law as a weapon took its full effect on Christ. It did everything it possibly could, by way of its curse coming on Christ. The curse of the law was the death of the sinner, and Christ in grace was made sin for us; therefore, what could the law do more than spend its full curse on the head of Him, who was made sin for us, who died under the law? Christ was born under the law and kept it. He puts Himself under its curse, and goes through it all, and rises entirely out of it. And faith applies Christ's position to the believer. But alas! to how many Christians law is Christianity. But Christ comes as a Mediator, and takes my place, my whole cause: and faith has received all that. He thus was in my place, bringing all the good of it to myself, as if I were in His place. He is not speaking of union with Him now, as in Ephesians. I come and have my place actually and livingly in Christ, for He is the quickening Spirit, the last Adam, who comes and gives me a portion with Himself in His present position. All question of the claims of the law upon the believer has passed away in Christ, for in Christ he has died to the life and position in which he could be under it; and now I have a life in Christ after the whole question of law is settled before God. I am married to another husband, to Him who is raised from the dead.

69 The Jew is still fully under the law. The believer has died to it in Christ. Does this weaken the power of the law? No, not at all, it has all its power. See Galatians 2: 19, 20. I through the law am dead to the law. But it cannot put forth its killing power on me, if I am dead. It has killed me, and that is what delivers me, for I am in Christ, and it killed Him. The law found sin in me, and executed all its full curse upon Him, who was made sin for me; and now I can reason about it in peace, because its curse is gone, which has been fully borne by Christ.

The law was formerly the religious tie with God, but now another is our tie with God. For it is not now the law, but my new husband, Christ in resurrection; we are dead to the law by the body of Christ, that we should be married to another, even to Him that is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. And because of this new graft in the heart of the believer, God is looking for new fruit; for God has ceased to look for fruit from man's nature, it has only brought forth wild evil fruit. This was fully brought out in the cross of Christ; but now there is the new thing, on which God's mind is set. Well, then, as we cannot have the two husbands at once, so if in any wise we are under the law, we are under its curse; and what is more, you cannot get from under its curse, for you have sin in your flesh, and the law can never allow the working of sin in the flesh, it must necessarily bring out its curse. You talk of sanctification, but you are not sanctified enough for the law, for it will not let you off in any wise. You may have the desire to be good, but you have not yet owned how thoroughly bad you are. God is not looking for any good in you, for He says, "There is none that understandeth, none that seeketh, none righteous, no, not one." Now this you do not believe, for you are thinking there is some good in you, or hoping for it; you do not believe yourself to be thoroughly bad, as God says you are. And the very way God brings to our consciences what we really are, is that He often leaves us under the condemnation of the law, that it may prove to us what our true state by nature is; and when we have learnt this, we shall be glad enough to be delivered from the law.

70 Do you say, that being taken from under the law leads to licentiousness? What! do you mean to say, then, that Christ's life in us leads to licentiousness? It is true that the flesh will abuse everything; but the living power of grace, the reality, what there is in the life of Christ, cannot be believed in by those who say, that if we are not kept under the law we shall sin.

If you use the law for sanctification, you do not know yourselves; and if you think you will be holier by living under the law, it is plain you do not know what it is. I dare any one of you to be under it in God's presence. No; not one of you could stand under it in God's presence for one single moment: "In thy sight shall no man living be justified." This is the ground the law will take with you; it can take no other, for the law knows nothing of grace - it would not be law if it did. Again, I say, you are not really reduced to the sense of what it is to be brought under the law, if you present yourself to God to be judged by it, and the law always brings into judgment, and then all is over, all is lost. The law allows of no excuse. It will have a perfect righteousness in use.

But farther, when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death; that was not the fault of the law, for while there is will in man, man can never produce what God desires. The law is applied to man as he is, it does not speak of the new nature. The law says, I must have obedience to God. You say, Oh! but I have flesh in me. I know nothing of that, says the law. I hate these lusts, you reply to it. So do I, says the law, and that is the reason I am cursing you, for you have them. The law allows of no excuses, and this is its value; it would not be a perfect law if it did, for it would be a bad law if it allowed any evil or failure. Do you love God with all your heart? No; you know you do not. Then you are under the curse. Do you love your neighbour as yourself? No; I do not deny there may be much kindness of feeling, sympathy, and the like; but if your neighbour loses his fortune, do you feel it just as much as if you had lost your own? No, you do not. Then you are under the curse. The effect of a law where there is a will is that it brings out the will; for it makes a man strive against that which checks his will, but that is not the fault of the law, but the fault of sin that there is in him. It is in fallen human nature to will to do a thing that is forbidden; for instance, if a cup were turned over on the table, and at the same time it was declared that no one must know what was under it, all in the room would desire to know it immediately. Thus sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.

Now, we are delivered from the law. But do you really believe that it is deliverance? If not, you do not know what flesh is, neither do you know what holiness is. Still, the law is good of itself: that must ever be guarded. It would be blasphemy to speak ill of it as God's law. But now we are delivered from the law, having died in that wherein we were held, that we should serve in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. The law is not dead. It is still in full force against the unrighteousness of the man who is under it; but I have died under it. The law has condemned me, and spent its full curse on me in Christ.

The moment I get life in Christ, I am in partnership with Him, and partnership involves participation in all the advantages of the one with whom we are admitted partners. All my debts having been discharged withal, I am brought into the position in which Christ is. I brought nothing in. His kindness brought me in. But then I speak as a partner would of his capital, customers, and the like; so we, of being dead, alive, and the like. And now I can serve in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. We do not blame the law. God forbid! But I had not known sin, but by the law, "for when the commandment came, sin revived and I died." Thus death was brought into my soul by the knowledge of sin; but will that bring to God? Never! It shews my need of grace and a deliverer. The law says, Thou shalt not lust; then it is all over with me, for I am one with Adam, and I am full of lust. "Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence"; that is, the law suggested it, by forbidding it.

72 Suppose a person to say, "I am going to do such and such a thing," and I say, "Oh, don't do that," when self-will is at work, he desires the more to do it immediately. It is useless to try and combat with sin in this way. Yet the awakened conscience and the prohibition combine to make one know that it is wrong, and put me consciously guilty before God. The commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. This was not the fault of the commandment, but being a sinner, the commandment which should have been the ministration of life, which said, "Do this and live," necessarily became the ministration of death.

Let me return now to verse 5, which contains an important principle, from which all this sorrow flows. "When we were in the flesh": compare this with verse 9 of chapter 8, "But ye are not in the flesh" (though the flesh may be in you). Now this is the key to all that has been said, and gives it its full power. If you are dead with Christ, and have life through Him, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. The natural man, we know, is in the flesh, nor does the law quicken him. But there is a further case. Suppose him quickened and under the law: still the law takes up man in the flesh, in principle, as to his position and conscience, and condemns him in the very thing in which he stands, as to his own consciousness before God, that is, his own personal responsibilities, but according to God's intention.

Now, as regards my conscious position, I am always in the flesh, that is, as a child of Adam, on my own responsibility, till I know myself to be dead with Christ, and redeemed out of it. The being born again only makes me apprehend the spirituality of the law, the force of "Thou shalt not lust." It does not shew me sin in nature, but it gives me the knowledge of it by its first movements, and the painful discovery that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. I still do what I hate, and do not do what I would. It does not give the Spirit, which does give power, as it is the witness of liberty, but leaves a man just where he was in his responsibility, according to the first Adam's place, and says, "Keep the law, and there is life; do this, and live"; and if there be life communicated, it does not hinder the working of the flesh, which yet it still condemns, and our conscience says, rightly. Thus the fact of being quickened by God does not give deliverance, while the conscience is under the law, though such have really a part in it; but it gives through the law the deep sense of the need of deliverance, because we cannot succeed in what we really desire. The law and flesh, and sin and death, go together, they are correlative. But if I have died, the other three have lost their power over me. If dead I am clearly no longer in the flesh. I say, When we were in the flesh, the motions of sin which were by the law wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But as to our conscious place, we all are in the flesh, unless the Spirit of God by virtue of redemption dwell in us. Redemption, therefore, and the knowledge of redemption (of our having died, moreover, with Christ), is what we need for this deliverance. The apostle, while ascribing the effect to the law, yet carefully guards the law: "Was, then, that which is good made death unto me? God forbid! But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful."

73 This brings us to the main point of the chapter, not only flesh, of which we have spoken, but the operation of the law, and its effect, and that even on those who can delight in it spiritually. It works death; for we, Christians, know it is spiritual, but I as a child of Adam, am carnal, sold, that is a slave, under sin; and sin only becomes exceeding sinful by the law, working in me all manner of concupiscence. It has not, then, as such, sanctifying power. It cannot make me holy. Is not the law good then? Yes! it is holy, just, and good. But I, as in the flesh, am not subject to it.

The apostle asks two questions here: Is the law sin? No, he says; but he would not have known sin, nor had sin on his conscience, but for it. Secondly, was it made death to him? No doubt sin wrought death in him by it. And this is its use. There is the knowledge of sin, and sin becomes exceeding sinful. Note here, it is all along sin, not sins. Paul had nothing externally on his conscience; but when the law became spiritual to him, then he found lusts and sin. That is what is discovered here, it is not what we have done, but what we are, that is, in the flesh.

74 There are three things in this chapter. In the first six verses, we have the doctrine - we have died to the law by the body of Christ, and we are married to another, even Christ risen from the dead; then verses 7-13, the conclusion, with the inquiry, is it sin? does it work death? and verses 14 to the end, experience, before being delivered from the law. And here it is of importance to mark how the apostle says "I" and "we." When he says "I," he is taking us in our individual state; but when he says "we," then it is as Christians, as believers in Christ, that he is speaking of us. If he says "I," then he is beginning to deal with individual members; for if I begin to talk of myself, then I find sin in myself every day. It is a personal, practical consciousness of what is working in my heart. But that is not my place in Christ, and there is the difference. And this gives us the key to the passage. It is one who has Christian knowledge, judging what flesh is, but what it is in its effect on me in the presence of, and under the law. It is what I am in myself, that is, in the flesh. I am carnal; in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. In this part of the chapter, all is "I" and "me" therefore, which are used some thirty times; but he never speaks of Christ or of the Spirit at all until the close of the chapter. It is the experience of what the flesh is, viewed in the light of the requirements of a spiritual law, deliverance being yet unknown, and not the knowledge by faith of what I am in Christ. It is the personal experience of myself in flesh, but mixed with the clear knowledge of a Christian, who looks back at it; but not the state of a man in Christ, whom the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made free.

What is in chapter 7, then, is a man under the law. It is not simply the effect of conflict between the new and the old nature, but the effect of being under the law when both are there. It does not say that Christ is good, but takes much lower ground, and says that the law is holy, just, and good. Chapter 7 is the discussion of the law applied to the practical experience of a man, struggling to live righteously under it. A natural man cannot delight in the law of God with his heart, the new nature does; but then, according to that nature, we see he always wills what is right, yet he never does it, because he has no power. Now, do you not find that, in a vast majority of cases, what you want is power to do what is right? Well, then, the law will never give it you; for the law is as weak to give you power to do right, as it is strong to condemn you when you do wrong. The secret of it all is, that when in the flesh there is no power, and it is all self till we see that; and till Christ is known as the Deliverer from the law, it is always I, I, I, and we shall be floundering about, and only getting deeper and deeper into it, like a man in a morass, who attempting to lift one leg out, only sinks the other deeper in the mire; there may be a desire to get out, but he must have a deliverer; there is ever the desire to be this or that, or to do this or that, being thus occupied with self instead of Christ. It is true you ought to desire holiness, but how are you to get power to be holy?

75 Suppose you were, what will never be, a great deal more holy than you are, would that give you peace, when you have not been brought to a righteous standing before God in Christ? If you think your own holiness could give you peace, you are not even depending on His blood, and certainly you do not know yourselves. What then is all this struggling meant for? Just to let you know you cannot have peace in this way, nor righteousness and holiness in the flesh and by the law, that you may know yourselves, and what flesh is.

There is such a tendency in us to be thinking of these I's and me's, thus to set up self in God's place, that God says, Well, you shall have so much of self, that you shall be thoroughly glad to have done with yourself, and to this end, God often suffers us to be brought through all this, to be put under the law, with a new nature and a good will, which only leads to "O wretched man that I am," for it is only man. There is the love of good, but no power to do it, for man is as powerless as he is wicked. He is, through labouring to do, brought to cry out, "Who shall deliver?" He is looking for another to deliver him; he gives it up as a hopeless thing, yet cannot, dare not, do without it. It is not that man is to get a better self, but a deliverance from self. This may be the work of a day or years, according to circumstances; man is brought to his own level, and then God in grace can come in. Then comes thanksgiving, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

76 The only way by which man gets power is by being shewn that he has none of himself, and then he is not delivered by getting victory, and so peace, but by finding he is in Christ, has died to and is out of the flesh, and only in Christ, through whom he lives before God. Then God can give him power. "When we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Man must know God as his Saviour, before he knows Him as his strength. There must be salvation; then comes peace, and progress.

The doctrine, then, in chapter 7, is that we cannot have Christ and the law, or the two husbands at once; but, that we are dead to the law, and bound to Christ risen. The motions of sin which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But it is not the fault of the law, yet it brings death into our consciences; the law, moreover, is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin; and it serves to the renewed man to teach him by practical experience what sin really is, and makes it exceeding sinful. The fruit of the experience gained under it is, first, to know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing - not what I have done, but what I am, that is my flesh; next, to distinguish between self and sin, for I hate it, its very pressure makes me know it, thus taught of God; but, thirdly, that if I do hate it, it is too strong for me, has still power over me; a law in my members bringing me into captivity. But this powerlessness, thus learned, when I feel the evil and the burden, leads me to have done with self, and look for a deliverer; a deep and weighty lesson; but having been crucified with Christ, I am delivered; hence, here he thanks God. The doctrine he had taught already; he is now come to the point where the effect is realised. The law has spent its full curse on the person of Christ, and so on us also, as reckoned to our favour, as associated with Christ in death; now we are married to Him risen.

The law is often applied by God to bring home to the soul a sense of its powerlessness, for it is easier to learn we are sinful, than to learn that we have no power. Conscience will soon tell us we are sinful, as regards acts, but it requires this divine teaching to know the sin in our nature. We often need to be brought through struggle after struggle, before we acknowledge that in our flesh dwells no good thing, that we have no power; we may assent to it as a doctrine, but we must also experience the truth of it in the secrecy of our own souls. It is a humbling, but most profitable lesson; the difference is evident always to every experienced eye, indeed, to oneself, as to confidence in self, besides turning to the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.

77 The Lord give you to weigh well this important principle, that there is no forgiveness of sins but of grace, through Christ's death. For an evil nature, for sin - Christ having died for us, as "for sin," - is condemned in His death, and we are set free, for we have died with Him. Also remember this, that it is the discovery of what we really are, that settles the question of the law. Then we shall be glad to get rid of what only can and ought to bring a curse upon us, and to be brought into fellowship with Christ the Lord.

Outline of the Epistle to the Romans

J. N. Darby.

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{see also files 26005_7e & 26001_4e}

Romans 8.

In this well-known and remarkable chapter, we have the results of what we have been considering in what precedes. Chapter 5: 1-11 gave us the peace, present grace, and hope, which Christ's dying for our sins gave us, and what God is to us in and by it. This chapter gives our state and place before Him, and as such in the world, a kind of picture of what a Christian is.

There are three distinct parts in the detail of this chapter. First - Our state in Christ - the fruit of the grace of God. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death," brought out in its inward power and fruitfulness, and with that, sin in the flesh condemned, but in Christ's death a sacrifice for it. This part goes down to verse 13. Second. - The person and presence of the Holy Ghost in us, down to verse 29. Third. - There is a transition from the work of God inwardly, in our souls, to the outward security, what God is for us, what we count upon Him for; and that makes it so sweet, for He says, "nor any other creature." And surely any creature whatever must be inferior to God: therefore he says, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" So that from verse 29 to the end of the chapter it is God for us, the outward security, so to speak, unconnected with the work within us, that he had spoken of in the beginning of the chapter, though preserving them in divine love, in whom it is wrought, for the glory; and so entirely is this the case, that when he says, "whom he justified," he does not add, "them he also sanctified" (though that be true), but "them he also glorified."

78 I repeat again these three distinct parts in the chapter.

First. - The inward effect of the living power of the Spirit of God in our souls, down to verse 13.

Second. - The personal presence of the Holy Ghost in us, down to verse 29.

Third. - From verse 29 to the end of the chapter, all the saving power of what God is, according to His counsel, for us outwardly not looking at His work within the soul, but maintaining it to the end.

It may be noticed by some that I have said nothing on the last verse of chapter 7. "With the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." Now a godly person might suppose having come to the deliverance there is in Christ Jesus, that conflict then was all entirely over. Now that is not the case, as it is after the soul has known deliverance by Jesus Christ that this great principle clearly comes out, "with the mind I serve the law of God"; as the apostle for the same reason could tell us what that state was I cannot do this till I have known deliverance. I cannot calmly describe how one sinks, as I have said, in the morass, till I am out of it. I am crying out for help, for my safety; but this last verse states the abiding general principle (flesh remains in us after we have known deliverance), and hence the conflict to keep it down; therefore in chapter 7: 25, we see there is conflict after deliverance, as before, because there are conflicting principles of nature contradictory one to another: but we are no longer under the law after deliverance, we belong to another. Moreover, the power of the Spirit is there in us.

Thus in chapter 7 the new nature and the flesh are opposed to each other, but under law, while in Galatians 5 it is the opposition of flesh and Spirit. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh," because in the Galatians it is about those who have the Spirit, and therefore you get real power here, after the deliverance, which you do not get in Romans 7, because they have not received the Spirit. So that in Romans 7 it is not flesh lusting against the Spirit, but man under the law; whereas in Galatians it is added, if we walk in the Spirit, we are not under law. Therefore he does not say here (Rom. 7), "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit," but he cries out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me? for what I would that I do not, but what I hate that do I." But ye (that believe) are not in the flesh, but "in the Spirit." "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Therefore in Galatians, when they have got the Spirit, they are exhorted to walk in the Spirit. But if they have the Holy Ghost, why this exhortation to walk in the Spirit? Because the flesh is still there, and lusteth against the Spirit.

79 But when a man is led of the law, he is still, as to his standing and conscience, in the flesh, though, if really Christ's, he cannot be entirely holden there. But you are not led of the law. "For ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you." And if ye be led of the Spirit, ye cannot be under the law, for when really under the law, ye must be led of the flesh; for sin loses its dominion as well as its power to accuse only by our not being under law, but under grace, because the law can in no wise place us in known grace nor give the Spirit. Therefore if under it you cannot be led of the Spirit.

Now then we are prepared to see the deliverance and the extent of it, and also that it is God's deliverance. In the first three verses of this chapter we have the results of the argument in the end of chapter 5, and in chapters 6 and 7. In verse I we have the result of chapter 5, as in the last Adam, then the displacing of the Adam nature by our being dead with Christ by the power of the Spirit of life in Him. In verse 2, and in chapter 6, dead to sin, and alive to God through Christ. In verse 3, as in chapter 7, dead to the law; and then in chapter 8, no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Still he does not merely repeat what is there, but brings forward according to the full light of faith, and divine teaching, the actual condition of the believer, which that reasoning had brought him up to. That prepared the way? in contrast with the old state in Adam, and in replying to objections. This gives the actual condition of him who is delivered.

The conclusion is in the first verse by itself; "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." They have passed out of the flesh as before God and are in Christ who has died and risen again; and, having suffered for our sins, is past death and judgment and the whole condition of sin, even as having to say to it for others. There cannot therefore be condemnation for me in Him. The 'therefore' is not a consequence drawn as an argument, but a great moral result demonstrated by the condition of things developed in what precedes.

80 Verse 2 begins the full resulting view, as 'for' is constantly used by the apostle - the result of what is passing in the apostle's mind - not the proof of his textual argument. The power of life in Christ, acting in and for itself, has set me free from the law of the old man altogether; I may foolishly listen to it, but I am not, really, at all under its power. Just as the breath which God breathed into Adam's nostrils gave him power to use his previously formed body, so the power of life in Christ enables me to serve now in the liberty and power of that life. But another truth comes in to make this good - redemption and resurrection. If it were only a new nature, new in its desires, it would give the sense of responsibility, the conscience of sin, and, in the hatred of it, the knowledge that God must be against it, and thus fear and dread as regards God. This is Romans 7, and in principle, law; but what law could not do, God has sent His Son and accomplished. The blessed and sinless Lord has come, and in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, that is, as a sacrifice for sin. Thus God has condemned sin in the flesh. It has been dealt with; that which my conscience recognised, which held me in bondage, cannot accuse me any more. Its condemnation is past, but executed, and I have, in that same work of Christ, died to it. I live to God through Him that is risen, to whom I am bound. Thus verse 3 shews me that work of God which leaves me free to live in the life of verse 2. The actual requirements of the law will be thus fulfilled, because I am not under it, and I live by a life which does not do what is contrary to God's will

Under the first Adam, who brought in sin and death, there was nothing but what pressed down; while in the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, it is all lifting up, but lifting up from under the power of sin, as well as from its condemnation - perfect liberty. God has come in in delivering power; but you say, How is that? God's Son went down under death for our sins, and rose in the power of the life of the Son of God without them, and by association with Him, we are taken from under our sins, and the law of sin in the old man, into resurrection-life with Him. Thus, then, if I am dead and in Christ risen, there can be no condemnation, for I have died under God's judgment against sin, and am alive after the judgment has been executed for sin on Him who died for it. I am alive only to God in Him, not in the flesh in which sin is, the sense of sins put away; there can therefore now be no condemnation, for it is God Himself that justifies.

81 God came in in power when man was a sinner, by Christ's coming and taking us out of the old, and putting us into the new condition altogether. Therefore now it is no question of hope, where faith is simple. I do not hope anything about the cross, because it is a past thing, executed and done. We do not now trust in a promise for salvation, but in the fact, the accomplishment of a promise (of course we do trust in a promise for every day's need and deliverance, but that is quite another thing).

By one righteousness the free gift is of many offences unto justification of life. And the way He is bringing them is beyond death, and hence deliverance from the guilt of sin; but through death alive in God's presence, and thus not in the flesh, in which the power of sin was, but in Christ, and there is no condemnation there; and then the reason he gives for this, saying, "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." And here is the secret of the walk, "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," for now he enters on the power of the Spirit, but still, first, on the power of life, for what we do not get in chapter 7, we get here fully, that is, Christ and the Spirit. Having laid the foundation in virtue of what Christ has done, and having given us life, He then works in us; for this is what we find, the living power of the Spirit of life in Christ setting us, as associated with Him, out of the sphere of the power of condemnation, death, and law; because my life, as a Christian, is through Christ, so that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. It is this which introduces the doctrine of the Spirit's presence, of which this chapter now proceeds to speak. "What the law could not do" (that is, effect righteousness by keeping it in the flesh), he that walks in the Spirit does; he fulfils the law, and that is the practical result of our position, but the law could never give that power.

I desire to call attention again to verse 1: there is great force and power in it. It does not say you are not condemned, but, "there is now no condemnation," and that goes much farther; for if there is any question of sin on the conscience, the nearer we are to God, the more distressed and anxious we shall be, and therefore the soul needs this full assurance. Could anyone say there was any condemnation for Christ? and that now even, as regards His connection with us? surely not! for He is the Holy One, the accepted Man in the presence of God, having perfectly glorified Him in His work for us. Then how can there be any condemnation for the one that is in Him, for whom this work was wrought? Therefore he says, "There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." This is more than saying to them for whose sins Christ died, than if it was said on Christ Jesus - as Aaron wore the breastplate as part of the vestment, so that the names of the children of Israel were borne on his heart; and when the light of Jehovah's countenance fell on Aaron with full favour, the same light shone on the names engraved on the breast-plate. But this in Romans 8 is much more, being in the presence of God as Christ is; all the old sins gone; himself, as to the old man, dead with Christ, and he himself before God in perfect acceptance.

82 Verse 2. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The old man could never get rid of its law (law here is power, or nature acting uniformly), but here we have another man, the new man; and that has its law, and what is that? life in Christ: a law as uniform in its spirit of action as any natural law. And this law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is godliness, associating with Him out of the sphere of sin and death. The law, dealing with the old man, had no power against this law of sin and death - this contrary spirit of action; but now there is the new man, with a new law, and that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; but he does not speak of walking in the Spirit, till he has said, "no condemnation," as there is no power for walk till that question is settled. We saw in chapter 7 the desires of the new life, but working towards the law, and, therefore, no power; but here it is life itself in Christ acting in its own law.

Verse 3. "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh." The law was not in fault. It failed through the weakness of the flesh; you cannot make anything perfect out of bad materials. A man may be a very skilful workman, but if you set him to work on bad materials, all his skilfulness would prove of no avail. If it is to carve on wood, for instance, he may display the most exquisite taste and workmanship, and produce that which all must admire, and declare to be perfect, and without a blemish or a fault: but if he were to attempt to do the same on clay instead of wood, or on rotten wood, it would crumble to pieces beneath his hand, and thus all his skill would go for nothing; so the law attempting to work on the flesh only crumbles it to pieces. The law never effected the giving of righteousness. It promises life to those who keep it, but it never gives life; what man could not do, God can do. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," in dying the just for the unjust. God condemned, or, as you might say, executed sin in the flesh for us by the death of Christ. He did not die only for my sins (though that is true), but for my sin. The root of sin that is in my nature, and that which worries and distresses the heart of the sincere believer daily, is put away for faith by death, and we are dead to it, as well as those sins that are committed; for the heart says, and rightly too, that God ought to condemn it, and trembles; now how is this to be met? By God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, or as a sacrifice for sin.

83 Then He condemned sin in the flesh, and put it away in Christ's sacrifice; thus the whole thing is settled, and that which was a weight on my spirit, and a thorn in my conscience is taken away by the very way in which the condemnation has run out in all its full force, in the crucifixion of Christ. God has settled the question, condemning the sin in you, which you condemn. But where has He done it? Outside of yourself altogether; for if God sets about delivering, He does it perfectly. If Christ has died, not only for your committed sins, but your sin in the flesh, it is real through redemption: for He does not leave us under our sins, but takes them away, and forgives them. And not only this, He takes away the condemnation of sin in the nature, by God's judgment being executed on the sinless flesh of the person of His own Son. Thus sin in my flesh is judged, as well as my committed sins. This is what the heart wants to be delivered from, and what it is in conflict with every day. The tree and the fruit - the root and the sap, that harasses the heart, is settled, and that by God sending His own Son. There was the greatest grace to meet it; and the very thing that harasses you most God has provided for in sending His own Son.

84 Well, then, in verse 3, I get the result of chapter 7 met. "In that the law was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son," etc. Well, but you say, I have sin working in me still, what am I to do? Why, the very thing that distresses you is the very thing that God gave His Son for, "and for sin" and so "condemned sin in the flesh." This it is that gives the real liberty to the Christian, not liberty to sin, but liberty from sin.

Verse 4. "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." He is not taking up the old man here, but the walk; and mark, there are two principles of walk - after the flesh, and after the Spirit. Flesh is not changed; if it were, why be exhorted not to walk after it? But no; the flesh is the same as ever, but the believer now has power over it, he does not walk after it, although it be there. The flesh is in him, but he is not in the flesh. There is no excuse for a Christian walking in flesh, because the Spirit of Christ is in him. But, mark further; we all, even as believers, have the flesh, but that does not necessarily make the conscience bad, but I must have conflict with it, then it is no hindrance to communion; but if I yield to it, I get a bad conscience and lose communion, and I have to confess my sin before communion can be restored For instance, if I have pride in my nature, that does not hinder communion, if I go to my Father and plead with Him about it, and ask Him to help me to keep it down, and walk in gracious humility, to deliver me; instead of losing communion, I have communion with God about it. But if there be neglect, instead of getting strength from God to overcome it, I may go out in the morning without carefulness and get my pride wounded: for if a person does not shew me as much respect as I think he ought, then my pride comes out in some unhappy manifestation, and my conscience is defiled, and my communion with God hindered, and the Lord Himself dishonoured The very fact of my having indwelling sin is but the occasion of communion, or a barrier to it, according as I am dead to it, seeking God's face, or yield to it.

Verse 5. "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit." It is "after the Spirit." the man's condition is looked at here as spiritual. Every nature has its object, which is its "mind." There are two principles here, each having its own object; the very brute creation have their desires, the flesh its more deliberate objects. The spiritual man obeys the tastes and appetites of the Spirit instead of the flesh.

85 Verse 6. "To be carnally minded is death" (or, which is better, the mind of the flesh, and the mind of the Spirit. It is what each in its nature desires, not a state). If the flesh run its course, death, the seal of condemnation, must be upon it. "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment"; "but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace." Now we are getting the real, practical, inward thing. There are two kinds of peace - peace in the conscience, and peace in the heart. "To be spiritually-minded is life and peace." This is a far higher thing than simply peace in the conscience. It is peace in the heart and affections. The affections are at rest, and then there is the steady pursuit of things for which our consciences will not accuse us, for, delighting ourselves in the Lord, there will be peace. If you are restless and discontented in your mind, you are not at peace, you are thinking about yourselves! self has come in, so we want something for self. The Spirit turns the eye away from self towards the Lord. The things of the flesh are too small to fill the heart, and the heart likewise needs enlarging to grasp the things of the Spirit; and herein is the contrast between Ecclesiastes and Canticles on this very point.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, "There is no good thing under the sun"; "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." Why so? To him, self was seeking its own satisfaction. Here, then, was no rest, no peace; it could not be otherwise. No human object could satisfy an immortal soul, nor could a dying man get rest in what he was to die out of. Yet, when thinking of himself, it was all I, I, I, I did it, and I found it vanity; but in Canticles we see all his blessedness, because he speaks of Christ being all to him there. As it has been said, in Ecclesiastes the heart was too great for the object; in Canticles the object is too great for the heart. We want a largeness of capacity for the enjoyment of God Himself; a largeness of capacity which none but God can give and none but God can fill. Where that is, "life and peace" are. What peace and joy and communion a Christian, so walking, has in his heart! But when self comes in, even if we have assurance, there is no peace of heart, because there is always a liability to have it wounded, and if it be not, self is never content. If we know ourselves, we shall soon see that it is the central thought of every irritated heart.

86 Verse 7. "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God," etc. Now, here we get a deeper thing still than lawbreaking in itself; an unsubject will always is the spirit of hatred against Him to whom we feel we ought to be subject, and this brings on the full judgment of self; for while there may be peace of heart and peace of conscience, yet a man finds that the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for he finds that he, according to the flesh, has a will that will not be subject to God, and it would not be a will if it were. The flesh has not only desires, but a will that is not subject to the law of God, nor ever can be. The law not only declares right things, but also the authority of the Lawgiver, and that brings out the rebellion of the flesh, for the flesh immediately says, I will, and I won't. If you are guilty of breaking one commandment, you are guilty of all; for the unwillingness to submit is as much shewn in the breaking one, as in breaking all. I may require my child to obey in three things, and in two of them he may obey me, because he does not want to do otherwise; but in the third he does not obey, not liking to do it, and therefore takes his own way instead of submitting; the sin was in the will, for he was as guilty in disobeying me, as if he had disobeyed in all: "So, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God," because of the will in the members.

Verse 9. "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." Now we get the liberty, for you are not set in the flesh, but in the Spirit. This is the new nature having its source in the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost working in it. The man is not in the flesh, is not in that place, and standing, and nature before God (he does not say that flesh is not in the man), but in the Spirit; that is, all the Spirit delights in and descries, characterise the man before God, according to the nature and place he has in Christ, though there may be much failure in carrying it out. "If so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." It is not merely God working for us, but in us. We are born of the Spirit, thus we get the new nature, but then, besides the new nature we want power and liberty, and therefore, consequent on redemption and our cleansing by blood the Holy Ghost, who is God, dwells there to work in the new nature, and this gives living power. For if I have the new nature only, this gives good desires, but I do not accomplish them, as in chapter 7; but here it is "if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." It is not merely that we have new thoughts and desires, but He, who is really God, dwells in us to give us power to accomplish them.

87 It is blessed to see how he brings in God as the real practical deliverance of the man who was before in the flesh. For it does not say, "if born of the Spirit," though that is true, but, "if the Spirit of God dwell in you," a truth founded on redemption, and our being delivered by it, cleansed through Christ's blood, so that the Holy Ghost can dwell in us, the power of God Himself working in us. And if the Spirit of God works powerfully in a man, when did it first work and manifest itself in the true and perfect path of a man before God? In Christ; so this is called now the Spirit of Christ, because shewn in the fruit, in walking like Christ, in the practical formal characteristics of meekness, lowliness, gentleness, obedience, heavenly-mindedness, etc., which the Spirit took in Christ (for these were the natural found characteristics of the Spirit in Christ), but formative in us of that which was so perfectly in Him.

Verse 10. "But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin," that is, Christ being power and life in us, we take it for dead, for if alive, it only is and can be sin: "but the Spirit is life because of righteousness," its natural practical fruit; I only am and own that as life. That is, the old man in us (the body with a will is called the flesh) is as dead, shorn of will, for I judge it: but the Spirit is life, already manifesting the fruits of righteousness in us, to the praise of the glory of God.

But, farther, the body itself will be raised. "He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." How entirely are the saints separated from this world! Even their resurrection is different; the world; that is, the wicked dead, will not be raised by the Spirit of Christ, but the just will be raised by His Spirit, for He dwells in them. "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you" (here is the link), you will be raised because of the same Spirit dwelling in you. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." Thus we have three aspects of the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of God contrasted with the flesh; the Spirit of Christ as characteristic of our walk in the world; and the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus, pledge of our resurrection - the triple character of the Spirit of God as given to the Christian. At the end of verse 11 we get the answer to verse 24, of chapter 7, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Here there is full deliverance, not only for the soul now, but for the body also. "He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." We shall be brought up to the very image of Christ; even our mortal bodies shall be fashioned like unto His glorious body. The liberty of glory is contrasted with the liberty of grace. Now we are in the liberty of grace, then in the liberty of the glory, the creature being sharer in the latter.

88 In speaking of the Spirit of God, He is spoken of up to verse 11 as being life, and after that as distinct from one's life in Christ, as a present Person, as dwelling in us and witnessing with our spirit. See how strikingly these two points of view are brought together in verse 27. It attributes the thoughts and feelings which God searches out to my heart, because it is in my heart that the Spirit works, but it goes on to the source: in my heart it finds the mind of the Spirit according to the doctrine of verses 5-7, which is wrought by the Holy Ghost; and lastly, it is the Holy Ghost Himself who makes intercession in the saints. It is me, because it is wrought in my new nature; but as to the power that wrought it, it is not me. The Holy Ghost does it in and by me. It is me as to the act, but it is He as to the source. We have the new nature given to us, and the Spirit is the source, nor is the stream separated from it; this is the teaching up to verse 11; but the Holy Ghost dwells in us. Well, a groan comes out, and I may not understand what to ask for, but through the Holy Ghost my groan is according to the mind of the Spirit, by the Spirit of God which is in me; but this brings in the last truth referred to, His intercession. It is the Spirit Himself in me; He makes intercession according to God, and "God that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit." It is attributed to my heart, but to Him also that produced it. It is me, and at the same time it is the Holy Ghost. I have anticipated in my reference to this verse, because it made plain the doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit of God. It is a sweet thing to know that the Searcher of hearts finds the Spirit's mind and intercession in us, in place of sin and the flesh.

89 We will now open out the doctrine itself. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit." The Spirit is life, as we have seen, but we must understand that we are sealed after we have believed. It will be said, "Yet, I cannot believe without the Spirit." Most true, it is His work, we are born of God by His quickening power, through the word, whence also it is by faith; but, then, because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost is a very different thing from the quickening power of the Spirit. The Old Testament saints were the subjects of this quickening power of the Spirit, but the indwelling of the Holy Ghost could not be till Jesus was glorified. Instances are given in the Acts, where there was an interval in time to make us sensible of the distinction of the two.

Well, there is a new nature, but there is neither strength nor power in it. We cannot act without the Spirit. The very characteristics of the new nature are dependence and obedience, and the Holy Ghost is the power in answer to this dependence, and hence it is we are led by the Spirit. The Spirit does not lead the flesh, but it teaches me to reckon it dead, and to mortify my members upon earth. Yet it is the whole man He leads, for I do not call the flesh me, if I reckon myself dead, but that is "if the Spirit of God dwell in you."

Then we are temples of the Holy Ghost, which is in us, which we have of God. A temple is that in which God dwells, and my body is this temple. Surely this is a most solemn motive against sin, for how can I go and defile God's temple? In John 14: 16 the Lord says, "I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." So also in John 16: 7, He says, "It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you." The first Comforter, Christ, did not dwell, that is, abide with them; He had to go away, and further, He was not in them, but the other Comforter was, as He said, to dwell or abide with them, and should be in them. Christ was with them and went away; but the Holy Ghost, the other Comforter, was to be in them, and abide for ever. There is no strength in us to give power to the truth we receive, or to enjoy the things we have believed. But the Holy Ghost not only presents the things of Christ to us, but at the same time enables us to enjoy them, and to walk in the power of them.

90 In 1 Corinthians 2: 12-14 we find three things about the Spirit. First, divine instruction received by the Spirit's revelation to the vessel of truth, verse 12, "Now we have received." Second, communicated to others by the Spirit, v. 13, "Which things also we speak." Third, spiritual capacity to discern; it also gives the truth living power in the souls of those who are taught, verse 14, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God." There is a solemn truth connected with this, namely, that the Comforter is really come, for He could not come till Jesus was glorified; and if the Holy Ghost is dwelling in us, we are called to walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Being born of God, and sprinkled with the redeeming blood of Christ, we get the Spirit indwelling. This blood is the foundation of His presence, for by it we are clean, and He can dwell there, the seal and witness of the value of Christ's work.

The Spirit was abundantly prophesied of in Ezekiel and Isaiah: "I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed." Thus to the Jews there were abundant promises that there should be the pouring out of the Spirit; and the Spirit was the quickener of every saint in the Old Testament times: but now there is another thing, for the Holy Ghost is really given to us; and He could not be given till redemption was fully accomplished. It was only promised till then, as Israel well knew; but it was promised, and therefore Nicodemus ought to have known that, "except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." But there is another thing, besides being born again, upon the coming down of the Holy Ghost, the seal was upon the value of Christ's work. The seal was not put upon what we had done (our real fruits are the fruits of the Spirit, when we already have it), but upon what Christ did. The Lord's own anointing, when baptized, was the seal to His personal perfectness - "Him hath God the Father sealed." But then, could He put the Holy Ghost on me? No; this would be sealing the flesh; but on Him: "After that ye believed, ye were sealed."

The Holy Ghost was also given to testify of Christ's glory as the risen Man. In Acts 2: 33 we see Christ taking the place of the Head of the body, the church, at the right hand of God, having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost. Thus we see the gift of the Holy Ghost was entirely dependent on Christ taking His place at the right hand of God, as we read in John 15: 26, "Whom I will send unto you from the Father"; and the effect of this was felt in the apostles. There was a total difference in them before and after Pentecost. They then preached Jesus crucified. Were they afraid? No; Peter goes and charges those who had denied Him with being guilty of a damning sin, when Peter had committed the same in a much worse way himself (having been His companion) in denying Him; and how could he do this? His own conscience was purged, for Christ had died in the interval, and the Holy Ghost had been given, and thus he, who before followed trembling (Mark 10: 32), had power now; for he had none before. As it is said, "When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, they marvelled," Acts 4: 13. I am not speaking of miracles, the mighty signs and wonders that were wrought by the power of the Spirit of God (Rom. 15: 19), but of the boldness in which the apostles spake after that they received the Holy Ghost. As we see all through the Acts, the boldness in which the apostles spake and acted was not the boldness of the flesh, but that of the Spirit of God in them.

We have a beautiful type in Aaron (looked at as Christ) who was anointed without blood. But the sons of Aaron (the church) must be sprinkled with the blood and oil. So the leper was first sprinkled with blood, and then over that with oil. Christ was anointed down here, which was the seal of His own personal perfection before the blood had been shed. But we, when we believe the atonement, are anointed and sealed, because of, and as a testimony to, the value of His work; "He that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointeth us, is God." Christ sends the Holy Ghost, and the Father sends the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is in us as the Spirit of adoption. The effect is to connect us with all the glory into which Christ will bring His church, and to associate us with Him now in the place where He is in the presence of the Father, and this as the children of the Father. And this truth, that the Spirit is sent to us and in us, gives the character of our walk down here.

We are to mind the things of the Spirit; and what are they? Anything in this world? No, nothing, if it be not His service there. "He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you." He gives us the knowledge of past redemption, present joy and peace, and future glory. The Holy Ghost teaches us the glory of the cross after we have known its saving power, for then we are inside the cross. Whatever is morally glorious: you see it in the cross - love, obedience, righteousness, holiness; law, and whatever was morally bad, met there too, condemnation, sin, and death. God and sin met together in the person of Christ on the cross, but in the way of redemption for us, while it enhances the iniquity of sin.

92 When I have found peace, then I can say, "Now is the Son of man glorified" (and so He ought to be), and now He has accomplished that work, and is gone on high, and we have glory in Him; and surely there is no joy like that into which we are brought, the joy of knowing that, in that act of deepest suffering for my salvation, Christ and God were most fully glorified. If Christ suffered all that agony for my sin and vileness, surely there never was a moment in which God could look on Him with greater delight than this. And I have now got all the effect of this; I am the fruit of the travail of Christ's soul. The light of God's love rests upon Christ Himself, and we are in Him - "I am in my Father, ye in me, and I in you." We have the blessing of union with Him now, and there is but one thing more - to be with Him for ever. The Comforter is the perpetual remembrancer of that word, "So shall we ever be with the Lord." The church is to be brought to Christ, as Eliezer went to fetch Rebekah to Isaac; and as all along the road he was telling her of the one to whom she was going, just so the Holy Ghost is leading us in the way, the cross being the starting-point, giving the whole character of the road all along the journey answering to it, while He is telling us of the Father's house, and place of the heavenly Bridegroom.

There may be trial in the way, but what is all that but dung and dross to the heart whose affections are on Christ? Poor Rebekah, if she thought of her father's house, where was she? In the wilderness, with a stranger, and an uncertain future; but if she thought of what was before her, then it was all joy and certainty as to the future. The cross is the very commencement of this journey, as separating us from the world, and if we would know the Spirit's power in our souls, we must keep in the narrow path of separation from the world all the journey through. Do not make the wilderness the object of your hearts (Israel did this); or at least do not rest in it. You may desire earthly good, and you may get leanness into your soul: "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die"; but let our walk down here be like Paul's, "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." Let us be so pressing on to the glory, that everything in this world may be things behind us, that we have left, turning our back on. We are going to Christ, and He will present us to Himself, and to the Father, without blemish and without spot, for He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.

93 We have before noticed that there are three parts in this chapter - three distinct subjects. First, the work of the Spirit of God in us, the effect produced in ourselves, as the power of life, even to the resurrection of the body; that it was the fruit and operation of God's Spirit in us extending to the resurrection. Second, it is not only the effect that is produced in living power in us by the Holy Ghost, but the presence of the Holy Ghost Himself in us, distinguishing between that which is born of the Spirit and the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Third, what God is for us in His outward operations. The moral effect of this is, not only that God has worked in me by the Spirit and thereby put me in a certain position, but that the Holy Ghost is with me in that position; what God is for me also, so as to secure and bless him in whom He has wrought. It is not merely that a certain work is wrought in me, but God is in me, for me, and with me. Thus, first, there is that which God has done with me; second, what God is in me; and third, what God is for me.

This last is brought out at the end of the chapter: what God is for man, and not what man is for God, but man looked at as a saint; for when the apostle has brought distinctly out what man is, then he brings out what God is for man, such as he is, as a sinner, summed up in chapter 5; and then what the position of the saint is in his life and trials, and God in and for him as such. Therefore God is fully set forth, that our hearts may rest in what He is, and not in what we are. The rejection of God's Son proved what man is; but those who believe rest on what grace is, as we saw at the end of chapter 5; and now, made alive to God, they know their position with God according to His predestinating power, and the glory to come. Faith rests on what God is, and on what God has done, as shewing what He is withal; God has quickened us and sanctified us, and we have a place with God through this, but what is wrought in me is not the object of faith: faith rests on what God is, as thus revealed in His word, which is our warrant for believing.*

{*Hence, in a certain sense, chapter 5 goes beyond chapter 8, as revealing what God is in Himself to a sinner, not what we are made before Him.}

94 The witness in power is the Holy Ghost. It is not only believing that the Spirit quickens, but that we stand before God in the Spirit according to the place He has given us actually in Christ, and that if we believe in what God has done, in that He has quickened the dead, and brought into His presence with power Him who had gone down under death for our sins, when everything was against us (for sin can nowhere be shewn out as it was on the cross, when He who hung there was made sin and a curse for us), and that we know He is now the very delight of God - a man in heaven - not only as to His person, but His work, we are brought thus to see what sinners we were - lost sinners - transgressors from the womb; but at the same time, to see His grace which has wrought deliverance, and that we are placed in Him who is thus accepted. And God has so brought out and applied to our hearts all this grace, that we can now say, "God is for us," for this is the great general truth at the end of chapter 8; the Holy Ghost giving us to understand it by bringing it home to our hearts, in the conviction of what we are in ourselves, and in Christ; what God is, and that He is for us, "What shall we say to these things? if God be for us, who can be against us?"

The testimony of the gospel always comes to convince of sin, but at the same time to speak of His grace - what God is for us; but then, it must be received by faith, for we have no power in ourselves to enjoy God, and it would never be properly faith if it were not by God's power, as it is said, "We are kept by the power of God through faith," but why through faith? Because faith leads my soul into the understanding of His love. Thus leading the heart to trust in Him, and not in ourselves, in a way that makes us understand and prize what God is (not in the heart's love to Him, but in His love to it), as known in all the dealings of His grace, keeping us by His power; not keeping as we keep a precious jewel, which is unintelligent and uninterested in all our care, but as creating an answer in our hearts to what He does. His power never fails: we are kept by that, but it is through faith, that we may have the enjoyment of it, as being brought to delight ourselves in Him, by whom we are kept.

95 In the three things brought out in this chapter, we have, first, the new nature, which has spiritual faculties, capable of enjoying God; as a child, for instance, has the capacity of enjoying its relationship to the parent, but must also be in the relationship to have the affection in exercise; so we are conscious of our place through redemption, but then we want power, because the new nature is a dependent nature. The first man sought to be independent, and so became the slave of the devil; the second man did nothing of Himself, He came to obey - He took the form of a servant. It is the same place we are in, and having a dependent nature, we want power as we have seen in chapter 7, where there is a new nature "delighting in the law of God after the inward man," but neither object nor power; for we must have something to love, and then power to love it, for in chapter 7 the soul has neither Christ nor the Holy Ghost till the end of it, when he finds the Lord Jesus Christ, and then exclaims, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and because he can say, "There is no condemnation." Now, the soul has got an object, and it has got power, Christ revealing the Father and the Spirit, and it is no longer a question of conscience. It is not that he is without a conscience, but his conscience is purged by the blood of Jesus, and then there is the power of the Spirit of God in him, and having the new nature, there is the development of God's things in us, by the power of the Holy Ghost; for the Holy Ghost takes of the things of Christ and shews them to us, and is the power in us also to understand them, as the Lord said, "He shall take of mine and shew it unto you," and "shall be in you."

It is the presence of the Holy Ghost with a soul that has been quickened and knows redemption, having submitted to the righteousness of God, and not as quickening the soul at conversion, which is the subject here; nor is it the Spirit, as He is with the church, which truth is taught in another place, but it is the presence of the Holy Ghost in man, in the believer; as the great subject of the epistle to the Romans is, how God can be just and the justifier of the sinner, and man stand accepted before Him - the relation of an individual soul with God. Therefore the great fundamental truth is what man is for God, and what God is for man, and lastly, what through grace man becomes before God. In the early chapters we saw what man in his natural state is for God; in chapter 5 what God is for the sinner; but in chapter 8 what man is in Christ is brought out, and thus what God is for him, as in this place - "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God"; he does not say as many as are quickened by the Spirit, though that is true, for they must be quickened, before they can be led by the Spirit. They are also sealed; then again, if they are led by the Spirit they are not under the law, but, being sons of God, they are led by the Spirit of God For the Christian is looked at here in his own place, according to the word. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

96 In John's Gospel we see, as truly as the Son was sent from heaven, so truly was the Holy Ghost sent from heaven; the Father sent the Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Holy Ghost; the office of the Holy Ghost is quite distinct from the work of the Son come in the flesh. We will now refer to some passages in John's Gospel, that we may understand it. In chapter 16: 7, He says, "It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart, I will send him unto you" - a living mighty agent, God the Spirit, who comes down and dwells with you, and is in you, and He remains. Christ must go away, but He shall abide with us, and be in us.

Of the Holy Ghost the Lord says, "whom the Father will send in my name," and again, "whom I will send from the Father"; that is, Christ obtains it for us, and the Comforter comes from the Father to put us, through that name, in relationship with the Father; then secondly, Christ sends Him from His Father, and the Holy Ghost comes to tell us all the glory into which Christ has entered as Man. But, that we may be distinct and clear upon the subject, we will look at John 14: 16. "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever"; and then, verse 17, "for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you"; and then, in verse 20, "At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The Holy Ghost in thus coming down gives to the believer the consciousness of being in Christ, and His being in them, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." The disciples ought to have known that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him, as He said, Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? (v. 10). But they could not know while He was on the earth of the fulfilment of these words, "ye in me, and I in you." As He says, "At that day ye shall know," etc.; then in verse 26, "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name." Here we have the Father sending in the Lord's name; and in chapter 15: 26, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father"; and then in chapter 16: 13, "when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he shall shew you things to come."

97 Here, then, in John 16 we get the fulfilment of this great promise, that the Holy Ghost was to come down to reveal Christ, and to abide for ever; for here the Holy Ghost is looked at as upon the earth, telling of the things He has heard, taking of the things of Christ, and shewing them unto us; thus carrying on the whole work in our hearts, and then that He is to abide with us for ever: for the efficacy of Christ's work must fail, God must fail, before the Holy Ghost could be taken away, as it is in virtue of our being sprinkled with the blood of Christ, that the Holy Ghost is given. The Holy Ghost is in us, in virtue of the work of Christ, being the great testimony of God's estimate of the value of the blood of Christ, and of the glorification of the Man Jesus. We may grieve Him, and hinder His operations in us (alas! we do grieve Him), nevertheless, that cannot drive Him from us, as His presence in the individual is not in consequence of the condition of the individual, but in virtue of the blood of Christ, and that must be given up before the Holy Ghost could be removed; for the anointing oil, when the leper was cleansed, was put upon the blood; as Peter also teaches when he says, 1 Peter 1: 12, "By them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." The Holy Ghost came down upon the person of the Lord when He was upon earth at His baptism, as a seal of His personal perfection, "him hath God the Father sealed"; but when He ascended up on high He received it for others (Acts 2: 33), and therefore promised (Acts 1: 5), "Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence"; which actually came to pass at Pentecost. See Acts 2. So also in John 7: 39, "This spake he of the Spirit," which, in virtue of redemption, they were to receive, "for the Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified."

98 In Acts 19: 2, Paul asks, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" They answer, "We have not yet heard whether the Holy Ghost is come." They were John's disciples, and therefore it was not that they questioned the existence of the Holy Ghost, for indeed, every thoughtful Jew acknowledged the Holy Ghost as spoken of by the prophets; but they had not heard whether the Holy Ghost had come in power, as spoken of in John 7; and according to the words of John the Baptist: "He shall baptise with the Holy Ghost," Matt. 3: 11. So again in Galatians, "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father"; and in Ephesians, "After that ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." In these two passages we have the same truth taught, having got redemption through His blood, they have the Holy Ghost as the seal and the earnest of the inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession.

The Holy Ghost was obtained by the work of Christ, and given to those who believe in consequence of faith, the seal of God set on those who believe in that work. Being sprinkled by that blood we can be sealed; the blood being that on which the anointing of oil comes,* as the seal of that work, which God had wrought in Christ, and the earnest of the glory to come; while the soul rests on that work of which the Holy Ghost is the seal. The Holy Ghost is the strength of fellowship in two ways, giving us first the knowledge of present favour, as adopted children; and secondly, of our union with Christ, our forming part of the body or bride of Christ. Thus we have seen redemption accomplished; the present work of the Holy Ghost in us; and glory in prospect. And if you are to bear fruit, you must be both quickened, and have the Holy Ghost; for others must see the fruit by my life, because they cannot see the faith.

{*This refers to the cleansing of the Leper. In the consecration of priests: the oil and blood were sprinkled together on Aaron, his sons, and their garments, with him, after the blood was put on the ear, the hand, and the foot.}

99 In 2 Corinthians 1: 20, 21, "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." And mark the power and blessing of these two little words, "by us." Now, could this be said of us unless we had the Holy Ghost giving us the blessed knowledge and consciousness of our place? "Now he which establisheth us with you, in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts," v. 22. He hath planted us in Christ, and hath anointed us, and hath sealed us for the day of redemption, and given the earnest of it in our hearts.

In verses 15 and 16 of Romans 8, he says, "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." In these two verses the blessed Comforter, who dwells in us, associates Himself with us, to witness with our spirit that we are the children of God; working in our hearts, and creating in us the confidence and proper affections of a child to the Father. As the Holy Ghost in me is the power by which I cry, Abba, Father; so He also reveals the object that attracts my best affections.

The Holy Ghost always reasons downwards, from God to man, for He reveals what God is, and therefore He says, "If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ." If God has made you His children, will He leave you without an inheritance? In truth He will not; but the moment you bring God in, then you get the consequences down here. For if you get all this glory, you must have the cross here, for we do not have a half Christ; "If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together": and mark what stress he lays on the word with, "joint-heirs with Christ," "suffer with Christ," "glorified with him." It is thought by some to be a great attainment to see the union of Christ and His church, but it was living association with Christ that was presented in the words, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" And Saul was arrested and converted along with the revelation of Jesus Himself, by the knowledge of the fact that those whom he was persecuting were the members of Christ's body. It could not be said of Paul, "Ye have been with me from the beginning," for Paul saw the Lord only in glory, and therefore he says, he did not know Christ after the flesh.

100 Well, then, you are members of Christ's body, of His flesh, and of His bones; therefore you must have His portion down here, as well as up there. If we have fellowship with Him in the whole spirit and tone of our minds, we must suffer as Christ did in passing through this world, seeing the sin and misery all around us, or it may be sorrow on account of the state of the church. All this must make one go through the world as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; not merely suffering for Him, though that is the highest condition, no doubt, but suffering with Him; it is the necessary consequence of being associated with Christ.

The world's joy can have no place in our hearts, if walking in fellowship with Christ, for if we go on with the world, Christ will not accompany us there. Jesus groaned down here, and deeply, in spirit, and so do we, as part, too, as regards our bodies, of the groaning creation; but does this set aside the word of our Lord, "that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves?" No, not in the least; for there is still joy by reason of the effect of God's presence in the soul, as an earnest withal of the inheritance of glory, which makes me say, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed to us." But, then, the effect of the blessedness of God's presence gives a deep and sorrowful sense of God's absence from those around, and of the passions and miseries which sin has brought in; every misery becomes a groan in my heart, every sorrow presses on my spirit, because it is a sign how sin has come in, and has ruined all man's natural blessings, and made him more than a stranger to all spiritual ones.

The more my heart understands what God's presence is, the more deeply my soul will understand the place the creature has got into. What a wonderful position this puts us into, one of association with God! When Christ passed through the world, did He screen Himself from sorrows? No, not even from death: "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels"; But did He do it? No; He went through the midst of it - suffered it all. He ate and drank with publicans and sinners; He went to the grave of Lazarus, and groaned, because He saw and felt the power of death on all around. But He passed through it all in the power of love. As to the condition of the world, we are glad in one sense, that as it is, it is not God's, though we know it will be by-and-by, when taken out of the hands of the usurper. It would be too sorrowful to think it was God's now.

101 Verse 23. "Even we ourselves groan within ourselves." As far as the body is concerned, I am connected with the creation, and therefore subject to vanity, sickness, and death: but still, I have the Holy Ghost in me, and He groans in me, so that my groaning is not selfishness, but groaning in a divine way, according to God, which is the second effect of the power of the Holy Ghost in me. He bears witness to what we are, first, as children and heirs; and then, by the power of the Holy Ghost, I have a sense of the vanity of this perishing world and everything in it. Christ suffered for righteousness as well as for sin. In the first kind, we are called to have fellowship with Him. It is that which He endured through the whole of His course down here. The latter suffering, for sin, we could have no part in; this He endured alone upon the cross, as that beautiful passage in Peter suggests, "For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing than for evil doing. For Christ hath also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God."

But our part in sorrow here flows thus also from the sense of the subjection of all around us to vanity and the bondage of corruption. It is a very sorrowful thought. We do not hear that Jesus ever smiled. Weep He did, He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. But it was because He was heavenly, and love, yet also because He was a man. And we have to remember that in us this feeling flows, when a right one, from the same causes. We are partakers of the divine nature by exceeding great and precious promises; the Spirit is life as the spring to the rill, and the Spirit of God dwells in us, making us know we are sons and heirs of God. This we have seen: as heirs, we shall be in glory like Christ, and the creation is waiting for our manifestation, for it was not by its will it was subjected, but through us. But to the groaning creation we are united in our bodies; we draw our sense of the sorrow from more than our being lookers on, and we feel for it from more than selfish grief, we feel for it through the Holy Ghost according to God. Our groans are well the groans of our hearts, but they are the mind of the Spirit, and more, the groans of the Spirit in us, a divine sense of the sorrow around us, yet in the sympathy of a human heart, the mind, too, of the Spirit as acting thus in man. Thus when God searches the heart, He finds my heart with divinely given feelings, and this He loves; the mind of the Spirit, which meets His holy requirements, is acceptable to Him, and the intercession of the Spirit itself for the saints. But it does not follow that our intelligence can estimate the evil or know a remedy, yea, till Christ comes, there may not be a remedy possible. But the heart is formed after God's in respect of the need and sorrow, and this is very precious.

102 As regards ourselves, it leads to another clear judgment and consciousness as to our position. Our portion we have not, but our blessed apprehension of it by the Spirit, is what gives us the clear consciousness of the existing evil and sorrow, but then it gives us also the consciousness, that, while yet having it all only in hope, we await only the redemption of our body to be in our glorious estate. There is no doubt as to our title, no question as to the salvation of our souls, no uncertainty as to the possession of what we hope for. We do not see it, that is the reason we hope, not because it is doubtful. It rests on God's word, and Christ's work, and we have the seal and earnest of the Spirit. Further, the power of evil does not give weariness or impatience: we wait with patience for that we do not see, because it is settled; of that patience we have need. Meanwhile, as we have seen, the Spirit helps our infirmities; and this brings out another glorious and precious truth, and ground of assurance.

We have seen the spiritual man, feeling according to God the burden of corruption on creation, but not knowing what to ask as a remedy: yet if we do not know what to ask for, we do know that for those that love God all things work together for good, even for those who are called according to His purpose. For we have now brought before us not the state of things through sin, but the purpose of God as regards the objects of that purpose, in the midst of that state of things, and in bringing them to glory.

In general the epistle to the Romans deals with man's responsibility, and God's blessed remedy in Christ, but here the epistle rises up to the purpose of God formed before the responsibility began; it reaches to the point where that to the Ephesians begins. The saints are called according to this purpose. Compare Titus 1: 1, 2; and 2 Tim. 1: 9. God foreknew these persons and predestinated them to a state equally in His purpose, for the glory of Christ, namely, to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Wonderful place! but the place of God's counsels for them, who works all things after the counsels of His own will, not relative to anything that we are, save as connected with Christ's becoming a man; but the fruit of God's will, so that we measure it by that. But how blessed for us, not only as intrinsic glory, but as likeness to, and association with, Christ, the Son of God! He is the firstborn among many brethren. Such is the counsel of God - to associate us with Christ, in the place of sons, and conform us to the image of Him, the firstborn. Our responsibility was as children of the first Adam; the purpose of God concerning us in connection with the last Adam. This is a glorious and blessed truth. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Being in this place, we are, then, anew responsible to shew forth the life of Christ, and glorify Him; but this is founded on the possession of life. This purpose God pursues and accomplishes. Whom He has predestinated to this, He calls; whom He calls, He justifies: whom He justifies, He glorifies. He carries it on to the end. We have nothing here of sanctifying.

103 The true Christian life, the life of the Spirit, has been fully expounded in the early part of the chapter. Here it is God for us, not His living work in us, nor the presence of the Holy Ghost; these are the two subjects treated in the previous part of the chapter. We are now at the third part - God for us, His securing those thus quickened according to His purpose, from purpose before the world on to glory, the actual introduction to blessing being by God's own calling: all is the blessed fruit of God's being for us. This is the triumphant question of the apostle, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" The great and blessed truth, the result of all his inquiries and discussions, which have led him up from the responsibility of man through the activity of God in grace, bringing him out of the condition man was responsible in

(while effectually meeting that responsibility by the precious work of Christ, maintaining it, but clearing us of our guilt) up to the purpose of God as to us, and thus closing with the blessed testimony that God is for us. But this last is also fully and beautifully developed. First, we have the great principle, and the absolute security it affords: "If God be for us, who can be against us?" His being for us precludes the thought of any being against us to any real effect.

104 But further - God being for us is considered, in giving, in justifying, and in all that, as difficulty or danger, might seem to hem our way, or separate us from His love. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" See how again, as remarked elsewhere, the Spirit reasons from what God is and has done, to consequent blessing to us, not from us to God. That is true in judgment; but in grace it is from God in all its fruits to us. He has not spared His Son, to give everything else, is, after that, a simple thing.

Next, as to accusation. We are God's elect: who shall lay anything to our charge? God will not be in fault in choosing us for blessing. It is He Himself that justifies (not here, note, justified in His sight, or before Him); but He justifies, who shall condemn? Little matter if anybody does. But then, as to the assurance of love in spite of the difficulties and dangers in the way, all is met, and the very witness of love is in it. It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from His love? He has considered our whole case, gone Himself into what was needed for it, but has triumphed, and is now risen, and sits as Man at the right hand of God, the sure guarantee of the full and blessed result, and is now occupied with carrying on our cause on high. He has gone down into the depths for us, He is at God's right hand securing all for us; He enters now into all our case here in intercession.

What is to separate us from His love? Difficulties there may and will be, but we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved us; they are but the occasion of a sure display of His faithfulness and love who has entered into all, and now lives for us. Death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, or depth, all may be passed in review; creatures high and low, death, or life, which may seem ever so dangerous; but all creatures, or whatever may befall us, cannot separate from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord; creatures are less in Dower. are nothing compared with Him; death is the proof of His love, and of our being with Him, in life, living by Him, because He lives.

105 Divine love is above all, or proved in all, and in one who has shewn it in perfect interest in us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The triumphant security of God being for us, a God who gives His own Son, who justifies; and who shall condemn? A love almighty as God's, but manifested in human sorrows, in Jesus, yet in Jesus the Overcomer, to whom all is subjected: such is the source and security of blessing which keeps and enriches our hope. God is for us. This closes the doctrinal part of the epistle; a supplementary instruction was needed and is given, before the apostle turns to practical exhortation,

Romans 9-11.

What about the promises made to the Jews, that is, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? That the Jews had broken the law, and were guilty, was plain enough - guilty beyond the Gentiles: their mouth was stopped. But God's mouth had spoken: what about His promises? "No difference" could not be said there; faithfulness could not be wanting on His part. This subject is now treated: how to reconcile the "no difference" doctrine, and special promises on God's part to the Jews. Chapter 9, beginning with the deepest expression of heart interest in God's people, of whom he was himself one, treats the question of Israel's hereditary claim, and the admission of the Gentiles to blessing. Chapter 10 tells how Israel lost the blessing, and the plain testimonies of the prophets as to it. Chapter 11 presents the question: is their present rejection final? and shews it is not, and that they will be re-established as a nation.

In the beginning of chapter 9 the apostle recalls carefully all the privileges of the beloved people. Far from him was the wish to diminish their importance, or deny God's delight in them; so far from indifference, in his ardent heart he had loved them as much as Moses, who would have been blotted out of God's book rather than not see them forgiven. All divinely conferred privileges were really theirs: and it was not that the word of God had taken none effect; but all were not Israel who were of Israel; nor, because they were the natural seed of Abraham, were they all children, that is, according to promise. And here he has just glided, in admitting their privileges, into the heart of his whole argument. The natural seed were not heirs, because they were the natural seed. If that were so, the question was really solved. And this he goes on to prove. Ishmael was the natural seed, but sovereign grace maintained its prerogative. In Isaac shall thy seed be called; but the Jewish objector might say, Yes, but Hagar was a slave, and Ishmael slave-born. Well, but take Esau and Jacob of one mother, that is an unexceptionable case. Yet Jacob was chosen, not Esau, and it was of pure grace, before they had done good or evil. The circumstances were natural, but the principle, pure sovereign grace, is to set aside the national pretensions of the Jews. They must let in Ishmaelites and Edomites, or allow God to be sovereign.

106 Then they would, as now, accuse God of unrighteousness. His answer is, sovereign mercy alone has spared you. If God had not retreated into His own sovereignty, and said, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, all Israel, save Moses or Joshua, would have been cut off at Sinai. They existed as a people only by virtue of this sovereignty. That sovereignty God would now use in favour of Gentiles, whom He called along with Jews. As to the general question, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. He hardened, when He saw fit to display judgment, those who despised Him. And if one demanded, why He yet then found fault? The answer is, You judge God! Who are you, a man, to reply to Him, and find fault with God?

There is, then, the unqualified assertion of God's power to make vessels of dishonour, if He pleased, but careful avoidance of the thought that He had made any. What if He had borne with vessels fitted to destruction, all ready for it; but made known the riches of His glory to vessels He had afore prepared for mercy? There is the maintenance of God's absolute prerogative. No reasoning allowed to weaken, or even call in question, the patience of God, with vessels fitted for destruction; and purposes of glory, for which God prepares the vessels of mercy. Thus the claim of Israel to hereditary privileges - to the exclusion of the Gentiles, was barred. It involved the admission of those He would not hear of, races forbidden to enter to the tenth generation; and shewing also, that they were excluded themselves, if they did not admit the absolute sovereignty of God. The apostle applies this sovereignty to the call of the Gentiles along with the remnant of Israel, confirming his doctrine.

107 From verse 27 he confirms this reasoning by positive quotations from the prophets. Esaias declared that a remnant should be saved, that, if a very small one had not been left, Israel would have been as Sodom and Gomorrah; and shews the real cause of this. They had sought indeed righteousness, but it was by their own works, and rejected Christ, stumbling at the stumbling-stone, as it was written: while the Gentiles, who sought it not, had come in under mercy, for whosoever believed in Him would not be ashamed. Into this subject, in respect of Israel, and God's ways with them, and His testimony to those ways, he enters more fully in chapter 10.

But a few remarks remain to be made on chapter 9, besides the general view I have taken of it. There is progress in the assertion of God's prerogative, though the object of the assertion of it be His title to have mercy on the Gentiles. In Ishmael and Isaac it is the simple denial of hereditary right. All are not Israel who are of Israel; but it goes no farther than promise. It is not the children after the flesh, but according to promise - Isaac, not Ishmael. But in Esau and Jacob the principle of simple sovereignty comes in. Both were children of Isaac, and alike so, but the elder was to serve the younger. Jacob was chosen according to the purpose of God. And thereupon the principle of sovereignty is asserted in verse 15, still only in view of mercy. It is not of him that wills, nor him that runs, but of God that shews mercy. And this applies to hardening (not to making evil), so that He has mercy on whom He will, and hardens, to display His righteous judgment, whom He will. And the reply to objections is, not first, explanation, but putting man in his place, and God in His.

It is not man's place to judge God: none can say to Him, What doest Thou? He is the potter, with power over the clay to make what He pleases. But once man is silenced, then there is explanation. What if He bears, with great longsuffering, with vessels fitted for destruction, as He did with Pharaoh; as He did with the Amorites and Canaanites; and prepared, as He had to do, if He would have any, vessels of mercy for glory? And so He called from among lost Gentiles, for that is the key to the exercise of His sovereignty, and Jews were really the same, to be His children in grace. Such is the unfolding of this principle of sovereign grace, without which not one soul would be saved, for none understand, none seek after God, not one of himself will come that he might have life. Judgment is according to works; salvation and glory are the fruit of grace.

108 But to return to God's ways with Israel: chapter 10. The apostle now declares, not merely the privileges of Israel, but his earnest desire that they might be saved; they have zeal towards God, but not the knowledge of His ways. Their fall lay in this: they sought to establish their own righteousness by works, and did not submit to the righteousness of God. How strange, yet how fitting a word! If we are to go up, as responsible, to judgment, it must be by our works. We are judged according to them. But we are sinners, and there is no possibility of our standing on this ground; yet this our pride will not admit; it will hope to bring it about, if it does not possess it. Grace provides righteousness for us. We have it not for God, He has it for us, and gratuitously in Christ; and we have to own that we cannot in any way make good our own case with God, and must submit to His righteousness. This, neither the Jew, nor man in any age, by his own spirit will do. He will blame it as a way of sin, as if he really cared for holiness; but finds he must come down, and confession come in.

Now the apostle shews that the ruin of Israel was supposed in their own law. The law gave the intelligible principle - "do and live"; but after having done that, and shewn ruin and judgment on failure, it speaks of the return of the heart to God, when under the effects of the judgment, and when the plainly revealed ground of legal righteousness was over (Deut. 30). And the apostle then introduces Christ, as the true object, when once this was the case; the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. Just as all hope of righteousness by doing was over in the case put in Deuteronomy, so in every heart, when honestly given up, as it must be by everyone that knows himself, instead of judgment, we have in grace, on the part of God, Christ for righteousness, and the law done with, an end to it; while its judgment was sanctioned, righteousness introduced by grace, on another ground, and as to this, an end of the law. And in fact, Christ is the end of the law, and another ground of relationship with God. So it is believing on, and confessing Him, the Lord Jesus, and we are saved. But then this lets in everyone that does so, and the national relationship drops. "Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." And now, as before, we had "no difference," in that all have sinned, now we have "no difference," in that the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon Him. Sin had levelled all alike before God. Grace raises up all alike through faith. And so it is written, "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved," and so, a Gentile, if he call.

109 And this brings in the testimony and belief through the word, with the question of the bearing of this on Jew and Gentile. They must believe, to call; and hear, to believe. It is a report, a testimony, to the Jew as to the Gentile; and so their scriptures spoke of Him who brought good tidings, and hailed them. All had not believed; and this proved it was a report even to the Jew, and it was gone out into all the world. This is the general thought. Then, specifically applying it to Israel, Moses had plainly declared they would be provoked to anger by them that were no people, and God would be found of the Gentile who sought Him not. And as to Israel, there was no want of grace, but grace they had rejected. God had stretched out His hands all the day to a disobedient and gainsaying people.

We now come in chapter 11 to the assurance, that, in spite of all this, God has not cast away His people. All Israel, that is, Israel as a people, will be saved. In shewing this, the apostle gives most solemn instruction, and urgent warning to the Gentiles. The apostle's own heart answers the question, and he is himself a proof that God had not cast away Israel; just as in Elias's time, when he interceded against Israel, as wholly gone, God had an election out of it: so now the apostle was the proof of it, and there were others too, besides him. Only it was by grace, not works - the theme he ever insists on. The election had obtained what Israel was seeking for; the rest were blinded, as the prophets had said they would be. Was then this stumbling at the stumbling-stone, which brought in judicial blindness on the people, in order that they should fall, and be finally rejected? In nowise. Moses had told of old in Deuteronomy 32, that it would so happen, for the letting in of the Gentiles, to provoke Israel to jealousy. But if to provoke to jealousy, it was not to reject. This was second proof of his thesis - that God's people Israel were not cast off. And if being brought low was for the blessing of the world, what would the future restoration and fulness be, but as life from the dead for this poor dark sin-stricken world?

110 The apostle magnifies his office of apostle to the Gentiles, by shewing its bearing thus on the Jews to put the Gentiles in their place, and guard them against the pride of supposed superiority in the flesh. And here comes in the solemn warning addressed to them. The stock of promise, beginning with Abraham, was naturally carried out in this world in the Jews; the root bore the branches, the Gentiles had no ground for pride. Abraham was the root of promise, and Israel the natural branches. Some had been broken off; true, because of unbelief, and the Gentiles had been graffed into a root to which they did not naturally belong; and they were graffed in on the principle of faith, contrary to nature, as the old branches had been broken off for unbelief. The Gentiles stood thus only on the ground of faith; if, therefore, as a body they departed from it - did not continue in God's goodness, which, contrary to nature (for the question is not of the body of Christ, but their outward connection with the place of promise in this world) had graffed them into the olive tree of promise, to partake of its root and fatness, they would be in turn broken off.

We have here nothing to do with the church, or union with Christ; but with the tree of promise in this world, beginning with Abraham, to whom and to whose seed the promises were made. Goodness, on the principle of faith, had given Gentiles a part in these, which the Jewish branches had lost, but the stock was not Gentile, but Abrahamic and Jewish, and what the Gentiles had by faith, they would lose by the want of it. And such were God's counsels. God was bringing in by this means a number of Gentiles, and for yet better things, and when by this outward system of Gentile association with the promises their number was complete, the time of the blindness which had come upon Israel as a nation, for that purpose, would be over, and Israel as a whole, as a nation, would be saved. God would give them, not then, as such, the heavenly portion of the church, which is not here in question, but graff them back into the place of promise, the enjoyment of what the root Abraham bore in blessing. And that would be by the coming of Christ, who would turn away ungodliness from Jacob. What is taught here, then, is a tree on the earth with Abraham for its root, who, when God had formed the nations, and all had fallen into idolatry, had been called out from among them, according to election, to be father (or root) of a race blessed with the promises of God.

111 Israel was the natural heir according to the flesh; but when He, in whom the accomplishment of these promises is, came, they rejected Him through unbelief, and were broken off, the election continuing in the place of promise (not added to the church here); Gentiles were graffed in contrary to nature, to enjoy the blessing of Abraham - those very nations out of which Abram had been called. This was by faith, not by descent of nature. If they left this, they would be cut off, cease to have, as so called, the promises on earth - at any rate, they were not to boast against the branches, for the root bore them, not they the root, and the cut-off branches could and would be graffed in again, that is, Israel restored in its original place in the enjoyment of promise. As regards the gospel, they are enemies as a people, in order to the bringing in of the Gentiles; but as touching the election of the people, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. We see evidently here, it is the election of the people, it is in contrast with blessing by the gospel, and the ground of their being beloved is the fathers, as we find constantly in the Old Testament, as Exodus 32: 13; Leviticus 26: 42; and other passages. For of His gifts and calling God does not repent.

The Spirit of God shews out, then, the wonderful moral wisdom of God in these counsels. The Gentiles had of old been unbelieving, so now it was pure mercy to them; the Jews had rejected this mercy to the Gentiles, and were themselves in unbelief, so that it had become pure mercy now to them also. Thus God had concluded all in unbelief, that all might be mere objects of mercy. The Jews had promises, and if they had received Christ, faithfulness would have fulfilled them in Him. As is said in this epistle, "Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy." But the Jews rejected Christ, and so came under mercy like the Gentiles. This it is that makes the apostle cry out as to God's deep wisdom, that this rejection of the Jews brought mercy to the Gentiles; and brought, seeing they rejected Christ in unbelief, the Jews on the footing of mere mercy also, though God only shewed Himself more abundantly true to His promise, which He accomplishes in spite of all. We have to read verse 31, "Even so have these also not believed your mercy, that they also might obtain mercy."

112 This closes, and closes by a full exposition of God's counsels as to His ways on earth, the doctrine of the epistle, and as the previous part had shewn how Jew or Gentile came alike upon a new footing. Justified by God, this shews His plans and counsels, according to which room was left, not only to admit Gentiles individually, but for the chain of promises to take a Gentile form, and withal a distinct system to be set up, the purposes of which being accomplished, the course of God's dealings would flow back into the ancient channel of Jewish promise, and inheritance of blessing, but by grace. The church is not spoken of in teachings, but its existence assumed in practical exhortation in chapter 12. The rest of the epistle, save a verse or two of chapter 15, to which I have referred, is preceptual and hortatory, founded on the mercies revealed; mercy on which we entirely depend.

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans

J. N. Darby.

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Introduction

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It may facilitate our apprehension of the epistle to the Romans itself, if we take a brief survey of the other epistles of Paul which complete his teaching on the various parts of the same general whole - Galatians, Romans, Ephesians, Colossians. A part of 2 Corinthians furnishes us with the practical application of it. In the Galatians we have the first elements; in Ephesians the brightest results of the same great circle of truth. But some preliminary remarks may facilitate our perception of the different parts themselves contained in each epistle. The point I now refer to is the difference between the counsels of God and the responsibility of man. The counsels of God have their accomplishment in the second Man, who is from heaven. Every intelligent creature is responsible, and the saint in a far higher way than a mere child of Adam. But I now speak of our original responsibility as creatures of God, and consequently in connection with the first Adam.

It is a wondrous and blessed truth that God's purpose and delight were in men. Before the world was the divine wisdom centred in them, and that in connection with the Son of His love. Purpose was before responsibility. Responsibility necessarily awaited the creation of the responsible creature; for we do not speak of angels here, who were a distinct creation altogether, present when this creation was set up by the power of God. That purpose of God had in view the last man, the last Adam, the Son of His love, in whom His wisdom and His power were to be displayed; and it was not revealed till after He had accomplished His work, on which, connected with His person, God's glory in it was to be founded. This is very distinctly stated in two passages I will now quote. Titus 1: 2, 3: "In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began, but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour." Again, 2 Timothy 1: 9: "Who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works [that is responsibility, according to which judgment is], but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality [incorruptibility] to light by the gospel, whereunto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles."

114 The same in substance is stated in Ephesians 1: 4, connected with other passages in the epistle, in which it is fully developed. In the well-known passage of Proverbs 8, though not of course as a dogmatic statement as in the epistles, we have the same truth of God's thoughts and purposes in man brought out in connection with wisdom personified, which, in its fulfilment, was in Christ. The object of that passage is not to celebrate - that which every pious mind surely owns - the wisdom of God in creation, as often supposed; but declares that wisdom was in God before creation, before His ways began. "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before his works of old; I was set up from everlasting." Or ever the earth was, wisdom was there, is the statement when no creation was. What was in the mind of Wisdom, of which the created earth was but the sphere? When Jehovah did create, and when He ordered our present world, Wisdom was present with Him "as one brought up with him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men." Man occupied Wisdom's thought: Wisdom's delight was there.

Hence when the Word became flesh, the angels, that prior creation, celebrate it, acclaiming this, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good pleasure in men"; not merely goodwill. It is the same word as when it is said, "in whom I am well pleased." Blessed unjealous praise of those holy beings delighting in God's thoughts, even if others were the object of them! For God's glory was their delight, and Christ eclipsed every other thought, they felt and thought according to their perfect nature. Purpose was thus in the second Man, the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the Son of God's love, and in those in whom His delight was associated with Him, to which end He became man, and all, through His death, was to God's glory and righteousness.

But the purpose of God was not first in accomplishment. That came with the second Man. when the question of man's responsibility had had its full solution and result, and they were dealt with as lost. The responsibility of man as such, as a mere creature, was fully dealt with, or rather man as under it. First as innocent. There he failed, tested by the simple claim of obedience without an evil lust; but (God having been distrusted, and Satan listened to, in Adam's, or, however, Eve's soul) God was lost, and lust and transgression came in - characterised now man and his ways, afraid of God, and driven out by Him. The sense of this responsibility was then lost, so to speak, in utter lawlessness, and the flood and judgment came upon the earth. Now, after God had established restraint, and authority in man on the earth in Noe, who also failed and got drunk, God developed His ways anew in positive dealings with man, as outside, to bless or to test. But, before testing, grace was revealed; man was dealt with in grace. A free unconditional promise was given to Abraham, the new root of hope and promise by grace.

115 It is not without interest to notice the distinction of God's ways before and after the flood. When Adam was judged, no promise was made to him. The first man had lost all but the judgment he had merited, nor could promise be made to sinful flesh. But the total destruction of Satan's power is announced. In judging the serpent, it is declared that the woman's Seed, not Adam (clearly he was not woman's seed), should bruise the serpent's head. The promises were in Christ. Then, though individuals were dealt with in grace, as Abel, Enoch, Noah, there was no new system or principle set up. Man remained responsible as man; and the earth was lawless, corrupt, and full of violence, and so bad that judgment came, and the world that then was perished. There was no new head and root of promise. After the flood, man rose up in rebellion to make himself a name, not to be scattered; and God confounded his language, and nations were formed, and Satan introduced idolatry. Save as an abstract root of all worship, as the consciousness of God must be, God was set aside, and men put demons in His place, and clothed deified lusts with His name.* Then God called out from the world which He had made, and all relationship with it, one to whom He revealed Himself, and whom He made the head of a family belonging to Him, whether naturally or spiritually. To this chosen and called one, this new head of a race, God gave promises directly addressed, not indeed to man as such, but to the chosen and called one. The promise was introduced,** and first deposited in Abraham the father of the faithful; it was soon after, by a figure intimating the death and resurrection of Christ, confirmed to the Seed. It was more than the judgment by which the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head; there was direct personal blessing from God to the objects of it, and this blessing in the seed of Abraham. The promise and the seed were fully united in the revelations of God.

{*There appear to me to have been four sources of idolatry: first, an ineffaceable consciousness of God; deified ancestors, the stars; and the principle of generation. These were interwoven the last giving rise to corruption inconceivable, the consecration of degrading lusts. The gods, as popularly known, were deified passions, as Venus, Mars, etc., and the powers of nature. Behind all these was always the unknown God. Conscience had no part in the scheme; natural benevolence might, as in India; nor even when something of conscience (for all have one since the fall) mingled with it, as in the Egyptian Amenti, no future intercourse with God, transmigration, exaltation to gods like themselves. But though the root of God-consciousness was always there, fellowship with God was unknown.}

{*A promise not to destroy the earth was given to Noah, but he was no root of promised personal blessings.}

116 After this came another very important dealing of God with the fleshly seed of Abraham - the giving of the law, the raising the question of righteousness, and requiring it from man, according to the perfect rule of it as applicable to Adam's children: blessing and life dependent on obedience - an obedience as justly required as the rule of it was perfect. Here responsibility was distinctly brought into relief, sanctioned by God's express authority, and a perfect measure of it given. We know the result. The golden calf was made before the tables of the law could be brought into the camp. To natural responsibility revealed authority and a revealed rule were added; righteousness was defined and claimed from man according to his obligations, measured by God Himself. Transgression came in, as before in Adam.

But then man's responsibility, to say nothing of God's patient dealings with him by the prophets, was dealt with in another and wholly new way. God came into this sinful world in grace, beseeching men to be reconciled to Him; and the promised Seed of David came to the seed of Abraham, according to the flesh. But when He came, there was no man; when He called, there was none to answer. Not only sin was developed in lawlessness, and the law met by transgression, but mercy had been rejected, and the promise itself, and the promised One, despised. The trial of responsibility was over; the tree was bad; and all the digging about it and dunging brought no true fruit to God. The fig-tree on the way bore leaves only, and was judged for ever. The one beloved Son, if He sought fruit, was cast out and slain. If the King invited guests, His invitation was despised. Not only God had driven man out of paradise, but man, as far as he was concerned, had turned God - come in grace into the ruined world of outcasts - out of it in hatred against Him. Sin was complete, and man lost. But now, speaking reverently, it was God's turn. They with wicked hands had slain Christ, but it was according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. The truth was, He had appeared once in the end of the world (the consummation of ages - an expression we can now easily understand) to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

117 Here the Lord, according to every need of man and the divine glory, met the consequences of man's responsibility - made sin, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. Propitiation was perfect, redemption (not yet as regards exercised power, but moral title in righteousness in the value of Christ's work) accomplished; and here, not only had man's responsibility been met, but God perfectly glorified in all that He is: love, righteous judgment against sin, majesty, truth, and devoted obedience to Himself at all cost,* and man entered in righteousness into the glory of God, and as Son established heir of all things. See John 13: 31, 32; 17: 1, 4, 5. Thus in the cross of Christ the full foundation was laid in righteousness, according to the righteousness of God, for the accomplishment of the divine counsels in glorifying the redeemed in the second Man, the last Adam, the Lord from heaven. The putting away the sins of those that had part with Him was accomplished (those that rejected Him were doubly guilty); the revelation of the righteousness of God had now its full ground, Christ being at the right hand of God as man in virtue of it, and the counsels of God could be fully brought out to the glory of God by us, yea, all His plans for the glory of the last Adam, His beloved Son, and of us with Him.

{*The more we examine the cross, the more we shall find how all good and evil found its issue, and how it connects together the consummated evil of man in hatred against God manifested in Christ in love, the full power of Satan as prince of this world, his hatred against goodness and audacity against the Lord. Then perfection in man in Christ, and love to the Father, and obedience, (and we may thankfully add to us), the double character of love to God as man upward and divinely to us, and all this in the very place of sin where it was needed, Christ being made sin. Then in God perfect righteousness against sin, and perfect love to sinners. All was concentrated in the cross.}

118 Thus we have these two great subjects before us, the responsibility of man and the counsels of God. I should add, to complete these truths, that Christ thus risen becomes our life; and the Holy Ghost is given to us that we may enjoy the efficacy of Christ's first coming, in forgiveness and righteousness, and have God's love shed abroad in our hearts, and have the earnest of the inheritance which is before us in glory; consciously sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

However, the forgiveness of sins and the clearing away of all that belonged to the old Adam on the one hand, and the counsels of God on the other, are now through the cross distinctly revealed and the difference as clearly seen. On one hand the evil and our responsibility are met by the work of the cross; on the other the righteous ground of the accomplishment of all God's counsels is laid, so that they can be revealed. We have seen responsible man in his natural state, unfallen and fallen, and that end in the flood; then in the renewed earth, as to this point, when man sought to make it his own, and God had divided it into nations, and these had fallen into idolatry. God called out one to be a race and people for Himself, and gave him the promises, confirming them to his seed; then man, this called people, put under law; and finally the heir of promise come, and God in Christ reconciling the world. Man had thus been fully tried in his natural state, and by all that God could do in dealing with him. The result was either lawless sin or enmity against God. God Himself, now in His own work of grace, wrought redemption, and, perfectly glorified in Christ a man amongst men, set Him as man in righteousness in the divine glory, our forerunner to whom we are to be conformed. Thus forgiveness, righteousness, the setting aside the old thing, were secured, and the counsels of God brought fully out as to having man with Himself in glory, in and with His Son the Lord Christ, the Spirit being given to the forgiven ones, that they might know this redemption fully, stand consciously in the place of sons, and have an earnest of the glory.

119 Of this the epistle to the Galatians brings out very distinctly the following points: - promise, in contrast with law, which brought a curse and no justification of man; redemption from that curse, by Christ's being made a curse for us; then through Christ the promised Seed, come of the woman (once the source of sin), and made under the law to redeem those under it, meeting the two great forms of responsibility and consequent judgment before and after the flood, Himself the Son, that, the blessing of Abraham coming on the Gentiles too, all might receive the adoption of sons. Thus was Christ the fulfiller of promise in contrast with the school-master till He came. But, we being sons by faith in Him, the Spirit is given to us, giving the consciousness of the relationship. The heirs are no more servants but sons, and the Spirit is in contrast with the law. The flesh, our evil nature, lusts against the Spirit; but, if led of this, we are not under law; nor can there be a law against the fruit of the Spirit. Thus we have the recognition of the natural evil of man (not the full inquiry as to our place under God's dealings), promise, law, the promised One, redemption accomplished by Him, and the consequent gift of the promised Spirit and the sonship into which we are brought. The ways and dealings of God are fully discussed, our place ascertained; but the counsels of God are not touched upon. Hence I said it was elementary, though most important in its place.

The epistle to the Romans discusses fully the ground on which a man can be put with God in this world; and how the promise to the Jews, and their present rejection, and the no-difference doctrine as to Jew and Gentile, is reconciled with the promise. Our study of the epistle will bring this out, with the Lord's help, in its place. I only remark that it also treats the responsibility of man and his state, not the counsels of God. But there are such, and our security under them into glory is just touched upon in chapter 8, so that a link with the other point is given.*

{*In the Romans the saint is looked as alone in this world, not risen, but the old man crucified with Christ.}

I would now refer to two aspects of man's state of sin, necessary to understand the distinction between the foregoing epistles and the others previously mentioned. Man may be considered as living in evil ways, alive to sin and lust, so to speak, but, if so, dead towards God. As to the former, death must come in to free him from the evil; in the latter aspect, he is viewed as dead in sins. The epistle to the Romans treats fully the former, and the remedy by grace; that to the Ephesians treats man as dead in sins. In Romans it is justifying and delivering sinful man, and bringing him out of that condition by redemption; in Ephesians it is a new creation. Here consequently, while redemption is fully stated, the counsels of God are fully unfolded, and man is seen sitting in heavenly places in Christ. In Colossians we have both aspects - buried unto death, and, when dead in sins, raised with Christ. The believer is seen risen with Christ, having died with Him; but heaven is in hope and prospect: he is not seen sitting there.

120 The Ephesians therefore begins with the counsels of God, first setting us in our place before God morally like Himself - Christ's position, who is gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God; then, after briefly stating redemption as that which we have as needed to bring us there, and indeed to make God known, God's purposes as to the Christ Himself, head over all as Man, are stated; which brings in the inheritance and the earnest of the given Spirit till the redemption of the purchased possession, when glory will be revealed. The present exaltation of Christ, and the working of the same power in us which took Him when dead from the grave to the right hand of God, brings us raised with Him to be in Him on high, the church associated with Him; His body who is Head over all things, and to it. This work of Christ is unfolded in Ephesians 2. Christ is first seen in death where we were lying in sins, and (these put away by His bearing them - going down to death for us) God's power comes in and raises us up with Him into the same place of glory and blessing. Thus the purpose of God in the sons and heirs, in the church as Christ's body united to Him, is fully revealed; the practical consequence gone into. It is a scheme hidden from all ages and generations, impossible to exist or be revealed till the middle wall of partition was broken down.*

{* Ephesians 3 gives, not the counsels and work of God, but Paul's administration of the mystery.}

Then the gifts of the Spirit from the Man on high to build up the saints and evangelise the world, forming the body in union with Christ, are unfolded; and, from Ephesians 4: 17, practical conduct. It is interesting to see that as we are perfectly brought to God in Christ the conduct of the Christian is that of our coming out as a child from Him to display God's own character, of which Christ is the perfect pattern in man. This subjectively depends on having put off the old man and put on the new, which is created after God, etc., and the presence of the Holy Ghost, who is not to be grieved. God, as love and light, is the objective measure to be followed, as by dear children, Christ Himself having been the perfect expression of both. It is well to note here that the contrast with, and the superiority to, law is striking. This takes love to self as the measure of love to others; that, the perfect giving up of self in love as Christ did. Then we have Christ's love to, and care for, the church as such; and finally we are God's warriors in Canaan - that is, in heavenly places - and have need of God's whole armour against spiritual wickedness, walking in dependence on God. Such is a brief sketch of the principles of the epistle to the Ephesians.

121 In the Colossians saints are not sitting in heavenly places; a hope is laid up for them in heaven. It goes farther than Romans, in that we are risen with Christ, a point not treated of in Romans;* but it does not, as the epistle to the Ephesians, seat us in heavenly places in Him. We are to set our affections on things above, where Christ sitteth. But the Romans and Ephesians view of the case are in their elements distinctly stated. We are buried with Him by baptism unto death. This is as Romans 6. The believer is looked at as previously alive in his sins, as stated indeed in Colossians 3: 7. But then he is looked at as quickened together with Christ (Col. 2: 13), which is not in the Romans, but is in the Ephesian development of the truth;** but it does not reach on to the full Ephesian doctrine, that we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ. So, further on, we find, "If ye be dead with Christ" (Col. 2: 20); and "If ye be risen with Christ," Col. 3: 1. Then it is exhortation: we are to seek those things that are above where Christ sits. There is another truth connected with this which shews the perfection of scripture and God's elaborate care in teaching His saints fully.

{*We are seen in Christ in Romans 8: 1, and the church is contemplated in chapter 12; but this is assumed - the subject is not treated.}

{**The quickening together with Christ is exactly the same in the Colossians and the Ephesians, but resurrection is not. In the Colossians the believer is raised with Christ, and by faith of the operation of God who raised Him. In Ephesians it brings in Jew and Gentile so as to be together in Christ in

heavenly places.}

122 In Colossians, save one practical expression which forms no part of its doctrine, the Spirit is not mentioned. It is having put off the old man and put on the new - life as risen with Christ. Ephesians is the full development of sonship and the body. It is by the Holy Ghost we have the Spirit of adoption, and are baptised into one body. Hence His presence is fully noticed in that epistle. The body is assumed practically in Colossians as chapter 3: 15, but the Head, Christ, is more its subject. The fulness of the Godhead is in Christ in Colossians. In Ephesians the body is His fulness, completing the head, who fills all in all. In 2 Corinthians 4: 10 and following verses will be found the practical power of the doctrine of Romans in daily operation. Death as to all that was of Adam in Paul is effectuated in every-day life, that nothing but the life of Jesus should be manifested in his dealings with others; God also helping to the same end, by making him pass through circumstances which were death to all natural life. Compare 2 Cor. 1: 8, 9. In verse 14 we have others viewed in the light of Ephesian doctrine - all men dead, or Christ need not have died for them.* The glory of an exalted Christ is what is especially before his eyes here - the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

{*The interpretation "they have all died," as a consequence, I have not the smallest question, is a simple blunder, as indeed verse 15 plainly proves.}

I trust this survey, though rapid, may enable us to study with more intelligence the epistle to the Romans, which does not enter on the counsels of God with any development, but lays the ground fully for their accomplishment in putting away sins and giving deliverance from the old man. The responsibility of man is fully treated, God's righteousness explained and established, and grace unfolded as the source and principle of God's dealings with us. The special case of promises to the Jews, which seemed to clash with bringing all with no difference into the same standing before God, is treated in a special appendix.

It may facilitate our inquiries to give the division of the epistle into the parts of which it is naturally composed. The first seventeen verses are introductory, the last giving the thesis of the whole epistle. From verse 18 to the end of chapter 5: 11 is one great division, where sins are treated of, and God's grace in respect of these sins. In this as a whole, Romans 1: 18 to chapter 3: 20 gives the full proof that all were under sin; and then the apostle returns to verse 17, and declares how the righteousness of God is now revealed, propitiation having been made through Christ's blood. Chapter 4 speaks of Christ's resurrection as sealing His work to the same purpose. But thus far imputing righteousness is not carried farther than forgiveness of sins. The first eleven verses of chapter 5 give the blessed result and effect of grace in our present standing under that grace.

123 Romans 5: 12 begins a new subject - the old man, the flesh, sin in the flesh, what we are as of Adam (not what we have done, though these are the fruits and the proof of the other). Here our death with Christ comes in, and life in Him (not in Adam). It is deliverance, not forgiveness. This second blessing and our place in Christ and security through Him are stated in chapter 8. This gives occasion to bring the question of the law fully before us. It addresses itself to the child of Adam, but as such we have died in Christ, and thus it has lost its application to such.

Thus all have sinned, Jew and Gentile, and had the same fleshly nature. There was no difference; and if it was God's righteousness, it was as applicable to one as to the other. But then a difficulty arose. There were promises to Israel as well as law. What about them? Did not they on God's part make a difference? This is met in what I have called an appendix - Romans 9 - 11. From Romans 12 and on, we have exhortation founded on mercies previously treated of. The epistle to the Romans furnishes the eternal principles of God's relationship with man; the way in which, by means of Christ dead and risen, the believer is established in blessing; and the reconciling of these things with the speciality of the promises made to the Jews by Him whose gifts and calling are without repentance.

Romans 1.

I may now turn to the details; and first to the introductory verses, Romans 1: 1-17. We must remember that the apostle had never been at Rome, and writes upon the ground of his universal mission to the Gentiles. Hence, while the personal salutations are very numerous, the epistle is very much of a treatise on the subject he refers to; what we may call the gospel fully reasoned out, the state of man, the place the law really held, and, as we have seen, the position the Jews, who had been nigh, had got into. He begins with his mission. He was separated to the gospel of God. He was an apostle by the calling of God.

124 Firstly, the Lord had personally called him, and given him his mission to the Gentiles; separating him out of the whole human race, Jew and Gentile, and connecting him with Himself in glory; Acts 26: 17. "Delivering thee [taking thee away], from the people [the Jews], and from the Gentiles, to whom now I send thee." The Lord had appeared to him for the purpose of his being a witness of the glorified Lord Jesus. Hence we find him speaking of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4), and God who caused the light to shine out of darkness shining in his heart, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Hence, too, he says that if he had known Christ after the flesh - that is, in His earthly associations - as Messiah down here, as a Jew would expect Him, according to the word, he knew Him thus no more. The Man glorified, after having suffered death and accomplished redemption, was the Christ he knew. It was the beginning and head of the new creation - the glorified Man - the Lord who saved His people as being Himself. Still the administration of the mercy recognised the place God had given to the Jews. There was no difference; but it was to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Secondly, he was separated, actually, and sent forth to active service at Antioch by the Holy Spirit. "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." His mission he received directly from the Lord, revealed in glory. He was separated to the glory, to the Lord in it. His immediate separation to his actual work was by the Holy Ghost. He was separated to the glad tidings of God. This has a double character. It was concerning God's Son; but it was the accomplishment of promise on the one side; on the other, the Person of the Son of God designated in power through resurrection, the setting aside the effect of sin, not God's judgment of course, but that wherein the power of Satan reigned over man by sin. It is to be remarked here that the Person of the Son of God is that which is especially put forward here as the gospel to which he was separated. We shall find propitiation and righteousness fully stated, but first of all God's gospel is concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord - first, Seed of David according to the flesh; then Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead. That power, divine power, which raised Him* from the dead and proved Him Son of God, was manifested all through His life in the holiness which never allowed sin to enter for an instant. He was quickened by the Spirit (lit. in Spirit), but His holiness, separation to God, was by the Spirit also. Resurrection was the public demonstration that He was the Son of God with power, victory over the full wages of sin as seen in this world; but the opened eye would have seen the same power in the exclusion of sin itself in absolute and perfect holiness all His life through.

{*It is not necessarily His resurrection alone. It is abstract, but this was the first grand complete proof}

125 Thus accomplishment of promise and divine power over death were there, and the Son of God as Man in absolute holiness - our Lord Jesus Christ. They were God's glad tidings concerning His Son. Of His work, save in triumph over death, we have as yet nothing; but God has come in power and grace, where sin and death reigned. Holiness has been manifested in man in this world, and death, under which man lay, has been overcome. It is important to notice that, in the statement of the glad tidings of God, the Person of the Son is first of all brought out: His intervention, in power to deliver,* promise accomplished, but, above all, it is the Son of God. Grace has made Him a man, and resurrection has proved Him Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness. There is One revealed to us in perfect grace, but who in grace has a perfect claim over our souls.

{*In this it partakes of the nature of the everlasting gospel.}

Another thing we may remark in this, as will be further seen, is that it is what He is from God. God has accomplished His promise; God has brought in victory over death. It is all in the Person of the Son, a man; not what man is for God at all, save the Person of Christ Himself. We shall soon see that, as God's Son is revealed in man triumphant over death, God's righteousness is revealed too; then fully the need of man, and how it is met - fully met; but first, what God has Himself brought in and for Himself, for grace and glory, what has more the character of the everlasting gospel as to the power that is in it - the Person of the Son in the Man Jesus, and divine righteousness. This is the general aspect; man's responsibility and man's need will come after. But we must first have the thing as it is for God and before God, though all in grace to us.

126 But there is another point I must notice here, as it refers to the whole character of the epistle, which is more that of laying the foundation than of building the superstructure:* the testimony that Christ is Son of God is resurrection, not glory. The ascension, though assumed, of course, as is the church, is not mentioned, save in chapter 8: 34, to bring in intercession. Ascension brought in the result in the counsels of God; but already in resurrection God had put His seal on Christ's Person and work. Redemption was accomplished; sin atoned for; death overcome; he who had the power of death brought to nothing in the stronghold of his power - all accomplished which made glory to be righteousness. Thus the whole case between man and God was met and established upon a new ground. The glories which result according to the counsels of God are not gone into. We shall see that our resurrection even with Christ is not spoken of; our death with Him is, because this was necessary to close the old evil, and bring us into a state capable of living with God as fully delivered. Christ's resurrection and our death with Him are necessary to make good our title, and close the old and evil state, and introduce what is essentially new. Our place in that remained yet to be entered into according to the counsels of God.**

{*The believer also is always seen alive on earth.}

{**Our resurrection with Christ looks at Him as come down in grace into our place where we are dead in sin. Our being then raised together with Him involves union with Him. This is not the subject of Romans, but individual justification. Christ is viewed as risen alone.}

The mission of the apostle was for obedience to the faith, the subjection of men's souls to the revelation of God's Son, the risen Man, the Lord Jesus - to the truth of God revealed in Him, and the grace which accompanied the truth; for both must be there that we may believe. Nor, indeed, can one be fully revealed without the others, for grace is part of truth where God is fully revealed; nor could grace come without the truth, for what would the grace be about, and how should God be revealed? But God is light. and God is love; and these, coming to us, are grace and truth. This obedience of faith was "amongst all nations," not of all nations. The grace and truth must go to men as such. God thus revealed could not be only to Jews: but the time was not come to subject all nations by power, but to call a people out of them - "to take out of them a people for his name." Among these the believers at Rome were the called of Jesus Christ. To such the apostle addressed himself at Rome. They were already there. God did not allow Christianity to be founded by an apostle at Rome. These believers were the beloved of God, and saints by His calling.

127 The apostle then enters into his own feelings as to, and interest in, them; and that connected with his universal commission to the Gentiles, in which the love of Christ wrought to make those the objects of his heart, and precious to him, whom he had not even seen. The apostolic spiritual power he would impart to them, but in unfeigned grace he would be comforted in their mutual faith. "Debtor to Greeks and barbarians" (for such is the place of love in power), he was ready to preach the glad tidings to those at Rome also. He was not ashamed of the glad tidings; they were "the power of God unto salvation"; simple words, but how much they contain! It is not God claiming from man; it is not man acting for God, or making out the means of meeting Him. But, God acting for man, it is power at work in man's favour; and this, not to help or plead merely, but to deliver from the state he was in - to save him.

Next, the way. It is such to every one that believed, Jew, or Greek; they wanted saving. God's power, there to save, took man up in his need and sin, not in his titles or claims, even if given of God, and applied to a lost Gentile as to a lost Jew. It was for "every one that believed" - the way of it was faith; the order of it recognised God's ways. It was "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." But this did not alter its character; it was salvation to a sinful Jew, who had to come in in mercy, just like a Gentile, by faith in what was on God's part in grace towards him, though in the order of administration it might first be addressed to him.

Further, it is the power of God to salvation, because in it the righteousness of God is revealed on the principle of faith to faith. Nothing had to be done by man; nothing was required from man. God's righteousness, perfect and absolute - that on which He would bless without limit - was revealed for man. More He could not require; more, as to righteousness, He could not give; and there it was for man, and revealed, and thus God's power to save him. This took it clean out of man's doings for God; which I insist on, because it is the great principle of truth, it is God's doing for man. It is on the principle of faith that it might be by grace; man only believed through grace what was revealed. Hence the believer withal possessed it, and so Gentile or Jew. But here the object is its intrinsic nature. It was "God's righteousness"; it was revealed "on the principle of faith" (works do not make out God's righteousness, but man's), and hence "for faith." The just were to live by faith.

128 This closes the introductory verses. The Person of the Lord Jesus and the righteousness of God are the great thesis of the glad tidings of God. One revealed as the Deliverer, the Son of God, claimed the obedience of faith; the other, still on the principle of faith, revealed as the ground on which man could have a part in purposed blessing through grace. The apostle now turns to what made this righteousness of God necessary to us. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness." This is a most important principle. It is not governmental wrath, such as bringing the Assyrian against Israel, or leading them captive to Babylon - a thing of this world, while God was hidden still behind the veil. It tells us of the incompatibility of God's nature with evil. God's wrath was revealed against everything inconsistent with His nature - wrath from heaven against all ungodliness; and, where the truth was known, and men might seem to be nearer to God, as the Jews, if held in unrighteousness, wrath was against such as so held it too. Wrath against all ungodliness was revealed from heaven; Gentile, Jew, men in every condition, came under the judgment. It was not a hidden God dealing in earthly judgment, but God Himself fully revealed according to His own nature, abhorrent of evil, in necessary wrath against all evil, wherever it was met. His nature could admit no evil. Dispensational ways there might have been - government, patience. But now wrath was revealed from heaven against all evil, wherever it was found.

The apostle then shews on what ground the judgment went, as against all men: on the heathen, to the end of the chapter: on moralisers, in the beginning of Romans 2; and from Romans 2: 17 on the Jew, which goes on to Romans 3: 20. The ground of the condemnation of the heathen is creation testimony, and their not retaining God in their knowledge; for in Noah that knowledge was. The first ground is stated in verses 19, 20; the second in verse 21. They turned the glory of the incorruptible God into images of men, birds, beasts, and reptiles; and as they thus turned God's glory into dishonour, God gave them up to turn man's too, and they degraded themselves in vileness as they had degraded God in idolatry. Yet they knew the judgment of God.

129 And this made the moralisers, the Socrates, and the like, inexcusable; they did the things they judged; see chapter 2. But God's judgment is according to truth against those who commit such things. Doing them and judging others was not the way of escaping God's judgment; or, were they despising God's mercy leading them to repentance, and heaping up wrath for the day of judgment - of the revelation of God's righteous judgment? God always judges evil morally; but there is a day when that judgment will be revealed, and this dealing with evil take place in a manifest way, according to the nature of God. Judgment will be executed. We have seen this infinitely important principle in chapter 1: 17; not dispensational government on those near or those far off, but God revealing His judgment of evil in man according to what He is. Hence the light of Christianity is thrown here on the grounds of judgment, though the light actually possessed is made to enter into the measure of retribution; but the nature, and, in judgment, the authority of God, rejects evil. Jew or Gentile, it is all alike. When He is revealed, evil is dealt with as evil. The special advantages of one may enter into the ground of judgment, and if they have sinned under law, they will be judged by law. But evil is evil, while God is God, be the evil in a Jew or a Gentile; nor is there respect of persons with Him.

But the revelation of God, which thus brings in the knowledge of judgment according to truth, necessarily supposes the truth there, and obedience to the truth became part of the moral testing of man, as well as law and natural conscience. Hence, in Romans 2: 7, 8, we have what Christianity has brought to light; verses 9, 10, tribulation and anguish are upon every soul of man that does evil, and glory, honour, and peace upon every soul of man that does good - to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

130 The object of the apostle here is evidently not to shew how a sinner could be justified; but that, though God might follow in His administration of blessing what He had accorded to the Jewish people, yet now that He had revealed Himself, He had to do with realities, and that a godly Gentile was more His delight than an ungodly Jew, whatever the privileges of the latter. The doer of the law would be justified, be he Jew or Gentile; not he who had and broke it. There was no respect of persons with God, and conscience might take notice of right and wrong where there was no law, and thus become a law to a man who had no law as given of God. So they that had sinned without law would perish without it. Here the discussion is not, by what power or grace a man would be led or enabled to walk conscientiously, but that reality of walk, and not privilege of position, was what God owned.

It is well to remark that there is no law written in the heart* of the Gentile - that is the new covenant - but the work which the law requires the conscience recognises as right or wrong. Conscience knows it is wrong to murder or steal, when no law is given. Man got the knowledge of good and evil by the fall, and it is of all importance to recognise the difference of this and law. Law imposes a rule by authority - here God's authority; conscience on the contrary takes notice of right and wrong in itself, as God does. "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." That is, conscience takes notice of good and evil in itself, as good and as evil, without any law which prescribes or forbids it; and so far a man is a law to himself, that is, not having the thing prescribed to him, or forbidden, as a law does.

{*"Written" agrees with work, not with law; the Greek leaves no question as to this.}

It is well also to remark here that verses 13-15 are a parenthesis. The connection is, "judged by the law in the day." Remark here, also, on the side of man's liability as before of God's actings, it is not governmental judgment, the ways of God with men on earth, visiting, it is true, sins on a people or on a race with longsuffering and patience; but the secrets of men's hearts judged - all brought to light, strictly and rightly judged - according to the necessary requirements of God's nature, taking into account the advantages men have had; not governing in patience, but judging in righteousness, according to what is good and what is evil, as none can deny, and where none can escape. The secrets of men's hearts would be judged, and men come out such as they really were, however hidden from the eyes of men.

131 In Romans 2: 17 the apostle begins definitely with a Jew, insisting on the same truth, but the converse of what he had said of the Gentile. A Jew who boasted of the law and broke it was as bad as he who had none; the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles through them. He only was a Jew who was so inwardly; whose heart was circumcised in the spirit, not in the letter; whose praise was not of men, but of God.

We come now to a very important principle in the ways of God, the possession of privileges where there was no renewal of heart to profit by them, and whether this made such any better, more agreeable to God - for this the Jew pretended; chapter 3. The apostle's argument seemed to level all. It did morally before God, save as privileges added to responsibility; but he fully admitted the existence of very great privileges and advantages where God had placed them. If the circumcised were uncircumcision really unless they kept the law, what advantage had the Jew? Much every way. The apostle fully recognises their privileges, especially in having the scriptures, "the oracles of God"; and if some did not believe, their unbelief would not make the faith - that is, the faithfulness of God - of no effect. God would be true if every man were a liar. He would fulfil His word. But if His accomplishing it in spite of man's unfaithfulness only the more proved His faithfulness, so that He was the more glorified through man's unfaithfulness, this did not hinder His judging the evil: were it so, He could not judge the world at all. If man's unrighteousness made God's righteousness more conspicuous, why should God judge him for it? This is a general principle, but it has a special application to the Jews; for the more the heathen opposed and were jealous of them, and trampled them down, so much the more God's faithfulness shone out, and He could no more judge the Gentiles, the world, than the Jews. But it is a general principle that man's unrighteousness commending or proving God's righteousness did not make it unjust to judge.

The apostle returns to the form in which it applies to the Jews - that their falseness made God's faithfulness to His promises more glorious, so that he had not to find fault; nay, they might do evil that good might come, returning in this latter to the general principle; as, indeed, some charged the Christian with holding. As to such principle, the apostle does not condescend to reason, but simply says, "whose damnation is just." No, all our evil does commend this patient faithfulness of God to His promises, and to His goodness. Man would soon reject those who dealt with him as he does with God. But that does not hinder responsibility, and sin, and judgment.

132 Well, then, the Jews had advantages; were they, then, better than the Gentiles? In no way. The apostle had already proved both under sin. He then quotes, first from the Psalms, then from Isaiah, the plain testimony of scripture, denouncing, as wholly sinners, all they were addressed to. The Jew boasted these scriptures were for him, and for him alone. Well, says the apostle, we know that what the law says, it does say to those who are under it. Let us then hear its voice to such. This is what it says: "There is none righteous, no, not one." The Gentiles confessedly were sunk in all manner of vice, in corruption, and idolatry. The Jews were the privileged race, and the special privilege was that the oracles of God were committed to them. Well, the apostle owned that the law spoke to those under it - but it declared there was none righteous. The Jew was condemned by his own plea.

And now see what is the state of man, under the greatest advantages, possessing what God has to give, as the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son! None righteous; none that understandeth, no intelligence at all spiritually; none that seeketh after God, in will all wrong; none that doeth good, no, not one; evil, without exception, when tried. The full forms of evil in which this state develops itself are then gone into: amiable characters which some may have, as animals may; but a heart seeking God, or fearing God, not one. Every mouth was stopped, and all the world guilty before God: the Gentiles confessedly so - lawless and reprobate in mind, working uncleanliness with greediness; the Jew condemned out of his own mouth by that of which he boasted. So far from any being justified by the deeds of the law, law brought with it the knowledge of sin. Sin was everywhere - law the special conviction of it. This closes the apostle's proof of that state which gave occasion to the wrath of God being revealed from heaven, the proof reaching as a whole from Romans 1: 19 to the end of chapter 3: 20.

133 Then the apostle returns to his proper subject, stated in Romans 1: 17 - the righteousness of God. Man clearly had none. He was proved, Jew and Gentile, all under sin; but now God's righteousness, entirely apart from law, was manifested. The law and the prophets bore testimony to it. This is the great leading point; God's righteousness is manifested. This is by the faith of Jesus Christ; such is the manner of its being set forth and received. It is towards all. Were it man's, it must be by the law, which is the perfect measure of that, and, consequently, only for the Jews, who alone had that law. But it is God's, and by faith, and so for all, and actually (since it was by faith of Jesus Christ) upon all those that believed. For there is no difference; all are alike, all under sin; but God's righteousness was by faith on every one who believed. The justification is free by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

This gives the thesis of the doctrine of righteousness, as a whole, complete in itself. In chapter 1: 17, God's righteousness, we are told, is revealed in the gospel. Now, in contrast with law, which was the way of man's righteousness; without law; Rom. 3: 21, that is, having nothing to say to it (wholly apart from the law), we know the manner of this righteousness in its application - it is by faith of Jesus Christ to all, applicable and held out on the principle of faith to all, and upon all those that believe. All were alike under sin, proved so, the justification of all alike freely by God's grace, through redemption-that redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

We have then additional detail, and the manner of its application to the Old Testament saints and those since Christ. God, the apostle tells us, had set Christ forth as a propitiatory, a place of access on the ground of redemption and blood presented to God as the atonement or propitiation for sins. Now, as regards the Old Testament saints, this now proved God's righteousness in having borne with them, where they sinned. His forbearance had been shewn at the time; but where was the righteousness in thus passing over the sins of the Abrahams, and Samuels, and Davids, and the like? This was now shewn. It was in view of the propitiation to be wrought by Christ, ever present to God, on the ground of which He dealt as if it was already accomplished, so far as the forgiveness of sins went.

134 Then, as regards those subsequent to the work, God's full present justice was declared - His righteousness declared at this time; that through which He could be just and justify, yea, that in which He was manifested just, besides exalting Christ, is in justifying the believers in Christ Jesus. This was an immense truth. Forbearance had been before, righteousness in exercising it unrevealed. Now righteousness was revealed, God's righteousness, first in His exercise of that forbearance, justifying His remission of the sins committed before Christ, but further (righteousness, God's righteousness, being fully revealed), the ground of justifying those who believed in Jesus, God's righteousness in doing so was as clearly manifested as the ground on which it went was perfectly accomplished. God's righteousness was fully proved in setting Christ at His right hand, as we learn in John 16: 10. He is gone up on high in virtue of having glorified God perfectly on the cross, and God's righteousness therein revealed and declared. In the part of Romans we are now occupied with, we have only the fact that God's righteousness is now declared as to remission of past sins, and justifying believers now, Christ being set forth as a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. The value of Christ's blood brings the witness of righteousness in remission of past sins, but it brings a known present justification of those who believe, maintaining fully the justice of God. He is just and the Justifier, not a condemner, of those that believe.

All boasting then on man's part is shut out, for it is God's work and God's grace by which man is justified (clearly not by a law of works, there would then be man's boasting), but by the law of faith which simply receives, through grace, the effect of another's work. We may see here that law is used for a regularly acting principle - the law of faith, the law of works. We shall find this again. Hence, as we cannot mingle the two principles of gaining a thing by working and receiving a thing by faith (and, indeed, another thing - God's righteousness, not man's), one of them excludes the other, and we conclude, not only that a man is justified by faith through Christ's blood by grace, but that it is without - wholly apart from, to the exclusion of - works of law. God is justifying sinners by His dealings for them, not man righteous by a law which he has kept. For all are under sin.

135 And is God only the God of a people, even of His people? Is He not God of all nations? Surely He is, and indeed now in grace, just as He is for the Jew, who needed it as much as the Gentile. For it is one and the same God who justifies the circumcision (who sought their own righteousness by law) on the principle of faith, freely by grace, and, if a Gentile had that faith, justified that Gentile by the faith that he had. This is the force of the words translated "by" and "through." "By" is on the principle of; "through" by means of, when one possessed it. The Jew sought righteousness on a wrong principle. The gospel revealed the true one - faith. If the Gentile had the faith, he had the justification which was given on that principle.

If then this justification was by faith to the exclusion of law, did it set aside the law? In no way. The law brought the conviction of sin, nay, brought the curse, from which he who was under it had to be delivered; and the justification of such an one, the deliverance of such an one from the curse by such a means as Christ's bearing it, gave the highest possible sanction to the law. That Christ should bear its curse established the authority of law as nothing else did. The apostle had just used it to bring the Jew fully under conviction, so that the blood of Christ, and grace, and redemption were needed; and the introduction of them as needed by the Jew, who was under the law, if it set aside all righteousness by law, recognised fully the authority of the law as bringing them under the transgression from which they had to be justified. The paying a debt recognises the debt, and the obligation which made it such, though (and in that in which) it puts an end to it. There is more than this in the law, it is true. I only use the image to shew that putting an end to anything may fully prove the obligation of it.

Righteousness by faith was on a principle incompatible with law. In one, God's work in grace justified freely; according to the other, man's work in righteousness made peace, redemption, and God's work unnecessary. Nor did obedience under law produce what grace did after all. It was not, if accomplished, God's righteousness, but man's. But redemption, and grace, and Christ's blood, effectual through faith, recognised the authority of law, and gave its sanction to it, by meeting in another way the sins and condemnation incurred under it. It went on a different principle, wholly incompatible with law as a way of righteousness; but it recognised the claim of righteousness made by the law as made by God, and, when man had failed, met that claim in grace. The two could not work together, for they contradicted each other in every point: one rested on grace, the other on work; one on God's work, the other on man's. One consequently gave man's righteousness if fulfilled, which it was not; the other, God's by a perfected work. But the grace that was incompatible with law owned and met the claim of law, in order to justify freely him who had failed under it.

136 But there was more in Israel's history than law. There were the Abrahams and Davids, promises, and divine faithfulness that owned the promises. What ground did they stand upon? What has Abraham found? Was he justified by works? If so, he has whereof to glory. But it is not so before God (proof before men, to make it good in testimony to them, there may have been and was), but before God he was counted righteous through faith. Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness. If a man works, reward is of debt, not grace; but to him that works not, but believes on Him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. This is established by the case of David. "Blessed is the man whose iniquity is forgiven, whose sin is covered; blessed the man to whom the Lord imputeth no sin." Note here that thus far the imputation of righteousness goes no farther than the forgiveness of sins. There is more farther on; but here that is all. A man is justified from what he is guilty of, from his sins, and so far accounted righteous. For such is the force of imputing righteousness. His faith is reckoned to him for righteousness. It is not put to him to account.* Abraham believed God, and was reckoned righteous because of his faith. It was not that his faith had so much intrinsic value, which was put to his account, as so much righteousness; but he was esteemed or reckoned righteous for his faith. God held him as a righteous man because of his faith. So David speaks of one accounted righteous without any works. No sin was imputed to him. He was accounted, held to be wholly clear of it before God, when it was forgiven and covered. The responsibility of man was fully met, and he looked on as clear from sin.

{*Another word is used for that, as in Romans 5: 13, and in Philemon 18, "put that to my account." Here in Romans 4: (11 times), verses 3 to 24, it is to "esteem, reckon, count." See page 239.}

137 Was this only for the circumcision? Our thesis is that faith was counted for righteousness to Abraham. When? When he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Uncircumcised. There is thus, in no less an example than Abraham, an uncircumcised person justified by faith. Circumcision was only a seal of the righteousness which he had when uncircumcised; and thus he was the father of all that believe (even if not circumcised, as believing Gentiles), that they might be accounted righteous also through faith; and, further, the father of true separation to God (as I understand it, though the form of the sentence be somewhat strange), not only for circumcised Israel, but for whoever walked in the faith of Abraham-circumcision, not in the letter but in the spirit.

The apostle then develops the principles of the case of Abraham. The promise to Abraham to be the heir of the world was not through law, but through the righteousness of faith. If they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void. To make Israel as under the law exclusively heir destroyed the principle on which Abraham had the inheritance. He had it by faith, and not by any law at all. Promise is not law; and to found the inheritance on law, and give it to Israel because of the law, made the promise of none effect. Promise, and faith in it, went together. Law was man's work, and on God's part requirement from man, not promise to him. And indeed the law works wrath instead of giving an inheritance; for where no law is, there is no transgression, for there is nothing to transgress: working wrath and bringing in transgression is surely not promise. But the inheritance is of faith, not of law, that it might be by grace; for faith just believes in the grace shewn, and thus the promise is sure to all the seed, for grace can give it to a Gentile, and faith in a Gentile can receive it, not simply give it to the seed under the law, though faith there could receive it, but to everyone who had the faith of Abraham, who is the father, not of Jews only, but of us all (as it is written, "I have made thee a father of many nations") before God, the God whom he had believed.

But this introduces another principle. When Abraham received the promise, he was as good as dead. The God in whom he believed is a God above human failure and weakness, and calls things that are not as though they were. Abraham believed God in spite of his deadness and that of Sarah: it was a quasi-resurrection. This introduces yet another great and important principle. Grace on the part of God, and faith on the part of man, we have had, in connection with promise on the one hand, and the redemption that is in Christ on the other. Now power comes in - God's power; not a dealing with man according to any good or capacity that is in him, but God that raises the dead, and according to this power calls things that are not as though they were. He can make them to be as He calls them. This applies to Abraham's case, to the Gentiles, and, as to the power in its nature, Christ's resurrection.

138 Law does require power in man to fulfil it. God's raising the dead clearly required no power in the raised one; and things that are not have no capacity to become things that are. Abraham believed God, considered no circumstances which, as to man's weakness, made it impossible; because He who spoke in truth could do all things in power. This Abraham assumed. Hence, if God spoke, the thing was certain. No lack of power would make it fail; and this owning of what God was, this faith (which through grace justified God in His word, giving Him His true character) was imputed to him for righteousness. When man justifies God in His works and words and ways, not himself, God justifies him. Those ways are in Christ. But our faith, though in principle the same, has in one very important respect a different character from that of Abraham. He believed that God was able to perform what He had said. We believe that He has raised Christ from the dead. His work is an accomplished work. He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.

But, note, the faith here spoken of is faith in Him who raised Christ. Righteousness is imputed to us as believing on Him who raised up Christ from the dead. So that we own not merely Christ's work, but God's acceptance of it, and God's power to quicken the dead; as John said, "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." God has in power come in, as satisfied, to raise up Christ from the state where our sins (He having taken them on Him through grace) had brought Him. Not to speak of His Person, God could not leave Him there, for He was satisfied as to the sins, and righteously raised Him from the dead in public testimony of it.

139 And now see how complete is the statement we have had as to our sins. We are justified by God's grace freely. We have redemption in Christ Jesus. We have His blood, a propitiatory through faith in it; God's righteousness in remission; justice in justifying the believer, Christ having been delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification, God Himself having raised Him from the dead. Thus all that concerns sins, guilt - what had to be answered for in the day of judgment - has been fully met; and forgiveness, justification, redemption clearly brought out in righteousness, and this by perfect grace; the whole work of Christ, as to that which had to be answered for, complete; God's seal put upon it in resurrection; grace in this respect complete (for it has much to give also); and we, believers, justified through faith in the sight of God. We shall see that another question arises. But as regards our sins, all we have done, what we should have had to answer for in the day of judgment, the question is completely settled. God has wrought His own work in grace; Christ, who was delivered for our offences, is raised from the dead; God has put His seal on the completion and efficacy of His work. It is in the God who has done so that we believe. His grace has justified us in righteousness.

There is a point here which it is well to note. We have in this part of the epistle no experience. Happy in forgiveness, as a result, no doubt we are; but it is not an internal process issuing in deliverance in the power of divine grace, but a complete work done, through which God's righteousness is declared, God's work meeting the sins by reason of which He has pronounced upon us as guilty - none righteous, no, not one - and proved us such. He has demonstrated all, Jew and Gentile, to be under sin, and justified freely by His grace. It is proved guilt, not experience; complete justification by Christ's being delivered for our offences, not what passes in our hearts. The experience of what is within, and the deliverance, comes afterwards in Romans 7 and 8.

This shews the completeness of this part of the epistle as to its proper subject, and how the gospel refers, first, to guilt and clearing from it - our justification from that guilt; not to our state or nature, though the fruits of the old man constitute that guilt. It shews, too, how a full free gospel can be preached without touching on our nature, and state by that; though a solid settled condition of soul cannot exist without the experience and deliverance of the subsequent part of the epistle. The natural man can understand forgiveness, the payment of a debt, a child about to be punished, what it is to be pardoned; but a soul under the exercises produced by the Spirit of God can alone understand what sin is within, and deliverance from its power. It is quite true that to have a real work, even as to forgiveness, there must be the conviction of guilt under our sins. Conscience must be reached, guilt must be owned; the statement of the epistle as to that guilt, that we are under sin, must find its personal application and echo in the conscience, our just condemnation endorsed by the conscience as to oneself; so that we should be conscious that we - I - have to be freely justified. But we can see that with the mere consciousness that we have sinned without any real sense of the existence of the old man, of our exclusion from God by it, forgiveness can be understood, nay, it can be supposed, though no real forgiveness is possessed, nor reconciliation effected. It is not insincerity, it is self-delusion; but it shews how the gospel of repentance as to sins of which we are guilty, and remission of these, may be preached without the experience of what we are in ourselves having been wrought in the soul. Genuine acknowledgment of our guilt in the conscience there must be, to have any reality of repentance or forgiveness, but no experimental knowledge of self. This may come before the knowledge of forgiveness, and will generally then be accompanied by great distress of soul, and forgiveness and permanent rest of conscience will come together. But the two things are clearly distinguished in the epistle, the experience of what we are, coming last; the testimony - God's testimony, proof, and judgment as to universal guilt, forgiveness, and justification, with its blessed results, through Christ's work, delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification - being complete at the end of Romans 5: 11. Of the experience itself, and our state in the flesh through Adam's fall, we will speak when we come to the subsequent chapters. All I do now is to shew the distinction between the two.

140 But there is another point I would notice before I return to the course of the epistle's teaching. In the third chapter we find allusion to the mercy-seat; in the end of Romans 4 the history of the scape-goat, at least what answers to the two. Hence the real word in Romans 3: 25 is mercy-seat, through faith in His blood. Hence past sins are referred to, and then, not as yet bearing of sins, but such a glorifying of God's character as revealed Him to be just and the justifier of them that believe in Jesus. And this is the testimony to the whole world. Christ is set forth as a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. That first goat was the Lord's lot. All that God is has been perfectly glorified in Christ's death; His majesty, truth, justice as against sin, love (John 13: 31, 32; 17: 4); without saying who, or how many would be saved. Hence the message of grace and beseeching can go forth to all the world. God is satisfied, glorified, in that blood He has under His eye, and says "Come." Here it is used for forgiveness, and that God might be just in justifying. In the end of chapter 4 it is, He was delivered for our offences; the offences of those who can speak in faith and say "ours"; "it was not written on his (Abraham's) account alone . . . but ours also." And here it speaks consequently of positive offences, for which Christ was delivered up (as the high priest confessed the sins of the people on the head of the scape-goat); for bearing sins, "our sins, in his own body on the tree," is a different thing from glorifying God in His own character, in that He died where sin had come in. Both had their place and special importance; one for God's glory, and that grace might be free in righteousness; the other for clearing us from sin, as needed.

141 I return now to the general subject defined in the first eleven verses of chapter 5 - the full statement of the effect of this redeeming grace of Christ's being delivered for our offences, according to the infinite grace of God. We have two distinct statements in this epistle of the blessedness of believers - the passage which occupies us, Romans 5: 1-11, and Romans 8. The former gives us what God Himself is for us in grace, with its blessed consequences; the other, the believer's place in Christ before God, and what God is for him there. The latter presents the believer more fully and completely before God, his evil nature as detected by law, and deliverance from it having been discussed; but the former furnishes more largely and fully what God is in Himself in grace. One is what God is to the sinner, and hence more what God is in Himself, with its consequences in grace; the other, the believer in Christ before God; an advance as to the saint, and most specially blessed in shewing what God is for him, but not so fully what He is in Himself through Christ to men. This is more richly unfolded, consequently, in chapter 5: 1-11. We have the whole rich blessing that flows from Christ, from peace with God to joying in Him; but it is love commended to us while we were sinners (and for that very reason more what it is in God Himself), not a man in Christ before God. Of this we shall see more when we come to chapter 8.

142 Thus much we must already remark that down to the end of chapter 5: 11, the teaching of the blessed Spirit refers to sins; from verse 12 to the end of chapter 8, the question is as to deliverance from sin. The former speaks of Christ delivered for our offences; the latter of our being crucified with Him, and so having died to sin. But our present theme is that He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. We have been also fully taught that it is received by faith as that which is done; that God has accepted it as a satisfying propitiation, proved in raising Christ from the dead - raised consequently for our justification according to God's righteousness. We have had propitiation through faith in His blood in Romans 3 - God's righteousness fully declared, just and the justifier of him that believes; and now, in Romans 4, Christ's resurrection for our justification when He had been delivered for our offences. This work, done outside us, our only part in which was our sins (and thank God that we who believe can say they were there), unless we add the hatred that with wicked hands crucified and slew Him, the fruit of God's sovereign and free grace, and Christ being delivered for our offences, has God's seal upon it in resurrection as complete and satisfying (much more, though we go no farther here) as it is the fruit of God's free grace and love to us.

Hence, not only God's righteousness is declared, "just and the justifier of him that believes," but, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. All that was between us through our sins cleared away, and God having sealed it to us by the resurrection of Christ, we, knowing it by faith, have peace with God. This is a very full expression. Peace with God is with God such as He is. If there was a thing that disturbed His holy nature morally, or if our conscience had got anything on it, we had not peace with God; but there is not. Our justification is absolutely by God Himself, known by faith; so that no spot, no cloud remains. We have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He has made it, and it is perfect. But by Him also we have access into the grace or favour in which we stand - our present condition; a favour better than life - divine favour. When I look up to God I find, as my present relationship with Him, nothing but divine favour resting upon me. The light of His countenance is unclouded. With the love wherewith He loves Jesus He loves me, and in that I rest. The hope that is before me - such is the worth of Christ's sacrifice - is the glory of God. I triumph in that hope. Into that glory He will bring me. The hope of it brightens with heavenly light the path in which I walk.

143 This completes what I receive as the effect of the blessed work of Christ and the grace that gave Him, and to me a part in that work by faith; but it is not all. Twice the blessed Spirit adds, "Not only so." I have indeed, in these three points, peace as to all that could make me guilty and take away peace, present favour, and the hope of glory; all that is given me, right into glory, fully stated. Past, present, and future-an eternal future - all perfectly settled in grace; but there is the way there, and more than that, the Giver as well as the gift to think of. All that concerns me as to what grace gives is complete; but I have much to learn, much to be corrected, perhaps much to be subdued, much that tends to hinder my seeing the hope clearly, and fixing my heart upon it. I find tribulations on the way, and I rejoice and glory in them also. They work patience, a subduing of the will, and the quietness of spirit which that gives.

This leads me to fuller knowledge of myself, separation of heart from the world through which I pass, a clearer consciousness (my portion being in another) of what God is for me by the way; as Israel learnt in the desert what they were, and the patient goodness of God all along the road. They were humbled and proved to know what was in their heart, but manna never failed, even if they loathed it; their clothes waxed not old, nor did their foot swell those forty years. If, through unbelief they turned back from the mount of the Amorites, and must stay in the wilderness some thirty-eight years more, their gracious God turned back and went with them. But this by analogy; for here the apostle does not speak of failure, but of tribulation and its profit - that in which he rejoiced and gloried. In failure he could not. There is such an exercise of heart as both renders us more capable of spiritually discerning what we hope, and weans from the world which tends to shut it out of sight. Our hope is clearer, and we more mature in the consciousness that our whole hope and home is where the new man finds its portion.

144 But there is another very important element in this, besides the subjective fruit in the state of our soul. I have both the key to all these tribulations and the power which enables me to bear them, and to know their meaning; to connect them with a blessedness which lifts us above them all, and turns us to the grace that uses them, all to give deeper and eternal blessing - the grace of Him who withdraws not His eyes from the righteous, who deigns to watch over us in detail, to follow our characters and state, and to make everything work together for our good. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. That which is in God - what He is in His nature - is shed abroad, is not only known, but pervades in its power our hearts. It is God's love, but in our hearts, and this by His own presence, here noticed for the first time - the Holy Ghost given to us. The cleansing and justifying being complete and absolute, every obstacle thus removed, the Holy Spirit can come and dwell in us, and bring in what God is in His nature into our hearts. The clearance of evil made way for this, and now the presence of God, such as He is (and He is love), fills the heart.

But the introduction of the Holy Ghost in this place is a truth of the utmost importance. The baptising with the Holy Ghost was one of the two great acts ascribed to the Lord in John 1. This is the practical application of it consequent on the value and efficacy of that blood by which the sins of those that believe have been put away. So, in the Old Testament, the leper was washed with water, then sprinkled with blood, and then anointed with oil. So we are washed with the word, sprinkled with Christ's blood, and then anointed with the Holy Ghost. It is not being born again. That applies to the Holy Ghost's work in unbelievers: it is after we believe that we are sealed. Farther, this sealing is, I think, always associated with forgiveness. "Repent and be baptised," says Peter, "for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." In Acts 10: 43, it is when Peter is announcing the remission of sins that the Holy Ghost comes down on believing Cornelius. And here in Romans the mention of the Holy Ghost comes in when forgiveness and justification have been made known, as in Romans 4, and indeed in Romans 3, and before the experience of what we are, and our being in Christ, is entered upon.

145 This has its practical importance for souls. The ground of acceptance is clear; the fulness of God's grace to us in Christ, and the hope of glory connected with it, is made sure to us by His death. We are forgiven and sealed. The grace presented to us here is not a matter of what is commonly called experience, but God's perfect love to us when we were sinners, and had no experience of good, at any rate, at all. It depends on Christ's work for us, the value of which is on us before God. Being thus accepted, we are sealed. The completeness of this as to salvation, and joy in it, confidence in God, it is of moment to see. Experience has its place, and an important one, but God's love in salvation, and judgment of Christ's work, is of all importance. Some Christians would oblige souls to have the experience of Romans 7, in order to the salvation of Romans 5 being true. It may come before. When it does, and acceptance in Christ is seen in simplicity, all the subsequent Christian life is one of assured grace, save cases of special discipline. But the acceptance of chapter 5 may be known by itself first (but then justification as forgiveness, applies to what we have done, and is not our being the righteousness of God in Christ); but if so, self-knowledge and our place in Christ must be learned afterwards.

Remark, farther, how, while the enjoyment of the love is by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, the knowledge and proof of it is in a work done outside of us, and wholly independent of us, indeed for us, when in an evil and wholly incapable state. "For," continues the apostle, "when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Ungodly, and without strength - such was our state when the glorious work of God's love was accomplished for us. But this gives us the certainty that the purity and perfectness of God's own work and nature were in it. It suits us, is without a motive for it in us save our ruined state. God's love as of Himself alone is its source and efficient cause. It is what is His own. Perhaps for a righteous man some might die - for some good one - dare to die; but God commends His love (that which is proper and peculiar to Himself) in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

We now get a principle of grace full of blessing for us. The Holy Ghost, who reveals the truth, does not reason from what we are to what God will be. Such is ever the reasoning of awakened man, and naturally so, because for conscience and judgment it must be so; only there is defective sense of sin, and a vague thought of mercy which enfeebles the effect of what sense of it there is. But even in the repentant soul this reasoning takes place till we have really met God, and known His grace; as the prodigal talked of being made a hired servant when he had not met his father. The Holy Ghost makes us see clearly that we are lost on the ground of judgment; but He reasons from what God is and has done to the consequence for us. He reasons according to the grace which He reveals. So here (v. 9, 10), much more being justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. If when enemies we were reconciled by His death, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. The Spirit thus reasons from what God is in grace to its consequences with us, not from our state to its consequences with God. Wherever this last is going on, the soul is yet in a legal state. There is either carelessness and self-delusion, or a mixture of law and grace. In the Holy Ghost's teaching there is no mixture; but either clear condemnation on the ground of responsibility, or salvation and blessing from grace through righteousness.

146 This closes the first addition to the full statement of salvation found in verses 1, 2. Hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us; and then we reason from divine grace to its blessed consequences. But this is not yet all - "Not only so"; thus, knowing God, we glory in God Himself, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the reconciliation. We rejoice not only in the salvation received, but in the God who is made known to us in it; as He has been revealed through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, we joy in God. Blessed truth! It is natural we should rejoice in the salvation given, in the hope of glory, but it is more yet to have learned to joy in God Himself, and to know Him so as to do it. This closes the first part of the epistle. Justified, in God's favour as a present place, and having glory in hope, we have the love of God, a key to all we find on the way, and joy in Him whom we have known through this great salvation.

But in this mere Judaism disappears, and the apostle consequently takes a wider range of thought, and views the whole state of man through the sin of him who stood first as man before God, and involved his race in the consequences of his defection from God. Each one has added his own sins, and that constitutes personal responsibility: but there is the universal state of all. Adam involved his whole race in sin and death, and in alienation and exclusion from God; only each added his own part; and thus (the reasoning passes from verses 12-18) by one offence, though all were not condemned because of grace, yet the bearing and tendency of the act was universal on the whole race; so by one righteousness was it for justification of life. All were not justified, any more than all condemned; but the bearing of the act in each case was universal, and had the whole race for its sphere, as that on which it bore, to which it applied. It is not upon all, but the bearing and direction of the act in each case. It is the same word as "unto" all, in contrast with "upon" all that believe, in Romans 3: 22. Adam's work bore on all, and so did Christ's work too.

147 Then, in a parenthesis from verse 13 to the end of verse 17, we have the place the law holds in connection with this point, besides the act of the two great heads of ruin and blessing. Sin was in the world from Adam to Moses, when no law was yet there; but specific acts could not be put to charge where there was no law forbidding them. The word "imputed" is another word here from the general word for "imputing righteousness," and means putting a specific thing to the account of anyone; (which the other does not), being found, as already stated, in Philemon 18. Where no law forbade an act, you could not charge it as a transgression. Yet death reigned - the effect and witness of sin being there - over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression (that is, who had not violated an actual commandment, as Adam did). This is a quotation from Hosea 6: 7, where the same principle as to Adam and Moses is stated. They (Israel), like Adam, have transgressed the covenant. Adam had a formal law; a formal law was given under Moses. But between the two, where there was no formal law, sin and death were found. The ruin was universal; ought not the grace and bearing of Christ's act to be so? That is the force of Romans 5: 15. But what was the bearing of the law on this? That, when grace came in, it had a multitude of offences to deal with, as well as in general sin and alienation from God; such is verse 16. Then the superiority of grace is farther shewn in verse 17; that (whereas by one man's offence death reigned by one) not life should reign, but they who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness would reign in life by One, Jesus Christ.

148 Thus, in every way, "much more" could be said of grace than of sin. It might have a multitude of offences to deal with, but it must at least be as large in its bearing (and as to those to whom it was addressed) as the sin of man. It was also by One Man, of whom the first man had been but the image; the first, the responsible man; the second, the Man who was in God's counsels before the world began. Farther, if it was applied, it was not merely meeting the case, and life reigning where sin and death had, but those who received abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness would themselves reign in life. This is the bearing of the parenthesis of verses 13-17.

In verse 18 we have the universality of the bearing of the act of Adam and of the blessed Lord; in verse 19 the positive efficiency or effect on those who were actually connected with these two heads. "Many" is "the many" - the mass of persons actually connected with each of these heads. The sin of Adam did not confine itself, in its effect, to him. By the disobedience of one, the many connected with him were constituted sinners. By the obedience of Christ, the many connected with Him were constituted righteous. This is not responsibility and imputation (there every one is dealt with according to his own works, to which judgment and propitiation apply), but a state into which the many were brought by the head to which they belonged, in contrast with personal responsibility. One man's - Adam's - disobedience involved those connected with him in the condition of being sinners; the obedience of One - Christ - constituted those associated with Him righteous, putting them in that state and condition before God. It is in contrast with individual responsibility, though each individual connected with the head is placed in the state consequent on what characterised his conduct. The "many," in their condition, were such before God in consequence of the conduct that characterised the head. It was not what met the actual conduct of the individuals, but a state of the individuals, which was the result of the characteristic action of the one who stood as the representative and head of his race before God. It was a state dependent on the conduct of the head. This is the great point here. The Lord and Adam, by their act and conduct, bring those connected with them into a certain condition.

149 The law came in by the bye in contrast with a state into which the respective heads brought those connected with them. What is important to see in this passage is, that the state was the consequence of the conduct of the head, not the conduct of the members met by that of the head. Judgment refers to works; this is a state the result of Adam's disobedience or Christ's obedience. The law came in between the two with a special object; it came in that the offence might abound. This is not the state constituted, but the act of the person under the law which forbade their acts, in contrast with that which affected the universal race by one man's disobedience, and all believers in Christ by His obedience. The law came in by the bye between the two heads of opposite states, the disobedient and the obedient Man, and came in with this intent - to make positive "offence" (not sin) abound. God can do nothing that sin may abound; but, where sin already is, He can send a special prohibition of it, a law, which brings it out in a fuller character - that it is not only evil but a defiance of His authority, an offence and a transgression; a law which the perverse will of man uses as a provocation to offending. Such was the law.

Then the apostle changes his term to go back to his main theme, saying (not where "the offence," but) where "sin" abounded, wherever a child of Adam was, law or no law, wherever the evil was, grace (God coming in in paramount goodness) did much more abound. Sin had reigned unto death, as the present proof of it in all men. Had righteousness, the natural correlative of sin, reigned, it must have been condemnation; but God is love, rich in mercy, and so grace reigned, the sovereign title of God in goodness; but then there must be righteousness, and so it is: grace reigns through righteousness. Not man's indeed, or it would not be grace; but through the obedience of One, the many are constituted righteous, and grace reigns through righteousness (it is the abstract statement of the nature of what is opposed to sin's reigning) unto eternal life, (as sin to death), through Jesus Christ our Lord. A full and clear statement of the ground and way of our salvation! It is remarkable how, in a few words, scripture brings out the whole truth. In these few words the whole source, and way, and end of our salvation are completely and clearly stated.

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans

J. N. Darby.

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150 In Romans 6 the practical consequence is gone into, the state and condition reviewed experimentally. Now there is deliverance from sin, and the bearing of the law upon the question is gone into; and thus experience comes in. The doctrine as to how we get out of the power of sin is stated distinctly in chapter 6. We may note here that in the first division of the epistle (Rom. 1: 18; to 5: 11) we have no practical conduct as the fruit of grace. We have full exhortations in Romans 12 and the following chapters as the result of the whole truth, specially indeed of chapter 6; but in the former part the result of our walk in judgment is stated, but no connection of walk with the grace there spoken of. You have the full complete clearance of the guilty sinner, all having been proved to be under sin and guilty before God, but no consequences drawn as to conduct. The righteousness of God is declared in clearing from guilt and forgiving, in justifying the ungodly, peace with God, standing in His favour, and the hope of glory as the consequence; God Himself joyed in; but no consequent walk. God justified the ungodly righteously, and they had peace. Salvation is stated by itself, as far as brought to us here by grace. Here, where the state is spoken of, divine life is fully spoken of; not indeed the details of practice in the way of exhortation, but the principle of divine life in power, delivering us from sin, and setting us in divine liberty in our walk; a liberty, that is, which comes from God, and in which we yield ourselves to God as those that are alive from the dead.

The point settled in the end of Romans 5 is, that by One man's obedience the many in connection with Him are made righteous. The conclusion the world and fleshly reasoning would draw from this is, that if it be so we may live on in sin. To this the apostle answers in what follows. His obedience was unto death. It is by having part in Christ's death that we have part in this righteousness. But having part in death (that is, dying) is not the way to live on in what we are dead to. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Our very profession of Christianity by baptism was that of being baptised unto His death, having a part in it, made one plant with Him in His death.

Our resurrection with Christ is not spoken of here; that involves union with Him. But we have been buried with Him by baptism unto death; the old man is a judged and crucified thing, by our very profession of Christianity, that, as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life. It was not now merely a holy blessed life in all that was good, true as that was in Christ's own life down here; but divine power came in when, for us, He was dead, and bringing Him into a new place as man according to all the glory of the Father engaged in His resurrection: so our life was to be a new one, analogous to that. And if it be true that we are planted in the likeness of His death, the other will follow, as surely as life in resurrection by the glory of the Father followed in His case. In its full result this is true even of our bodies. As yet this consequence is not fulfilled; but in His death, as Christians we have avowedly and professedly taken part, so that death to sin is our settled portion down here.

151 We draw the conclusion as to life, morally now, in full power hereafter. But death to sin we have professedly taken our portion in, "knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." The body of sin is, I apprehend, sin as a whole. The word translated "destroyed" means annulled, rendered powerless. That body (which if alive as the old man, is the seat of lust and doer of sin) is crucified, so as in this character to be set aside and annulled; it has closed its existence. He that is dead is justified from sin. It is not here "sins" or guilt; a man who has died may have to answer for sins, but you cannot accuse him of "sin." He has neither evil lusts nor a perverse will. And the question now is of our state and condition.

But we see the power of death destroyed by the resurrection of Christ. He is risen, He dies no more; death has no more dominion over Him. For His death was not a mere natural consequence, so to speak, of His state. He came about sin, to take our place as sinners, and died to sin. It was with the object of grace to us, and in respect and view of sin that He died, and did it once, when He had, for our sakes, need to do it. But He did it once for all. It was a work which He had to do in respect of sin, and He has done it - has no more to do with sin. Sinners He will judge, no doubt, but He has done with sin, as occupied with it, once and for ever. Up to the cross, He, the sinless One, had to do with sin; on the cross sin was the whole question, though for the glory of God He was made sin; but now He has done with it once and for ever. He lives past having to do with sin. There is but one thing, even viewed as man, which constitutes His life, one thing which fills its outgoings - God. In that He lives, He lives to God.

152 In His life down here He served God perfectly, and lived by the Father, and every step was perfect, having God His Father always before His mind; but He had to do with sin all around Him; He was pressed by it, grieved, a Man of sorrows through it, He had for us to be made sin. Perfect in love manifesting God, perfect in obedience as Man come to do His will, still He came about sin, and was necessarily assailed by it in all around, and, as I have said, was finally to be made sin for us, when fully proved the sinless one Himself - He who knew no sin. But now He has done with it for ever. He died to it here, passed (perfectly accomplishing His work) through death out of the whole scene where He had to do with it, in resurrection into a new state as man, where, in thought, object, and life, He has to do as to His state of life with God only. In that He lives, He lives to God. Nought where He is but what is filled with God - so filled that nothing else can be there save what ministers to His glory. It is not merely the perfectness of His intention (this was always as perfect as His walk; in this sense He always lived to God), but that in which and to which He lives, where for His soul nought else is. It is a blessed thought of man's life, and shews, though the flesh be always the same, what the true Christian state is. Compare 2 Corinthians 1: 9; 4: 10, 12. His death was a single act in which He died to sin; His life a perpetual present, in which God is all from His soul to His object.

So we are to reckon ourselves (our old man being crucified with Him) dead to sin, and alive to God through Him. It was a new and free life; for the believer was entitled to reckon himself dead unto sin; it was his condition and place as a believer to do so. If we are alive, we are alive to God, not through Adam at all, but through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus it was wholly new, and, reckoning ourselves dead to sin, entirely free - able to yield himself to God. Compare Romans 12: 2; and read "intelligent" for "reasonable." It is not that sin in the flesh has not its lusts; but the believer as such does not let it reign in the body to obey it in its lusts, seeing he is free in the power of a new life; for so the believer is accounted free to walk in the power and after the things which belong to this new life. He holds the reins, and does not allow sin to use the body for its lusts - the lusts of sin. Nor does this freeman give up his members to be instruments of righteousness unto sin - that evil thing to which he was once a slave. He yields himself to God as one alive from the dead, for, as to his life born of Adam, he had died to sin, but now lives, and yields himself and his members as instruments of righteousness to God.

153 For sin has not dominion over us, because we are not under law, but under grace: a grave and important sentence. Being under law leaves me under the dominion of sin. What we want is a free life, free from bondage to sin; for he that commits sin, says the Lord, is the slave of sin. Law gives neither life nor freedom nor strength, nor even an object which may turn our hearts elsewhere. It forbids, rightly and necessarily, the sins, but gives no life nor power. But under grace we have power. Life is given, strength is given, and an object is given; none of which, as we have seen, law gives. Thus, under grace, sin has no dominion over me; under law it has. It is beautiful to see, while it is all grace, still how we are given to yield ourselves to God - true freedom, in which sin has no dominion over us; and, while the power comes from on high, we are really set free, and allowed to give ourselves willingly and freely to God.

Here, then, the apostle takes up this freedom and reasons on it - freedom, not in the old and sinful Adam, but, in that I am alive to God through Jesus Christ, I am free. The law forbids sin and lust, but does not deliver. I am not under it. I am freed from the dominion of sin, and not under law; freed from the dominion of sin, because I am not placed under law but under grace. Shall I then sin because I am not under a law which forbids it, and which curses me if I do it? God forbid.

And now he returns to the great principle of the Gentile condition. If I yield myself to sin, as a slave, to obey it, I am its slave; and sin reigned by death without law being there. Death was the natural and appointed wages of sin, and that as the judgment of God. We could not say obedience unto life; for if we obey, we are alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, but it has the fruit of practical righteousness. And note the character here of what is opposed to sin; not in itself righteousness - the doing right as known by conscience or law - but obedience. We are alive to God, and that is, and must be always, obedience. We cannot live to God otherwise than in obedience. So Christ lived. He was the obedient Man - came to do God's will. His Father's will was the motive of all He did. He lived by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. His path, consequently, was practical righteousness, and the pattern of it. So the apostle thanks God that, whereas they had been slaves of sin, they had obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine delivered to them.

154 And here we learn the spring and character of this obedience. It is the obedience of faith, the reception of the word of God into the heart. This forms the link of obedience between the soul and God. The same reception of the word gives life. Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. It is life, it is an obedient life, in truth, the life of Christ in us; and He is the obedient Man. Thus made free from sin - for this is the great point here - they had become, yielding themselves up to obey, slaves to righteousness (using "slave" as a figure he excuses, for it is true liberty, but to make it plain to flesh's infirmity of understanding); for as they had formerly given up their members as slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness, only to be lawless, letting loose an evil will which bore no fruit, so now he exhorts them to yield their members (for they were free) slaves to righteousness. But here there was a blessed result, holiness, a separation of heart to God in the true knowledge of Him, the soul brought into His image, as expressed in Colossians 3: 10 and Ephesians 4: 23, 24 (there more in its nature, here in practical growth, but the same general truth).

The apostle continues the figure, and appeals to their consciousness of what had passed. They had been slaves of sin, and in no way subject to righteousness. What fruit had they then in the things they were now ashamed of? It was fruitless wasting of their members in lawlessness, and the end death. But now, free from sin - his great theme, as we have seen - free in the sense of out of bondage, no longer sin's slaves (such alone is the sense of the words here), and become slaves to God, entirely given up to serve Him, we have our fruit unto holiness; not only the end everlasting life, but by the way growing in knowledge of God, and likeness to Him, and separation of heart to Him from all evil, according to what He is. Walking in the path of obedience to Him, and so with Him, the soul is in that delivered from the power of evil, which is in will and lust, neither of which is its obedience.

155 This is an immense privilege, this growing up into the knowledge of God and intimacy with Him, acquaintance with God. Will never can do this. But in our right place with God we grow in His knowledge, we live more in those things that are found with Him - that He takes pleasure in; and that is holiness. Obedience is not holiness, a heart given up to obey God; but it is the path in which holy affections, springing from Him, and free before Him, are found. The end is everlasting life, received in its full result in glory, as it is in the purpose of God. But that is the gift of God. The path to it is the path of obedience and holiness, but itself is the gift of God. Death we have earned - it is the wages of sin; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not merely that eternal life is the gift of God, but the gift of God is nothing less than eternal life. Death is purposely looked at in its simple character of death. No doubt it is judgment on sin here in this world, and implies, unless redemption comes in, the judgment which comes after. It is the present effect of judgment on sin, and the divine officer and witness of sin, to conduct us to judgment, according to wrath revealed from heaven. But here it is the end of life which fruitless sin worked. It does lead to judgment - judgment of works done while living. God gives eternal life.

To recapitulate this important chapter. First, in reply to continuing in sin, we have found part in death, Christ's death, in order to be justified; that is not living on in such a life, but the contrary. Christ has died, and we esteem ourselves dead (compare 1 Peter 2: 24; 4: 1), the Christian being thus alive to God in the power of a new life. The first principle then, in which the flesh's judgment of the effect of the obedience of One constituting us righteous is controverted, is that we have part in the righteousness by having part in death, by being associated with Christ in His death (that is, in death to sin, which, clearly, is not living on in it). And we are to reckon ourselves dead, and alive to God in Jesus. But then comes the difficulty. We are not really dead, though called on to account ourselves so: how can we be free from the power of sin? This brings in the contrast with law. Law did not give power over sin in the flesh. It forbade its working and fruits, as it ought to do, but gave no freedom from it, no power against it. But sin shall not have dominion over us who believe, because we are not under law but under grace, and grace does give power - does set free. I am not to let sin reign; and this frees me from its dominion. I am made free from sin, that is, delivered from captivity to it. Being free, I am to yield myself to God and righteousness, give myself up to Him, and my members, once instruments of lusts, as instruments of righteousness. It is the freedom of grace and divine life in power.

156 This is the general doctrine: Christ having died, we reckon ourselves dead as if we had done so. He who is become our life, the true I, has died. I have died - have been crucified - with Him, and, as a Christian, do not own the flesh to be any more alive at all. I speak of all that has happened to Christ as if it had happened to me, because He is become my life, and I live by Him; as a son (whose father had not only paid his debts, but made him a partner) would speak of "our capital, our connections," because he is partner, though he brought nothing in, and all was done and acquired before he became partner; so we in much truer, because living, association with the Lord. Only, as I have remarked, we have not ascension, nor union with Him, nor resurrection with Him, which involves it; but the death of the old man, and life in Christ, and so freedom from sin - the full answer to the allegation that having righteousness in Him gave license to sin. One important remark to make here is, that the true question is one of power. A rule of right is not power over an evil nature. Of this we shall see more; but even here we find that the reigning of sin in our mortal bodies, having dominion over us, is the real question. In point of fact we are not under law; but that is subsisting power in life, grace which gives it, for a mere (however just) claim of righteousness from one that was a sinner. The first answer to the allegation that being constituted righteous by Christ's obedience gives licence to sin is, that we have been planted in the likeness of His death - have been crucified with Him. This applies to sin in the nature. But, besides this, we have grace contrasted with law, giving liberty from the dominion of sin and the slavery we were under to it, which law did not. We are free to live to God.

157 On this follows a full discussion of law. We are free from law, following the same great fundamental principle that we have been crucified with Christ. Now law has power over a man as long as he lives. This is illustrated by the case of marriage, and the law or bond of husband and wife, which lasts evidently as long as one lives, and can no longer; the survivor is free to be to another when one is dead. It is of all importance to the understanding of this chapter to see that the whole subject treated is the bearing of the law - the connection of a soul with it. First, the doctrine on the subject and the distinction of a soul being under law, or connected in life with a risen Christ; and then the experience of a soul quickened and renewed in its desires and delights, but not knowing deliverance by the knowledge that it has died with Christ, and is now connected with another - Christ raised from the dead. The description of the deliverance follows, and the condition of the delivered soul in Romans 8.

Law has power over a man as long as he lives - and cannot have it longer; the person to whom it applies exists no longer. If one to be punished for crime dies, law can no longer reach him. We have seen, in Romans 6, that the fact of not being under law does not cause to live in sin; but that, being under law, one has no power to resist it. It requires, but it does not free from the dominion of sin. But we have become dead to the law by the body of Christ. Had the law reached ourselves, it would have been death, but it would have been condemnation also.* But we are delivered, being dead to the law, by the body of Christ. The figure is changed. Death puts an end to the bond, but it is we who die; yet not actually we, but Christ effectually for us; and now we are united to Him who is raised, that, the power of life being there, we should bring forth fruit - not merely be dead to sin - unto God.

{*Compare 2 Corinthians 3, and Galatians 2: 19, 21}

Having thus died as Adam's children, in that Christ has died, we are no longer in the flesh, in that nature or place and standing before God. We do not stand as Adam's children before God at all. We have died as such. We say therefore, "when we were in the flesh" - a thing we could not say if still in it; when we were, the motions of sin which were by the law wrought to bring forth fruit unto death. The prohibition of a will or lust, though right, does but provoke; it makes you think of the object, and does not take away the lust; it does not change the nature. Were I to say to a lover of money, "You must not desire that gold," it would only awaken the desire. Do I resist a wilful child? He only pushes the harder against the obstacle opposed to him. The motions of sins are by the law - a poor way of holiness or righteousness. They wrought in us to produce actual sin unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, having died in that in which we were held. The life in which we were connected with it is ended; the bond which attached to that life exists no more, ending with the life it subsisted in. The law addressed itself to the child of Adam, and required from him what was according to God's will. Man was in sin, not subject to the law of God; nor could his sinful flesh be so, or it would not have been sinful flesh. The law only stirred up that flesh in its will and lusts, but now with Christ we have died; the bond with the law is broken in our death with Christ, and we are connected with Christ risen, serving in the newness of the spirit, not in the oldness of the letter; bound to a husband - not however the law, but Christ. We could not have both together.

158 That is the great point here. Romans 6 laid the groundwork of doctrine and truth, namely, that our old man is crucified with Christ. We are for faith dead. Romans 7 takes up the effect of this on the connection of the child of Adam with law. Death has dissolved the bond,* and we are to another - to Christ risen, now to bring forth fruit to God, for we are alive unto Him. The whole point of the passage is, that we cannot have the law and Christ together - the two husbands at once. It is impossible. But our deliverance from the law is by having died to sin. Christ risen is now our life and husband, where there is power to bring forth fruit to God, which the sinful flesh never could do. The contrast of Christianity with law is not only for justifying, but for life, obedience, and fruitbearing. Under law we are under the dominion (not guilt merely) of sin; in Christ made free, and able to bring forth fruit to God.

{*It is not, "that being dead in which"; as if the law had died. The text has been (in error) changed in one letter in Greek to keep the apparent comparison perfect, to the destruction of the whole doctrine of the passage.}

But this is not all. The law has its use, namely, in bringing out the consciousness of what we are - of our state. Was it the fault of the law, this dominion of sin, while we were under it? Nay, it was the fault of the sin, and lust which the law condemned. "But that," says the apostle, "I had not known, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not lust." If he had murdered, he would have known the fact; his natural conscience would have taken cognisance of it. But we are not treating of sins now (as before observed), but of sin. I had not known that, unless the law had dealt with its first movements as evil. Many have committed no crimes - have neither murdered, stolen, nor committed adultery; but who has never lusted? It would be to say, I am not a child of Adam at all. And note here, we are not speaking of guilt by acts, but of state; not of judgment, nor of forgiveness, but of deliverance, of setting free. And note further here, how great the error is of those who hold lust not to be sin if not consented to. The object here is to detect the evil nature by its first motion - lust. Not, indeed, what we have done, but what we are; and the sinfulness of flesh is detected by that first movement, which is lust - will in evil. It proves, by its sinfulness, the sinful source in me. I know that in me dwells no good. Important though humbling discovery! Not, I repeat, what I have done, but what I am; but how important that! What simple folly the thought to make the child of Adam good, unless he be born again!

159 God's way is, not to improve the wilding, but to cut it down and graft it. Then, when we are grafted with Christ, the fruit of that life is to be brought forth. Law does not condemn the nature nor consequently treat man as lost. Law supposes it is yet to be proved and trusted, but forbids what is its only first movement - lust. Law thus gives the knowledge of what it is. The true force of the word translated "nay," in verse 7, is "but." And note, it is sin, not sins; for he would not, as natural men do not, have judged and taken cognisance of lust in himself as evil and sin, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not lust. The law was thus a means, not of righteousness, but of the knowledge of sin. By it, moreover, sin deceived and killed us. It took its occasion, or point of attack, from the law. Thus did Satan come when Adam was innocent. Now sin takes the prohibition to provoke the will and suggest the lust; for, till the law came in and forbade it, the conscience took no cognisance of lust.

We must remember he is not treating of sins, but of sin. This was provoked and stimulated by the commandment; without it, sin was dead. But when the commandment came, sin revived, and guilt and death came upon my conscience. Otherwise there was no sentence of death in the conscience by sin. Sins would be judged in the day of judgment, bringing condemnation; but a sinful nature, as such, does not give a bad conscience. We remain alive, untested, unawakened. I was a living child of Adam, unconscious of sin, as we see hundreds; but when the law of God forbade lust, the conscience was affected, and I died under its judgment. What had said, Do this and live, and was thus ordained for life, I experimentally found to be to death. I took up the law, thinking I had power to be good and righteous by it: sin profited by it thus to deceive me and bring me into death by the commandment. Still it was to profit. Sin became by the commandment exceeding sinful. It was there, and I unconscious of it as a fatal evil in my flesh (we are not speaking of committed sins); but it appeared as sin when the law came, and became exceeding sinful. It appeared in its true nature of sin, and took the characteristic, moreover, of opposition to, and transgression of, the holy, just, and good will of God.

160 But another element comes in here: the spiritual judgment which can thus estimate all this - "We know." This is a technical expression for knowledge belonging to the Christian as such. See 1 Cor. 8: 4; 2 Cor. 5: 1; 1 John 3: 2; 1 John 5: 13; and other places. We know the spirituality of the law; not applying it to crimes merely, but to the inward man. But if I look at myself as a child of Adam, I am carried a captive to sin, sold under it. I say, a child of Adam; for the apostle says, "in me, that is, in my flesh." He is looking at the man as standing on that ground with Christian knowledge as to it, but as married to the first husband - the law: "When we were in the flesh." It is Christian intelligence applied to the judgment of the state of (not an unrenewed person in mind and desire, but) one under the law. Hence the law only is mentioned, not Christ or the Spirit, till the cry for deliverance from that state come. It is not a question whether the flesh is in us; but "when we were in the flesh," the motions of sin there, we being met in that state by the requirements of law in our conscience, not as redeemed and dead with Christ, delivered and having the power of life in Him, consciously in that state.

161 Three immensely important lessons are learned, under divine teaching, in the conflict connected with this state. First, in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. This is not the guilt of having sinned, but the knowledge of what we are, that is, as flesh. Next, I learn that it is not I; for, being renewed, I hate it - would it not at any time: the true I hates this. It is then sin in me, not I - a very important lesson to learn. Thirdly, if it is not I, it is too strong for me. To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I know not. But it is well to enter into this a little more in detail. It is not really any individual person, but the judgment of a nature; but a nature which (till I know redemption, and that I have died to sin with Christ, and am in Him) constitutes myself, for the conscience. It is to be remarked that the will is supposed always right, and good never to be done. This is not the Christian state. We can do all things through Him that strengthens us.

Further, the man here is a slave; in Romans 8: 2 he is set free. In Romans 7: 5 we are supposed to be in the flesh; in Romans 8: 9, we are not in the flesh, if the Spirit of God dwell in us. If a man be not dead with Christ, he is fully in the flesh. If he do not know it, the conscience and mind are on that ground with God. What he is, not what Christ is, is the ground on which he judges of his state before God. As to his conscious standing, he is in the flesh; and it is the process of deliverance from this by the thorough humiliation of self-knowledge that is here described. The operation of the law is what is contemplated; grace working in the man, but he, as to his mind and conscience, under law undelivered. By the law is the knowledge of sin. Grace has given him to see that the law is spiritual. It is not sins, but sin, which is in question. Conscience has by grace recognised that the law is good, yea, the spirit consents to it; more than that, he delights in it, after the inner man. He is a renewed man.

We have first, then, the state of the man. Light from God has come in. The law is spiritual for him; but he is carnal, a slave to (sold under) sin; for he sees himself in flesh still alive - in that life of a child of Adam in which the law asserts its claim. "I am (that is consciousness, individually) carnal," "sold under sin." That is, you have a man looking at himself as in flesh, and knowing that the law is spiritual, perceiving it by divine teaching.

162 We have then, further (this being the state of the person's soul), two points in respect of the law - nothing, mark, in respect of Christ and the Spirit. He is not there yet, but on the way, getting, while taught of God, knowledge of sin (that is, of himself under law). In the first case he is doing evil, but would not; he does what he hates. He does wrong, but would not. He consents to the law that it is good. His conscience and mind accept it as right - coincide with it, but he does the contrary; but thus under grace, by this very word, he is taught that it is not he does it, but sin that dwells in him. He has a new man, a new life, in which, thus taught, he can treat sin as a stranger, though dwelling in him - as not himself. And now he has experimentally learnt, not mere doctrine, even though taught of God, as to something outside himself - "we know" - but something about himself, and a great lesson too: "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." The flesh is a judged nature, a great point of progress. And now the second point in the renewed man comes out - the positive will to do good. He delights in the law of God in the inner man - not merely consents, having it as his own approved rule in conscience, but he would do good; but evil is there - he cannot perform good. Power is wholly wanting: the law gives none. There is a law in his members, a constantly operating power of evil which brings him into captivity, though now against his will.

Poor wretched man! But (immense advantage) he knows it; he knows himself. Desires and efforts to do right have resulted in this - in the knowledge of himself and his real state: in him, that is, in his flesh, there is no good thing. But it is not (now he is quickened of God) himself at all. But that makes out no righteousness for him, no deliverance from the power of sin; he is still under it, being under law. It is an immense lesson to learn, that we have no power. (Like the poor man at the pool of Bethesda, the disease of which he had to be healed had taken away, even if he willed, the strength through which he could get healed; John 5.) Thus taught, the man ceases to look to being better, or to doing; he has learned what he is, and looks for a Deliverer. The moment God has brought him there, all is clear. He thanks God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But though the subject treated be the experience of the soul under the law when its spirituality is known through grace, the thing learned is not what the law is, but what sin is - what we are. By the law is the knowledge of sin. Hence, though the process be carried on under law, by which through the secret working of grace that knowledge is acquired, yet the thing we have learnt to know - what sin in the flesh is - is always true.

163 Hence, although as we have said it is the description of a soul under law, yet it is in a way in which the lesson remains for the Christian at all times. Not that he is ever under law, or in the flesh - he never is: he has died as connected with that first husband, and for faith the flesh is dead, and he is delivered; but the lesson he has learned remains always true. In him, that is, in his flesh, dwells no good thing. And it is experimentally known. The flesh may deceive him if he is careless, and he forget to bear about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus, but it can no longer deceive him as to what it is itself. He may have left a door open in his house to an unfaithful servant, but he does not now take him for a trustworthy or unsuspected one. And the difference is immense. The power of flesh is broken. And, further, he has no thought of being in the flesh before God. The Galatians shew his position. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, that ye may not do the things that ye would." "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." You are not in Romans 7, though the evil flesh be there. You are free with the liberty wherewith Christ has set you free. Be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage. Hence, too, after the deliverance is spoken of here, the abiding fact of the two natures is affirmed, though going on further than the law, the subject before us. "So, then, I myself with the mind serve the law of God; with the flesh, the law of sin."

In result, then, the state described is that of a soul under the law, but sin comes to be known, and conflict with this remains - flesh remains flesh. But it is a very different thing to have to say to it, when we have no strength, when we are sold under it, and it has us down, in the combat, under the law of sin, and to be able to say, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The natures are the same; but it is one thing, having them, to be under the law, which is the strength of sin, and having died with Christ to have the life and Spirit of Christ, which is the strength of godliness; to be led captive as a rule or law by sin though hating it, or to rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. This freedom, and the state of the believer in it, we shall find developed in Romans 8. The two points before us are, deliverance, and the abiding of the law of sin in the flesh; only that it is not I. That is the mind which serves the law of God. That is experimental and learned.

164 But there are two things the apostle now assumes of the Christian. What constitutes him such - being in Christ, and the Spirit of God dwelling in him? What belongs to such is another thing. That is being a Christian. But we must remark that the measure of walk and practical effect is limited, as all here is, to human responsibility. One passage alone connects us with the counsels of God, and then only as a great general truth. But the result in practice takes the measure of human responsibility, whatever the deliverance needed to enable us to meet it.

For the man in Christ, then, there can be no condemnation. Such is the first statement in this chapter. It will be remembered that it was said there were two passages descriptive of the Christian's blessing, Romans 5: 1-11, and Romans 8, the former already treated of, and what now occupies us: that, the blessing flowing from what God was towards us in grace; this, the believer's status before God. Hence here it is "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" - not for those for whose sins Christ has died. These last are forgiven, the man justified and fully blest; but it is not his new standing as one who has died as in the flesh, and is alive to God in Christ; who is married to Him that is risen from the dead. How could there be condemnation for those who are in Christ? It would be, so to speak, like condemning Christ.

But the reason is given in connection with what precedes; and that on the side of good in the power of life in Christ on the one side, and as to the evil, the condemnation of sin in the flesh, on the other. The being in Christ is the great and sure ground; but the conditions and ground of it are added when this is the case. The law of sin and death has lost its power. I have another principle of life in power in me, which has its own constant nature and rule; for such is the force of "law" here - "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." This alludes to the breath, or spirit of life, breathed into Adam. Now it was spiritual or divine life in the power of the Spirit of Christ in us; and this had its constant law and character, and was power which had made the Christian free from the law of sin and death - the deadly principle which ruled in him before, as alive in the flesh. It is there, no doubt; but he is set free from it. It has no dominion. There is another operative life and power, which has its own determined and unvarying characters, and which works in power; so that I am not under the dominion of sin. That is the side of God - what I am before God in life.

165 Then comes the evil nature, and why I am not condemned for it. The law could not work good nor righteousness in me because of it; it could not bring the question of flesh to an end before God; it could neither justify nor deliver me; could not clear me of the evil that is in it before God. Where sin in the flesh was, law could not hinder its acting, nor justify me while it was there; it could not operate the good it required. It only required the good, and provoked the sin. But "God, sending his own Son," sinless surely, but in form and fashion of one of these sinners in flesh, "in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin" (that is, as a sacrifice for sin) "condemned sin in the flesh." The evil thing, so hateful, condemnable for God and for the new man, has been condemned when Christ was a sacrifice for sin. Death and condemnation of sin in the flesh went together, and I am dead to it; and its condemnation is past and settled when Christ was a sacrifice for sin. There is no allowance of it, which the new man even could not bear. A nature is not to be forgiven. But its condemnation was in that which removed all condemnation from me, and was at the same time death to it.

Thus there can be no condemnation for one in Christ. Not only are the sins blotted out, but the nature which produced them has been condemned, that is, sin in the flesh; and, as to my actual state, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of it. Thus the old man is condemned and dead, and the new man lives and walks, so that the claim of the law (its righteousness, the sum of what it requires) is fulfilled in us, because we are not under it, but under grace. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free, and I walk not according to the flesh, which the law forbids, but according to the Spirit, against whose fruits there is no law; yea, through the power of the Spirit of God I walk after that which it leads me into - the life of Christ in this world. And this walking after the Spirit gives its true character to the walk of the Christian in this world.

166 As I have said, as Christ is contrasted with law for righteousness, the Spirit (Christ as life in the power of the Spirit) of God in us is contrasted with the righteous but powerless law for our walk and rule; deadness to sin, and life in the power of the Spirit of God. This the apostle develops. In fact, commencing with the "no condemnation" to the end of verse 11 is the unfolding of the answer to "Who shall deliver?" On the words "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," hangs a full description of both; of the Christian life as flowing from the Holy Ghost, and of the flesh. Each has its own objects according to its nature. There are things of the flesh and things of the Spirit - not merely right and wrong, but objects which belong to each.

Thus there are two natures, with their respective objects, and with the new one the power of the Spirit of God, instead of one, the old one, and a law which fruitlessly forbade its desires as well as its acts. They that are after the flesh are governed by its principles: mind, will, have their object in the things which that nature craves after. They that follow the leadings of the Spirit are under His power in the things the Spirit brings to us, and sets the mind upon. Now the mind of the flesh is death; the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. That is, they are characterised respectively by these things as immediately and necessarily flowing from them, or accompanying them. For the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, resists His authority, rejects His will, rises up against Him and His authority, does not like it should exist, and consequently hates Him. It is not hence subject to the law, nor can be. Its lusts will not have what it claims, nor its self-will bow to the claim itself. God comes in by law, asserts authority, and forbids lust; but the flesh knows no obedience, loves its will and its lust, and hates God. Self-will cannot like subjection because it is self-will, nor lust what forbids lust. But God must come in thus with law to flesh. What is essential to flesh, it is essential to God to contradict, and it is enmity against Him. They that are in the flesh cannot then please Him. Those whose life is in the first Adam cannot please God. There the flesh leads and governs. Their place of standing is in Adam life. But this is not so if the Spirit of God dwell in us. This characterises, leads, forms the life of him in whom it dwells. God's Spirit, in living power, forms and characterises the state of the soul.

167 This, then, characterises the Christian, and distinguishes him: the Spirit of God dwells in him. Such an one is not in the flesh (that is not his standing), but in the Spirit. This is clearly and in terms the contrary of the state, "when we were in the flesh"; that is, of Romans 7 experience. Then the motions of sin, which were by the law wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. And, note, it is not here being born again. It is the Spirit of God dwelling in us. True, if we are born again, there are new desires, the evil of the flesh is felt. But this is not liberty and power. But where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty, with God and from sin. It is the fruit of redemption by Christ - of the ministry of righteousness and the Spirit. Christ has redeemed, justified, and cleansed us. The blood of sprinkling having made us perfectly clean* in God's sight, the Holy Ghost comes to dwell in us, the seal of the value of that blood, and consequently, so coming to dwell in us, gives us the consciousness that we are in a new place before God - not in the flesh, not in our natural Adam state, but in the condition in which the Spirit sets us in God's presence. This position belongs only to those who have the Spirit. It is the Spirit of Christ. If any man have not this, he has not the proper Christian place, is not of Christ, does not belong to Him according to the power of redemption, which brings us before God according to its own efficacy, of which the Spirit's presence and indwelling is the characteristic seal and living power - that by which those who have entered into this place are distinguished.

{*Compare the case of the leper, washed, sprinkled with blood, and then anointed.}

Being born again does not give this. It may (and by itself, does) lead to the cry - "Who shall deliver me?" It does not tell us we are redeemed. It gives desires and hopes, but may equally increase fears, because it strengthens the sense of responsibility, giving spiritual apprehension of the measure of it; but it gives no power of deliverance from the evil it makes us sensible of. But the redemption which is in Christ delivers. There is no condemnation for those who are in Him. And if we are in Him, He is in us, the power, as the source, of a new life; yea, that life itself. And this is the Christian; such an one is actually His;* Romans 8: 9. Those born of God may be under the law as to their state of mind, dwelling on their own responsibility as alive in flesh, this side of redemption - married to the first husband, and the bond not broken by death, as to their state. They are not united to the second husband in their faith - to Him who is raised from the dead - passed into a new sphere (which is indeed the fruit of redemption for us), where there can be no condemnation; for we are accepted in Christ, and the presence of the Holy Ghost characterises our position.

{*It is of Him, not for Him. Note in verse 1 we are in Christ; here verse 10 He is in us - two things inseparable. One is in a place before God; the other, power of life before the world. It is the practical development of John 14: 20.}

168 We now find in verse 10, the power which produces the effect, doctrinally stated in Romans 46 as our position. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead, because of sin." Sin is its only fruit if it live; but if Christ be in one the power of life, the body, as to all will, has its place in death. What then is practically life? The Spirit that is to produce righteousness. This is the full answer to its being liberty to sin, or leading to it, because we are not under law. But this deliverance goes farther. If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in us, He who raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken our mortal bodies by reason of His Spirit which dwelleth in us. This is full and final deliverance, even as to the body. We may remark that the Spirit is spoken of in three ways here: as the Spirit of God, contrasted with flesh - with man as he is; as the Spirit of Christ, or Christ in us, formative of our practical state; thirdly, as the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus, and the assurance of our mortal bodies being quickened, and thus our possessing full liberty in the highest sense. For all this is not forgiveness sought, nor justification, but deliverance from a state we are made conscious of being in.

A further remark (which leads us to the structure of the whole chapter) has here to be made. In the verses we have been considering, the Spirit, though spoken of as indwelling, is viewed as the source and power of life characterising the man: "The Spirit is life because of righteousness." After this He is spoken of as a distinct and separate Person, acting on and in us - "with our spirit." This is the second part of the chapter. The third and last part is, not what God is in us by His Spirit, but for us, securing us in the blessing which it is His purpose to give.

169 We may now come to the second part of the chapter. It is preceded by two verses of practical consequence; verses 12, 13. "We are not debtors to the flesh." It has no claim or title over us. It has done us all the evil it can, and only evil; and it has been condemned on the cross of Christ, and we are dead to it, having been crucified with Him. Living after it ends in death, but, mortifying the deeds of the body (the things which flow from its will if left to work), we shall live. But now the instruction goes farther, and shews us the relationship the Spirit brings us consciously into, and not merely the state as hitherto; "As many as are led by the Spirit of God these are the sons of God." This flows directly from the whole position we are brought into, in contrast with that we were in under the law - a position God has brought us into by grace, through redemption - not the bondage and fear in which we were toward Him under the law; the fruit of divine grace in Christ - not the effect of failure in responsibility in presence of a divine claim upon us. We are sons of God, and cry, "Abba, Father," having the consciousness of being sons by having the Spirit, which is in us a Spirit of adoption.

It is well to remark, as so frequently occurring in this chapter, that "for" expresses in very many passages no direct inference on the part of the apostle, but introduces some statement confirmatory of the general principle which is in the apostle's mind. Thus, in verses 13, 14, there is no direct inference, though the connection be more immediate in verse 13. Verse 14 goes on to give the whole condition of him who has the Spirit, suggested by the mention of the Spirit exercised in moral power over the walk in verse 13. Such a mortifying of the deeds of the body is natural in the Christian, for such is their real state and character as having the Spirit. But it is in no way "Ye shall live, for," etc. But he has in all the chapter the man in Christ before his eye, shewing what is his character, and what qualities and privileges belong to him as such.

We have now to consider what is said concerning the Spirit as dwelling in us. We are sons, and by the Spirit cry, "Abba, Father," in the consciousness of being so. The Holy Ghost Himself (here we have Him definitely as a distinct Person) "beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." It is a distinct definite testimony of the Spirit who dwells in us that we are such; not a proving by the word on examination of ourselves (a false and unscriptural and evil procedure), but the testimony of the Holy Ghost Himself dwelling in us, which He bears to us as so dwelling in us. We have the consciousness and estate of the mind of the Spirit in us; but He Himself, as dwelling in us, bears consciously also to us the witness that we are sons. We are in the conscious relationship, but He who is in us gives the confidence-producing testimony.

170 But if we are children, we are heirs. We are heirs of God naturally as His children, and (as Christ is the great heir and firstborn) joint-heirs with Christ. But then the whole path and character of Christ as Man characterises us. His life and Spirit being in us, the spring of what we are, our mind must be in character and nature His. But He suffered here, and now is glorified as Man, ready to inherit all things. We too, then, must suffer with Him; not exactly for Him - this is a special privilege - but with Him. He could not (walking in holy love and grace, holy in all His ways, and heavenly) but suffer in the midst of a sinful world rejecting His love. His Spirit must have been ever grieved by sin, and the sorrow that was all around Him. So the saint in the measure in which he walks in the power of His Spirit, as he says in Timothy, "If we suffer with him, we shall reign with him." It is a whole Christ: the same life has its natural consequences here and in heaven in the place of sons; a heavenly Man in this world, and in the heaven of God in holy glory. We are co-glorified, and co-sufferers. But the sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory. I apprehend "in us" is our whole state as well as our persons.

We have, then, a beautiful connection of the suffering and glory, through the dwelling of the Spirit in us. He gives us to know we are sons, and is an earnest and revealer of the glory while we are in this world of sorrow. The creature is in the state which results from the fall, but grace causes it on the other hand to wait for our being in glory for its deliverance. It must be so; the unintelligent creature cannot be brought to the rest of God's glory when the heirs for whom it is ordered are not there. It waits for the manifestation of the sons. The liberty of grace it cannot enter into (which is intelligent and spiritual - "soul-salvation"); but the liberty of glory will be its deliverance also. It was subjected to vanity, not by its will, but by reason of another, Adam - but not ever to be left there. It also will have its deliverance in the liberty of glory; for this applies to the whole state of things, not merely to the relationship of souls with God.

171 Such is the general statement. And in this we get the first and fullest glimpse in Romans of the counsels of God. We shall find something of them as to the Jews in chapter 11, but in this the general result in the sphere of glory of the Son of man, though only briefly stated in connection with the subject of deliverance, which here applies to the whole creation. But this is the general statement of this truth.

What follows is our personal connection with it as Christians. We know (we Christians, having the mind of Christ, know) that the world which flesh is trying to improve as its home is groaning and travailing in pain through the fall (though grace and deliverance and reconciliation are received by us). And this is not simply true of the creature around us: our body is part of this. We being creatures have to wait for the redemption of this - the actual adoption and salvation. The redemption of the body and of the purchased possession, in a general sense, go together. The redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, we have; but the Spirit we have received in consequence is only the earnest of the other. It is in this sense we are saved in hope. What was in God's purpose to give us in salvation we have not yet (that is in glory with Christ); but the work is wrought which saves us, and we have it by the Holy Ghost. We stand (having received the Holy Ghost) between the accomplished work which saves us and entitles to the inheritance (and know it is accomplished, having, withal, been sealed for the day of redemption), and the exercise of power which shall bring the full redemption in when Jesus comes again. We, by the Spirit, look back to the accomplishment of the work, and understand its value; and by the same Spirit look forward to Christ's second coming to accomplish all and bring in the glory. Meanwhile we have these earthen vessels, our unredeemed bodies - unredeemed as to power and deliverance; for the body also is the Lord's, bought with a price; and though we have the firstfruits of the Spirit (for the Spirit will again be poured out as the latter rain for millennial blessing), we suffer with Him who suffered here, connected with the glorious inheritance by the Spirit, and with the creation fallen in the first Adam by the body; and we groan (saved in hope) for the redemption of the body, and wait for that and the inheritance with patience - for that which is not yet seen.

172 We have seen that the Spirit bears witness with our spirit, that we are sons, and so heirs - heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. For the inheritance we wait. But He takes part also in the infirmities in which we find ourselves, through our connection with the fallen inheritance through the body. But the part we take through the body in the sufferings of the fallen creation is not in the selfishness of a sufferer, but we become, by the Holy Ghost, the voice of all this sorrow according to God. There are cases, no doubt, where we know the will of God, and can (praying in the Holy Ghost) expect an answer according to our demand of God. But there is a mass of sorrow which we feel according to God by the Holy Ghost, for which we know not what to demand as we ought; but the sense of the evil pressing on the heart is wrought by the Holy Ghost, and, in our weakness through this poor body, the mind of the Spirit is there through the Spirit's working.

Thus He who searches the hearts, and scrutinises what is found there, finds, not our poor selfish feelings or complaints, but the mind of the Spirit - what the Holy Ghost has produced in them; for the Holy Ghost Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. He makes intercession for the saints according to God. Wonderful privilege in our sorrows and sufferings, that, when God searches the heart, He finds the mind formed by the Spirit there, the Spirit itself, as in us, making intercession for us according to God! It is a privilege to be in suffering thus, God by His Spirit taking part in it. As Christ personally felt all the sorrow perfectly through which He passed, so we through grace by the Spirit take our part in it (not according to selfishness, but) according to God, with the increased sense of our infirmity and weakness of our dependence and connection with a fallen creation from which we cannot escape down here, and feeling it so much the more as we see the glory, but given by the power of the Spirit to take part in it according to God - to be its voice, so to speak, in grace felt by ourselves, though having part in it. It is the mind of the Spirit in it which God finds in us when He searches the hearts, and the Holy Ghost Himself is there making intercession for the saints according to God. It is wonderful grace: the heart of man is searched; the mind of the Spirit is there, because the Holy Ghost Himself is there interceding, but, though Himself, in groans which are in our hearts. But (for such is the force of it), though we do not know "what to pray for as we ought," we do "know that all things work together for good to them that love God." God works of and from Himself in our favour - and makes everything work together for our good. We know not what to look for. Perhaps in the present state of things there is no remedy, no direct setting aside or remedy for what makes us groan; but this is certain - God makes all things work together for good to those who love Him. The sorrow may not be remedied, but the sorrow is blessed. We are called according to God's purpose, and God orders everything for our good.

173 This evidently brings in God working for us (without us - not in us); and this is the third part of the chapter. The work in us we have seen, in life by the Spirit, and the presence of the Spirit giving us the consciousness of being sons, heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ, and helping us - taking part in the scene of the infirmities and sorrow - being come down from heaven to dwell in us while we are in the midst of and, as to our bodies, connected with, the fallen creation, subject to corruption through the first Adam. The will is right; power is there by the Spirit for the inner man, and hope of the glory to come; and that just makes us feel the infirmity and sorrow, but felt through the Holy Ghost according to God. It is a blessed place, and shews how true and complete is the deliverance from the power and evil of the flesh; for in that, in which by the body we are connected with the fallen creation, the will is not - "not willingly," though we be still subject to the effect as sorrow. As for the will of the flesh, it is dead and condemned; but, on the contrary, He who searches the hearts finds the mind of the Spirit - a divine sense of the evil, and sorrow through it; the Holy Ghost interceding for us, in that which is beyond the measure of human thought, but God entering, as in our hearts, into the sorrow. It is a wonderful deliverance in, though not yet out of, the sorrow.

We have now brought to us the counsel and favour of God - His own purpose. If through grace any have loved God, they were called according to His purpose. The purpose is not here, nor indeed anywhere, simply sovereignty in election. It includes that to which they were called. They were foreknown; but whom he foreknew He predestinated to a glory which was in His mind and counsels before the world began, namely, to "be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."

174 Here we may remark the epistle goes wholly beyond and out of its general subject - the responsibility of man and his failure, and the way that it is met by the death of Christ. But the delight of divine wisdom was in the sons of men before the world was. Hence the Son became a man that His redeemed ones might be conformed to Him in glory. Meanwhile the first Adam was set in responsibility, and this had to be met, and was met in the cross, but therein a righteous ground laid also for the accomplishing the counsels of God, which consequently was then revealed. See Titus 1: 2, 3; 2 Tim. 1: 9; Rom. 16: 25, 26. Compare Eph. 3 and Col. 1. In the Romans, however, the instruction does not go beyond the individual, even in speaking of the purpose of God. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son, that He may be the firstborn among many brethren. This surely is clearly sovereign grace. To set poor worms, and dying worms, in the same glory as the Son of the Father has nothing to do with responsibility, or meeting it; although the act by which our failure in it was met did lay the ground for it, in that Man perfectly glorified God; and hence Man is set in God's glory. Our sins and our sin were met on the cross, as we have seen. But besides that God was glorified; and man, exalted to His right hand, entered into the glory as our forerunner. For, besides His personal and eternal title, it is because of what He did for us that Christ is entered into the glory. Here then we pass beyond responsibility and get on purpose: only that in this epistle we do not go farther than the individual place. We are to be conformed to the image of God's Son. And so scripture constantly testifies. "We have borne the image of the earthy," says 1 Corinthians 15, and "we shall bear the image of the heavenly Adam." "When he shall appear, we shall be like him," says the apostle John; 1 John 3. "He will change our body of humiliation, and fashion it like his glorious body," says our apostle; Phil. 3. Such as to this point is the wondrous counsel of God. For how, as to state, could we conceive anything more glorious, more blessed, than to be conformed to the image of God's Son; to see Him as He is, and be like Him?

175 The Spirit then blessedly states the security of those whom God has predestinated to be so conformed, stating the steps by which they are brought to the great result, only omitting wholly the work in us, which had been fully stated previously, because He is speaking of that which God is for us in His own purpose as its source (and securing that purpose in grace up to its accomplishment), and not of man's responsibility and the necessary requirement of God's nature and righteousness. These have been discussed in the previous part, both as to guilt and righteousness, and as to nature and state, so as to render it possible to have to say to the holy God. Grace has wrought that, but has wrought what was needed that we might be reconciled to God. Here (as already stated), alone in Romans, he touches on purpose and counsels. So in Ephesians 1: 4. There it is so according to the purpose of His own will. Men must be holy and in love to be before Him; but making us sons is according to the purpose of His own will. He might have made us something lower - could not, indeed, if we think of Him. It was part of His perfection to think and purpose thus. But we can think as a fact of a lower place. But His counsel was to make us sons, "that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us by Christ Jesus." Part of His glory - of what angels learn - would have been lost else; part of the glorious offering of the atonement. This could not be. Well, He called them, justified them, and brought all to perfection in His plan - He glorified them. It is not as yet in historical accomplishment, but all one unbroken chain with God.

We have then the great and blessed truth derived from it all - God is "for us": if so, "who shall be against us?" It is the great central truth of grace: God is for us. He is for us, in giving, in justifying, and in securing that in all difficulties nothing shall separate us from His love. And first, in giving, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us": with Him given, we can reckon on receiving everything else. No gift like this: how should He then not give everything else? Again, it is God Himself who justifies. It is not here justified before Him, but He justifies us Himself - little matter who condemns us then. God is for us in this also. Compare Zechariah 3.

176 Further, there are difficulties, trials, dangers in the way, death, the high and holy place so far removed, Satan's power against us. First, as to difficulties and trials, we more than conquer. It is the very path of blessing and honour: there Christ trod; there His power and mind are with us. Take all on high moreover, or in the depth: angels and powers, all are creatures - creature power or creature weakness. They cannot separate us from the love of God: this is more, more sure, more strong than any creature; yet it is in Him who, as Man, has met for us all of hostile power and death in the way, and is on high for us. It is the love of God, the sureness of divine love, and that in Christ Jesus our Lord, who has been through all, and is now on high for us. This secures us against all and through all for glory.

Here alone in this epistle, to bring in His intercession, the ascension is spoken of: "It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us." He has gone down to the depth for us in sorrow and the ruin of man, and risen in power and victory over it now as the exalted Man; He is interested in us, intercedes for us, finding needed help and mercy: what then shall separate us from His love? Here it is the love of Christ, that we may know Him and His love, as Man gone down to depth, and gone up on high as Man, still interested in and caring for us. In verse 39 it is the love of God in Christ, that we may know the love to be divine, supreme, and immutable, above everything that might separate in us - stronger than everything which, without us, might seek to separate us from this love.

This closes the doctrine of the epistle, carrying us on personally to glory, according to God's counsels, but not beyond our personal place according to those counsels; and surely it is high and blessed enough. Otherwise the epistle goes no farther than the responsibility of man, of which the law is the perfect rule, and where even redemption and the Spirit (our being dead to sin, and alive through Christ to God) have set us free; it is still "the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who walk after the Spirit." It is being thus dead and alive in Christ which is the way of deliverance. But no one can read Romans 6: 14, and Romans 7, without seeing that the great object of the apostle is to shew that being taken wholly from under the law and put under Christ - being delivered from the law - is the way of godliness as well as of peace; that the law, which gave no new life and left sin its power - left us therefore under its power, is contrasted with our having died, for faith, to sin, and with being alive through Christ and the power of the Spirit. That is, obligation, sin, and no new life, which is our state under law, is contrasted with life and the Spirit (having died to sin), giving us power and liberty, though the flesh remains just the same when the mind is renewed, and man is viewed as living still in this earth, only in the life of Christ, and dead to sin.

177 But in one case we, even if renewed, are still under the power of, and slaves to, sin; in the other, we are set free to live to God. Law is bondage to sin; our new place is life and liberty, sin in the flesh being condemned in the cross. The natures are the same; but to be bound by the evil one and unable to deliver ourselves is a different thing from being set free by power and able to keep it under. But this we have through the very fact that this epistle confines itself to the responsibility of man and the way God has met it in grace, man's justification and deliverance, with only just a slight mention of counsels at the end to bring in his security.

Thus the whole ground of his personal standing as so justified (God's salvation), is with wonderful fulness completely set forth, searched into, and grounded on God's work of grace, from the utter sinfulness of man alienated from God to the perfect security of the called one, so that nothing can separate him from God's love. This is of unspeakable value. Sin is fully stated, searched out; the law, as condemning and convicting of sin, forgiveness, justification, deliverance from the power of sin, all gone into; every question examined relating to how a man can be just with God; divine judgment, and human experience, fully ventilated; and divine righteousness, through grace, effectually established as the ground on which the believer stands, and which he will never be off. It does not go far on into counsels and privileges connected with the establishment of Christ's glory as Head; but our standing is most completely revealed and gone into, in the Holy Ghost's reasoning, by the word of God.

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans

J. N. Darby.

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177 The three following chapters are a special appendix, for the purpose of reconciling the doctrine that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile with the faithfulness of God to the promises made to the Jew, or Israel. The Jew might say, "I have nothing to answer to your plea against me by the law. I did break it, and hence must give up my claim under it to be a favoured people. But there were promises even before the law, and not with a legal condition. How do you set these aside, so as to make no difference between Jew and Gentile?" This had a colour of reason, and the Spirit of God, jealous of God's faithfulness, and of the sureness of the promise made to His people, now fully clears up this point, shewing, and that triumphantly, how Israel had forfeited it altogether, and yet that God, faithful to Himself, would accomplish these promises all the same; only that thus, in His divine wisdom, the Jew would have to come in as a mere sinner, entitled to nothing, just as a Gentile would.

178 But the apostle was charged by the Jews with indifference to Jewish privileges. Against this he eagerly defends himself. He had, he declares (the Holy Ghost bearing witness to him in his conscience), as much love as Moses when he wished himself blotted out of God's book if they were not forgiven. He too, had* (as beside himself in zeal for them) wished himself accursed from Christ for their sakes, and thus recognises all privileges as theirs. As the Lord, in the parable of the prodigal son, speaks of the elder brother, "All that I have is thine," so all, even Christ Himself, according to the flesh, came of them. Nor had the word of God none effect, but all were not Israel that were of Israel. And now the apostle brings in the sovereignty of God.

{*I do not read it as "could wish," but as "had." He refers expressly, I believe, to Moses in respect of his love to the people. As to God's people, I believe if we have Christ's Spirit, it cannot be otherwise. It is not a sober wish, but the desire of the blessing of God's people at all costs to self.}

And here I may remark, it is not national election, but precisely the opposite; the sovereignty of God setting aside national election, which was the ground the law took. The Jews claimed that, and the apostle is setting it aside, and he does it thus, You claim to be children - exclusively children of promise, as Abraham's natural seed: but it is written, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." You must let in the Ishmaelites, if you take it as a descendant according to the flesh. The Jew would answer, "Ah, that was a slave - not a true child of promise." Still it shewed that the children according to the flesh are not the children of God, but the children of promise; for this word is of promise (so we should read it): "At this time will I come, and Sarah shall bear a son." Nor is this all; when Rebecca had conceived by one, Isaac (here there could be no subterfuge as to a slave), before the children were born and had done good or bad, it was said the elder shall serve the younger. If it be title according to fleshly descent, you must let in the Edomites. If the Jew did not consent to this, he must consent to sovereignty in election.

179 This sovereignty (v. 24) God would use in favour of Gentiles as of Jews. But the apostle treats some other points and objections before arriving there. Verse 14, we have the common objection suggested, there is unrighteousness with God. The apostle then quotes Moses in reply, affirming that sovereignty, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." This was sovereign, but it was sovereign mercy. And when we examine this and the following case, in both we find the wickedness there. For sovereignty in mercy and compassion supposes the evil, and pardoning was not as to good. But when we examine the case, this will appear more strongly still. When the passage quoted from Moses was spoken, Israel had made the golden calf, and God had threatened all with excision, and on Moses's intercession retreats into His own sovereignty to spare any. Had He not been sovereign, had He acted in righteousness, all (save Moses and Joshua) would have been cut off. But He was sovereign, and could use mercy, and He did. The apostle draws the general conclusion. It is not willing or running on man's side, but God that shews mercy. No righteousness was attained by man's willing or running, but by God shewing mercy when man was unrighteous.

So on the other side, in the case of Pharaoh, God was shewing His power and making His name known, and Pharaoh is set up as one in whom it is to be done. He was already a wicked man who defied Jehovah: "Who is Jehovah that I should obey him? I know not Jehovah." Well, says Jehovah, you shall know, and all the earth too; and hardens him, that he may be a monument of His judgments to those that defied His power. Both were wicked - Israel and Pharaoh. Righteousness would have condemned both. He has mercy on one, and hardens the other. He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardens, where simple righteousness would simply have condemned both. This is sovereignty. He proves Himself not merely righteous (the day of judgment will prove that), but proves Himself God; and this is of all importance for us all: without it none would be saved.

180 But then there is still the human objection, which the apostle clearly states, and looks man in the face, "Why then doth he yet find fault, for who hath resisted his will?" Here it is not simply righteousness, but power exercised according to His will. It is the objection of man, referred to the impossibility of resisting. The sovereign exercise of God's will is no answer really on man's part to the guilt of the exercise of his own. But man does so because, if God does what He pleases, man pleads it as an excuse: it rests with God, and why blame man? But the apostle does not reason on the unreasonableness of it, but, as is most fitting, puts God in His place, and man in his. The thing formed is not to say to Him that formed it, "Why hast thou made me thus?" God, as the potter, can of one lump make a vessel to honour and another to dishonour. If He does, none can say, What doest Thou? There is no word that He has done so; but the first of all righteousness is that God should have His place, and this the apostle asserts. This is the first point-God will judge man. It is not for man to judge God. God is sovereign. No word that He does make a vessel to dishonour; but if He did, man could only bow.

Then see the holy wisdom of God. He has power to do what He sees good. "What if God, willing to shew his wrath and make his power known, endured the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy" - on the vessels "which he had afore prepared unto glory?" First, man is not to reply to God. He has power, if He saw good, to make vessels to honour and dishonour of the same lump. Then the case is put without weakening that. What if He endured vessels fitted for destruction? not which He had fitted, but, like Pharaoh, shewing His wrath on these already such; and then make known the riches of His glory on vessels of mercy. And now the work on them was His doing, which He had afore prepared for glory. They were vessels of mercy, and He prepared them for glory itself. So with us who have believed through grace. The others were vessels of wrath, and in them (fitted for destruction) He displayed His wrath and made His power known, as in Pharaoh. All were evil to begin with. He displayed His divine title and ways in both mercy and glory. He is sovereign in Himself, preparing for glory "even us," says the apostle, "whom he hath called of Jews and Gentiles." He forces the Jew to admit the sovereignty, or he must admit Ishmaelites and Edomites, and have been cut off himself - all but Moses and Joshua; and then shews He uses this sovereignty to call Gentiles, who had no title by promise, and Jews, who had forfeited it. He then quotes Hosea, stating both: the Gentiles, chapter 1; the Jews, when rejected, chapter 2;* and then Esaias's testimony, that only a remnant of Israel would be saved; and but for a very small one they would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. What is the result? Gentiles, not looking for righteousness, have found it - the righteousness of faith; and Israel, following after the law of righteousness, did not attain to it, seeking it by works of law, not by faith. For they stumbled at the stumbling-stone which Isaiah had declared would be laid in Zion - a sanctuary indeed, but a stumbling-stone; but it would be by faith that they would have the blessing. He that believed should not be ashamed; but, as a body, they had stumbled at the stumbling-stone.

{*Peter, speaking only of Jews, quotes only Hosea 2.}

181 But this must be more fully developed. For we have now, not the sovereignty of God letting in the Gentile and sparing a remnant of Jews through mercy, but Israel's rejection, as to the mass, as a nation, and the question whether it was final. The desire of the apostle's heart was for the salvation of Israel. He testifies of their zeal towards God, only it was not according to knowledge; and this last statement he now develops to explain their casting away. The next chapter treats the question whether it is final or not. They were ignorant of God's righteousness (his great theme in the epistle), and, setting about to establish their own under the law, had not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. That was Christ, and Christ was the end of the law - closed it wholly for righteousness to every one that believed. The schoolmaster went on in his office up to faith for those who had been put under his care till the time appointed of the Father, and so practically and usefully too for many a soul (for most Christians are under law). Then came the Son, and the whole economy and dispensation of the law closed. So it was in dispensation - they could not have two husbands at once; and so it is in conscience, for such is the mind and truth of God. It is another ground and way of righteousness. One is by our doing; the other God's righteousness - ours by faith in Christ who has perfectly glorified Him. Christ closes the claims of God against us by law, which is condemnation and death; and He is Himself our righteousness who believe through grace.

182 But here the special point is, He is the end of law. It is done with for righteousness: Christ takes its place. The law knows nothing but the person who is under it fulfilling it. It says, he that doeth these things shall live in them; and this is most righteous. The righteousness which is by faith speaks wholly differently. It is, "If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved"; for the real question is the salvation of the sinner, not the keeping of law to live. The allusion is to Deuteronomy 30, where the question of responsibility was closed as to keeping the law; and, the people being in captivity for their sins, the keeping of it to live was wholly over, they being cast out for not doing so.

The apostle introduces Christ as the hope then, as indeed He was to the Jew: only through Him could the law be written in the heart according to the new covenant, even in Jewish hopes; and then he turns to the proof of Christ being the one whom Israel was thus taught to look to; but then it let in the believing Gentile: "Whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed." Wherever the word was in the heart and in the mouth, that is, the word of faith preached; for law was over, and faith was not law - it was another way of righteousness. Law spoke one way, faith another. We have then, on the statement of the principle which let in the Gentile, the no-difference doctrine coming out beautifully in contrast with the first use of it. First, we had, "there is no difference: for all have sinned"; here, "no difference, for the same Lord is rich unto all that call on him." "For whosoever [how the apostle glories in these "whosoevers"!] shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved" - consequently a Gentile who did.

The original immediate application was deliverance in Zion for a remnant; Joel 2: 32. But God had furnished the blessing in terms which let in the Gentile too when the time was come, and this way of grace of His was more important far than the Jewish privilege. This supposed the testimony which made known the Lord on whom they were to call.

183 This brings in the relative position of Jew and Gentile under it. The testimony in grace proclaimed to Israel was a clear doctrine of the Old Testament, for which he quotes 52: 7. But they had not all obeyed the testimony. So Isaiah declares in Isaiah 53: 1: "Who hath believed our report?" So faith comes by this report; that is, the testimony heard - and that by God's word. But were the Gentiles not the object of God's testimony? Has the testimony not been sent? God's testimony was meant for the Gentiles. It is gone out into all the world. The main object here I believe to be to shew that, in God's mind, testimony (God's testimony) was to go out to the whole world - not how it was done. But was Israel unaware of this bringing in of the Gentiles? The ancient testimony of Deuteronomy 32 proved the contrary. When Israel first was established as a nation before God, Moses foretold their departure from Him as a foolish and unwise people. They were to be provoked to anger by those that were no people. But Isaiah is very bold. God was found of them that sought Him not (the Gentiles); made manifest to them that asked not after Him (again the Gentiles); but to Israel, "All the day long have I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people." Grace had not been wanting, but there was no response. God had called in vain; the divorce had come. See Isaiah 50.

Was the rejection then of Israel final? Surely not. The apostle then gives three proofs that it was not final rejection: a remnant was owned now; the reception of the Gentiles, to provoke the Jews to jealousy, not therefore to reject them; and, finally, the testimony that the Redeemer would yet come to Zion and turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and so Israel be saved as a whole - "all Israel" - not merely the Jew, nor yet as a remnant. With this the like responsibility of the Gentile is revealed. First, then (as himself of Israel according to the flesh, and blessed), he declares God has not cast away Israel; but as in the days of Elijah, when he even pleaded against them as wholly adversaries to God and His prophet, a remnant according to the election by grace had been preserved, so now, of which he, Paul, was a proof. But "if by grace, not by works, otherwise grace was no more grace." Israel had not obtained what they sought amiss, but the election had obtained it, and the rest were blinded. And so it was written, as Moses testifies (Deut. 29: 4), and David, in spirit, in judgment on their rejection of Christ (Psalm 69: 22, 23) - from the close of their history in the wilderness dealt with in patience till Messiah was rejected; and they now stumbled at the stumbling-stone and were blinded. But was it that they might fall? Was this God's purpose about them? Nay, but their fall was the occasion of salvation to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy.

184 This is the second proof it was no final purpose to cast them off. It was ordered to provoke them to jealousy, that is, not to cast them off. And so the apostle laboured. His service to the Gentiles he magnified as tending to this; so far was he from thinking little of Israel. For if their casting away was the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their restoration and fulness? This leads the apostle to bring out the relative position of Jew and Gentile as to the place of promise in this world - a most important point, and bringing out the real position of the Gentile professing body in this world; and into this I must enter a little.

When, after the flood, men had (casting off God) set up to make themselves a name, that they might not be scattered, God scattered them in judgment and formed them into nations. They gave themselves to idolatry, and God called Abraham (Josh. 24) - when they were in this state - and made him the root of a separate family in which the promises were according to the flesh, or in Christ in a special way by grace. Up to that there had been, for good, no head of a race or family. For Adam was the father of sinners; Abraham, of the seed of God in the world. In him election, promise, and calling were thus established - not merely individually in grace, but as a root and tree of promises. He was the first-fruit, the root. The natural tree was Israel. Some of the branches, for he will say no more, were broken off. It is looked at as a continuing tree of promise, and Gentiles by grace grafted in in their place, to partake with them of the root and fatness of the olive tree. We have not here Jew and Gentile brought into one new man - one body in Christ; not a body united to Christ in heaven, where there is neither Jew nor Gentile; nor a mystery hidden from ages and generations, but Israel, the olive tree of promise, subsisting from Abraham, in possession of the promise, and now some broken off from the place where they were because of unbelief. The root remained in the same tree where they were, and Gentiles were grafted in among them; for they were not natural branches, but only had their standing by faith.

185 The Gentiles were not to be high-minded, but fear. God had not spared the natural branches; what of the Gentile, who was only grafted in? It is not the church as the body of Christ. There is no breaking off there. Then the Gentile is fully warned, and shewn the principle of God's dealings - the goodness and severity of God on them which fell, the Israelitish branches cut off; "In thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness." Otherwise the Gentile branches would be broken off, as the Jewish. Have they so continued? Has Gentile profession continued in the faith and walk once delivered to the saints? If not, it will be cut off, as the Jews were - solemn word and warning to Christendom.

But the tree of promise remains, and the Jewish branches will be grafted in again into their own olive tree - the original place of Abrahamic promise, "for God is able to graft them in again." Not again into the church; for, so far from being there, they were broken off when it was founded (as touching the gospel, enemies, to let in the Gentiles); but still, for the fathers' sake, loved as a people chosen of God, elect ones - enemies as touching the gospel; that is, Jews (God's chosen people as such), but broken off for unbelief, as the Gentiles in similar case would be, and the Jews grafted in again. The Jewish system closed, we know, to let in the Gentiles. The Gentile will close, to let in the Jews back as such to the place of promise, which will then indeed extend, in its own way, over the earth. Not that there was any failure, nor could be, as to God's accomplishing His own work of grace; but blindness in part had happened to Israel till the fulness of the Gentiles had come in, all the Gentiles who had part in Christ's glory - the true church, in a word - what completed the number thus brought in by the gospel.

Then the Gentile history of grace and the church would cease, and Israel be saved as Israel, as a nation (which of course cannot be while the church time is going on, where there is neither Jew nor Greek); and not only the Jews but all Israel; when Christ should come, the Deliverer, out of Zion - not from heaven to take to heaven, but turning away ungodliness from Jacob in the place of His power on the earth. The Gentile professing system will be cut off, unless popery and infidelity be continuing in God's goodness. And, note here, it is not God's goodness continuing. Only just then it is displayed in the fullest way; the fulness of the Gentiles will be come in, and taken up then to heavenly glory. But as a system on earth, they will not have continued in God's goodness, and, as such, they will be cut off. These are the ways of God on the earth, not the security of the saints for heaven. There is a place of promise and blessing into which men are introduced; and they outwardly partake of what can be participated in on earth, but are not necessarily really partakers of Christ; Hebrews 6.

186 God's covenant to take away Israel's sins is sure. It shall be accomplished when Christ comes; for, note, the apostle speaks of Christ in Zion in a time yet to come; for God's gifts and calling suffer no change or setting aside, and Israel is His, by gift and calling, as a people. "As touching the gospel, they are enemies"; the now rejected nation; but, as touching election, ever and unchangeably loved as a people, and that in connection, not with law, but with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The law was conditionally blessing: "If ye will obey my voice, . . . ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me." With Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, it was purpose, and unconditional gift and calling. This difference runs through scripture. Daniel 9 refers to Moses; in Leviticus 26: 42, it is Jacob and Abraham; so in Exodus 32: 13; and in many other places. The final restoration of Israel will be on the ground of the promises made to the fathers, "for his mercy endureth for ever."

But there was a display of God's wisdom in this, which the apostle does not forget. Israel had promises. If they had come in on the ground of these, it would be so far a right, though grace had originally given them. But they would not, but rejected Christ, in whom all is to be fulfilled, and thus they became a mere object of mercy, like Gentiles, though God was faithful to fulfil them. As the Gentiles had been unbelieving, and mercy had been the only ground of their entering in, so now the Jews had not believed in the mercy shewn to the Gentiles, had rejected the grace that let them in, and were mere objects of sovereign mercy themselves.

187 It will be seen that I translate Romans 11: 31 differently from the Authorised Version;* but I am satisfied it is the only true way. As it stands in English, it directly contradicts verse 28. They are not saved by the mercy to the Gentiles, if they are enemies as concerning the gospel for the Gentiles' sake. God had concluded all in unbelief, that it might be pure mercy to all. It is this that calls out the adoring praise of the apostle in contemplating the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Thus he closes his survey by the Spirit of the redeeming and justifying grace which had dealt with sinners, and of that wisdom which had known how to conciliate this faithfulness to His promises, on the part of God, with those who were heirs of the promise coming under mere mercy, as behoved a sinner and the riches of God's grace. He now, though briefly summing up his doctrine farther on, turns to the practical consequences which should flow from these mercies of God.

{*"So these also have now not believed in your mercy, in order that they also may be objects of mercy."}

The practical exhortation takes the ground of the whole doctrine of the epistle, with which indeed the last special part as to the Jews closes withal - mercy on all, Jew or Gentile. There was no other ground of hope, and this mercy had been fully developed in the doctrinal part. The first general principle refers directly to the doctrine of Romans 6. We have seen that the first part, closing at Romans 5: 11, gives neither experience nor practice. It is just the full mercies of God in redemption. Then, set free, and in the new power of the Spirit of life, we present the body having no will (an instrument I dispose of), a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is my intelligent service. I am not innocent, I am not under the dominion of sin, and I have the privilege in the free power of life to give up my body as a sacrifice wholly to God, but in living service. It is consecrated to Him, set apart, and acceptable. The intelligent soul knows what it is doing in this. It is not a blind ceremony, done according to rule, nor a legal obligation, a yoke "neither we nor our fathers were able to bear"; but the free service of a willing mind, offering with intelligence all its powers to God, and in particular that body which (if it governed us - had a will of its own) would be the seat and power of sin bringing us into captivity, but is now a living sacrifice to God, and an acceptable one.

188 This answers perfectly to the practical point of the epistle, while in Ephesians the Christian is seen as having been dead in sins, and a new creation as directly coming from God. Hence the Christian walk is seen as following God in love, and being light in the Lord. The epistle to the Romans does not reach that ground. It has seen the body as the practical seat of sin, and as such called flesh, and brought in death. We are to reckon ourselves dead; but then (being alive to God in Christ, free from the law of sin and death, through the power of grace) we can yield ourselves to God as those that are alive from the dead - present our bodies a living sacrifice to God. It is the purpose and divinely wrought will, the intelligent service of the free Christian, who has to view his dealing with the body as a sacrifice to God though a living one.

The next point is that, the world around us being all astray from God, an immense system built up by the enemy, we cannot as Christians be conformed to it; only it is not a mere outward discordance, but a difference flowing from an inward renewing of the mind. Hence it goes much farther, having its positive side. The Christian seeks through this world the path of God's will - that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. Not acceptable to us, as sometimes said, but in itself, acceptable to God Himself, that is, in its very nature acceptable to every one that judged rightly. This is a great privilege, to have a will of God in a world departed from Him. Christ has marked it and revealed it, in walking with divine perfectness as Man in a way of which His walk was the perfection and the pattern. It was not mutual righteousness, for all were against Him, and went their own way; it was not, I need not say, wrong. It was a heavenly way on the earth, a life of perfect obedience; but a life of grace on the earth - God manifest in the flesh. There needed no way in paradise, but to remain where and what man was.

Where the whole system was departure from God, when man had left Him, there was no right way in it, none but to return to God; but back again - this was impossible. Innocence was over, never to be recovered; the tree of life was lost. The Son of God could bring down heavenly motives on earth, and live a life of grace and separation from all evil in the midst of all the evil in the world, holy and obedient, displaying a new and divine character on the earth, heavenly in its nature, yet adapted in grace to man, such as He was on the earth. This way we have to learn, to prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God - that will Christ came to do, and in which He has walked in the midst of evil; a way not only right, but of obedience; God fully restored to His place, and man to his as a perfect one, of grace (that is, above the evil, but suited in goodness to those in it) not only to seek and save, but in our own demeanour so as to represent God. Here, however, it is represented in its character of God's will. It is the obedience of one who has yielded himself to God, and now seeks what His will is, knowing it is perfect, and delighting in it, in itself, and as obedience.

189 This self-sacrificing subjection to the will of God hinders our setting up self, and that by its very nature; and the mind takes quietly its place where God has set it. This it does with more firmness, because one does it as serving God. He quietly serves there, where God has set him, and made it a duty. What he does in faith, he does with God in service. And each takes his place in the one body as God has set him, confines himself to its own service, and waits upon it - one body in Christ, and all members one of another. Here alone we find the body in the epistle. Christian position is assumed in various respects. We are in Christ, we are members of His body; the developed doctrine of the epistle enters into none of this. The point of exhortation is not going beyond the gift given by grace, but serving in it.

But the apostle passes on to more general service, as giving, unfeigned love, and then many other points in Christian life. But all this part of his exhortation refers to personal qualities or characters, and state - the spirit in which we are to walk. If a man give, it should be with freedom of heart; his love is to be unfeigned, abhorring evil and cleaving to good, kindly affections, brotherly love, and putting others before oneself. Grace and generosity of heart should in general characterise the Christian; sympathy with others; not heeding the fashion of the world or high things, but associating* with those of low estate (it is not "condescending"); walking so as to have things irreproachable before men, and, as far it depends on oneself, walking in peace with all; in nothing overcome of evil, but overcoming evil with good - a noble, indeed divine, principle. I am myself by grace in spite of the evil of others, I do not avenge self, I am above the evil of others, as God is, in principle doing good to those who hate us. All this is personally characteristic - the spirit in which we walk.

{*"Condescension" is a false translation of the Greek.}

190 Romans 13 turns to relative duties, with the addition of the Lord's near coming. Two principles are presented thus in the chapter: duty, to which he exhorts as the principle of love with which they were imbued in Christ; and that the night was far spent, the day at hand. First, he exhorts to subjection to the civil authority. These are God's ordinances: the powers that exist are ordained of Him - a precious direction, sparing us all question of who has the right, and political partisanship. "The powers that be"! that is all I have to concern myself about. There is no power but of God. Where power therefore is, it must be of God; and I own Him in it. Wherever power is established, the Christian obeys. Resisting it is resisting God's ordinance. They are God's ministers to maintain order. On the same principle we pay tribute. From this the apostle passes to every one's due, tribute, custom, honour. The Christian pays it, owing no man anything, save one debt that always remains; and this it is which fulfils the law, for love to our neighbour will work him no ill. The principle of love makes good the requirements of law, which the law itself could never make good. This is the first great principle.

Then the thought of the Lord's coming is used to enforce all: "It is high time to awake out of sleep; for our salvation is nearer than when we believed." The night of this world is the absence of the Sun of Righteousness. Let us clearly conceive this. In the busy and pleasure-seeking course of this world, for him who has understanding, and to whom Christ is known, it is still night; the gloom of night is over it, but the day has dawned to his faith, the Morning Star is arisen in his heart, but the world is asleep in the still-continuing darkness of night. For us indeed the night is far spent, but the world is asleep in the night. The waking soul sees in the horizon the Morning Star, the dawn along its edge, and waits for day. The heart is in the day, and walks as in the day. As Christians, we have done with works of darkness. In conflict we are still; but our armour against evil, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, is the light in which we walk. The power of light, and truth, and godliness, and judgment of evil, which belongs to that day, is in our heart, and the weapons and snares of darkness are foiled and detected, getting no entrance into, no hold on, the soul. We walk honestly as in the day, we put on in our ways and heart the walk and character of Him who is the true light of it, the Lord Jesus Christ. Having the hope of being like Him there, we purify ourselves as He is pure, we walk as He walked. We do not provide for the lusts of the nature which belongs to the darkness to satisfy it, but walk as Christ walked. Such is the Christian in view of Christ's coming and bringing on this dark and benighted world the light and day of God, in His effectual power; and such are the two springs and characters of Christian conduct; recognition of, acting up to, every relative duty in love; and knowing the time, the near approach of day to which he belongs. Compare 1 Thess. 5. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand."

191 The apostle now in Romans 14, turns to special cases of the spirit in which Christians should walk in their relationships with one another. There were those weak in faith, not living fully in the light and power of the new creation as dead with Christ to the rudiments of the world. It was weakness of faith, but Christ was loved; they were the purchase of Christ's precious blood. Christ had died for them. They were to walk in grace, receiving the weak, but not to doubtful questions which might bewilder his faith. And as to that, wherever he was weak (meats, days, etc.), as a Jew might well be, though it be weakness, the weak should not judge the strong as doing evil because his conscience did not allow him to do it, nor the strong despise the weak because he had scruples which a fuller faith would have delivered him from. It was judging another's servant. He stood or fell to his own master, and God was able to make him stand fast, weak as he was. That every one was to be fully persuaded in his own mind, not act on another's faith To Him they must look as the Lord to whom they were responsible, as Him to whom they had to live.

The apostle, as ever, then breaks out as to that which belonged to Christ in this respect. Christ was Lord of dead and living; to this end He died and rose again. Finally, He alone was judge. It was to God every one would give account of himself. All would be before Christ's judgment-seat; every knee bow to Him; "every one of us give an account of himself to God." This, rather, the Christian should judge, not to put a stumbling-block in his brother's way. It is uncharitable to destroy, as far as the bearing of our act goes in leading him to violate his conscience, or drive him back from Christ, as if Christ made lawless the one for whom He died. He that serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God, and approved of the sound judgment of men. We are to follow what makes for peace, and edifies others. "To the pure all things are pure"; no meats are defiled meats, if the heart is pure; but if a person defiles his conscience, even through an unfounded scruple to him, it is unclean. Happy for him who, in boasting of his liberty by faith, does not go beyond his faith in what he does - does not offend in what he allows himself to do; for whatsoever is not of faith (done with God as that which is allowed with Him) is sin. If a man thought he ought to honour such a day, or abstain from such and such food, and, to shew his liberty, does not, to him it is sin. It is not of faith with God. If a man has faith as to these things, it were better to keep it to himself before God than stumble his brother by acting on it where it does so.

192 The first seven verses of Romans 15 are a summing up of the same point, and belong to chapter 14. The strong are to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please themselves. So acted Christ. He did not seek to please Himself, bearing in meekness the reproaches that fell on Him, and walking so faithfully, so perfectly with God that, when men were disposed to reproach God, the reproach fell on Christ; so perfectly did He present God in His ways - the image of the invisible God. Christ served others (such should be our path), He did not please Himself; His life, on the contrary, was a life of reproach which He bore, but it was the reproach of God He bore. The quotation of this passage gives occasion to the apostle to justify his use of it by a principle of the utmost importance, that what was written aforetime was written for our instruction; that walking in patience, perhaps in reproach here, the comfort of the scripture might be ours, that we might know that God's mind was in it, our reproach His reproach, because as serving Him we had our part with Him, and hence have hope and bright confidence of soul in any and every trial in the whole path of faith. For all these things brought the apostle and the right-minded saint into the patience of the gospel; and this is the path of love, serving others, and for Christ's sake. But God is the God of patience (of patience, how great with us all!) and, blessed be His name, of comfort too. What a name to give to God, perpetually bearing with us, with our stupid, ignorant, and often inconsistent hearts, and occupying Himself with all our little trials to comfort us! He consoles those who are cast down, never withdraws His eyes from the righteous, is patient where we are impatient even with Him, and comforts us in grace. So have we to walk, like-minded one toward another, and receiving one another as Christ received us - weak in faith, that we might be to the glory of God. This closes the exhortations of the epistle.

193 The apostle proceeds to sum up briefly the leading elements of what he had taught, especially the letting in of the nations to the privileges of the gospel. Christ "was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers." The nations, on the other hand, had no such promises; they had to glorify God for His pure mercy. We have already seen how the accomplishment of promise to the Jews has become pure mercy by their rejection of the Christ of promise. The apostle then quotes several passages from the Old Testament, shewing that this mercy to the nations was always contemplated of God, and that there should be a root of Jesse, and One rising to reign over the nations, in whom the nations should hope. The apostle then thinks of them as such, and says, resting on this word "hope," "now the God of hope [for the full promises are not fulfilled, and He gives us hope, and we are saved in hope as to that fulness] fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost." Such is the natural condition of the Christian, full of joy and peace in believing; the Holy Ghost dwelling and acting in him so that his spirit rises in abundant hope, trusting in God, and looking forward to the bright and holy and blessed time when all shall be accomplished in the light - when we shall be with Jesus.

Paul then refers to his ministry. He trusted that they were able to edify one another; but he wrote to them as having this ministry to the Gentiles confided to him; ministering the gospel of God, in order to the offering up of the Gentiles as an offering to God, acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Ghost. Thus a divine public ministry was confided to him by Jesus Christ in the things pertaining to God. In this the apostle presents himself figuratively as a priest (such is the force of the word "ministering" the gospel), offering up those of the nations to God; for such are Christians - an offering out of the world to God - a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. So the Levites were offered up, instead of the first-born of Israel. We are consecrated, sanctified to God by the Holy Ghost.

194 He then shews the power with which he had laboured, and how he had gone, not where Christianity was already planted, but to poor souls far away from God and light. Now his ministry was closed in these parts. He had accomplished his service; others might build up, but his work was done. He was a master-builder to lay the foundation; resisting indeed energetically the inroads of evil, but even he had his own place, and only that. It was an energy which had a sphere where energy had its place. He could preach, in spite of every danger, where no one had been; he could form, establish, ordain, enter into all details needed for this, and resist evil and false doctrine, so that his building might not be thrown down; and from Jerusalem to Illyricum he had fully preached, completed, or filled up the measure of the gospel work. Christianity was founded, and his work was done. The Greek world was Christianised and settled, as far as true church work went. The Latin world was before him; those who were at Rome also; for his work was done in those parts, and there was no more place for him; there he would be out of his place - ill-placed. A man, even now, may finish his work in a place (the formation and establishing work), and only be in the way if he remains, hindering others, and so felt - an energy not adapted to the quiet care of everyday service, which occupies itself with the details of souls, and would only harass them. It is wise to learn when this is so, and work elsewhere when God calls. At any rate his service in the Grecian sphere of his labour was closed; he had no more place in these parts.

But God would not allow Latin Christianity to have an immediate apostolic foundation. Christians were already at Rome, as we learn from the epistle, and Paul, as we find here, did not go on (when his service was closed on the eastern side of the Adriatic) to pursue them with free apostolic energy in Rome, but goes to Jerusalem with alms and offerings. The apostle went only as a captive to Rome. Christianity (save those residing there as inhabitants) began as a captive in Rome. He had been long desirous of going there, but even now does not speak of it, though labouring wherever he found himself, as a general rule, at a place which was a direct object of apostolic labours. He did not found the church at Rome - it was already there. He could not say, "where Christ was not named": it is only, "When I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you; for I trust to see you on my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled with your company." Spain he was going to; he would see them on the way. That Peter had been, or was there, the epistle wholly excludes the idea. Christianity founded itself at Rome. No wise master-builder was there. It is not the custom of God to take worldly capitals as the centre of His work. "Hazor aforetime (we read in Joshua) was the head of all these kings." It, and it alone, was destroyed of all the cities that stood still in their strength. Paul was going to Spain. He would see them on the way. But as far as scriptural history goes (that is, in God's representation of the closing scenes of the gospel), he never goes to Spain, is brought a prisoner to Rome after two years' captivity in Caesarea, remains two years captive in his own house in Rome; and there, with the judgment of the provincial Jews, the history closes. This is a remarkable, and I believe, not unintentional account of the character of Paul's intended visit to Rome, coupled as it is with the actual history of his imprisonment and arrival there as a prisoner more than two years after. We have his early history in Galatians for doctrinal objects, but no such history of frustrated plans in any other epistle. That was at Rome only, and recorded by the Holy Ghost - surely not without intention.

195 But now he went to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. His apostolic ministry was closed in the east; he undertakes a diaconal service to Jerusalem, and never resumed a free apostolic service again, as far as we have any direct historical account. His purpose, as stated in this chapter, he certainly did not fulfil as intended. (See verse 23.) Indeed his fears as to what might happen in Judaea are stated in verses 30-32. I do not enter here on the question, on which so much has been written, whether he was freed from a first captivity in Rome, and again taken prisoner. It depends mainly on inferences from 2 Timothy, compared with Philippians, Philemon, and Acts 20. The direct scriptural account closes at the end of the Acts, supplemented by what we have here (Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon having been written in captivity); to which there must be added Hebrews, if we esteem it to be written or composed by the apostle Paul - chapter 13: 23, 24, applying directly to the question. The question affects in no way the moral or ecclesiastical bearing of any of the epistles.

196 The close of the service of the great apostle, as we have it in scripture, is deeply affecting: made even here so like his Master, though at a distance, as it could not but be; but all failing in this world, and closing, however wonderful - yea divine - the energy in exercise in the work, resulting in failure here, because of the materials with which the divine workman had to deal; yet the ultimate purpose of God only so much the more wonderfully accomplished, the work only so much the more evidently divine, when we consider the materials wrought on, and the failure as displayed in them. Compare Acts 20: 29-33; and still more Isaiah 49: 4-6. But the comparison of our chapter (verses 23-33) with the closing chapters in the Acts will bring home to us more than any commentary the true state of the case: only in Acts 19: 21 we should read, I have no doubt, "in spirit," the Greek having the practical force of "his spirit." Chapter 21: 4 must be compared. I would remark that the Jews, who, to please their countrymen, had recommended him to go into the temple, never once appear in the difficulties they had brought him into by it. But the Lord stood by him and strengthened him, and all was ordered of God.

A witness to all the authorities from the Sanhedrim to the Emperor, the providence of God had ordered his path, and the Lord's grace sustained him in it. If the free service of apostolic power in the Spirit was now to close in an unwilling captivity, yet he is delivered by the Jews to the Gentiles to suffer at their hands, in the perfectness of grace, if not in the perfectness of the blessed Lord Himself. For who is as He was? No highs and lows, as the energy of the apostle could and did experience, but the calmness of unvarying perfection was there, if it were not in the thought of drinking the cup none else could, and that, if it could be, was more perfect than all.

If as yet a stranger at Rome, his heart is at home with many there. No forgetfulness of service to himself, nor of that done to the Lord, marked the apostle's spirit. His heart, too, for nearly all had an epithet or a remembered service, which went to their heart, and individualised and gave reality to the remembrance. He could not write to them as an assembly he had had to say to, for there was (Rom. 16: 5) one there, yet he could write to almost all as saints that he had known. He filled himself in spirit with their company, as those known in their faith and service. And this, under the circumstances, is as beautiful as it is apposite. He was apostle of the nations, and as such had his service at Rome, as elsewhere; but the apostle of the nations had bound by the links of faith, and with a large and individualising heart, one and another and another to the service that he was performing for Christ, and by the heart that performed it. We do service as a whole, so did the apostle - a whole that embraced all the counsels of God; but he did it with a heart that could link up all the elements into the bonds of a charity which thought of each to make them a whole in Christ in love. The fruits will be hereafter. We find many here, remark, who in various ways served diligently in the sphere in which God had placed them; from those who were of note among the apostles, to Phoebe, the deaconess or servant of the church at Cenchrea, who had been a helper of many. None of them are forgotten before God, although their names are not recorded even by the mindful fervency of the apostle's love.

197 The apostle then judges those who cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine they had learned: activity of mind, seeking personal self-importance, working mischief to themselves and others. Such activity separates the heart from God, with whom subjection of spirit is always wrought in us, a confiding learning in the secret consciousness that all is received from God. We see this spirit so sweetly in John the Baptist; and so wherever the Spirit of God works. Its coming from God brings not only knowledge but the love of God into it. It is no charity to sanction such workings of the human heart. We are to avoid them. And faithfulness in this, in ever such a weak one, brings a testimony from God with it which has power - more power than the pretension of man - and works by the Spirit to preserve the saints wherever the Spirit of God rules in the heart, wherever the soul is subject to God. The rest are made manifest. The hearts of the simple are preserved: the mischievous though fair speeches are judged for them.

This leads to a most beautiful Principle for the guidance of our hearts, which Christianity alone can give: "I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil." The wisdom of the world must know its crafts in order to avoid them; but God has a path of His own in the world which wisdom has traced. By His teaching the heart is well informed in what is good - good as to the path which is in this world: Christ's path, the path of divine goodness and wisdom as to everything around in man. Learning this, I need not know all the evil or any of it. I shall walk in the wise and holy path I know, and need not know the rest. It is avoided and remains unknown, and the heart more conversant with what is good, lovely, and of good report. This is a most healthful and blessed preservative, a path marked out of God for us in this world. It is great grace. If I know the one right path across the waste, I need not learn all that lost themselves in it. "By the words of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer." It was sufficient for the blessed Lord to say, when tempted for us, "Man shall live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." We have the salutations of, as well as to, the saints; for fellowship in love characterises the spirit of the gospel.

198 We have also what shews us Paul's way of writing his epistles, save that to the Galatians; he dictated them while another wrote. Here one Tertius wrote it, and salutes with the rest. From 2 Thessalonians 3: 17 we learn how they were verified, their accuracy secured. For letters which had the character of commandments of the Lord (1 Cor. 14: 37) this was important.* The salutation at the end came from his own hand, which verified all that was in the epistle as his, that is, as of apostolic inspired authority. We see what he thought of his own epistles; the accuracy he thought important, just because they were not his, but from the Lord. The reader may remark the three steps in the reception of divine truth in 1 Corinthians 2: 12-14. The things freely given of God are known, revealed by the Spirit, then communicated by words** which the Spirit taught, and then received through the grace of the Spirit. Compare, as to the two first points, 2 Peter 1: 19-21. So at the end of our epistle.

{*Hence what came from his own experience, however elevated, was distinguished (1 Cor. 7: 12).}

{**It is not "comparing," but using a spiritual medium of communication.}

199 The apostle closes with ascription of praise to the only wise God; but, in doing so, and owning Him as He who is able to establish them according to His gospel, he recalls the character of the testimony contained in that gospel - that of which he speaks in so many places in so remarkable a manner. In this epistle he has not developed this mystery; his object was to shew how a soul stood in liberty before God; and that is individual, and must be so. Conscience and justification are always necessarily individual. Still he supposes the Christian estate (as in Romans 8: 1) that we are in Christ, and (chap. 12) that we are one body in Christ; as here the full scope of the counsels of God in the mystery hidden from ages. None of them is unfolded in the epistle; but his preaching of Jesus Christ was according to the revelation of the mystery, which set Christ at the head of all things; and not only so but brought Jews and Gentiles as one body, with all distinction lost, into union with Him in heaven as Head - a truth which left the system of the law entirely aside, though confirming its authority in its own place. This had been kept secret since the world began, but was in the counsels of God before the world was (compare 2 Tim. 1: 9; Titus 1: 2; Eph. 1 and 3; Col. 1), and was revealed now that the foundation for the heavenly and eternal blessing was laid in Christ's work.

But a very important principle is added here; it is not "the scriptures of the prophets" really here, but "prophetic scriptures." Such was this epistle, and Ephesians and Colossians - in a word, all the inspired epistles; and by these this truth was made known to the nations "according to the commandment of the everlasting God." He whose counsels were not confined to Judaism, but who had His own purpose in the Son, and now revealed this to the nations, and commanded it to be sent forth to them; He, who, while He had been in a special manner in time God of the Jews, had His counsels and views in man, and in the Seed of the woman, would accomplish the counsels in power. And now this original purpose of God was made manifest for the obedience of faith to all nations. But the inspired and prophetic character of the scriptures of the New Testament is here distinctly affirmed. The only question is: Since there were such, are those we have in the New Testament they? And outward and inward testimony makes this good to the soul taught of God.

Notes on the Epistle to the Colossians

J. N. Darby.

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Two Epistles of the New Testament are occupied with the mystery of the church united to Christ in one body, the Epistle to the Ephesians, and that to the Colossians. There is consequently identity in a measure between the two epistles; but they show the subject each under a particular aspect, presenting as to the details a sensible difference. In the first Paul sees the church in Christ, the saints occupying in Him their place in heaven; in the second he sees Christ in the saints (not them in Him) on the earth.

Chapter 1: 1-3. Paul addresses himself to the Colossians from our God and Father [and the Lord Jesus Christ],* that is to say, on the footing of our relationship with God. He blesses the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the first source of all our blessings. This is the manner in which he enters upon his subject. This opening is the same as that of the Epistle to the Ephesians.

{*The critics omit "and the Lord Jesus Christ" here.}

Verses 4-12. But here is a difference. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul, before coming to that which concerns the faith of the saints, and their spiritual condition, causes quite a stream of the riches of the grace of God to flow (Eph. 1: 3-14); whilst in the Epistle to the Colossians he is occupied immediately with their condition. This would indicate that these latter were found in a lower moral condition than the former. He could, from the very outset, speak to the Ephesians of the riches of the counsels of God; the Colossians required him to be occupied with them firstly. In verse 4 Paul records their faith, and in verses 5-12 he recalls the work of God in their favour, expressing his desires and his prayers for their prosperity.

Verses 9-12. This introduction presents to us a fine summary of all that one can ask of God for Christians. If we had sufficient confidence in the interest which God takes in His children, we should have greater boldness in asking God, according to the intentions of His grace. We do not live enough by this grace, and that is why our prayers are so constantly stamped with the sense of want. We are often the Abraham of Genesis 15, who asks for himself, saying to God: "What wilt thou give me?" But Paul shews himself here the Abraham of Genesis 18, sitting before God, worshipping Him, and making requests for others.

250 Verse 10. To walk worthily, is not only not to fall, but rather also to act in a manner so as to be pleasing to the Lord; it is to shew Him a walk in harmony with the knowledge He has given us of Himself and of His will.

Verse 11. Strengthened with all might according to the power of His glory; not merely "glorious." The power indicated by these words is that which the glory of God possesses.

Verse 12. Giving thanks to the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints. We inherit from God as children (Rom. 8: 17); it is then from our Father that we receive the inheritance. And the Father, who gives us the right to the inheritance, prepares us also to receive it, and to enjoy it.

"In light." He has made us such, that we are capable of dwelling in the light. We can dwell there with joy, where is found absolute holiness.

Verses 13, 14. "Translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." God does not wish to put His own in absolute purity without giving them an object of affection. This inheritance which He gives is also the kingdom of the Son of His love into which we enter virtually through the redemption accomplished by His Son.

Verses 15-29. Having thus named Christ, Paul goes on now to present Him in the glory of His Person; he goes on to tell what Christ is in Himself, the works He has accomplished, what He is in His own.

As concerns this, we remark in Christ, as elements of His glory; two headships, one in creation, the other in resurrection (v.15-18); two reconciliations, that of the creation, and that of the saints forming the church (v. 19-22); and two ministries proceeding from Him, the gospel preached to all creation, and the ministry of the church (v. 23-29).

Verse 15. What glory there is in the Person of Christ! He is on one side the image of the invisible God, manifesting in His Person the God that cannot be seen, and on the other He is the Head of all creation.

"First-born." This title indicates that He who bears it is Head over all. One sees an example of this in Psalm 89: 27, where Solomon, tenth son of David (1 Chron. 3), receives with the title of "first-born" the right to his father's throne. It is not difficult to conceive that if the Creator-God finds it good to take a place in the creation, the first belongs to Him. The Son took this place in becoming Man.

251 Verses 14-17. The Son, who is before things, created all things from the beginning, and by the same power which He shewed in the formation of the worlds, He holds up all things to-day. Without Him, all in creation would dissolve.

Verse 16. Visible and invisible things, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, everything powerful depends upon the power of Christ who created all. And not only is it by Him, but for Him, that all things were created.

Verse 18. He is the Head in resurrection, as in creation.

Verse 19. Hitherto we have seen Christ the image of God, and Head of all things. He presents Himself now to us, uniting all fulness in His Person. There dwelt all the fulness. The Gnostics had imagined a fulness in which Jesus occupied one place only. Now to preserve for the Lord His true place, the apostle declares that, far from belonging to a fulness, Jesus is the one in whom all the fulness was pleased to dwell. What is this fulness? It is deity.

Verse 20. It pleased this fulness, which created everything, to reconcile all things, when after the entrance of sin they were found in disorder.

"To reconcile all things," that is, creation outside Himself, and the church in Himself; the reconciliation of the church is already an accomplished fact. "You hath he reconciled."

The general condition of things is complete confusion: all creation is in disorder; Satan is in the heavenly places; and, being the god of this age, leads the course of this world. But this disorder will not always last. God will put His hand to it; the state of things will change. Meanwhile the moral reconciliation is already wrought; we are reconciled to God: as for our bodies which partake of corruption, deliverance will come also, for that we wait, the reconciliation of creation.

When speaking of reconciliation, Paul neither mentions wicked men nor Satan: they are named when it is a question of the subjection of all things to Christ (Phil. 2). But when it is a question of reconciliation, it is evident that they could not be spoken of.

252 Verse 21. The reconciliation of the saints, composing the church, presents a fact which is special to it. Paul, in looking at it, finds the objects of this reconciliation in the greatest distance from God. He sees the Colossians (their condition is that of every man in the flesh) as not only sharing in the general disorder of creation, but as alienated from God. Such are the beings that Christ has reconciled to God. He has reconciled them in the body of His flesh - in Himself.

Verse 22. It is important to remark that the reconciliation of the church, as well as the headship of Christ in resurrection are in connection with His Person.

Verse 23. "If ye continue in the faith." One may gather from these words that there was not much stability among the Colossians. The words "if ye continue in the faith," indicate a condition. As concerns this, we may remark, that the presentation of our persons to God, to which this condition would seem to be bound up, is very free for us, since it is God who does all that this condition requires (v. 22). But then (v. 23), if we abandoned Christianity we should lose our advantage, seeing that we should thereby have rejected the grace by which we were presented to God. This does not at all touch the election and the perseverance of the saints (one finds this language unceasingly in the epistles); it only proves that God, whose faithfulness guaranteed the accomplishment of His counsel, keeps ourselves, and that He keeps us morally.

Verses 23-25. Observe these two ministries: the preaching of the gospel in all the creation which is under heaven; and the service of Paul as minister of the church. These two ministries are distinct; but we see them combined in the person of Paul. Ministries inferior to the apostleship are in general given for one or other of these two branches of service, though it may happen, too, that God sometimes employs one and the same servant to meet the very varied need of souls.

Verse 25. "To fulfil the word of God." The doctrine of the church completes the word of God - the Scriptures. What was given afterwards did not add new truths to the revelation of God. The Apocalypse, for instance, gives many new details on prophecy; it casts much light on the prophets of the Old Testament, etc., but they are not at all new truths.

Verses 26, 27. "The mystery which hath been hid from ages." To declare the coming of Christ on the earth, His sufferings, His departure, His return in glory to establish a kingdom - all this was not a mystery, it was revealed. One may misunderstand these revelations, and in this case there was ignorance or mistake. But a Christ glorious and heavenly, who unites all in His Person - a Christ, Head of His body, forming the same heavenly body of saved Jews and Gentiles - was only revealed in the New Testament. And not only was this mystery hidden, but it does not at all agree with the hopes of the Jews: for a Christ present (by His Spirit) among the Gentiles, who is as yet only the hope of glory, is far from answering to the expectations of the Jews, who looked for the Messiah to come then, bringing them the glory and establishing the kingdom.

253 "Christ in you," or among you, Gentiles. Such is the side of the mystery which attaches to the presence of Christ come, where He has given the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). "Came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh," Eph. 2: 17. This expression "among you" applies consequently in the dispensations of God to this particular period during which Christ is among the Gentiles by His Spirit.

Verses 28, 29. Paul laboured to present "every man perfect in Christ Jesus." It is not enough for the spiritual life that one be in Christ without anything more. It is needful, besides, that one should apprehend what Christ is, and that our character should be formed by this knowledge. A Jew or a Gentile who embraced the faith was saved; but he had much to learn with respect to our Saviour. He must learn that Jesus is Lord of all, Head over all, as well as to the church, that He is High Priest of good things to come, etc. Paul did not weary in his efforts to make Jesus known. His heart desired in a lively way that every man should become a formed and full-grown Christian. Every man "perfect" means full-grown. The same word reappears in Philippians 3: 15, and in Hebrews 5: 14.

Chapter 2: 2. "Being knit in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding." The New Testament speaks of full assurance of faith in Hebrews 10: 22; and "of full assurance of hope" in chapter 6: 11 of the same epistle. But in the passage that we are studying we read, "full assurance of understanding." Paul asked in his prayer for the Colossians that they might joy in this "full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God." This last is more vast and extending; it is all in connection with the glory of Christ. The full assurance of faith and hope is more towards ourselves, and our joy; the full assurance of understanding brings us into the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and this gives us understanding in all His ways. It is astonishing to see how quickly our thoughts turn to the earth, and bring down heavenly things to our own lives. That explains why legality is so often found among Christians, for the elements of the world and law go together. If we live up to our heavenly position, enjoying communion with God in that position, we see things in God, and contemplate from on high His great love.

254 It is love which gives us this assurance of understanding; love precedes it. In this love we can understand divine things; but if not there we find ourselves led away by self, and selfishness understands nothing of the things of God.

Verses 2, 3. Omit in these verses the words, "and of the Father and of Christ," and read "the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." The church is part of the mystery of God, but it embraces more than the church; it is the purpose that God before all time had of uniting all under one Head, Christ, in giving Him, as centre of this whole, the church composed of Jews and Gentiles to form one body with Him. Thus, according to the purposes of God, Christ takes His place as Head over all who belong to the second creation having in glory the church as a body.

God's government down here represents the elements of Christ's glory, but they do not form part of the mystery; so the glory of the Messiah among the Jews, and the lordship of the Son of man over the nations do not belong to the mystery of God. These things are revealed in the Old Testament.

Verse 6. It appears the Colossians were inclined to philosophy, legality, etc. To turn them from it the Holy Ghost says, "There are no such elements in the things which ye have received, but hold fast that which ye have received of God, and walk ye in it."

Reasoning is a vain deception. If man does not accept the testimony of the word of God, he understands nothing amidst the confusion which surrounds him. Philosophers say, "All is God" Well evil being in the world, what is the consequence? Is the evil of God? Admit the fall of man, and these errors will vanish.

255 For "after the tradition of men," read, "according to the teaching," the word signifies, "transfer to another." The Jews went a good deal into the elements of philosophy; they adopted the form to which they submitted the Jewish elements.

"The rudiments of the world." Philosophy goes no farther: it could not give us anything, much more where the truth of God is in question; anything we find added only tends to destroy. Gnostical inventions reject the divinity of Jesus, and the mystery of the incarnation. Later inventions make other truths disappear. Thus, the mass annuls the perfect sacrifice of the cross; and invoking the intercession of saints does not acknowledge the priesthood of Christ. So the Christian should seek for nought outside Christ. We are in Him in whom all fulness dwells: what can we want more? We are complete and perfected in Him.

Verse 9. "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." In this verse, as in chapter 1: 19, already noticed, we see that all fulness dwells in Jesus. There this fulness is seen respecting the counsels of God, the goodwill of God; here it represents, rather, the accomplished work of redemption.

Verse 10. "Ye are complete in him." Notice: far from having anyone between us and Christ, we are in Him who is the Head of all principality and power. We lose our standing, if, for example, we allow an angel to come between Christ and us, although as a creature an angel is far superior to us. There is no mediator between us and Christ; there is between us and God, this very mediator being Christ Himself.

Verse 11. Paul shews that we have in Christ the reality of things signified in the ordinances. Being in Christ we have life, and this life produces death in the flesh, the true circumcision.* To seek life by death would be to wish for death outside of Christ. We are never recommended to die to sin; it is said, we are dead to sin. In practice, it is true, one realises life according to the measure that he is dead.

{*This truth decides the question discussed with the monks and the Irvingites. They want to obtain life by death, instead of knowing that we are dead by the fact that we have received life.}

In Christ circumcision consists in putting off the body (of the sins) of the flesh. With one gleam of faith one is entirely freed from sin looked at as a whole. This passage does not refer to practical life. It shews a moral condition, which is, in fact, when we receive Christ by faith. Note here, it does not say, "the sins of the body," but "the body of the sins" - sin being looked at as a principal characteristic of the body. The circumcision of Christ exists in the fact that we are constituted dead to sin.

256 Verse 12. To unfold the subject more fully, Paul adds, "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him," v. 12, 13. One can look at man in two ways - as living in the world, and as being dead in his sins. Paul, in Romans 6, sees the Christian out of the first of these two conditions. "Shall we continue in sin?" and in Ephesians 2 he sees him out of the second - "Ye were dead." And here we find the grace which corresponds with these two states - "Ye walked according to the course of this world; now ye are buried with Christ. . . . Ye were dead in your sins; God hath quickened you.

Verse 13. This verse represents a detail, which, I believe, was not remarked in the Ephesians, namely, that God in quickening us pardons our offences; with one act He does the two things. The knowledge of our sins does not prevent Him from quickening us. In this case the quickening brings of itself the pardon of our sins. If, for example, my child is being punished, and I come and take him for a walk, it is clear he is forgiven. One sees in the light of such grace how man has liberty through Christ.

Verses 13-15. The death of Jesus corresponds in several ways to the condition and wants of sinful man. There are trespasses - Jesus has forgiven them (v. 13); ordinances - He has blotted them out (v. 14); principalities and powers - He has triumphed over them. How valuable it makes the cross! Respecting this deliverance, it all applies to saints individually, not to the church as a body. This body has its existence in Christ alone. The church has never been under the power of death, nor under judgment; it has never needed to be justified, which is all individual. Where the church is named, there is no room for any such question.

But do we not see in Ephesians 5: 25, that Christ gave Himself for the church? Yes; before Christ formed the church for Himself, He bought it with a price. In this passage the idea is not justification, but the love that Jesus had in giving Himself for the church. Justification, that is to say, the grace that enables a sinner to stand before God, is not brought out in the Epistle to the Ephesians. This epistle speaks of the church as being in the heavenlies, united to Christ, and heir to His glory, according to all the counsels of God; it shews also the love and care of Jesus for His church. Christ, according to this love, gave Himself for it, bought it by His death; and now that it is His, He purifies it by the word before presenting it to Himself glorious. The church in this last case is the object of care, similar to that received by Esther before being presented to king Ahasuerus. But all this is not justification.

257 Verse 14. The handwriting should be, "the obligation" - the obligation that existed in ordinances. An ordinance is all that is given to one in the flesh to accomplish: Peter calls it a yoke that neither we nor our fathers could bear. The ten commandments are presented under the form of an ordinance, but they point to something larger; they trace the conduct of a creature that knows love, and are thus the expression of a great moral principle that even angels obey.

258 The breaking of bread, is it an ordinance? Not in the sense that we understand ordinance; it is not a commandment, but a privilege granted to us to remember Jesus. The feast of unleavened bread on the contrary was an ordinance to which one must submit under pain of being cut off. Neither is the breaking of bread a sacrament. Originally a sacrament was a faithful oath that the Roman soldiers made to their flag. Fathers of the church called many things by this name; breaking of bread, baptism, and marriage were all sacraments to them. In a time of persecution to break bread was well, in one way, to profess the faithfulness of Christ; but it happened also at a similar time to profess faithfulness was no more than the breaking of bread. This expression "a sacrament" has become so ecclesiastical that it leads the mind away. Breaking of bread and baptism are no more sacraments than the viaticum and marriage. It is well to get clear of these bits of superstition.

Christ has left us two signs: one of His death and resurrection, baptism; the other, the memorial of His death, the breaking of bread. It is sad that it is called an ordinance if more is meant than the Lord's institution. When Jesus said "Do this in remembrance of me," surely He meant that it should be done; but by these words He only gave a motive, and did not establish an ordinance.

The breaking of bread, and baptism, were things practised by the Jews. They broke bread with the afflicted (Jer. 16: 7); they had pools for their baptisms. The Lord adopted the first of these two customs for the breaking of bread; the second for the washing of regeneration. "He took bread, and blessed it" (Luke 24: 30) means He gave thanks to God, no more.

Verse 15. Having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly. Jesus has, as it were, drawn the enemy into a public scene. Speaking historically it is the enemy who has conducted the things in this manner.

Verse 16. There are three results derived from verse 12: "Let no man therefore judge you," etc. (v. 16-19); "Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ," etc. (v. 20-23); "If ye then be risen with Christ," etc. (chap. 3: 1-4).

"Of the sabbath," all the days that they were compelled to rest were called sabbaths.

Verse 18. "Let no man beguile you of your reward." The idea that these words present is to be deprived of the crown after having run. "In a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels intruding into those things which he hath not seen." But the adversary is satisfied; he succeeds in that way to force you to make a diversion, and to turn your thoughts from the object of your faith. As soon as men take this attitude of voluntary humility, they are not "holding the head." How can he that has the right to own himself one with Christ let such a privilege go to turn to other objects?

Verse 19. The Lord, far from having instituted an order . of things to come between us and Him, has given the ministry which works to join, and sustain the members of the body united to the Head. This verse shews the direct union of each member with the Head.

Verse 20. Why are ye subject to ordinances? As though living in the world. It is not the simple fact of being in the world that these words infer, but to have lived in it and of it, outside of Christ. It is to this kind of life that ordinances apply themselves. It is remarkable to see how the very things in which Christianity seems to give place to man - baptism and the breaking of bread, of which the flesh would make ordinances, these very institutions declare man to be dead.

259 Chapter 3: 1-4. Taking part in Christ's resurrection the Christian finds himself a heavenly person. Jesus his life and joy is hidden in heaven; and such a Christian can but have heavenly thoughts and affections.

Verse 4. "When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." We have life, we are already quickened, but there is more to expect from this life; God wishes it to shine in glory. The promise is given; and when Christ shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him.

Verse 5. If there are things we should not seek after, there are also others we should fight against.

Verse 6. Some people say unbelief is the only sin on which will fall the judgment of God, but we see by this and the preceding verses that God's judgment will come on the rebellious for other things beside unbelief.

Verse 10. The new man is renewed in knowledge, or in other words made new for knowledge. It is the Christian seen in his new nature through the new life. "After the image of him that created him." The renewing that God accomplishes in us is not after the pattern of the first Adam, but a renewing according to Christ. This verse presents two privileges for the Christian, the divine nature in him, the new man; and an object outside himself, Christ, the object of his faith and thoughts.

Verse 11. While awaiting the glory when God will be all in all, Christ dwells already in His saints, He has formed in them the new man, in whom also He is all and in all. The old man can have ordinances and philosophy, but to the new man Christ is all.

Verse 14. Nothing is perfect in our behaviour towards others without love, divine love, brotherly love, etc. You must bring God in, God is love. That is why love is the bond of perfectness. Surely, when the first thought of our heart is formed in God, it is perfection.

Verse 15. Read "Let the peace of Christ."

Verse 16. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly"; that there should be in your hearts by the effect of the word, an unfolding of the Christ you acknowledge, and that it be perfect.

Chapter 4: 5. "Walk in wisdom: redeeming the time."

Verse 16. Read "That from Laodicea," the epistle which will come to you from Laodicea.

260 Remarks.

The comparison between the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians gives rise to the remarks which follow. They both treat of the church united to Christ, as being His body. But the Epistle to the Colossians goes rather to unfold the perfection of the Head, than to shew the privileges of the body; while the Epistle to the Ephesians does the reverse. The Ephesians being well grounded in faith and holding fast the truth of their union with Christ, the Holy Ghost could unfold to them the great privileges derived from that union. The Colossians, on the contrary, needed to be established in the faith and to be shewn Christ in His fulness, Head of the church. Thus the two subjects are complete, and present at once to us both the perfection of the Head, and the privileges of the body.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians the church, being in a good state, is seen on high in its position in Christ, and from there looking down contemplates what God is doing and going to do. In Colossians Paul shews rather what is on high, directs the Christian's gaze upward, shewing him the perfection of Christ, and the hope which is reserved for him in heaven. This position of the Christian awaiting the heavenly glory resembles a little that given him in the course where we see him pressing toward the mark. In this respect the subject of the Colossians approaches that of the Philippians. These two aspects of the Christian's position explain another difference remarked between Ephesians and Colossians. In one Paul says, Christ shall appear; in the other he does not speak of His return. The Ephesians are seen as being already on high. There is another epistle - to the Galatians, where Paul keeps silent as to the coming of Jesus, without doubt for the opposite reason: the moral state of the Galatians was too low.

Many things connected with the Holy Ghost in Ephesians are connected with the new man in Colossians, on account of the difference between the two on the common subject. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, where Paul looks principally at the body, he mentions necessarily the Holy Spirit who is in the body, uniting it all in one. In that to the Colossians, where individuality is more forcibly marked, he sees the new man characterised by the individual. Again two different effects: the Holy Spirit, the power of God which works in us; and the new man, the communicated divine nature, which renders us responsible.

Notes on the beginning of Colossians

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I desire to send you a few remarks from time to time, as the Lord may enable me, on the Epistle to the Colossians, chiefly for the help of the young who have recently been brought, in His great mercy, to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ.

Two things in this epistle make it specially precious to such. The first is the way in which it so fully reveals the glory of Christ's Person, whether as Son of the Father's love, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells, or as Creator, and Redeemer, and Head of His body, the church. The second thing is the way in which it unfolds "the mystery" for joy and consolation of the saints - even Christ in them the hope of glory.

These are the two great subjects set before our hearts by the Holy Ghost in this precious epistle; and what can be more strengthening or gladdening than to have the eye and heart filled with the glory of Jesus, and to have the joy and assurance of our intimate union with Him made good in our souls by the Holy Ghost? To walk in the light of His risen glory, and in the consciousness of our individual interest in His love is the great requirement in these evil days. Nothing else will give courage to confess Him before men; and this alone will deliver from all the snares of Satan, whether of worldliness on the one hand, or of religion on the other, which is not after Christ.

These things will come before us, if the Lord will, by-and-by: meantime, let us follow the course of the epistle from the beginning.

In the first two verses we have the salutation of the apostle, and in the next three his thanksgiving on their behalf. He addresses them as Christ's apostle, clothed with the authority of His name, and charged them with the communication of His grace. Moreover, God had set him apart to this service. In the end of the chapter the apostle tells of a double ministry entrusted to him as the vessel of the grace of God: first, a ministry for the proclamation of the gospel to sinners; and second, a ministry for the church, to make known to the saints the unsearchable riches of Christ. It is in the exercise of this latter ministry that he writes this epistle. It is to bring the hearts of the saints into the assured knowledge and enjoyment of their place and portion in Christ so as to walk in peaceful communion with Him until He shall appear. This ministry he fulfils in the name, and as the apostle, of Jesus Christ. Thus the whole epistle flows directly from Christ through His chosen apostle.

262 It is to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ he writes, and, as we have seen, on the part of Christ. They were "in Christ," the grand centre of the new creation; holy and faithful brethren in Him. Then he ministers the sweet stream of grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus was parted from His disciples in the act of blessing them, so here the apostle of Christ begins his epistle to the Colossians, before entering on anything else by saluting them with the grace or unmingled favour of the Father and the Son, of which they were ever the objects, being in Christ, and with the peace which is the fruit of this favour.

Next we get his thanksgiving. He thanked God, even the Father of "our Lord Jesus Christ," praying always for them, for the hope laid up for them in heaven. Here we see how Paul identified himself with the interests of heaven. He had heard of the faith and love of these Colossians, and his heart at once turned to God in thanksgiving and prayers; thanksgiving that He had linked with heaven this fresh company of believers, and that He had done it. And note well, that it was not what they were delivered from that here occupies him, though he does not forget that, as we see lower down; nor is it what was wrought in them, blessed as that was; but it is what they were called to - that bright and blessed portion in heaven - the hope laid up for them there. Thus he would evidently fill their minds with what they were going to; and in his own sense of its exceeding excellency and glory he thanks God on their behalf as heirs of such an inheritance.

This is a very important point. For there is a great tendency, in the first joy of faith and fervour of feeling, to be occupied with the joy and with the feeling; and when afterwards trials and exercises of heart and conscience have to be passed through, to be occupied with them, or with what will give present deliverance and help, and to forget the bright and blessed hope laid up for us in heaven - the place of rest and glory with Himself, which Jesus is gone to prepare. But how can I journey on to Canaan through the trials and exercises of the wilderness if my heart has lost the sense of the blessedness of the Canaan I am going to? We are redeemed, not for the wilderness, but for Canaan; we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And when the glory of God is indeed our joy, we can add, "Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also." For then we know and experience that these very tribulations are all made to work for our good, and to further us on our way. For "tribulation worketh patience." It free us from the restlessness of our own will, which would turn aside, and delivers us, besides, from the fear of what man can do to us. We learn to trust in God. We learn, moreover, how little we can be the authors of our own blessing, and we count more and more on the constant watchfulness and love, and care of a Father in heaven. His love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. We know that we are in these tribulations because the objects of His love, the ransomed ones of His grace from the fire that shall never be quenched. And then, besides, we are on our way to God. Thus having the end in view enables us to confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and it brightens with hope every step of the way. Otherwise we get weary, becoming faint in our minds. But if living in the midst of things that are unseen and eternal, the inward man is renewed day by day, and that, too, at the very time that the outward world is perishing and falling into decay.

263 But we now come to a third point, and that is - the ground of this thanksgiving on behalf of these Colossians. How could the apostle give thanks so assuredly on their behalf, having never seen them? Verse 4 tells us. It was because he had heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus, and of their love to all the saints. These were the grand distinguishing features and characteristics of the divine life in man. And these being of God, he well knew that all who possessed them were bound up for ever in the bundle of life with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that where He was there should they be also. These were the essentials. In Christ Jesus nothing avails but "faith which worketh by love." First, faith, which came to Jesus with all its load of sin and unworthiness because it had nowhere else to go, and because it saw a love and a holiness in Him which received sinners and made Him their companion and their friend; and then love which, having Him for its object, necessarily had all who were His. Faith not only thus comes to Jesus at the first, but it binds the soul to Him as risen, and is ever receiving of His fulness. And love, having seen the saints as the precious ones of His heart, enfolds them for ever in its bosom with a most tender affection. They are dear to Him. This is the motive of love, and it never fails. It clothes with divine comeliness all the objects of His grace. And what it does to them it does as unto Him; and great is its reward.

In the previous verses we had three points brought before us. First, is the apostle's salutation, in which he regards the saints as the objects of the present favour of the Father, and of the peace which He gives. Happy position! secured to us for ever in Christ. And sweet it is thus to be able to view the saints at all times, whatever their practical condition may be, as dear to God, the excellent of the earth, whose present peace and blessing He seeks, even as He has secured it for us for ever in Christ. In fellowship with these thoughts of God, the apostle greets them with grace and peace from God their Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

264 Then, secondly, we had his thanksgiving for the hope laid up for them in heaven. Heaven was near to his thoughts. Jesus was there. He had entered in, and He was preparing a place for them. He is to come again to take us to Himself, that we may be for ever with Him. And when He shall be manifested then shall we also be manifested with Him in glory. This latter, perhaps, was more especially the hope here before him; Christ in them "the hope of glory." What rest of heart the apostle had in contemplating this issue of Christ's travail on their behalf, their being with Him for ever in heaven! Many an exercise he had on their behalf even as to the very condition they were in at the time he was writing to them; they had lost the sense of their place with their risen Head; at any rate it had become much enfeebled, and with the enfeebling of this all else became enfeebled too. He had great agony for them; and this was Christ's Spirit yearning in him over them for their deliverance, and for their entrance in living power into the joy and comfort of the mystery. But when he turned to heaven all was peace; he could give thanks to the Father for the portion He had laid up for them there. Christ was there. The Head was there, and with Him everyone of the members should appear in glory.

Then, thirdly, in verse 4 we had the ground of this thanksgiving as far as they were concerned - even their faith in the Lord Jesus and love to all the saints. Grace had wrought in them already, and he at once connects it with glory.

265 In the close of verse 5, and in the next, a new subject comes before him - the gospel, "the word of the truth of the gospel." In connection with this he makes three statements, each of them weighty and important, as indeed every word of God is.

First, he connects the hope laid up for them in heaven with the word of the truth of the gospel. The gospel, the good tidings of grace, had wrapped up in it also good tidings of glory. It was in the word of the truth of the gospel that they had heard of the hope laid up for them in heaven. Such was the range and scope of the gospel, at least which they had heard; it was God's good news not only of the forgiveness of sins through the blood of His Son, but of eternal blessedness with Him in heaven.

How could it be otherwise? Christ was in heaven, and we are redeemed to be with Him. The cross put Him in glory, and it puts all there who trust in Him too. Blessed is it to know what we are delivered from - the wages of sin - eternal separation from God, who is love, the fountain of all goodness and joy; and this, too, as the expression of His everlasting displeasure. But how much more blessed to know that His perfect love did not spare His own Son, not only that I might not perish, but that I might know Him and be with Himself for ever! Jesus was forsaken for us, that we might be for ever brought nigh. This gives the heart an object as well as perfect peace to the conscience. It delivers also from this present evil world; the brightness and blessedness of that One discovering the true condition of this world - far from God and in bondage of Satan, and under wrath because of having rejected Jesus. The word of the truth of the gospel reveals all this - the true condition of man and his world; and the perfect grace of God which has wrought in the cross for us, and which has wrought in them by the gospel, giving them a place even now with Him who bore it for them, and the hope of being with Him for ever in heaven. It was the word of the truth of the gospel, and on it they might rely with confidence. Man and his glory was passing away, but the word of the Lord should endure for ever. And this was the word which by the gospel was preached unto them.

What firmness of step, and what buoyancy of spirit this heavenly hope gives to him who has it in passing through this world! Then we realise that we are not of it, and that we are on our way to God.

266 A second characteristic of the gospel was its universality. It had reached them, and was among them, as indeed it was in the world. It was no mere Jewish tidings; it was for man. Offences abounded among the Jews; but where "sin" abounded, a far wider thing, there grace did much more abound.

Then, thirdly, it was bringing forth fruit in all the world and amongst them too. It was gathering souls to God through Christ wherever it went, but besides, it was bringing forth fruit in those who were gathered. This last point is plainly implied in the clause which follows: "Since the day ye heard it, and knew the grace of God in truth." Ever since it was the power of fruit-bearing, as at the first it was the seed of eternal life. This is a very important point, and one we are apt often to forget. The seed that fell into the good ground brought forth fruit; some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundredfold. We have become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that we should be married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God. This is the simple natural result of union with Jesus risen. And the grace of God, when known in truth, sets us thus before God in Christ, the fruits of which union we are to manifest down here upon the earth. We are to walk in newness of life, that is, of response Godward. In order to do this, we must abide in Him. But when simply holding the Head, everything is fruit, fruit unto God.

What a place of honour and glory this is - of being here in this world the living channels of the affections and virtues of Christ hid in God. Oh! that we esteemed it more. Thus it is we adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour, by manifesting in this world of sin and in the trying circumstances of daily life, not what flesh is, but what Christ is; our hearts feeding upon His love, whilst we lean upon His arm and are guided by His eye. What interest He takes in our being fruitful, that His Father may be glorified! Will He fail us in the hour of need? He lets us come into it just that we may prove how abundant are His resources to make us victors over all the power of the enemy.

May He keep us near to Himself that we may be happy in His love, and so be strong to live for Him.

Reconciliation

Colossians 1.

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In a certain aspect, the Epistle to the Colossians does not take us up so far as the Ephesians does. The latter takes up very distinctly the purpose and counsels of God and the new creation. Hence the contrast of it with man in the old is presented in a very remarkable way.

In Ephesians we read that God has made us "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," and the Holy Ghost as the seal of our state; whilst in Colossians we are "risen with Christ," and that life and its place are largely developed, but yet we are upon earth ourselves, and are to "seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." Hence in Ephesians man is not looked at as a responsible person, to see what can be got out of him, and his responsibility met in grace as in the Romans; it begins with him as dead in sins. It is an entirely new thing. We are created in Christ Jesus. Even as to Christ Himself, it begins with Him as dead - as a man that is raised from the dead - and with man as "dead in trespasses and sins." It is not that man is a living sinner, as we have it in Romans, where the whole question of responsibility is looked at; but the man is dead in trespasses and sins, Christ has come down into the death that he is in. Christ is quickened out of it, and we are quickened together with Him, and raised up together, and seated together in heavenly places. Now Colossians does not go so far as this.

In the Epistle to the Romans man is always looked upon as living in the world; he is alive in his sins; and it takes him up in his responsibility, and brings fully home to Jew and Gentile their state. It does not speak of man being dead in sins, but he is to die because of being alive in sins. And when he is a Christian, he is still a living man in this world, Christ his life, and justified, and in Christ, but alive here though dead to sin, and exhorted to present his body a living sacrifice.

In Colossians you get man dead to sin through the cross of Christ, and then, though in this world, risen with Christ, as in Ephesians (which you do not get in Romans), but not, as there, carried on to sit in heavenly places. Here man is a risen man - not physically so, of course; his hope is laid up for him in heaven; he is not sitting there, but walking in this world as a risen man - risen in Christ; thus, being alive, he is connected with Christ; he is "quickened together with him," and therefore it is "having forgiven you all trespasses." Christ has come down to where we were lying dead in our sins, has borne and put them away by His death, and then we were quickened and raised up along with Him, all sins forgiven. Thus, when we were raised up with Him, we came clean out of the whole thing in which we were.

268 Still in Colossians we get far more of what Christ is in us, than of what we are in Christ. It is "Christ in you," not you in Christ; it is Christ in us down here. And this is what makes the epistle exceedingly precious; you have in it the fullest development of life here, in the Christian in his tried condition on the earth. It is "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." And then it is, "When Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." He first puts the man as risen with Christ, and then his heart and affections all go up after Him to where He is at the right hand of God. There is no mention of the Holy Ghost in Colossians. It is the fullest bringing out of the life of a person in Christ still walking in this world.

In chapter 1 we see the condition and standing of the Christian, and the bearing of this on his walk. How blessedly he puts the Christian in his place through grace!

In the first place I read verse 14: "In whom we have redemption [through his blood], even the forgiveness of sins." I take this as the very starting-point - the forgiveness of sins. We get the blessed truth - this first truth, if you please - of grace, and joy, and peace; complete forgiveness through Christ. He has come down to us and redeemed us out of the condition we were in.

I am sure, the more we go on from day to day, the more important we see it is to get hold of this, though it be an elementary truth, now that there is so much seeking for an unfinished forgiveness. When I am brought into God's presence, that which I have upon my conscience is the sins I have committed; of course I cannot have those I have not. And therefore when persons are brought to the knowledge of saving forgiveness, the sins of which they have a sense of forgiveness are those that they have committed. But when it comes to those they have not, then comes the question, "What about the future?" And then arise in men's minds various ways of getting rid of them, from the gross form of absolution to the more subtle form of the Eucharist.

269 If you take a person who is upon Calvin's ground, he tells you to look back to your baptism; while the ordinary evangelical teaches you to look to a perpetual sprinkling again with the blood of Christ, a thing unknown to Scripture, and you will find he is never settled. But it is settled, and so completely that, if all my sins are not now set aside to all eternity, they never can be. Christ must otherwise take the cross and have the sins laid upon Him now, which is impossible, for He is in glory. "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." That word "for ever" there means not only eternally, but uninterruptedly; there is permanency in it before God, no discontinuance. It is not the word that speaks of eternity, though, of course, it is that too; but it is permanently perfect before God. As Christ is always ("for ever" here is the same word) sitting at the right hand of God, our conscience is for ever perfect; it is used in Hebrews 10: 12, to shew He has nothing more to do.

In these days it is really important to get clear on the point of our sins being put away - I mean as to justification before God, and to see that I am before God always upon that ground, because Christ has borne all my sins. That is the first thing given here - the first elementary thing, though not the first thing named. It is an eternal redemption; it is never discontinued or interrupted, for God can never overlook that which has so perfectly glorified Himself.

Then we see another point which the apostle here speaks of. The whole state of things in heaven and in earth - they will all be reconciled - all things made new. And then he adds, "And you, who were sometimes alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled." The creation has got ruined, corrupted, defiled by sin, though, of course, it could not be guilty as active in it; and it will all be reconciled. But he begins now with those who were active in this ruin - who were "enemies in their minds." I am reconciled to God, brought back to Him in a divine righteousness that has been worked out for me; there is not a question between me and God. Here is infinite divine love. We are brought to God - reconciled to God; and it is a great point to be consciously before God, to enjoy His love, knowing that He has nothing against us, and so our hearts in entire confidence, able to think of Him and His favour, not of ourselves.

270 I am made the righteousness of God in Him, if I look at righteousness. There is not a single thing left; nothing but God to be enjoyed. There cannot be any unpleasant feeling between two people if they are thoroughly reconciled; so I am at home with God. All His gracious feelings are towards me, and I know it, and my heart is brought back to Him, and when He looks at me, I can say He looks at His own righteousness - at His Son, who is mine; I am loved as He loves Him. My heart believes it, and I come back to Him. I am reconciled to God.

This epistle especially insists on life - the divine nature which is born of God, and is capable of delighting in Him, and of understanding His righteousness. Having this life I know, through the gift of Christ, and by the power of the Holy Ghost, the divine favour resting upon me: and I can rest there, and that is a great thing. It is not merely that I am forgiven - that my sins are all blotted out, but that God has wrought - even for His own glory - wrought a work in which He Himself is perfectly glorified. By Him I believe in God. And what do I believe? Why, that He has brought me, associated with Christ, into His own presence; sin is gone, and I am made the righteousness of God in Him. I get to the very secret and spring of God's nature; I get the very source of what He is in Himself, and am able to enjoy it. I have not a word to say for myself; I was totally lost, and now I am totally saved, not according to what man ought to be, but according to what God is. If it were according to what man ought to be, there would be no salvation needed; but that is not it.

What put it into God's heart to give His Son? Why, nothing, of course! It was out of His own heart. And is not God righteous in the way He has saved us? Yes, I am "made the righteousness of God in him." He has "made peace through the blood of his cross," and thus reconciled us to Himself. This reconciliation is that in which God has perfectly glorified Himself, and it is to Himself that I am reconciled. The only part that we had in what has saved us was our sins. Imperfect in every sense, how was I reconciled? As redeemed, and quickened, and brought back to God according to that work that He has wrought. And I am not come halfway to God: "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed; thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation." "I bare you on eagles' wings and brought you unto myself." He has brought me to Himself consistently with Himself.

271 Thus has the love of God to us been shewn out in this reconciliation, Christ giving Himself for it; and it is a blessed thing for us that we are reconciled to God, according to what He is; and God is glorified in it. "If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." A wonderful thing it is! The enmity of the human heart against God shewed itself to the uttermost at the cross where that work was wrought out, in virtue of which God has put Christ into glory at His own right hand, and God Himself is glorified. It is like the prodigal, most blessedly true, that, when you get the young man back to his home, you do not hear a word about him; it is all the joy of the Father; it is the Father who does everything; it is the display of what God is; and my heart is in consonance with Him.

Thus I get reconciled to God. Things here are not reconciled yet - our poor bodies are not, as we know. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." It is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and never any labour on our part, because who did it? We? Not a bit of it, but God Himself!

Then I get another thing, which gives clearness and distinctness to this. "Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." Here I get this blessed truth, that, though I am here in this poor body, compassed about with infirmity, and sin dwelling in me, so that if I am not walking in the presence of God, the flesh comes up, yet I get this - "Who hath made us meet?" It is not that there is no progress; there ought to be, and there is, because the Lord will make us make progress by chastening if we will not in any other way. At any rate progress is insisted on continuously: "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure." But you never find it mixed up with being meet. Progress is mixed up with experience, and divine government: meetness with Christ's work and our being with Him. There is the constant government of God with respect to our walk. He looks for progress in it; but here, where it is a question of reconciling us to Himself, there is no progress. There is no progress in the value of Christ's blood-shedding; there is no progress in the life that I have got - that is not in its nature - though there ought to be in the development of it. There must be daily progress in our walk; but, as to our meetness, it is the work of God; it is, "What hath God wrought?" The poor thief on the cross goes straight to paradise, made in one moment a fit companion for Jesus throughout eternity.

272 The world will not have this; many Christians will not have it, because they want their own righteousness. It is not here holiness - which you cannot insist on too much - but it is a question of righteousness. We are "accepted in the Beloved." Of course no fault is there, and no progress; and it injures holiness bringing it in here, because it confounds righteousness with holiness. When you talk of holiness, which is intimately connected with walk, there ought to be progress; but that is not righteousness. Holiness is abhorrence of evil. There is no holiness really developed in us, though a holy nature be there, till we understand we are the righteousness of God, because till then I cannot help mixing it up with my acceptance. Till then the question with me is, what the effect of sin will be as regards my acceptance before God. But when I am settled as to my acceptance, and in the light as God is in the light, then it comes to be a detestation of sin for its own sake; not the evil act so much as sin - the root itself. And that is holiness.

I get then another truth, and this is, that I am delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son. That may come in before the other if you will. I have changed my whole place. Darkness is the absence of the knowledge of God. The light shone in the darkness, "and the darkness comprehended it not." "If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another." "If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." People are in light or in darkness. It does not say according to light, or according to darkness. God is light, and if I am walking in darkness I do not know Him at all. Christ said, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." Dreadful word for man! He is a slave of Satan. He does not say they are reprobate criminals, but that they are without God, and in darkness, though they may be amiable natures or unamiable.

273 In Christ, of course, the light was perfect. He went through this world with the consciousness that all the people He met with, of course, excepting the converted ones, were without God.

In all there is a consciousness - a sense - that man is a responsible being. Though he may try every kind of effort to get right with God, yet, if he has been committing sins, he knows he has been committing sins. There is conscience in everybody, but people confound the rule for conscience with the conscience itself. Man feels this is right, and that is wrong. Now Satan totally hides God from the conscience. I do not believe he can destroy the conscience, but he hides Him from it. Christ says, "I am the light of the world," and then He opens the man's eyes and he sees. All the rest were under the power of darkness. There it was all openly so. The world is utterly without God; there is not one common thought between God and their souls.

Well, we are "delivered from the power of darkness," but is that all? No; we are "translated into the kingdom of his dear Son." That is where we are brought to. Truth could not come by itself. As truth came in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, there could not but love come too. He does not say "translated into the light," though that is true; but "translated into the kingdom of his dear Son." The power of darkness is the rule of Satan over this world; and by vanity, money, knowledge even - by all that is going - he blinds the eyes of men and maintains his power over them; he uses all these various things to keep man without God. Just like Cain, he embellishes his city, and sets it all up and makes everything as pleasant as he can without God. And we are delivered from all that, and brought into the kingdom of God's dear Son.

It is the kingdom - the place where Christ has the rule. It is the effect of redemption. The power of love has come in and has delivered us, and has brought us into the kingdom that He has set up. In the cross the full power of Satan was destroyed; there Satan brought everything to bear. The apostles ran away, and Satan had everybody against the Son of God. For it was Satan's hour and the power of darkness. He carried the world with him against the Son of God. So the Spirit "will convince the world of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." Satan came against the Son of God as the prince of this world, now he is cast out. The cross was the full enmity of man against God, under Satan's power; but he has been met; his power has been judged - it is all destroyed. If we go and listen to him in the flesh, he can ensnare us; but he has no power; if we only resist the devil, he will flee from us; it is not said we shall overcome. As to this, the cross was the very thing that God allowed, so that in it his power might be destroyed. At the cross Satan governed the whole world; there the exercise of his power came to a crisis; he pushed men on to crucify the Son of God; and then all his power was destroyed. So now it is, "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations" - not sins, of course; we have only to resist the devil in them, and he will flee from us. We are delivered from the power of darkness, and passed over to the place where Christ is, and spoken of as only here; not only into light out of darkness, but associated in the kingdom with the only-begotten object of His special love - the kingdom of God's dear Son - brought into that. We have got this place into which grace has brought us; we are "made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

274 But then we have it all in these poor earthen vessels, though "risen with Christ." And therefore we are to "seek those things which are above." It is, "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead" - dead to the law, dead to sin, quickened together with Christ, and, ."When Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." The risen Christ at God's right hand is our life, and yet we are not taken out of this world.

And then I get, "Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." I get three "worthies" in the epistles. "Worthy of God who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory," in Thessalonians. "Worthy of the vocation," in Ephesians; practically the same thing, the Holy Ghost having us for His habitation, the habitation of God through the Spirit as a present thing. And here, it is "Worthy of the Lord." My path through this world is to be worthy of Him. My life should be the expression of Christ; my life, ways, everything that Christ expressed.

275 "Fruitful unto every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God." Here I get growth. I get no growth in reconciliation: there is no growth in the value of Christ's blood; but the moment I get life, there is "increasing" or "growing by the knowledge of God." I know God, and can say, That is not fit for God. I purify myself. It does not say he is as pure as Christ, but that he is to "purify himself as he is pure." As I get my eye purified, I see better; I get my "senses exercised to discern good and evil," and the more I get on, the more I see what I am getting on to.

Here I could say a word (as I find it current in certain circles that perfection is attainable here) that there is no perfection for the Christian except Christ in glory. If I am a risen man I take Him on earth as a pattern for my steps, but not what I am to attain to. Christ down here is unattainable, because Christ had no sin, and I have sin. There is no perfection down here - you never find any maintaining that there is, who do not lower it to Adam condition. I seek to walk as Christ walked, not after the flesh at all, but the point I am aiming at and looking to is Christ in glory. It is "when he shall appear" that I shall be like Him, and not till then. I try to be as like Him here as ever I can be. "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling" - the calling above - "of God in Christ Jesus." I have no calling down here; there is the calling above - the whole thing that God has set before us.

People say, God cannot give you a rule you cannot attain to. But I say, God never gives you a rule which you can attain - never! First, there was the law. Could man attain to that as in the flesh where it was given to him? It was not subject to the law of God, nor can be. And now there is Christ in glory. Can I attain to that? Never here! But I press on to it; it is before me, and I never attain it till I get to Him. This object that I am aiming at governs me where I am; "I live by the faith of the Son of God"; and, if you are not living by Him glorified, you have not got Him at all. If you look for perfection down here, you have lost your object; it is a complete blunder in the very nature of the thing. Christ in glory is the object to which our minds ought to be always looking on. We are predestined "to be conformed to the image of his Son," and, if you are looking at anything else, you are not looking at that.

276 And now, mark, as regards the path down here, we are "strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power." Is not that a wonderful thing to say? And what is the fruit of it? It sounds a poor thing - "patience!" But I say, you try and see if there be not a working of will in you that does not like to be thwarted. That is not patience! "Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." See if you do not want divine power for patience. "If when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." This is the first thing: "Strengthened with all might unto all patience." And what next? "Long-suffering." As we see it in Ephesians, "I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering." And then follows "joyfulness." The moment the will is broken - my will bowing to God's will - bearing with patience everything I come across - then joy is unhindered.

Thus we have got the place in which we are set, and then the behaviour with which we are to walk. What the apostle looks for is that we should be "filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." But do we not often find ignorance of His will? Where we do, there is always our own will working. He looks for a spiritual conformity to Christ's mind to so mark our mind, and walk, and ways, that our life should bear the expression of the life of Christ. It is not merely avoiding positive sins; it is far more than that. The question is, What will please Christ? I do not say a thing is wrong - not merely wrong; but what will please Christ? The question, beloved friends, really is, Is Christ in our hearts enough to make us seek only one thing upon this earth until we get to Him where He is? If our hearts are set on Christ our one desire will be to "walk worthy of the Lord," and then the world will not know us.

Thus we see, that, not only are our sins gone - put away through the precious blood of Christ, but that we are brought into this new place in Christ, "delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of his dear Son," and that, being thus brought there, we have now to walk in it "worthy of the Lord." Just as I would send a child out into the world, and say to him, Now walk worthy of your father and your family. But how could he do it if he did not know his father?

277 God wants us to be "holy, and unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight." That is what He would have us - what is pleasing to Himself. The earnest seeking to walk worthy of the Lord to all pleasing; forgiven, justified, reconciled to God, fit for the inheritance of the saints in light, fit for the kingdom of God's dear Son, and sent now to walk down here in the consciousness of our place up there.

The Lord only give His saints to have a deeper truer sense in this way of the place into which He has brought them in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they may know what it is to be brought to God according to the acceptance that is in Christ Jesus.

All in Christ and Christ All: a word on spoilings and beguilings

Colossians 2

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The Lord can bring good to His people out of any evil.

These Christians at Colosse were in danger of not "holding the head," that is, of slipping away from the consciousness of being in Christ, through getting beguiled into subjection to ordinances. To meet this the apostle urges them back, shewing them how the believer has everything in Christ, and not anything out of Christ. In result we get much precious teaching as to the fulness of the Head for the body, as well as solemn warning against practical separation from our standing of union with the Head, through the allowance of religiousness in the flesh. Everything is based on union with Christ risen and glorified. But then, if here, as in the Epistle to the Ephesians, we get this great truth as a basis, the Colossians are addressed on somewhat lower ground than the Ephesians, who were standing fast in the faith of it, and could profit by teaching which unfolded to them the whole extent of the church's privileges, inasmuch as they have to be got up to the point from which the Christian's thoughts and feelings should ever flow - his standing and privileges in Christ. The epistle to each is perfect in its place.* The stedfastness of the one and the failure of the other have both been made to subserve the blessing of the church in all ages.

{*A great part of New Testament scripture had, as the occasion for its being written, mischief done by Satan in the church. The Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians are examples of this. Man gets humbled in it, but God overrules it for greater blessing.}

The moment we look to ordinances, as it regards position before God, we are slipping away from Christ: something is brought in between us and the Head. God's thought of completeness is Christ; if, therefore, I have the thought of not having already all perfection, everything I need, in Him, I am leaving Christ. "Ye are [it is not said, ye shall be] complete in him," v. 10. If there is anything for me to obtain, there comes in at once some means of obtaining it. If the body is united to the Head, or (which, in respect of the individual, is the same thing) if I am one* with Christ, I have in Him all I need. I may have to be taught about it and to seek grace to manifest it, but the moment I think I have to obtain what is in Christ, a subtle form of self-righteousness is at work - I must do something. No matter what shape this may assume, prayer, or works, or anything else, I am not "holding the head." One in possession of an estate may have to see about that estate, but were he to say, I must get possession of it, he would be all wrong.

{*This is not merely true of the church, in an abstract manner (the religion of the flesh can be orthodox): faith is an individual thing, and places him who possesses it in the enjoyment - or personally under the effects - of its object.}

279 Christ is revealed to the humble soul. Intellectual attainment is not in question here, it is no matter of great learning or of philosophy. "Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" The "things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God." The most transcendent mind could never discover the ways of God; we get effort, but never success in attaining to that which the simplest Christian knows - things "hidden from the wise and prudent" but "revealed unto babes." How painful the efforts of man in arriving at darkness! "What is truth?" asked Pilate, and crucified Christ. Christ is the truth, and the humble simple soul of a poor sinner, taught of God, has it perfectly; he may not have realised it, but he has it all there, "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" in the mystery. Christ is the righteous One, and we are made "the righteousness of God in him" - life, "in him is life," and He is "our life." As to all that is divine and eternal, there is not anything out of Christ.

At the commencement of the chapter the apostle speaks of the great conflict he had had on behalf of these saints, that their "hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God [and of the Father, and of Christ]." For as we know, God is about to gather together all things in Christ (Eph. 1: 8-10), and the church is associated with Him who is this centre. "And this, I say," he continues, "lest any man should beguile you with enticing words [pretending to bring you a mass of wisdom and knowledge in all manner of things that are not Christ]; for though I be absent in the body, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ," v. 4, 5. It is all well to have Christ for Christianity, he may come and say (alas! how often is this said), But is there to be nothing else besides Christ? No, not anything. We cannot deal with the plants of this earth, without dealing with that which belongs to Christ; and if we deal with them without Christ, we sin. We are exiled from paradise and have forfeited everything. Forgetfulness of all that had taken place, thorough blinding of heart and hardening of conscience marked the way of Cain, till at last, when driven out from the presence of the Lord, he sought to make that world, into which God had sent him forth a fugitive and a vagabond (the very name of the place in which he dwelt - "the land of Nod" means, "the land of a vagabond"), as agreeable an abode as practicable apart from God. And all that man is now doing, to inherit the earth without Christ, he is doing according to Cain, settling himself down as a poor sinner in a world like this. The Christian acknowledges that he has forfeited everything; he cannot talk about "my rights"; in using anything himself, he would be using it as a poor guilty rebel. He trusts in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; he eats his meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God; whatever he does, in word or in deed, he does all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks unto God and the Father by Him. To him, there is not anything outside Christ - all belongs to Christ, and it is, as a Christian, that he enjoys it.

280 Let us not suppose that this "mystery of God" is some great knowledge. Where the soul has so owned itself a sinner and everything to be in Christ, it has owned Christ as centre of all; it has received Him for forgiveness, and it has all in Him; "as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord," he continues, "so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving," v. 6, 7. Everything I have, I get from God's love.

"Beware lest any man spoil you" - despoil or cheat you of your blessing - "through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." The tradition of men is never faith - truth or error, it is never faith - it is natural and belongs to man. Faith is the reception of a divine testimony by the soul, so that God Himself is believed; and, further, it is founded on His testimony alone. Man may be the instrument of leading me into truth - a sign-post shews me the way - but I cannot believe man, that is, I cannot believe because man says it; I believe God. We have believed Satan when we were enjoying God's blessings; now, God calls upon us to believe Himself. Herein is the real return of the soul to God. If I believe because "the church" has put its authority or its sanction on that which I believe, I am just simply saying that I do not believe God. The Bible is the word of God. God has given a testimony carrying His authority with it, which testimony I am bound to believe: otherwise I despise God's testimony. To believe because man says it, or because "the church" says it, is to make God a liar; for, when I had only what God said, I did not believe. It is well to look this distinctly and definitely in the face. There are two things: 1, that which I believe - the fulness, riches, and perfection of Christ; and 2, the ground on which I believe it. Now as to the latter, if a person were to tell me something, in order really to believe that person's testimony, I must receive what he said, because he said it. If I cannot believe God, why is it? My eyes are holden, I cannot believe when God speaks. He has not failed in giving the testimony. The only rightness in regard of this is to believe what God says, because He says it; in other words, to believe God. To tell a person, "I will believe what you say, when I get it sanctioned by another," is not to trust him. To require "the church's" testimony to accredit God's word is to disbelieve - to dishonour - God. In doing this, I am, as it respects moral position, infidel in regard of God.

281 But more: Christ is a heavenly Christ, He is not of this world; He was from heaven and He has gone back to heaven. Hence all that is "after the rudiments of the world," beautifully suited, though it be, to human nature, and calculated to make man pious,* is not "after Christ." That which has not been in heaven can only tell about heaven at second hand; all that is not simply Christ's revelation of Himself does not belong to heaven. He says, "No man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" - who else could? And, therefore, no matter what man tells me, or what men have said about heaven - be it what the ancients have said, or what "the church" has said, I cannot believe it. That which is "after the rudiments of the world" is exactly opposed to heaven. The moment we get what is suited to the flesh, or makes a fair show in the flesh, it belongs to the world, it is not "after Christ."

{*The religion of the flesh is altogether as evil as its lusts; for after all, it is but one of them, though covered up with the veil of works and of holiness. It can be occupied much in good works, be without reproach as to conduct, have much of self-denial, much of piety, plenty of humility, be much occupied with the love of God, but while pretending, perhaps, to found it upon His love (which is infinite), it will be that love which is in the heart - our love to Him. One may ask, But, if all these things can exist in a person and be nothing but the flesh, how can we discern the true circumcision? It rejoices in Christ Jesus. Nothing is easier than to judge these things, if Christ is our all. The fact that He is so makes us feel, without hesitancy, that all this is flesh, and yields its help to that which destroys Christianity from its foundations. The flesh is very pious when it acts the pious, for it always rejoices in itself.}

282 "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," v. 9. There is here something exceedingly blessed; it is not a Pilate's What is truth? Nor yet seeking after God, if haply we might feel after Him and find Him (Paul's expression in regard of the heathen), but, as John speaks, "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life" (1 John 1: 1), that which is brought home to the senses of men. In place of working up the feelings to seek after something, God has come down to us, poor wretched creatures that we are. But God is there. He has come down to us in our sins and miseries bodily: I do not get a heap of stories, patched up nobody knows how, to act on my senses, and work on my imagination; it is the God who saves me. But He will be always God. There is not a trouble, there is not a distress, there is not a feeling in the heart of man, that is not met in Christ (and, after all, we do want something to fill the heart, we are men, and we want what man wants), not as a doctrine merely, but bodily. We find in Him that which is to be found nowhere else. Let it be the most loving person possible, he has not loved me and died for me. But then I have not simply the love of a gracious person: there is in Him "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." All flights of the imagination are checked, for I meet it in the Holy One, though I meet it in all my wants.

"And ye are complete in him," v. 10. Not only have I all I want, but I am all I need to be in Him. I must appear before God, and have to say to God, as a responsible being; looked at as what I am in myself, I am lost; in Christ, I am complete, as complete as Christ is, for I am complete in Him. There are these two sides: if God is manifested to us, we must also be manifested before God. Blessed be God! I have not anything to seek out of Christ as to completeness. And mark, it is not merely what there is, but what we have in Christ. Our hearts are so deceitful and treacherous, they do like to get in a little bit of their own. But let it be humility, or what else it may, there is no room found here for anything of self. In us, that is, in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing. There is neither righteousness, nor holiness, nor humility out of Christ.

283 The Jews were looking to a variety of forms; we have all in Christ. A person talks to me about getting absolution from a priest, I do not want it; I had it years ago in Christ. Another says, You will receive the Holy Ghost in this or in that particular way. I have received the Holy Ghost already. So, in regard of what the apostle speaks of here: "In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ" (v. 11); we have done with sin, we are dead to it with Christ. He goes on to shew how: "Buried with him in baptism wherein also ye are risen with him, through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead," v. 12. We have done with the flesh; it is not an effort to have done with it, we are dead. He does not say, "Die to the flesh" (neither does Scripture anywhere speak thus), nor yet, "Die to sin." Such an expression is in itself a clear proof that he who uses it does not know the gospel simply. But we do find it said, "Mortify your members which are upon the earth," etc. (chap. 3: 1-5). This supposes us to be dead, and to have our life hid with Christ in God. Elsewhere the apostle says, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me," Gal. 2: 19, 20. All that Christ is, and all that Christ has done,* is mine in Him. Has He been put to death? so have I. Is He risen again? so am I; therefore I am able to "mortify," etc. We cannot mix these two things (in our minds we often do, and hence confusion):** Christ's having died unto sin for me, is my power for being dead practically to sin. To make this clearer, if need be, see the argument of Romans 6. "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? . . . In that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body," etc. The moment the eye rests on Him, faith says, I am dead to sin.

{*It is all ascribed by God to me, as though it had happened to myself.}

{**The true mortification of the flesh is accomplished through grace, in the consciousness of grace. Without this, there is only the effort of a soul under law, and in that case, a bad conscience and no strength. This is what sincere monks attempted, but their efforts were not made in the power of grace, of Christ, and His strength. If there was sincerity, there was also the deepest spiritual misery.}

284 And mark how this is brought in. The faith is not in my being risen, but in Christ's having been raised. This distinction is far from unimportant. Many a sincere soul is continually turning in upon itself to know if it be risen, but this is not "the faith of the operation of God." Peter says, "You, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God," 1 Pet. 1: 21. So Paul, "to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead," etc. My soul, knowing that all that is flesh is condemned, that there is no good thing in it, has given up seeking good from it; God has found plenty of evil, and I have done so too - He may have allowed me to struggle on in the hopeless endeavour to better it - but I look out of myself, and I see that God has raised Christ from the dead. "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," Rom. 8: 1-3. My confidence is in this, that God has raised Christ from the dead, when He was there for me. But then, if this sets aside everything that I am in myself before God, it sets all aside for acceptance also. Am I saying, There is no good at all in my flesh, it must die, I cannot mend it? It is dead, the whole old thing gone; I am in heaven in Him, who has been raised from the dead, and now I have to mortify my members which are on earth.

285 "And you who were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses," v. 13. Here comes in another blessed truth. Instead of its being a question as to the flesh getting better, not only is it condemned already, but we have been quickened together with Christ. This is no mere doctrine: Christ is our life. I am in this new man before God. And what has become of all my sins? They are gone. He has quickened me out of Christ's grave, and they are left behind. Christ went down with my sins into the grave (they were put away on the cross - "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree" - the grave is the expression of this), when He rose again they were all gone. What can give me such a sense of the heinousness, the hatefulness, of my sins, as seeing Christ bearing them! But they are gone.

"Blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross," v. 14. He is not setting men to obtain righteousness through that which quickens sin and works condemnation. Am I saying, I have not done this, or, I have not done that, then where there is the obligation of some act, and it is not fulfilled, there is condemnation. In taking up the Lord's supper - that sweet, and blessed, and holy memorial* of Christ's death, the joy of my heart, so as to put it between myself and Christ, then I am not "holding the head." Christ has taken ordinances out of the way, it is the flesh that does them: let it be penance, it is the flesh that does it - but the flesh is dead; the same thing that put away sin put away ordinances; the man who had the sin and was to do the ordinances is dead, because Christ has died. I am alive in Christ, who is alive again from the dead: He is my life. I do not need to obtain a standing before God through any ordinance. Had I to perform the smallest act, as that through which I needed to get completeness before God, it would be a denial of the perfectness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

{*The passover was the memorial of the deliverance out of Egypt for Israel. The Supper is the memorial not only of our deliverance, but of the love of Him who has delivered us.}

But more. Those "principalities and powers," with whom we have to contend (Eph. 6: 12), have been "spoiled"; He has "made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it," v. 15. Does Satan come and accuse me? It is all true, but my sins are gone. God has said He will remember them no more. "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Why flee? Because of having already met Christ. Is it temptation through the agreeable things of the world, or the sorrows and trials of life, or the power of death? he has been "spoiled," his power is gone for faith; Heb. 2: 14. Death, to the believer, is but a departing to be with Christ; all that it could be from Satan, or from the wrath of God, Christ has gone through for us; but He has gone through it, and He is now with God. Dead and risen with Christ, yet here in a dying body, if I put it off, "absent from the body," I shall be "present with the Lord."

286 And now, having shewn us how we have everything in Christ, and not anything out of Him - completeness in the presence of God, and perfect deliverance from all that we are in ourselves, as also from all that we are in ourselves, as also from all that is, or could be used, against us, as in ourselves, he goes on to say, "Let no man therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holiday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath-days, which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ," v. 16, 17. What perfect liberty! We need to see that we use it holily, but it is a perfect liberty.

A "holy-day" (it is well to call it so, as indicative of its meaning) was one God had made to be esteemed above another: this and other things, the meats, and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances of Judaism, had their time and use. "The body is of Christ." In Him we have that which they were designed to typify. If I take them up now, I take up the shadow and not the substance; it is a mere shadow, but, in setting it up again, I make it substantive and deny Christ. This may be done through ignorance, still it ought to be treated as a thorough infirmity, the soul has not the knowledge of what it is in Christ; whilst ignorance has to be borne with, the saint is beguiled of his reward.

"Let no man beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind, and not holding the head," v. 18. I may talk much about saints and angels in heaven, their glories, and the like, and call this humility; but it is not so, it in reality is the very opposite, a being vainly puffed up in my fleshly mind. What do I know about them? Have I been in heaven? Whilst thus intruding into things I have not seen, I am losing knowledge needed by all saints. The weakest believer is as much one with Christ as an apostle, and as complete in Him. It might seem more humble to say, I am this, that, or the other thing; but can we do without Christ? Do you reply, I have not arrived at such a position? Then you are expecting to attain it - that is presumption. It is because we are lost, poor, and blind, we are miserable, naked, and have nothing in ourselves - we have this all in Christ.

287 The moment he has brought them there, left nothing between them and Christ, "Now," he says (v. 19), there is that which flows down from the Head - that which has to be manifested in the members. We have not a single grace, or thought of grace, until we are complete; we must be united to the Head. People are looking to that to make them complete, which they cannot have until they are in that position. Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do, we have to do all to the glory of God; let it be but the purchasing of some article of dress, I should do it for Christ to please Him. This is our one rule, to do all for Christ; and both as to inward graces and outward manners, the more I realise what Christ is for me, the better shall I know what is pleasing to Him. Here spirituality comes in. It is not man increasing in order to get God, it is "increasing with the increase of God." All flows down from Christ's fulness.

In Christ I am not "living in the world," I am "dead with him to the rudiments of the world," v. 20-23. If really dead to the flesh, I cannot be looking to ordinances to get the flesh bettered. But the tendency of our hearts is ever to this. And God has met that tendency. If the flesh must be laboured to see if any good could be got out of it, He has taken it up and proved that, after all that had been done for it that could be done, there was no good in it - God could get no good from it. Still here is our danger; religiousness in the flesh is that against which there is this special warning. And with all its specious appearance, what does the apostle call it? "Will-worship." It may have a great character for humility, but it is the most positive and terrible pride before God; it does not look like this; it looks like mortifying* the flesh and putting it down.

{*The tendency of bodily austerities, as shewn by the apostle here, instead of being really to subdue and mortify the flesh, is to satisfy and exalt it. We are thus taught a most important truth - the difference between "the body" and "the flesh." The very neglecting and afflicting of the former, and not yielding it any honour or respect, may contribute to the inflation of the latter. The body may he sanctified to God - may be nourished and used for God - may glorify God; the flesh never. The body may be the servant of the Spirit; not so the flesh, for it is essentially opposed to God; Romans 8: 7, 8.}

288 The only thing that will deliver from it is, the knowledge of our completeness, and a walking in the power of a dead and risen Christ.

Here there is rest for the heart (there will be conflict still, we have not, in that sense, rest yet), my eye turned from myself, I rest in Christ; there I can delight, and there God delights - I have a common feeling with God. All that I see in Christ is mine, all that perfection that my soul delights in, my perfection before God.

There are these two truths: all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ; and we are complete in Him. My need is met.

God has come down to me in Christ. Am I troubled about my sins? where shall I find any as gracious to me as Christ? I can tell to Him what I dare not to another. Brethren may be kind and sympathising; but I can tell out my heart to Christ, so as to no one else. Well! it is to God, and He does not reproach me. All the infinitude of love is brought down to display itself in kindness to a poor sinner; I meet it by my wants, my sorrows, my failures, my sins. The poor woman of the city had not a mouth to tell it out; she was weeping at His feet about her sins, but she had found One who could so meet her in them, as to give confidence to her heart, whilst conscience was awakened in the very deepest way. I never add to that fulness; all the majesty of God is there. On the other hand, conscience is awakened: God is a holy God, and how shall I appear before Him? The same Christ who is God towards man, is man before God for us. He has come down to meet me in my sins, and He has gone up to be my righteousness before God.

If we desire to manifest Him - the life of Christ is daily walk and conduct, it must flow out from Him; and for this, the flesh has to be mortified and Satan resisted. We are not our own, we are bought with a price; let us, therefore, glorify God in our bodies; 1 Cor. 6: 20. In doing anything for myself, I am a dishonest person; He bought me when I was the slave of Satan.

289 Christian, is your soul honouring God by resting thus in the completeness of Christ? or are you seeking to honour self in ekeing out a righteousness, it matters not how - by doings or by feelings? A child ought to have right feelings for its parent: but, if that child is making a merit of its feelings, it is destroying the whole thing. Looking for feelings to make out righteousness through (while feelings are right) is just as bad as looking to works.

The Lord give us to know that we are complete in Christ, that we may have blessed and happy liberty, loving and serving Him in love, because He has given us all we need, loved us, and saved us, and made us complete.

Dead with Christ, Risen with Christ

Colossians 2: 20; 3: 1.

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The Christian's risen life is exhibited in two things - death unto that which is here, and heavenly-mindedness. "Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ," writes the apostle, "from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" The expression "rudiments of the world," goes a vast way. I am to be dead, not only to sin, but to all the religiousness of human nature. A Jew has this religiousness, and it was cultivated of God; but it brought not forth good fruit, it produced nothing but "wild grapes."

Now, if we do not see that we are risen, we shall be cultivating human nature, for God. He Himself has tried this already; and He says, that not anything could have been done more than He has done; Isa. 5. But man would still, still be striving to cultivate the religiousness of human nature, and introduce sinners into heaven, otherwise than by death. We are dead and risen again, and it is simply heavenly.

In this, is the real power of our living above sin. It assumes death, it goes upon the principle that we are "dead to sin," Rom. 6. We get a blessed liberty in seeing and accounting ourselves dead. We have a new life. Christ has taken His place where death and resurrection have put Him. And there I am, where Christ is. It is altogether another life, and this life has its own world, and its own sphere of affections. "They that are after the flesh, do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit," Rom. 8: 5.

Resurrection life is manifested in walking through this world as abstracted, withdrawn from, unactuated by, the motives of the world. A Christian has new motives. - If I see a man walking through the world without things here affecting him; I say, "He is either mad - or risen with Christ." Alas! we are not as consistent as madmen. All the motives in the world never touch the new nature. Do you think it could be thinking about friendship with the world? could be seeking riches, or honour, or power? The motives which actuate men have no influence upon it. Perplexity comes in by our having a motive which is not drawn from heaven; whenever I see myself, or another, in difficulty, I may be quite sure some other motive is at work. There is always a tendency to decline from this singleness of eye.

291 When we first receive the knowledge of life in Christ, we are absorbed, we readily admit all else to be "dung and dross," Phil. 3 But when decline comes in, we get old motives into action again. Little by little, we are not absorbed, and then a hundred things begin to be motives - things of which I took no notice, which did not act before. People say, "What harm is there in it?" When I begin to inquire, "What harm is there in this, or in that?" there is the tendency to decline. There may be no harm in the thing, but the thought about it shews that I am not absorbed with that which is heavenly. "Thou hast left thy first love." It is not in great sins, but here, that decline in the saints is manifested.

When the sense of grace is diminished, we decline in practice. Our motives must be in God. Sometimes, effort is made to press conduct, works, and practice; because (it is said) full grace was preached before; now, that there is decline in practice, you must preach practice.

That which is the rather to be pressed, is grace - the first grace. It is grace, not legalism, will restore the soul. Where the sense of grace is diminished, the conscience may be, at the same time, uncommonly active, and then it condemns the pressing of grace, and legalism is the result. When conscience has been put in action through the claims of grace, that is not legalism; and there will be holy practice in detail.

We may fall into either of two faults - that of (because fruits have not been produced) preaching fruits; or, that of getting at ease, when certain things come to have influence over us again, through thinking that what we approved of before, was legalism.

We shall not get back by dwelling on detail. Christ is the great motive for everything; and we must get up into the knowledge of resurrection in Christ, to remedy detail. Here, there is a wonderful truth, and wonderful liberty.

Another very important point is, the tone and spirit of our walk. Confidence in God, and gentleness of spirit, is that which becomes the saint. For this we must be at home with God. The effect of thus walking in Christ, setting the Lord ever before us, is always to make us walk with reverence - lowliness, adoration, quietness, ease, and happiness. If I go where I am unaccustomed to be - if I get, for instance, into a great house, I may have much kindness shewn me there, but when I get out again, I feel at ease; I am glad to be out. Had I been brought up in that house, I should feel otherwise. The soul is not only happy in God for itself, but it will bring the tone of that house out with it; because of its joy in God, anxieties disappear, and it will move through the ten thousand things, that would trouble and prove anxieties to another, without being a bit troubled. No matter what it may be, we bring quietness of spirit into all circumstances, whilst abiding in God.

292 If a man be risen with Christ, if he be dwelling there, it will shew itself thus. We shall not be afraid of the changes around. We shall live, not in stupid apathy and listlessness, but in the exercise of lively affections and energies towards the Lord. One great evidence of my abiding in Christ, is quietness. I have my portion elsewhere, and I go on. Another sign is confidence in obeying.

This connects itself with fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ - fellowship, not only in joy, but in the thoughts of the Father and the Son. The Holy Ghost, the third person of the blessed Trinity, is our power of entering with the affections into the things of God. "The Father loveth the Son" - what a place this puts me in, to be thus cognisant of the Father's feelings towards His beloved Son.

In our proper place, we get our mind filled and associated with things, that leave this world as a little thing - an atom, in the vastness of the glory, which was before the world was.

Notes on the Epistles to the Thessalonians

J. N. Darby.

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1 Thessalonians

When the Thessalonians received Paul's first epistle, they had not long been converted to the Lord. They then were in all the freshness of Christian life, waiting for the Son of God from heaven, and suffering persecution for His sake. But their faith was mixed with a measure of obscurity. They thought that those from among them who had died would not see the Lord at His coming. To meet their need, the Holy Spirit addresses this epistle to them, in order to establish their faith, to give them light as to the coming of Jesus, and to comfort them in the midst of the persecutions they were going through.

Chapter 1: 1. "The church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father." The Epistles to the Thessalonians present the only instance where we find the expression, "in God the Father," used to indicate the position of a church. In the other epistles, in general, Paul says, "the church of God which is at Corinth," or "the saints which are at Ephesus," etc. It is probably because the Thessalonians were recently brought to the faith that Paul speaks of them in this way. Taking, so to speak, this church at its birth, he only sees it in its relationship to God. "One God and Father" - such is the first notion that springs from faith.

"Grace be unto you and peace": that is to say, May all the energy and riches of that grace in which you stand be displayed in you.

Verse 3. The great christian principles shewed themselves in all their force among the Thessalonians; hence it is that we remark so much freshness in their spiritual condition.

"Your work of faith." See the acts which belong to faith - acts like those which are presented in Hebrews 11 and in James 2; the act of Abraham delivering up his son, and that of Rahab preferring Israel to her own country, etc.

Your "labour of love": that is, the pains one takes in the Lord, the labour one pursues in love, though amidst difficulties.

"Patience of hope"; that is, patient waiting for the promised glory.

"In our Lord Jesus Christ," translate, "of our Lord Jesus Christ." In Him is the source of all blessing for our souls; from Him it is that we derive strength and in Him we find that which nourishes the spiritual life.

294 "In the sight of God and our Father." In the presence of God we find the exercise of conscience. These two blessings - the maintenance of life in Christ, and the exercise of conscience before God - present the two sides of the Christian life. When the soul is in a good state, there is always an exercise of the conscience before God. One may, it is true, after a period of blessing, walk for some time with a certain measure of life, but without the conscience being much in activity. But if conscience is not reawakened, the time comes when one slips away and declines rapidly.

Verse 4. The great principles of Christianity - faith, hope, and love, which were in activity among the Thessalonians, gave evidence of their election. And this proof is the only practical proof of the election of the saints.

Verse 6. "Followers of us, and of the Lord." The Thessalonians had a share of the experience of Christ, when He was on earth. Like Him, they possessed the joy of God through the word, and they suffered persecution.

Verse 8. The faith of the Thessalonians had had an echo; it was noised abroad.

Verse 10. Converted through the power of God, the Thessalonians, far from remaining in the world and seeking to reconcile the world and faith, were, on the contrary, formed by that faith to wait for the Son of God from heaven.

Chapter 2: 1-12 gives a beautiful instance of the feelings and ways of grace in the conduct and labours of a servant of God.

Verse 7. "As a nurse," etc.; that is to say, like a mother who nurses her own child. It was in this spirit of tenderness and affection towards the Thessalonians that Paul had laboured amongst them.

Verse 13. After having called to remembrance his labours, what care Paul takes to maintain the Thessalonians on the foundation of the word which they had received through his preaching. The apostle puts himself aside and gives thanks that they had received that word, not as the word of man, but as being the word of God. Thus their faith was founded on the word of God, although it was by the ministry of a man that it had been produced and placed upon that foundation.

295 There are two evidences, which shew the divine authority of the word of God - works of power, that is to say, miracles; and the effective action which it exercises in the heart. The word of God was accompanied by works of power, when it came unto the Thessalonians through Paul's preaching; chap. 1: 5. And now, in his letter, the apostle, to the praise of these believers, proclaims that the same word worked effectually in them.

Verse 14. In consequence of their obedience of faith, the Thessalonians found themselves connected with the churches of Judea, which had preceded them in the same faith (there is one body); and, like those churches, the Thessalonians were suffering persecution from those of their own nation.

Verse 16. "Wrath is come upon them to the uttermost" - upon the Jews. Unbelieving Israel had been visited of God several times by partial chastisements; but now that they had rejected Christ and the gospel, God subjects them to the full extent of His judgment, a judgment which still continues, and will only be executed in the future trouble of Jacob.

Verse 17-20. Had it not been for the hindrances which had several times prevented him, Paul would have visited the Thessalonians. He greatly wished to see again these believers, the fruit of his labours - they who were the subject of his present joy and his crown of boasting at the moment of the coming of the Lord Jesus. Here then is a new element, with regard to the coming of the Lord! in that glorious day Paul and the Thessalonians would be found together.

There is a difference in the way in which the coming of the Lord is presented in these two instances. Verse 10 of chapter 1 places more particularly before our eyes the coming of the Son, and the joy of the saints, in experiencing the deliverance which He will bring them. There the distinction of the rapture of the saints is not yet brought out; the statement simply presents the coming of the Son from heaven. Verse 19 of the chapter we are reading goes farther; it shews the blessedness of the saints gathered together at the coming of Jesus. The testimony rendered to the Son coming from heaven has enlarged the circle of believers. There are numerous saints; all will be gathered together and happy in that blessed day.

Chapter 3. But there are in the hearts of the saints affections which grace produces.

296 Verses 1-10. Paul, in the midst of the care he devotes to the faith of the believers, is the first to shew us how Christian affections can be connected with the cares of the ministry.

Verse 3. "We are appointed thereunto." It reads better thus; "We are set for this" - this is our lot.

Verse 8. "For now we live." It is my life, if ye stand firm, ye Thessalonians, says Paul.

Verse 10. "Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face." This desire was not so soon realised; Paul before that had time to address a second epistle to the Thessalonians; and indeed several years elapsed before he was able to see them again.

Verses 11-13. In this passage Paul puts the coming of the Lord in connection with every Christian affection. This apostle, who abounded in love towards the saints, desired also that they should themselves walk in love, in order to abide in holiness, and to shine forth in that day. He does not yet state the order of the facts by which this result will be seen, but he mentions the moral truths and the practical grace which prepare it.

"The Lord make you to increase and abound in love . . . to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness." The love of God possessing the heart is what enables the Christian to walk in holiness. Here we find again the doctrine of John: "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light," 1 John 2: 10. It is interesting to see these fundamental elements of faith and of individual blessing forming an integral part of the powerful testimony through which Paul was forming the church.

"To the end he may stablish your hearts," etc. It is an actual establishing of the heart, but which will be seen in its results at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ: "We must all be manifested," etc.

"Before God, even our Father." Paul always sees the Thessalonians in their relationship to the Father. It does not appear that these believers had as yet got beyond the state of babes in the faith. "I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father," 1 John 2: 13.

The sense of verse 13 is this: May God establish your hearts in holiness (now, by the exercise of love), that ye may be [seen] unblameable in holiness, before our God and Father [at that moment] at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. In this passage the coming of Jesus is not presented in the act of our gathering together to Him, when we go to meet Him; but in the act of our coming with Him from the Father's house, after having been in His presence. It is that moment which will shew whether we are unblameable.

297 When Paul, occupied with the coming of Jesus, considers the privilege of faith, he sees the saints all gathered together to the Lord, tasting before Him the common joy. When he considers the responsibility of the Christian walk, he always sees the appearing of Christ. There can be nothing but joy in our hearts at that blessed moment when we shall go with Jesus into the Father's presence, taking a place which the love of God has given unto us, and which the work of Christ has procured to us. It will be otherwise when we return with Jesus. Without losing our position and our blessedness in Him, we shall nevertheless be in a different scene; we shall have reached that solemn moment when the consequences of our responsibility will be manifested.

Chapter 4: 1-12. Here Paul adds several developments to the truths which he mentioned at the close of chapter 3; and first of all on the subject of holiness and love.

Verses 1-8. When Paul was with the Thessalonians, he had shewn them the conduct that is pleasing to God. We must preserve or possess our own vessel in sanctification and honour. If anyone disregards his brother in overstepping his marriage rights, it is not man only but God whom he disregards; for the Holy Spirit dwells in that brother who has been wronged.

Verse 8. "Despiseth." It means, He therefore that [in this] disregards [his brother], disregards not man but God.

"God, who hath also given unto us his Holy Spirit," to dwell in us - Christians. Some read you instead of us.

Verses 9-12. Love is of God. By Him we love the children of God - the brethren. And this love, because it has not its source in the sympathies of man, but in God, is a love which is exercised likewise towards all; chap. 3: 12. Nevertheless, the object which is here recommended to the attention of the saints is brotherly love. The Thessalonians were not wanting in it. They were taught of God, and did not need to be written to about it. Only it was well that they should abound in it, even more and more, and seek earnestly to manifest to those without a quiet and reputable walk. When love is true, we do not merely confine ourselves to the effusions of brotherly love; we watch also, lest as to things without we should be in fault.

298 Verses 13-18. Paul presents, at the end of the chapter, fresh developments on the subject of the Lord's coming. He had already given the chief features of that truth; he now returns to it, in order to supply details, and to introduce elements which had not yet found their place in the subject. What he adds as a fresh element is particularly the doctrine of resurrection. Doubtless, the Thessalonians would not have denied that there will be a resurrection from among the dead, but they might not perhaps have been able to apply it to the Lord's coming.

Verse 14. "Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." The departed saints will be found again at the coming of the Lord Jesus. They will reappear on the scene at that blessed moment. You, Thessalonians, you will find again your lost ones! And these are the glorious acts that will then be accomplished. "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air," v. 16, 17.

Verse 15. "We which are alive and remain." As regards the coming of the Lord, the saints form two classes. There will be one class composed of those who have fallen asleep through Him, and the other of the saints who will be then on the earth. It is these latter ones that Paul points to, when he says, "We which are alive and remain." When he was writing this epistle, he considered himself as included in that class.

Verse 16. "A shout" - an assembling shout. The word here used in the Greek meant originally, the shout raised by the chiefs, on the Greek galleys, to call the men at the time of resuming their work. In our day we mean something similar when we speak of sounding a call to assemble.

It is interesting to see, in the course of this epistle, the progressive order with which the apostle sets forth the truths which concern the coming of the Lord. Instead of immediately attacking the error which was mixed up with the faith of the Thessalonians, he first takes up the subject at the point where it was known to those believers. He begins by using this language to them: You are waiting for the Son of God from heaven! This is indeed the privilege of your faith; for it is to this end, in effect that you were converted; chap. 1.

299 Then, by developments which it is precious to know, he brings them to those things which necessitate our gathering together in that day; chap. 2.

He then fills their hearts with the truth, so that they may be built up in God for that august moment; chap. 3.

It is after this that Paul develops the coming of Jesus for the saints, rectifying errors of judgment in the minds of these believers on certain points; chap. 4.

Lastly, after having expressed the whole portion of the saints in this event, he mentions the portion of the world; chap. 5.

Chapter 5. In the preceding chapters Paul had not pointed out any period of time in connection with the Lord's coming. Here he takes up the question of "times and seasons." But the moment he touches upon this point, he ceases to say "we." He says, "they," "them," those that are without, from whom he takes great care to distinguish the saints, by pointing to them by these words, "But ye brethren," when he again addresses himself to them. "The times," when it is a question of the Lord's coming, are connected with this world and judgment. The saints have their portion above, outside of the ages. They are taught by the Holy Spirit to be constantly waiting for Jesus.

Verses 2, 3. But the world will know what the day of the Lord is - that day which will bring with it sudden destruction on the earth.

Verses 4, 5. The saints will not be overtaken by that day. Why? Because they are not in darkness. Paul adds, "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day." Hence, for us, a privilege and a character; the privilege of not being overtaken, as those will be who dwell in darkness, and the character of children of light. There are not in the word mere naked doctrines. The truth always clothes with a certain character those whom it places in the position of privilege.

Verse 10. "That, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him"; whether we belong to the class of the living or to that of the sleepers (the departed saints), when the Lord comes, we shall live together with Him.

Verse 22. "Abstain from all appearance of evil." It may be translated equally well, "Abstain from every form of wickedness."

300 Verse 23. "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly." God is often called, "the God of peace." (See Phil. 4, Heb. 13.) There is peace where all is perfect. If we live in these relationships where peace exists, we shall walk in holiness.

"Sanctify you wholly." That is, sanctify you in every point, sanctify the converted man - the whole man. One may, in certain respects, be faithful to God, and in others be faulty. Remark, that Paul does not say, "sanctify perfectly"; but he says, "sanctify wholly," which expresses another idea.* "Your whole spirit and soul and body." The spirit is that which is most excellent in our moral being, that by which we are placed in relationship with God and distinguished from the brutes. The soul is the seat of the affections; it is a faculty of an inferior order which is to be met with, in a certain measure, even among animals: "all in whose nostrils was the breath of life" - "both men and cattle," Gen. 7: 22, 23.

{*The doctrine of perfect sanctification, preached by Wesley, does not admit of the communication of life which is made to the believer; it only requires the action of the Spirit on man such as he is. "The Holy Spirit," it says, "sanctifies the body, the soul, and the spirit." At bottom, this is to set aside regeneration; and it is perhaps for that very reason that the same doctrine will see something good in man, and gives this definition of sin, "a wilful transgression of the law." If sin is merely a wilful transgression of the law, Paul was wrong to express such grief about sin where it was not wilful; Rom. 7.}

Wishing to shew how sanctification takes up a man in his whole being, Paul says, "spirit, soul, and body." In other passages we read simply "the soul," when the soul and the spirit are meant: or else we read, "the spirit," when the spirit and the soul are meant. These two spiritual elements are the instrument on which the life acts, which God has given to the believer, and the body is in its turn the instrument which obeys the spirit and the soul.

Verse 24. It is a consolation for us to know that God is faithful; and that if we walk with Him, He will act in our behalf.

2 Thessalonians

The summary of the second Epistle to the Thessalonians is this. False teachers had come, taking advantage of the little light which the Thessalonians (as yet young in the faith) possessed on the Lord's return; and seizing the occasion of their tribulation, they had thrown them into trouble of mind by telling them, "The day is present." In opposition to this work of the enemy, Paul reassures them by writing to them this epistle, the object of which is to shew them that the day of the Lord was not yet present. These data are the key to the book.

301 Chapter 1. In this epistle, as in the preceding one, Paul, in saluting the church of the Thessalonians, sees it "in God our Father," v. 1, 2.

Then, before entering upon the special subject, the apostle considers the circumstances of the Thessalonians; and, on the occasion of their sufferings for the gospel, he recognises their good estate in Christ, and finds in their tribulations an evidence that they were really in the Christian position. "Your faith," he says, "increases exceedingly and your love abounds, so that we ourselves make our boast in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions. . . . For these tribulations are the portion of those who inherit the kingdom of God," v. 3-5.

Then he shews in what an end these tribulations would issue and the change of position they were preparing between the persecuted and the persecutors at the appearing of the Lord Jesus. In that day we shall be at rest while the wicked will find themselves in tribulation. The Lord will manifest against them His retributive justice. This change of condition is not mentioned, as though it were only to be accomplished at the Lord's appearing; but the words by which it is expressed shew what will be the respective condition of saints and unbelievers at that moment. It is already a first intimation, shewing that the Lord will not put the saints into sorrow and trouble when He comes; v. 5-10.

Verse 5. "A manifest token of the righteous judgment of God." The persecutions which the Thessalonians endured proved they were "counted worthy of the kingdom of God." The judgment of God would bring this into evidence, as it would also manifest what had been the conduct of the persecutors.

Verse 8. There are two classes of persons on whom the vengeance of the Lord will come at His appearing: those who knew not God (that is, sinners in general), and those who do not obey the gospel.

302 Chapter 2. While declaring, in the preceding verses that the Lord, in His day, will manifest His retributive justice, Paul lays down a general truth which governs the subject. Now he enters upon the special point: - Is that day come?

Verses 1, 2. Read, "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind . . . as that the day of the Lord is present." The coming of Jesus, and the gathering together of the saints to Him at His coming, is a motive, for the latter, not to be troubled as if they were to be included in the judgments which the day of the Lord would usher in. They will be with Him before that. When He shall be revealed from heaven, the saints will have rest; chap. 1: 7. Evidently they will no longer be on this world's scene, for it is not then that there will be rest on earth.

The seducers told the Thessalonians, "The day is present"; and not "the day is at hand."* The Greek word is the same that is used in Romans 8: 38, and 1 Corinthians 3: 22, to signify, "things present," in contrast with "things to come." The language of the seducers signified that this day had been already entered on.

{*If we change the word "present," the whole epistle becomes unintelligible.}

Having the declaration that the Lord should come and gather them together to Himself before that day, and being themselves still on earth, the Thessalonians had, by this very fact, a proof that the day was not yet present.

Verses 3, 4. Here is another proof. The one who will be the object of the Lord's judgment in that day was not yet on the scene. As long as, on the one hand, those who are to be on the seat of judgment are not gathered together (the saints above), and while, on the other hand the criminal is not brought to the bar, there can be no judgment.

Verse 6. "What withholdeth." It is not in order to prevent the revelation of the lawless one that God has put a restraint; it is to prevent his being revealed before his time. The adversary is always ready for evil. In the day that God takes away the bridle, Satan will immediately shew himself at work to drag men into apostasy.

"That which restrains;" the Greek means a thing. What is it? God has not told us what it is, and this, doubtless, because the thing which restrained then is not that which restrains now. Then it was, in one sense, the Roman empire, as the fathers thought; who saw in the power of the Roman empire a hindrance to the revelation of the man of sin, and thus prayed for the prosperity of that empire. At present the hindrance is still the existence of the governments established by God in the world; and God will maintain them as long as there is here below the gathering of His church. Viewed in this light, the hindrance is, at the bottom, the presence of the church and of the Holy Spirit on the earth.

303 The Antichrist will be the head of the ecclesiastical apostasy. He "denieth the Father and the Son." He "denieth that Jesus is the Christ." He will be at the same time a civil head, although the first beast (Rev. 13: 1-10) will be the one to whom the authority and throne of the dragon will be given. The Antichrist, whose seat appears to be in Judea, will be a kind of lieutenant of the beast. Herod might furnish us an example.

Verse 8. "The Lord shall consume . . . with the brightness of his coming." Mark these last words. The lawless one shall be consumed by the presence of the Lord, manifested at His appearing. This leads us to distinguish between the coming of Jesus and His appearing. The Lord will first come, and then He will manifest Himself - He will appear.

Verse 9. "With all power and signs and lying wonders." It is very solemn to see the terms used by Peter, in his preaching at Jerusalem (Acts 2: 22), to denote the works of power which accompanied the ministry of Jesus, now used by Paul in this epistle to express what the man of sin will do. What seduction there will be then!

Elijah's miracles will also have their counterfeit. The lawless one will cause fire to come down from heaven. And here are signs which, in the days of Elijah, were the touchstone of truth - signs by which one recognised that Jehovah was God, which now will be accomplished in behalf of the beast! (Rev. 13).

Verses 9-12. These verses furnish circumstantial but most solemn details concerning the ecclesiastical action which will take place then, and the power of seduction which will be at work among men. The lawless one will come "with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish." God will send "strong delusion," and men will believe what is false, that they all may be judged who have not believed the truth.

304 Such will be the moral state of things during the great tribulation which is to come on the earth. Two passages in the prophets (Jer. 30: 7, and Dan. 12: 1), as well as two passages in the gospel (Matt. 24: 21 and Mark 13: 19), tell us of this great tribulation. There we remark that it will fall more especially on the Jews, although it may happen that the Gentiles also shall suffer from it. It is to the sorrows of this crisis that the sufferings of that remnant refer, which we find on the scene in the Psalms. The tribulation will take place during the latter half of the last week mentioned in the book of Daniel (chap. 9), and will last until the Lord's appearing.

Besides, there are two passages in the Revelation which speak of a general tribulation. The first is Revelation 3: 10, where we read these words, "The hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world to try," etc. Then we have Revelation 7: 9, 17, where we find persons saved out of "all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongue," coming out of the great tribulation. From the evidence given by these passages, we find that there will be a general tribulation on the whole earth; then, at the last moment, a more special tribulation for the Jews.

The church possesses the inestimable privilege of exemption from going through these evil days. Not only will it not be on the earth at the appearing of Jesus (and this is what we have seen at the beginning of the chapter), but, besides, it will not be there at the time of the great tribulation. The Lord has said, "I also will keep thee out of the hour of temptation." We shall not therefore pass through that hour.

Verses 13, 14. There are persons who obey not the gospel; but you, Thessalonians, you have obeyed it. But this was before ordained of God, because He has chosen you from the beginning (according to a counsel determined before all ages), in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, which are things accomplished in time.

"Chosen you to salvation" - such is the object which God has purposed in Himself. "In sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" - such is the effect produced in the elect, conformably to God's purpose. "Our gospel" - such is the means used of God to produce that effect.

305 Chapter 3 contains various exhortations and wishes of Paul in behalf of the Thessalonians. It mentions prayer, obedience, love, and the patience of Christ; also how to treat any walking disorderly: then salutations.

Verse 5. "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patience of the Christ." The teachers who told the Thessalonians, "the day is present," had not that patience.

"I will come again"

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Nothing is more prominently brought forward in the New Testament than the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was the first comfort of the angels to the sorrowing disciples: "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven," Acts 1: 11.

And if you turn to 1 Thessalonians you will find it presented in the end of every chapter as a common doctrine. It was not at all a strange thing - immediately after conversion to the living God - "to wait for his Son from heaven, even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come."

Again, in Hebrews 9 we read that "He appeared once in the end, of the world, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself . . . and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation."

In 1 Thessalonians it is presented in the way of warning as well as the object of the blessed hope of the saints: "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."

From this we see the amazing difference between the coming of Christ for this world, and for those who trust in Him. To the world He comes as a judge of both quick and dead (see Malachi); but in this John 14 we find a wonderful difference in the whole principle and spirit of a believer's expectation of Christ.

"Behold, he cometh with clouds and every eye shall see him, and they who also pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him," Rev. 1. "But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?" Mal. 3.

Dear reader, let me ask you, Can you stand before Him at that day? Do you think that you would have confidence before Him at His coming? Could you say, "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him?" This is He whom I have loved and longed for? Men always judge according to what is suited to themselves. In 1 Thessalonians 4 it is said, "So shall we be ever with the Lord." Now, are you suited to be ever with the Lord? Have you this confidence? If it is founded on anything good in yourself, it is a vain ground of confidence. Peter, as soon as he found himself in the presence of the Lord, felt that he was not suited for the Lord. I am too corrupt, he said. This was a true judgment of Peter; and love for the dignity of the Lord and for holiness. If you are content that holiness should be lowered that you may get off, you do not care for holiness, though you do for getting off. The moment I have seen the holiness of the Lord, and that happiness is in holiness, there is the immediate feeling of my unfitness for that holiness; though there may be the longing for it, which the Lord will doubtless in mercy answer.

307 Two things are needed thus to meet the Lord. First, the conscience must be right: I may have the kindest father, yet if my conscience is not right, I cannot be glad to meet him; and, secondly, affections must be there - the Lord must be my portion. If my heart is on literature, or on anything else here, I shall not like to be where Jesus is. I shall rather be here for a time. If you like the world, you are fit for the world. Heaven is just the contrary, and you know it; and therefore you do not want to go there, because it would take you from being here in the world. There is the comfort of the gospel. It did bring down to men's consciences all that would attract God. But alas! men no more desired the Lord's company here, than they do there. The coming and rejection of Christ here is the plain proof that the world is not fit for Him, and He is not fit for them.

But now to turn to John 14. We find persons here the opposite of all that is in the world. "Let not your heart be troubled." About what? His leaving them. Their happiness, comfort, and joy was in having Christ with them. But now, he says, I am going, but I am not going to be happy without you. There is plenty of room for you. The thing with which He at once comforts their hearts is this, "I will come again." I cannot stay down here in this vile place, I am going to prepare a place for you, but I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also. The Lord reckons on this satisfying their hearts; and their consciences did not hinder. "The Father's house!" Oh! they could go there. "I will receive you unto myself." He knew the chord that rung in their hearts: to be with Himself, the source of all blessing. Thus we get the character of these disciples: they were persons whom the absence of Jesus distressed, and whom the presence of Jesus would comfort, not here, but with Himself.

308 There we find what begot this character. It was all founded on His own word. We do not care for what does not concern us. But as soon as we see a thing that concerns us, it becomes important; and then we want certainty. Now it is very blessed to have God's own word for the basis of our certainty.

For instance, I am a sinner - how then can I get into the Father's house? Because God has said "Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more." Well, God is true, and He will not remember them. Do you say I am presumptuous to say so? I do not say so; God says so; and again in John 5: 24, "He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation"; and John 3: 33, "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." Thus when the power of the Spirit brings home the word, I have certainty. Faith is in the word, but it is about something. Christ is presented, and man is brought to the test. People always judge by their inclination, and not by their reasoning. Now the effect of the testimony of the Spirit of God when Christ is revealed is that men are not fit for Him, and their hearts do not like to be with Him.

These disciples had loved the Lord. Christ had attraction for their hearts. There at once we see the object of their hearts' affections. Christ had fixed their hearts. Take Mary Magdalene, for instance. She was all wrong in her intelligence, yet Christ had attraction for her heart. So with the rest of the disciples. They all ran away for fear; but it was love to Christ that brought them into the place of fear. Thus we see that Christ Himself was the object of their hearts. They were the companions of Christ - all fear being gone - according to His love and grace. "Ye are they," He said, "who have continued with me in my temptations." Why? He had continued with them; but He speaks as if indebted to them for this fellowship. And being in companionship with Christ in heart, He brings them into all joy into which He is going - nothing less than the Father's house. What attracts me is found in Christ, and then I get from Him the certain assurance that He is coming - and coming for me. Now when the heart is on Christ, what a thing it is to know that He is coming! Am I afraid? No, I am looking for Him. And it is to His Father's house He is to bring me. All that makes heaven a home to Christ will make it a home to me. O come, Lord Jesus. If I have learnt to love Christ, I have learnt to love holiness, to love God. God, in Christ, has brought down to my soul all that God is. What shall I get in heaven? Another Christ? Another God? No. It is the one we have seen and known. "Whither I go ye know." I am going to the Father, and you have seen the Father in me.

309 Ah! but He has not given up His holiness, perhaps you reply. No, indeed, He has not. But Jesus knew all that is needed for me to be with Him. And if He will make the heart to love, He will put the conscience perfectly at rest, that I may love Him. Will He do that by dulling it? No. He will do something that will enable me to stand in the presence of God in whose presence I am to find my joy. He reveals fully God in His holiness, and takes away the sin that would hinder my being in the presence of that holiness. And not only does He put sin away, but He purges the conscience here, so that I am enabled to enjoy God, in full and free affection.

Nothing is more attractive than the death of Christ; but, besides that, it puts away the sin of which I was guilty: an act in which I had no part, an act the proof of perfect love, while it meets perfect righteousness. I had done the sins, and I could not undo them. Jesus said to Peter, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." This touched Peter's heart. If you are not cleansed according to My cleansing, according to what suits God's presence, you have no part with Me. O what a comfort! Instead of saying, Depart from me, Jesus said, "Now you are clean." And in Peter we see the proof of a good conscience. He said to the Jews, Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, the very thing he himself had done fifty days before. Now a man will talk of every sin but what he is guilty of; he will shirk that. But here Peter was in perfect peace about the very sin he was guilty of; his conscience was perfectly purged.

The happiness of the heart that is touched is to be with Christ; and conscience is purged for being in His presence. Between the Lord's saying this, and coming for them He had put away sin from God's sight, and from their conscience. "I will come again, and take you unto myself, etc., and whither I go ye know." There is no uncertainty. We know where we are going to. The soul has found fully the object that has set it at rest, and that will satisfy it up there without fear.

310 Could the Lord thus address you? Could you say, O that is what I am wanting? Or, are you saying I've got here what I would like to enjoy? Is that being a Christian? A Christian may vary in strength of affection, never in object. I am sure I do not love the Lord enough, but I am sure it is the Lord I love. I have no confidence in my own heart, but all confidence in Him. He has died for me; that is what I count on: He has put away my sins; that is what I need: He is coming again; that is what I am longing for.

Dear reader, let me ask you, was it ever a trouble to you that you had not Christ? Do you know where you are going? It may be you have hope; but have you present certainty? Now we, Christians, have; for Christ is known, and when He is known, there is perfect rest in His word. "I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." "Amen, Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Notes on 1 and 2 Timothy

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The fact of flesh (that is, of the flesh being in us) does not make a bad conscience. It requires flesh in action, so as to produce outwardly what is bad, to do so.

"Holding faith and a good conscience" - in this we have the doctrine of the epistle. I may see what is beautiful in creation, and delight in it; but the moment I rest in it, I make it an object, and then sink down into it.

"We know" is a technical expression for Christian knowledge. It is not merely knowing objectively, but rather such and such is made a subject of revelation, and we have got it and know it.

"Using the law lawfully" is convicting sinners by it. The legalist takes the ground that the law proves he cannot take. The law never goes beyond the brazen altar, that is, man's responsibility as man. The law condemns all that flesh produces, but not flesh itself.

The sabbath - rest - is an integral part of man's relationship with God; God did rest in creation, but not now since man has fallen. The sabbath is annexed to everything (or order) that is set up (with responsible man as man); but in the New Testament, it is always set aside as is man, the child of Adam fallen.

Paul calls himself the chief of sinners; that is, he was a rejecter of the Lord after He was crucified and glorified; the Jew (properly speaking, is characterised as being) a rejecter before He was crucified. Stephen's martyrdom was the closing scene of the dispensation for the Jew. The chief of sinners is an end of self, and we are in the same boat with Paul when we take that place.

The gospel of the glory (of Christ) is the highest point of grace as it reveals the glory to the person who is trying to destroy it: in preaching, however, you must go back to where the want is in the soul.

"Make shipwreck of faith" is running into heresy, backsliding, giving up a good conscience.

Not only man has fallen - there are fallen angels, and the heavens are defiled; all things had and are to be reconciled. Those that are reconciled do need a mediator for intercession-a mediator came in with a broken relationship, an advocate with a retained one.

In Ephesians we are called on to be imitators of God; in Colossians, like Christ; in Philippians, to walk as a saint, as personified in Paul.

312 An unmarried man might be a ruler, but he could not be an elder. A ruler is a gift, an elder an office; gifts are for the body; office is local. We have an example in Timothy of a young man who ruled elders. A ruler is a person who gets an ascendency over others morally, and keeps their wills from working by the power of the word in the Spirit.

Christianity takes up creation as God made it and sanctions it, and brings in another power, namely, spiritual power.

The snare of the devil which is a bad conscience, brings in the same condemnation; the person is charged with the same thing Satan is charged with, namely, pride. (See Ezekiel 28.)

The precious stones are on the king of Tyre in creation (worldly glory); on Aaron in grace (the high priest); in the new Jerusalem, in glory.

The Holy Ghost dwells in the individual believer, and in the whole church, only.

"Justified in the Spirit" - that is, the power of the Spirit characterises the justification. "Seen of angels"; it is only by Christ angels have seen God. "Believed on in the world," that is, announced and received there by faith.

The Reformation reformed the existing body as it then was: we go back to the beginning.

The everlasting covenant has a different character from the new covenant. There are many covenants in Scripture, but the old and new are distinct, and with Israel only.

Every prophetic word comes from relationship broken for us now, as Christians and in Christ, everything is restored; 1 Tim. 4: 5. Hence the creature is sanctified by the word to me, prayer goes up from me in response.

There are two characters of forgiveness of sins - the one as in Romans, justification, in which man has no power, the other, the sins or failure of a justified person. The church can forgive these. It is administrative forgiveness.

Dependence is kept up in Scripture without ever questioning acceptance.

Salvation is by grace: reward is for labour.

God is the only one that has immortality in Himself. When we speak of mortality, it only applies to the body. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," means that each one shall die for his own sin; in other words, it is individual responsibility.

313 2 Timothy.

When the power of evil comes in, then it is just the time to expect courage. These are truths for the times. There are truths for eternity, which are more blessed. Through grace we now have Paul's testimony, which had been lost, brought out again.

In the early church they used to pray for the saints, not to them. In the fourth century Christ was the only one they did not pray for.

"Purge from." It is not exactly discipline here, but to separate myself from. There is the Lord's certainty, and man's responsibility, acting on which I then get ecclesiastical apprehension.

A thing may not be wrong for a person ecclesiastically, if he has no conscience about it; at the same time the church cannot be ruled by an individual person's conscience.

The word "receiving" (into communion) should not be admitted at all. Properly speaking, we are all in. One has now to ascertain whether people are real - who calls on the Lord out of a pure heart.

"The last days" are more definite and distinct than the "latter times" - "perilous," because of the form of godliness.

It is said, You must believe in the church because it is holy, and you must believe it is holy by faith!

We are always deficient in strength in service if we do not recognise that we have to do with Satanic power, as in Jannes and Jambres.

If I do not believe the word till it be sanctioned by someone else, I do not believe it at all; it is the sanction I believe.

No one speaks of the church but Paul, nor of Christ's coming for the church but he.

When we meet together, we recognise the presence of Christ, not the habitation of God.

External testimony proves the folly of other men, but does nothing for faith. All arguments only remove the rubbish, they do not give faith. By removing rubbish from a plant, you do not make it grow, but you give it liberty to do so.

A gospel rejecter is under the responsibility of rejecting love. There is rather a want of will to come than a want of power: "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life."

We find that angels are the power of providence, Israel the power of government, and the apostles the power of grace in the Spirit.

Notes of a discourse on 1 Timothy 1

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Wherever the Spirit of God reveals truth, it is the revelation of Christ to the soul. It is essentially practical. It fills the soul, the affections, with Christ. The Lord said, "For their sakes I sanctify myself." The foundation once laid, God forms and fashions the soul by the revelation of Christ, at the same time delivering us from present things, and associating us with Himself.

What characterises the Christian is that which takes him out of the world altogether (he has his relationships to fulfil in this life), makes him an epistle of Christ, manifesting the life of Christ, and leading him to long for the time when he shall find himself in the Father's home, like Christ, with Christ for ever, nothing more to jar.

God has associated him with Himself and with that place; and our part is, as Christ's was here, to manifest that our place even now is there. Aye, our place is in the last Adam, not in the first.

This "charge," the "end of the commandment," was Timothy's commission. His mandate, as it were, was to make manifest this place which saints had in association with the life of Christ. He speaks of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God." We are called to inherit blessing, to inherit it from one who dwells in blessing. "The glorious gospel" tells me how man is brought back to God, and thus shews the triumph of God and blessing over evil.

The first beginning of the history of man gives us the triumph of evil over natural blessing. Consequent on this came judgment. Next comes the law, a requisition from man who had pretensions to good. A rule was given of righteousness (if man could make it out). There was no triumph of good here, but a requirement from man of what man ought to be. The law was not given to Adam, the law was given to sinners - to fallen man. The law would have been of no use to Adam before the fall; he would not have understood, "Thou shalt not steal," etc. The law brings out evil to our consciences. Who has loved God today as he should have done? Who has loved his neighbour as himself? It is not the blessed truth of the triumph of good over evil; but it is most useful to bring to the conscience these two things - first, not only that we have sinned, but why you and I have sinned. Shall I tell you why? Because we liked it. "In me, in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing"; and, what is more, when I desire to do good, evil is present with me.

315 If we are to be with God, we must be fit for Him. When Isaiah saw His glory, he felt he was a man of unclean lips. I cannot go back to paradise and natural blessing; I cannot stay where I am; but I must be able to look into the light of that glory, and say it is my joy, or I cannot walk with God who is light. To this end I must learn what verse 5 speaks of - "the end of the commandment," love, faith, and a pure conscience.

A good conscience is only conscious of what the pure heart should be in the presence of God, having an entire unclouded confidence (faith unfeigned) in God - "That your faith and hope might be IN God." If I fail, I fly back to God; if I am weak, I fly back to God with faith unfeigned in Him, as the One who has delivered me; counting upon God, as the One that is for me, to bring me back to my place.

Verses 8 and 9. The law never gives life; the law never gives strength; the law never gives an object. If the law could have given life, righteousness would have been by it. The law gives no power against sin, but slays. The law gives no object. But when we turn to Christ, in His Person we find the one good, all purity, all goodness, perfectly divine. Oh! if I could get such - as Paul says, "win Christ" - One above all my wretchedness; One who comprehends me, but in so doing brings such grace and peace; One who was brought into the midst of all evil, but who was superior to it. When He is once known, we do not want to excuse sin, we want to get rid of it. Does He hide sin? Nay, He would have truth in the inward parts (not the truth of doctrine now). When once thus known, God is trusted in all love. In the Gospels we have a full, perfect exhibition of the triumph of good over evil. See the woman taken in adultery; see the leper who was not only defiled, but whose touch defiled another, but not Christ. What grace (however imperfectly) to know God! I discharge my heart into the bosom of Him whom I can trust. To whom could I ever tell out all sin? Not to any friend out and out, but to Him unreservedly. And mark how He carries me on. Having opened my heart by the goodness He has shewn me in bringing me into His presence, I learn sin put away by Him who needed not to be spared, but was able to bear the full brunt of God's wrath.

316 Oh! that one work by which He put away sin! God being perfectly glorified by that which met sin! Not as the Jewish sacrifices did - sin and sacrifice - sin and sacrifice - and sin again; but done for ever! I get then this truth, that in virtue of what Christ has done, the Christ is set at His right hand, God having stepped in, and in this blessed One met sin and put it away. It is done! If it is not done, when is it to be done? Can Christ die over again? It never can be done. He cannot return from glory to do it. It is done, and now we see why it is called "the [not 'glorious gospel' but] gospel of glory."

I am brought into light. No light is like the light which shines at the cross. Your sins were as scarlet, they are made white as snow. I am brought in conscience through a new and living way into God's presence, and spotless. By the Comforter sent I get the power of it. The true conscience is one that knows nothing in the heart but what the Holy Ghost puts there.

The estimates of the conscience are always according to the presence it is in. Duties flow from the place we are already in. Some think the knowledge of grace releases us from duties; but nay, it founds them. A child of God for ever, I have the duties of a child for ever. A pure heart will reject what is contrary to the Holy Ghost. In a good conscience Christ is all. Whenever I have failed, I have left Christ out.

Faith unfeigned trusts Him ever, and keeps a good conscience; a perfect and pure heart confides in that love; and whence did it come? It sprang from Himself. By Him we believe in God, and what He expects from us is that we should know not only we are blessed in Him, but with Him. His perfect love is shewn by bringing us into blessing with Himself. Driven out of earthly paradise by sin, we are brought into heavenly paradise by redemption; and He leads our thoughts, desires, and affections after it, founded on His perfect work; a faith unfeigned giving us the knowledge of His heart, a heart to enter into all our sorrows and trials.

The smallest thing let in contrary to Him jars. We belong not to ourselves; we are Christ's, not our own. We ought not to have good consciences if indulging in what is contrary to Him.

317 I ask, if He came this night, would He find you with a whole heap of things to huddle out of your heart, or is it ready? Is your heart waiting, full of affection for Him? There is no truth so powerful to empty the heart of all that is contrary to Him. If waiting, how much freer and looser should we sit from all on earth. The Lord apply the question to your hearts, whether, if He came, you could open to Him immediately, and so look with joy unclouded to see Him.

Propitiation and Substitution

1 Timothy 2: 6.

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My intercourse with saints, and especially with those who preach, has led me to discover that a good deal of obscurity in their manner of putting the gospel, and I may add a good deal of Arminian and Calvinistic controversy, arises from not distinguishing propitiation and substitution. I am not anxious about the words, but about the practical distinction, which is very simple and I think of moment. I say the words, because in propitiation, in a certain sense, Christ stood in our stead. Still there is a very real difference in Scripture.

This difference is clearly marked in the offerings of the great day of atonement. Aaron slew the bullock, and the goat which was called the Lord's lot, and sprinkled the blood on and before the mercy-seat and on the altar. The blood was presented to God, whose holy presence had been dishonoured and offended by sin. So Christ has perfectly glorified God in the place of sin, by His perfect obedience and love to His Father in His being made sin who knew no sin. God's majesty, righteousness, love, truth, all that He is, was glorified in the work wrought by Christ, and of this the blood was witness in the holy place itself. Our sins gave occasion to it, but God Himself was glorified in it. Hence the testimony can go out to all the world that God is more than satisfied, glorified, and whoever comes by that blood is freely, fully received of God and to God. But there was no confession of sins on the head of this goat; it was about sin by reason of Israel's sinfulness, but it was simply blood offered to God: sin had been dealt with in judgment according to God's glory, yea, to the full glorifying of God, for never was His majesty, love, and hatred of sin so seen. God could shine out in favour to the returning sinner according to what He was; yea, in the infiniteness of His love beseech men to return.

But besides this there was personal guilt, positive personal sins for which Israel was responsible, and men are responsible, according to what is righteously required from each. On the great day of atonement, the high priest confessed the people's sins on the scape-goat, laying both his hands on its head: the personal sins were transferred to the goat by one who represented all the people, and they were gone for ever, never found again.

319 Now this is another thing. Christ is both high priest and victim, and has confessed all the sins of His people as His own, borne our sins in His own body on the tree. The two goats are but one Christ, but there is the double aspect of His sacrifice, Godward, and bearing our sins. The blood is the witness of the accomplishment of all, and He is entered in not without blood. He is the propitiation for our sins. But in this aspect the world comes in too. He is a propitiation for the whole world. All has been done that is needed. His blood is available for the vilest whoever he may be. Hence the gospel to the world says, "Whosoever will, let him come." In this aspect we may say Christ died for all, gave Himself a ransom for all, an adequate and available sacrifice for sin, for whoever would come - tasted death for every man.

But when I come to bearing sins the language is uniformly different. He bore our sins, He bore the sins of many. "All" is carefully abstained from. I say carefully, because in Romans 5: 18, 19, the difference is carefully made. The first, our sins, is the language of faith, left open indeed to anyone who can use it, but used and to be used only by faith. The believing remnant of Israel may use it, including the blessing of the nations, for He died for that nation; Christians use it in faith, for all that have faith use it. The second "many" restricts it from all, but generally has the force of the many as contrasted with a head or leaders, the mass in connection with them. Adam's the many were in result all, but all is in connection with him. Christ's the many those connected with Him. But it will never be found in Scripture that Christ bore the sins of all. Had He done so they never could be mentioned again, nor men judged according to their works That Christ died for all is, as we have seen, clearly said. Hence I go to the world with His death as their ground and only ground of approach, with the love shewn in it. When a man believes, I can say, Now I have more to tell you, Christ has borne every one of your sins, they never can be mentioned again. If we look at the difference of Arminian and Calvinistic preaching we shall see the bearing of this at once; the Arminians take up Christ's dying for all, and generally they connect the bearing of sins with it, and all is confusion as to the efficacy and effectualness of Christ's bearing our sins, and they deny any special work for His people. They say if God loved all He cannot love some particularly; and an uncertain salvation is the result, and man often exalted. Thus the scape-goat is practically set aside.

320 The Calvinist holds Christ's bearing the sins of His people so that they are effectually saved, but he sees nothing else. He will say, if Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it, there can be no real love for anything else, and denies Christ's dying for all, and the distinctive character of propitiation, and the blood on the mercy-seat. He sees nothing but substitution.

The truth is, Christ is said to love the church, never the world, that is a love of special relationship. God is never said to love the church, but the world. That is divine goodness, what is in the nature of God (not His purpose), and His glory is the real end of all. But I do not dwell on this, I only point out the confusion of propitiation and substitution as necessarily making confusion in the gospel, enfeebling the address to the world or weakening the security of the believer, and in every respect giving uncertainty to the announcement of the truth. I believe earnestness after souls, and preaching Christ with love to Him will be blessed where there is little clearness, and is more important that great exactitude of statement. Still it is a comfort to the preacher to have it clear, even if not thinking about it at the moment; and when building up afterwards, the solidness of the foundation is of the greatest moment.

On Rule

1 Timothy 5: 17.

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I agree that, as a rule, gatherings get on where there is one who cares for souls. I have long noticed it; and, while in a small gathering, care one for another may be easy and simple, I have always held it to be a bad sign if time and increase of numbers did not develop the care of souls in persons whom love led to devote themselves more or less to it.

It may be in one aspect mutual or general, as Hebrews 12: 12-15; or more direct and positive, as 1 Thessalonians 5: 12-14, where, indeed, we have both. Hebrews 13: 17 (v. 7, they are deceased). In none of these cases are they viewed as official. It is, moreover, the contrary to official in 1 Corinthians 16: 15. They are those who "take the lead" (1 Thess. 5: 12) and "leading men" a word used of Judas and Silas in Acts 15: 22.

In 1 Corinthians 16 they have "addicted themselves," as indeed we have no trace of elders at Corinth; the Lord, doubtless, allowing it that we might have the internal state, and care, and duty, of an assembly in Scripture itself. These care-takers were not, as is truly said, the gift of teachers. This case is distinguished in 1 Timothy 5: 17. But it was desirable, not that they should be teachers as a gift (pastor and teacher are united under one head in Ephesians 4), but that they should be "apt to teach," 1 Tim. 3: 2; able to carry the word with them in their episcopal ministrations, and use it - shepherd and feed, not merely superintend; though they might usefully do the latter alone according to 1 Timothy 5: 17.

These have been the passages which have guided students of Scripture as to that by which God meets the need of saints when public order and official authority are lost to the church, with general warnings in Old and New Testament as to the care of the beloved sheep of Christ. Still the promise remains, that where two or three are gathered together to Christ's name, He is there in the midst of them.

But I would draw your attention to one of these passages - and this is my object in these lines - a leading one on the point. The household of Stephanas had "addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints." In the heart of him who so labours, when rightly done and efficient, it is done in the spirit of service, not of rule. Love works: they addict themselves; as Paul, free from all, became the servant of all for Christ's sake. There is a gift of rule, but love delights to serve. In this verse, which is a specially guiding one, service (diakonia) is that to which they addict themselves. He who thus addicts himself in love, will assuredly find himself blessed in it, though patience may be exercised, and must have its perfect work.

Fragmentary Remarks

2 Timothy 2.

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I believe that the churches have been merged in the mass of ecclesiastical popular hierarchism, and lost; but I believe also that the visible church, as it is called, has been merged there too.

Still there is a difference, because churches were the administrative form, while the church, as a body, on the earth, was the vital unity.

What I felt from the beginning, and began with, was this: the Holy Ghost remains, and therefore the essential principle of unity with His presence; for (the fact is all we are now concerned in) wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

When this is really sought, there will certainly be blessing by His presence; we have found it so, most sweetly and graciously, who have met separately.

When there is an attempt at displaying the position and the unity, there will always be a mess and a failure: God will not take such a place with us.

We must get into the place of His mind, to get His strength. That is now the failure of the church. But there He will be with us.

I have always said this. I know it has troubled some, even those I specially love; but I am sure it is the Lord's mind. I have said, We are the witnesses of the weakness and low estate of the church.

We are not stronger nor better than others (Dissenters, etc.), but we only own our bad and lost state, and therefore can find blessing. I do not limit what the blessed Spirit can do for us in this low estate, but I take the place where He can do it.

Hence, government of bodies, in an authorised way, I believe there is none; where this is assumed, there will be confusion. It was here [Plymouth], and it was constantly and openly said, that this was to be a model, so that all in distant places might refer to it. My thorough conviction is, that conscience was utterly gone, save in those who were utterly miserable.

I only, therefore, so far seek the original standing of the church, as to believe that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, Christ will be, and that the Spirit of God is necessarily the only source of power, and that which He does will be blessing through the lordship of Christ. These [the Spirit present and the lordship of Christ] provide for all times. If more be attempted, now, it will be only confusion.

324 The original condition is owned as a sinner, or as mutilated man owns integrity and a whole body. But there a most important point comes in. I cannot supply the lack by human arrangement or wisdom. I must be dependent.

I should disown whatever was not of the Spirit, and in this sense disown whatever was - not short of the original standing; for that, in the complete sense, I am - but what man has done to fill it up; because this does not own the coming short, nor the Spirit of God. I would always own what is of God's Spirit in any. The rule seems to me here very simple.

I do not doubt that dispensed power is disorganised; but the Holy Ghost is always competent to act in the circumstances God's people are in. The secret is, not to pretend to get beyond it. Life and divine power is always there; and I use the members I have, with full confession that I am in an imperfect state.

We must remember that the body must exist, though not in a united state, and so even locally. I can then, therefore, own their gifts and the like, and get my warrant in two or three united for the blessing promised to that.

Then, if gifts exist, they cannot be exercised but as members of the body, because they are such, not by outward union, but by the vital power of the Head, through the Holy Ghost.

"Visible body," I suspect, misleads us a little. Clearly the corporate operation is in the actual living body down here on earth, but there it is the members must act, so that I do not think it makes a difficulty.

I believe, if we were to act on 1 Corinthians 12: 14 further than power exists to verify it, we should make a mess.

But then the existence of the body, whatever its scattered condition, necessarily continues, because it depends on the existence of the Head, and its union with it. In this the Holy Ghost is necessarily supreme.

The body exists in virtue of there being one Holy Ghost. There is one body and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling; indeed this is the very point which is denied here.

325 Then Christ necessarily nourishes and cherishes us as His own flesh, as members of His body; and thus goes on "till we all come," etc. (Eph. 4). Hence, I apprehend we cannot deny the body and its unity (whatever its unfaithfulness and condition), and (so far as the Holy Ghost is owned) His operation in it, without denying the divine title of the Holy Ghost, and the care and headship of Christ over the church.

Here I get, not a question of the church's conduct, but of Christ's; and the truth of the Holy Ghost being on earth, and His title when there; and yet the owning of Christ's lordship. And this is how far I own others.

If a minister has gifts in the Establishment, I own it, as through the Spirit, Christ begetting the members of, or nourishing, His body. But I cannot go along with what it is mixed up with, because it is not of the body, nor of the Spirit. I cannot touch the unclean, I am to separate the precious from the vile.

But I cannot give up Ephesians 4, while I own the faithfulness of Christ. Now if we meet, yea, and when we do meet, all I look for is that this principle should be owned, because it is owning the Holy Ghost Himself, and that to me is everything.

We meet and worship; and at this time we who have separated meet in different rooms, that we may, in the truest and simplest way, in our weakness, worship. Then whatever the Holy Ghost may give to anyone, He is supreme to feed us with, perhaps nothing in the way of speaking; and it must be in the unity of the body.

If you were here, you could be in the unity of the body, as one of ourselves. This Satan cannot destroy, because it is connected with Christ's title and power.

If men set up to imitate the administration of the body, it will be popery or dissent at once.

And this is what I see of the visibility of the body; it connects itself with this infinitely important principle, the presence and action of the Holy Ghost on earth.

It is not merely a saved thing in the counsels of God, but a living thing animated down here by its union with the Head, and the presence of the Holy Ghost in it. It is a real, actual thing, the Holy Ghost acting down here. If two are faithful in this they will be blessed in it.

If they said, "We are the body," not owning all the members, in whatever condition, they would morally cease to be of it. I own them, but in nothing their condition. The principle is all-important.

326 Christ has attached, therefore, its practical operation to two or three, and owns them by His presence. He has provided for its maintenance. Thus, in all states of ruin, it cannot cease till He ceases to be Head, and the Holy Spirit to be as the Guide and the Comforter sent down.

God sanctioned the setting up of Saul; He never did the departure from the Holy Ghost. The "two or three" take definitely the place of the temple, which was the locality of God's presence, as a principle of union. That is what makes all the difference. Hence, in the division of Israel, the righteous sought the temple as a point of unity, and David is to us here Christ by the Holy Ghost.

On the other hand, church government, save as the Spirit is always power, cannot be acted on.

I suspect many brethren have had expectations, which never led me out, and which perplexed their minds when they were not met in practice. I never felt my testimony, for example, to be the ability of the Holy Ghost to rule a visible body. That I do not doubt; but I doubt its proper application now as a matter of testimony. It does not become us.

My confidence is in the certainty of God's blessing, and maintaining us, if we take the place we are really in. That place is one of the general ruin of the dispensation. Still, I believe God has provided for the maintenance of its general principle (save persecution), that is, the gathering of a remnant into the comfort of united love by the power and presence of the Holy Ghost, so that Christ could sing praises there

All the rest is a ministry to form, sustain, etc. Amongst other things, government may have its place; but it is well to remember that, in general, government regards evil, and therefore is outside the positive blessing, and has the lowest object in the church.

Moreover, though there be a gift of government, in general government is of a different order from gift. Gift serves ministry, hardly government. These may be united as in apostolic energy; elders were rather the government, but they were not gifts.

It is especially the order of the governmental part which I believe has failed, and that we are to get on without, at least in a formal way. But I do not believe that God has therefore not provided for such a state of things.

I do believe brethren a good deal got practically out of their place, and the consciousness of it, and found their weakness; and the Lord is now teaching them. For my part, when I found all in ruin around me, my comfort was, that where two or three are gathered together in Christ's name, there He would be. It was not government, or anything else, I sought. Now I do believe that God is faithful, and able to maintain the blessing.

327 I believe the great buildings and great bodies have been a mistake; indeed I always did. Further, I believe now (although it were always true in practice), the needed dealing with evil must be by the conscience in grace. So Paul ever dealt, though he had the resource of a positive commission. And I believe that two or three together, or a larger number, with some having the gift of wisdom in grace, can, in finding the mind of the Lord, act in discipline; and this, with pastoral care, is the main-spring of holding the saints together in Matthew 18. This agreeing together is referred to as the sign of the Spirit's power.

I do not doubt that some may be capable of informing the consciences of others. But the conscience of the body is that which is ever to be acted upon and set right. This is the character of all healthful action of this kind, though there may be a resource in present apostolic power, which, where evil has entered, may be wanting; but it cannot annul "where two or three agree it shall be done."

So that I see not the smallest need of submission to popery; that is, carnal unity by authority in the flesh, nor of standing alone, because God has provided for a gathering of saints together, founded on grace, and held by the operation of the Spirit, which no doubt may fail for want of grace, but which in every remaining gift has its scope; in which Christ's presence and the operation of the Spirit is manifested, but must be maintained on the ground of the condition the church really is in, or it would issue in a sect arranged by man, with a few new ideas.

Where God is trusted in the place, and for the place we are in, and we are content to find Him infallibly present with us, there I am sure He is sufficient and faithful to meet our wants.

328 If there be one needed wiser than any of the gathered ones in a place, they will humbly feel their need, and God will send some one as needed, if He sees it the fit means.

There is no remedy for want of grace, but the sovereign goodness that leads to confession. If we set up our altar, it will serve for walls; Ezra 3: 3. The visibility God will take care of, as He always did; the faith of the body will be spoken of, and the unity in love manifest the power of the Holy Ghost in the body.

I have no doubt of God's raising up for need all that need requires in the place where He has set us in understanding. If we think to set up the church again, I would say, God forbid. I had rather be near the end, to live and to die for it in service, where it is as dear to God; that is my desire and life.

Notes of lecture on Titus 2: 11-14

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It is very striking to notice the connections in which the summary of divine truth, contained in these verses, is introduced. The chapter is occupied with teaching what sort of conduct Christianity demands from those who profess it, according to the relative position in life in which they may be found. It teaches what is becoming in aged men and in aged women. It tells us, also, how young women should behave; and what should be characteristic of young men. It then takes up the common every-day conduct which is due from servants to their masters; and (while teaching them to be obedient, and to seek to please them in everything - guarding against insolence and dishonesty - "that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things") it adds, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

Now there is a reason for the introduction of this passage here; which is simply this: that while men are satisfied - and must be satisfied, for they can go no farther - with the expression of the mere outward behaviour, the word of God occupies itself with the correction of the motives and springs from whence all conduct flows. More than this - no conduct can ever be acceptable in the sight of God that does not flow from a heart subjected to His grace, which brings salvation; and that is not swayed by its daily powers. Rules of conduct are not given, cannot be given, to those whose hearts have not been subjected to "the obedience of faith."

But even here, amongst Christians, there is a very frequent mistake. While the world values Christianity merely for its collateral results, such as the reformation of manners and its conservative effect on society, etc., Christians too often are occupied with the working and effect of God's grace, in the subjects of it - whether themselves or others - to the exclusion of the contemplation of that grace in its divine and absolute character, and in its first and grand effect. I mean this: ordinarily the Christian's mind is more occupied, as expressed in the passage before us, with what the grace of God teaches, than with what it brings. It teaches us to deny ungodliness, etc.; but before it teaches, it brings salvation. How many may be found most anxious to discover, what men now call the subjective power of this grace, who at the same time are utterly at sea as to what is meant, in corresponding phrase, by its objective power! Surely it is well, and necessary, in its place, to see to it that we yield ourselves to the teaching of God's grace, when its lesson is, "that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." But it is not well to overlook, or underestimate, the absolute power of that grace in what it brings. The grace of God brings salvation, or is salvation-bringing, to the lost and ruined, before it teaches in those whom it saves.

330 "The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared," is but the succinct description of God's intervention in infinite love, by the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the accomplishment of redemption.

Apart from all the effects and fruits of grace in those who are the subjects of it, there is God's intervention in perfect absolute goodness, in the scene of ruin and death, which sin has introduced, for the perfect and entire deliverance out of it. The grace of God brings salvation into this world, where sin and death and Satan's power mark the condition of man's existence; and that apart from all effects of that grace, in peace of conscience, or holiness and happiness, on the part of those that believe. There is the grace itself, as well as the blessed fruits which it produces. The salvation which it brings has its own proper character, as the intervention of God in divine love and power, as well as its own blessed results in the position Godward, to which it brings its objects.

The two termini of a Christian's course are here marked as the results of this interposition of God in grace, namely, salvation and glory. The Christian's path, I repeat it, is here shewn to lie between the starting-point, which is salvation, and the goal, which is glory. Grace and glory are inseparable. Conduct, exercise of heart, trial, conflict, service, lie between these two points, and in God's estimate take their character from them; but the salvation was accomplished alone by Christ's appearing in grace - for "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." And the glory will be accomplished, alone, by Christ's appearing in glory. This is what the passage states. "The grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." It then adds, "looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." Intermediately it tells us that the grace, which brings salvation, teaches us, "that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world"; while in verse 14, we have the constraining motive to holiness in the end for which Christ gave Himself for us. "Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."

331 This is plainly practical as the end, in us in this world, of Christ's infinite love.

Let us look, then, first, at the character of the deliverance, or salvation, which this wondrous intervention of God in grace brings. This cannot be learnt by going over the points of systematic divinity [i.e. the creeds of religious systems], but by a reference to the character of man's condition through sin, as unfolded in the word of God, and manifested by the suffering and death of Christ. Whatever there is of moral distance from God, through sin, this salvation, which "the grace of God" brings, meets, and sets aside. "For Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." Sin in its very nature separates from God; for light cannot have fellowship with darkness; but then it is said, "Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." Sin, and death, and Satan's power, and the judgment of God - all marked man's condition of ruin, and all must be met before salvation, full and adequate, can be proclaimed. It is not enough to raise man from his degradation and moral pollution, if such a thing could be, and set him on his pathway to happiness. The conscience must be set at rest on the ground of every claim of God in His righteous holiness having been met, and every possible consequence of sin set aside. And this is the salvation which the grace of God brings. It brings eternal life into this region of death; for "God hath given to us eternal life: and this life is in his Son." It brings in divine righteousness into the midst of condemnation. For "he who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." It brings deliverance from Satan's power; for "through death [Christ] destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the devil." Nay more, the salvation which the grace of God brings puts us in the very place, and position, and acceptance before God, and makes us partakers of the very life and glory of Him by whom the salvation has been wrought. It has no other measure, and has no lower character. Was ever love like this!

332 There is, indeed, the teaching of this grace, which is all-important in its place; but what the heart must know first (as it is its first action, on the part of a God of goodness) is its salvation-bringing power; for without the knowledge of the salvation, its teaching will be misapprehended and in vain.

The grace of God, then, first brings a perfect absolute deliverance of the soul from the whole consequences of sin, and brings into God's presence in acceptance, according to the acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the salvation lies in His obedience and sufferings for sin, in the acceptableness of His sacrifice, and in the power of His resurrection; and "as he is, so are we in this world." This is all absolute; it is God's part in the grace which brings salvation.

And as it is absolute in its character, so is it universal in its aspect and bearing. "The grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." It is unrestricted in its character; as the sun shines for all, though some hide themselves even from its light. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish but have everlasting life." "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

But the grace received becomes teaching in those who are the subjects of the salvation which it brings. It teaches us "that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world." And here, I observe, it is "the grace" that teaches, and not something else. It is not man's wisdom, or man's morality, mixing itself with that which is divine in his salvation, and, I may add, divine in the nature which it imparts. It is the grace which brought the salvation still acting - but acting now in the subjects of it, and on the divine nature which it imparts. They are not human motives, which form and fashion and produce the morality of a Christian, any more than it is human power that accomplishes his salvation. It is "the grace of God" that teaches him as well as saves him.

This is very remarkably shewn in a passage in Timothy (1 Tim. 3: 16), the force of which is very frequently overlooked. The apostle would teach Timothy how he ought to behave himself "in the house of God"; and he then presents the formative power of all true godliness in the words, "Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."

333 This is often quoted and interpreted as if it spoke of the mystery of the Godhead, or the mystery of Christ's Person. But it is the mystery of godliness, or the secret by which all real godliness is produced - the divine spring of all that can be called piety in man. "God manifest in the flesh," is the example and the power of godliness, its measure and its spring. Godliness is not now produced, as under the law, by divine enactments; nor is it the result in the spirit of bondage in those (however godly) who only know God as worshipped behind a veil. Godliness now springs from the knowledge of the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. It takes its spring and character from the knowledge of His Person as "God manifest in the flesh"; the perfectness of His obedience, "as justified in the Spirit"; the object of angelic contemplation, and the subject of testimony and faith in the world; and His present position as "received up into glory."

This is how God is known; and from abiding in this flows godliness. And as in the passage before us, between the salvation, which is the result of the appearing of the grace and the crowning of "that blessed hope" which the believer looks for in the appearing of the glory, is the teaching of the grace that has brought salvation. It teaches the denial of ungodliness and worldly desires, as at war with the ends of redemption, and contrary to the character and position in which salvation places us as "delivered from this present evil world." Certainly the cross and the glory alike forbid the allowance of ungodliness and the pursuit of worldly desires. It was the world that crucified Christ; and in the appearing of the glory worldly desires can have no place. "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lusts thereof." It will be all withered by the appearing of the glory. But sobriety, righteousness, and godliness are due from the believer towards the world as a witness; and due towards God as a witness of the conforming power of His most precious grace.

334 Already I have noticed that this passage presents the believer's path as lying between the salvation, which was accomplished by Christ's appearing in grace, and the glory, which will be accomplished by Christ's appearing in glory. "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing [or epiphany of the glory; as there was the epiphany of grace] of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ." The salvation which the grace of God brings settles every question between God and the soul as to sin and condemnation; and the appearing of the glory will bring those who are Christ's into the enjoyment of the presence of God and Christ, into the perfected victory of Christ, and into the possession of all that can fit us for His presence in glory. "Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself," Phil. 3: 20, 21. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation," Heb. 9: 28. "We are saved by hope"; and nothing so moulds the affections for heaven as "waiting for God's Son from heaven, . . . even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come." In possession, and in the enjoyment, as to the soul, of this divine and perfected salvation, the believer has that which is far brighter in hope. He who, in sorrow and suffering and in infinite love, wrought the salvation, is coming to receive us unto Himself; that where He is, there we may be also. We shall see Him as He is, and then we shall be made like Him.

All is divine and precious, infinite in love and goodness, in the way our God takes to act upon the soul. How touching is the motive to holiness which is presented in the closing verse of our passage! "Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works," v. 14. Here we have the end of redemption in the practical walk of the believer in this world. But what can equal the motive that is presented in the declaration, "Who gave himself for us"?

May our hearts more fully answer to its constraining power!

Notes from lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews

J. N. Darby.

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Hebrews 1.

The Spirit of God in this epistle distinguishes between the way in which God spoke, or dealt, in time past and now. So in Romans 3 the apostle speaks of Christ, "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past." There he applies the death of Christ to the sins committed before He came. The day of atonement in Israel was for the putting away of past sins. He had been bearing with them all the year, and then when the sacrifice came on that day, the sin was all put away and all bright in the presence of God. There is the day of atonement yet to come for Israel as a nation, when in their land. Then the other part was "to declare at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him," etc. This is for the present time. By ascending before God on high, He establishes a present righteousness - all sins forgiven and we made the righteousness of God in Christ. Romans 3: 25 gives it historically, for the sins of all who were saved in the Old Testament times are put away by this sacrifice; but we may apply it immediately, and see that not only our past sins are put away, but we stand in righteousness for the present.

Verse 1. "God who at sundry times," etc. That was before the time came for the revelation of Himself. Messages were sent through others. They had communications from God, for He spake to them through the prophets: but now we have the manifestation of Himself. The Son of God has now come. "God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." Thus the word is so exalted. "Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." His name up to that time was exalted. He had made Himself known to Abraham as the Lord Almighty, telling him to trust His power, when he had to walk up and down as a stranger, with none to take care of him. Then again He was made known to Nebuchadnezzar as the most High God, higher than any of the gods of the nations; and to Abraham too He was called thus, when he returned from the slaughter of the kings. He will take it again when the kingdom comes. Then, again, He was known by the name Jehovah - "I am" - the practical force of which is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." All these names were glorious; but the word He has magnified above all. The word is that which tells all that God is - holiness, love, wisdom, etc. His word expresses His thoughts and feelings; it is the revelation of Himself. God speaks by Christ. Everything that Christ did was the manifestation of God. Who could heal the leper but God? "I will, be thou clean," are His words. Who could raise the dead but God? "Lazarus, come forth!" "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me," John 17: 8. He has committed His words to us, to be the vessels of His testimony according to our measure. "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true."

336 We are not only brought to God now, but to God revealing Himself, God manifest in the flesh. Christ came declaring the Father. "Believe me that I am in the Father . . . or else believe me for the very works' sake." What a blessed place we have in Christ, having Him as the revelation of God to us! The mind of God is brought before us in Christ. "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart." This is what makes Scripture so precious. It is indeed the written word, but the revelation of God. "No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation." You have got the mind of God in writing, and there it is stable and imperishable - in contrast to traditions merely handed down from one to another. There cannot be the church speaking, without Scripture. If the church can say anything, itself, then Christ's words go for nothing. I have another master over me. I am speaking of authority now, not of gift, which, of course, there is in the church for the bringing out of truth. But authority in the church trenches on the lordship of Christ over His house. It is a great thing to treasure in our souls that we have this revelation of God in Christ; and the beginning of the next chapter takes us up on the ground of possessing it. "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip." These were Jews to whom the apostle was writing, and they had heard the Lord Himself speak, and afterwards His apostles; and that is the reason why Paul did not put his name to this as to other epistles, when inditing them. You Jews hear what God Himself has said to you. You have heard Him. Thus, the apostle only confirmed what He had said. It is blessed thus to see how Paul drops his own apostleship (he was not, it is true, the apostle of the circumcision), and only speaks of the twelve who confirmed Christ's own words.

337 In this chapter we have first the glory of Christ shewn in His being "heir of all things." He was the Son of the Father, and the everlasting Father, by virtue of His own power; and He will take everything. He will inherit all things. If a Son, we may say, then an Heir; for it is even said of us, "If children, then heirs." All that is the Father's is His. "He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you." Psalm 8 is alluded to in chapter 2, when in the counsels of God it is appointed that as a Man He should take all things; but in this chapter we have this same One as the Son of God and "heir of all things"; and for this glorious reason, He "made the worlds." In Colossians we have it - they "were created by him and for him." There it is His title over creation, but as "the image of the invisible God, the first-born," etc. So here it is "heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds." He is distinguished from God the Father - the right hand of His power. By wisdom He planned and by power He wrought. Christ is that wisdom and that power.

Verse 3. "The express image of his person." Christ was the outshining of God's glory. This is more than testimony made by the prophets in other ages. John 12: 38-41, in connection with Isaiah 6, shews the shining out of His glory very remarkably. See also Genesis 1: 26, 27 in connection with this word, "the express image of his person."

"Upholding all things," etc. Of course this is a divine act. Who could keep the universe going? How could it all go on without God, so that not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him? How could it be without Him who made it? Though He has established the order of all things, it is He who is keeping it all going. The one actually acting and possessing all is Christ. We see His glory in all this.

Another divine work there is spoken of in His having "purged our sins"; and it is just as much a divine act to purge our sins as to create a world, and in one sense far more difficult, because sin is so hateful to God. It would be easy enough for Him to create another world out of nothing. He could look at His creation and say it was all "very good"; but He is so holy, He cannot look upon sin. Therefore there is something He must take away, and He does come to put sins away. We have sinned against God, and it is impossible for any to forgive the sin but the person sinned against. We have sinned against God, not man primarily, and man cannot forgive sins. This is another reason why God should be the only One who can forgive sins.

338 Mark another thing. He must purge before He can forgive. In passing through this world, man has to pass over a great deal, and get through as well as he can: but God cannot do this. He "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." Then if God is to have anything to do with us, He must purge sin. There is this dreadful necessity, that God should be occupied with our sins; and He had love enough and power enough to do it. If He passed it over, He would have to give up His holiness. Therefore there was this moral necessity of His holiness, that if He is to have any such poor sinners in His presence, He must cleanse us. So there must also be the feet-washing, if we are to have part with Christ.

"When he had by himself purged our sins" - it must be by Himself. No one could help Him in it; angels could have nothing to do in it, though they were sent to minister to Him when engaged in the work. Man could not, for man can do no more than his duty; if he did more, it would be wrong. It must be a divine work to purge away sin. There is a divine necessity upon God to do it - and that by Himself, because He could not allow sin. This is how I am purged. Because He could not bear sin, He must take it away Himself, and "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." It is a work that has been done: not anything that He will do, and may do - not something yet to be done. It is done, and He has sat down. We then no longer have a prophet coming to tell us He will do it, but there is the testimony of the Holy Ghost that it has been done.

"The brightness of God's glory," it is said, not the Father's. Sin is connected with God as its judge, not with the Father. He "sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." The whole work is accomplished and so perfectly done that He can take His own place again, and with the blessed difference, that He goes back as a Man, which He never was before. Stephen saw Him as the "Son of man," standing on the right hand of God. Here He has "sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." He has taken our sins, and yet is on the right hand of the throne of God. This shews that the righteousness wrought out was so perfect and divine, that though He has taken our sins, He could sit down on the throne of God, and not soil it. He had a right, of course, on the ground of His divine Person; but there is more than that here. Divine righteousness is presented to God, as an accomplished thing, just as the divine Son was manifested to man when He came down amongst us. It is all divine glory throughout.

339 Psalm 2, "Kiss the Son," etc. Blessed is the man who trusteth in God: but cursed the man who trusteth in man; Jer. 17. We find in the prophets certain traits in mystery, as it were, to display the divine Person of the One who was coming in humiliation. See Isaiah 50: 3-5. The same glorious Person who said, "I clothe the heavens with blackness," etc., says, "The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious," etc. In Daniel 7 again, see verse 13 - "the Son of man," brought before "the Ancient of days," and in verse 22, He is giving out Himself to be "the Ancient of days," Heb. 1: 7. "Who maketh his angels spirits," etc., but He does not say make when speaking of the Son. "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." See Psalm 45: 1-7; Heb. 1: 9. He whose throne is for ever and ever has been put to the test; and He loved righteousness and hated iniquity while amongst us, and has brought us up as His fellows out of our iniquity. See the contrast in the connection in which "fellows" is mentioned here, and in Zechariah 13: 7, where Jehovah speaks of the man, His fellow, who has been "wounded in the house of his friends."

Thus we see the glory of Christ shining through the Old Testament continually, but in this chapter it is fully brought out. He is owned as God, though a man, and glorified above all others.

Verses 10, 11, etc. See Psalm 102: 24. "Thy years are throughout," etc., is in answer to verse 23, and first clause of verse 24. This is still more pointed and precise. Jesus, in His humiliation, breathes out His broken heart to Jehovah. The Psalm anticipates the rebuilding of Zion. If so, where would this smitten Messiah be? If cut off in the midst of His day, how could He be there? God's answer is, that He, the holy sufferer, is Jehovah, the creator and disposer of all things. What a testimony to His unchangeable deity!

340 This is the time of grace, when those who are to be His companions in the glory are being gathered out (His fellows, v. 9).

Verse 13. Angels have a very blessed place and office, but it is never said to them, "Sit on my right hand," etc., but Jehovah did say so to the man, Christ Jesus. He has His own place there.

What a blessed Saviour we have! The Lord Himself has come and taken up our cause. The One whom we look to, and lean upon as a Saviour, is the Lord Jehovah.

Then, besides the glory of His Person, there is the other blessed truth, essential to our peace, to see what a wonderful salvation we have: our sins completely purged away! There is a wonderful and divine glory in this salvation, and divine and ineffable love - the love of One who is not like an angel who could only do His work when told.

Our souls are thus called to worship Him who clothes the heavens with blackness, who indeed made all things, even Jesus, the Son of God.

Hebrews 2.

The first four verses of this chapter are an exhortation founded on the preceding one. Observe, this epistle does not begin with an apostolic address, as the others do; but Paul puts himself entirely among these Jewish believers, and speaks of Christ as their Apostle, not himself; and throughout he is unfolding all the riches of Christ, to keep them from sliding back into Judaism. Though the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to Paul, as that of the circumcision was to Peter, yet is Paul the one used to these Hebrew believers. In chapter 1: 1, 2, God hath "spoken to us"; that is, Paul puts himself among them. In the Hebrews the church is not addressed as such, but the saints individually - not in their aspect of oneness with Christ. Even in the Epistle to the Romans it is said, "Whom he justified, them he also glorified"; but here we get Him only "crowned with glory and honour." Further, I would remark, as it is not of union with Christ of which the apostle speaks here, responsibility is pressed; continual "ifs" and warnings flow from this. These warnings do not one whit touch the final perseverance of the saints, as the doctrine is called; though I would rather say, the perseverance of God, His faithfulness, for He it is who keeps us to the end. "If you continue" does not throw a doubt on your continuance. The quickening work of the Spirit of God is scarcely referred to in this epistle, save in one or two cases. In chapter 2: 2, "The word spoken by angels" means the law given at Sinai. In these verses the whole Jewish nation is addressed, while those only who had faith would receive the warning. And I would notice that the warnings of God are not merely against sin, but not to let slip truth, etc. Christ came into the world, not imputing their trespasses unto them, but they added to their rebellion of heart by rejecting Him who came to warn them. Neglecting salvation is despising it. By the rejection of Christ the Jews bound their sins upon them. To have broken the law was bad enough, but to reject grace was worse; and these first four verses press this upon them.

341 God's purpose for man (v. 5, and following) is to set him over everything, but that purpose is still unfulfilled. "The world to come" is not heaven, for that does exist now; but it is the habitable earth to come, not this earth in its present state. The Jews expected a new order of things; they looked for blessing and peace, and they were right, for so it will be. The present world is in subjection to angels. God's hand is not seen directly, but His angels are ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation. Everything in this world, however mercifully ordered in providence, is a proof of sin - the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, etc. All this was not God's purpose. He is not, as I said, now acting directly. He permits and overrules, but He draws His own people from the world (delivering us "from this present evil world"), and then teaches them to walk through it as not of it. He protects us through His angels; they are His ministers in His providential dealings; v. 6. But it is a Man who is to be set over the world to come. Once (in Adam) dominion was committed to man, but he lost it; v. 8, etc. God's purpose, that is, His order of things, is not thereby touched. Now we see Jesus crowned, and when we are, then all things will be accomplished. The Head is now glorified, and the members are down here in suffering. Christ is sitting at God's right hand, waiting till His enemies are made His footstool.

342 Take Psalm 2 and compare it with Psalm 8. God says, "Yet have I set my king upon the holy hill of Zion." Christ is come, and is not yet set there as king. Now Psalm 8 shews that, though rejected as Messiah, Jesus took the place of Son of man. So when Peter confesses Him as the Christ, Jesus charges him straitly not to tell any, for the "Son of man [His title in Psalm 8] must suffer many things," etc. Sin must be put away before God could set up His kingdom. We are now passing through that order or state of things which is not yet put under Jesus. Christ has gone through this very world, and been tempted, before He took His place as Priest, that He might succour them that are tempted. This is not sin, for we do not want sympathy in sin, but help and power to get out of and overcome it, and all this we have in Him. He went perfectly through reproach and tribulation. All that Satan could do to stop Him in His godly course, Satan did; but all was in vain. The Lord "resisted unto blood." We need to pray God for help to judge sin, each in himself. Sympathy in distress and suffering is another thing, and this we have, as well as forgiveness.

I began by saying there were two things - the purpose and the ways of God. Now, the latter it is our privilege to trace, while the former remains still unaccomplished. Instead of being merely Son of David, Christ is Son of man. He takes possession in our nature - not, of course, in the state in which it is in us, but still in our very nature. Now, as to the ways of God, we get these in verse 10: "By the grace of God he tasted death," etc. Mark this well - our sin brings us to the same place which, by the grace of God, He took. Perfect grace and perfect obedience we find in Him. When Christ came, as in Psalm 40, to do the will of God, God's majesty needed to be vindicated; and I would say unhesitatingly that God's truth, His righteousness, His love, His majesty, were all vindicated by the death of Christ - aye, far more than they would have been had we all died. In anticipation of this He said, "I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" His love could not fully flow forth till then. In the words, "It became him," I find the character of God; while in the expression, "many sons," I find the objects of His love. He could not bring us to glory in our sins. We get Christ taking up the cause of this remnant; and where, historically, did He begin? It was in John's baptism that He outwardly identified Himself with His people, that is, with the sanctified ones; v. 11. See Psalm 16: 2, 3. His association was with the saints; and there cannot be a step in the divine life in which Christ does not go along with us. Christ, in all that He is, is with us in the smallest fibre of divine life, from the repentance which is at the beginning. Not, of course, that He had aught to repent; yet His heart is with us in it. This is as true now, as it will be when manifested in glory; v. 16. There was no union of Christ with the flesh. The associates of Christ are the excellent of the earth; while in grace one of His sweetest titles was "the friend of the publicans and sinners."

343 Verse 12 is a quotation from Psalm 22: 22, where Jesus in resurrection takes the place of leader of the praise of His brethren. Our songs should therefore ever accord with His. He has passed through death for us; and if our worship express uncertainty and doubt instead of joy and assurance in the sense of accomplished redemption, there can be no harmony, but discord, with the mind of heaven.

Verse 13 is quoted from Psalm 16, where, as also elsewhere, Christ on earth takes the place of the dependent Man. He is specially thus described in Luke's Gospel, where it is so frequently recorded that He prayed. Again, "Behold, I and the children," etc. This passage from Isaiah 8: 18 is particularly applicable to these Hebrew believers. While waiting for Israel, He and His disciples are for signs.

In verse 14 we find the consequence of His association with us. In these latter verses we have these two things: He took our nature that He might die; and also that He might go through temptation. We were alive under death; then Christ comes, and He takes upon Him all the power of Satan and death, and destroys thus him that had the power of death. By His death He made propitiation for sin. The feelings of His soul, and the temptations of Satan, were before His actual death, in the garden of Gethsemane, where His language was, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." This was because of Satan's power; for He said, "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." But all this He went through, as part of His appointed sufferings. In the first three Gospels we have His cry in Gethsemane. In John we have His remembrance of His mother, and His other cries ("I thirst!" and "It is finished!") on the cross; and this is in character with that Gospel in which His divine aspect is given. After the conflict with Satan was over, Christ took up the cup from His Father's hand. They who were sent to secure Him had no power against Him, for they all fell back; but He gave Himself up. Satan pressed the cup upon Him, but He took it from the hand of His Father.

344 As regards temptation, I shall hope to speak more about it another time. I would only now say that succouring is not dying instead of me; but now that I am going through this world I need succour. The ark in Jordan was like Christ preceding us through the waters of death, which to Him overflowed its banks, while we follow dry-shod. For what is dying to the Christian? It is passing away from all sorrow into the presence of the Lord - the happiest moment in a Christian's existence.

Hebrews 3.

The first title of our Lord in this chapter is connected with the first part of the epistle; the second, namely, the priesthood, refers to what follows afterwards. In chapter I also we have His qualification for being the Apostle; in chapter 2, His qualification for the Priesthood. He was the Divine Messenger for the testimony He was to bring to earth; and He is gone up on high to exercise His Priesthood on behalf of a needy people down here where He has been. "God manifest in flesh justified in the Spirit . . . received up in glory," referring to His having come down here and become man. He must be in the holy place in order to carry on His work as Priest; but He must be a man. Therefore what He was on earth fitted Him, as it were, for this work. There is a third character connected with Christ brought out in this third chapter; Christ set "over his own house."

In this epistle we do not get the unity of the body at all; we get a Mediator speaking to God for us and speaking from God to us: "Let us hold fast the profession," etc. If He spoke of the unity of the body, that is inseparable; there is one Holy Ghost uniting the members to the Head - "ye in me, and I in you." It is not so here. Therefore profession is spoken of, and the possibility of that being not true profession; yet assuming it might be sincere, "we are persuaded better things of you," etc. (chap. 6). There might be all these privileges, and no fruit, but falling away. These Hebrews had made a public profession of having embraced Christ, and received a heavenly calling. In speaking of the body of Christ, we know it is perfect - no possibility of a false member getting in; but in a living congregation I may address them as hoping they are all saints, but the end proves. No man can tell the end, whether they will all persevere; but if there is life, we know they will.

345 "Apostle of our profession" - it could not be said Apostle of life. We never can understand this epistle properly, unless we get hold of this truth. In Ephesians, where the body is more the subject, I do not get such an expression as this, "that he might sanctify the people with his own blood."

The character of this epistle not being understood is the reason many souls are tried and exercised by passages they find in it. They are addressed with the possibility of their not having life, and so not continuing to the end. The church supposes a body in heaven. "Heavenly calling" does not necessarily imply that, because they are called to heaven, they are part of the body of Christ. The kingdom and the body are different. "Head over all things to the church" is wider, too, than the kingdom. Kingdom implies a king; a body implies a head. The church is precious to God. Everything that Christ has, I have; the same life, the same righteousness, the same glory. If my hand is hurt, I say it is I who am hurt. Paul was converted by this truth, "Why persecutest thou me?" It shews what grace has done for us - taken us out of ourselves. The body of Christ shews out the fulness of redemption, and the purpose of God respecting it. But another aspect of the people of God is that they are down here in infirmity, but having this heavenly calling. In this condition I need One in heaven; and there is not an infirmity, a need, a sorrow, an ache, an anxiety, but it draws out sympathy and help from Christ. This draws out my affections to Him. But before the priesthood is taken up, Moses is spoken of as a type: "Christ Jesus, faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house." The house is the place where God dwells; and there is another thing here - the Head of the house administering it.

God has met His people according to the need in which they were. In Egypt they need redemption, and He comes to redeem. In the wilderness they were dwelling in tents, and He would have a tent too. In getting into the land they wanted One to bring them in, and there is the captain of the Lord's host. Then, when they are in the land, He builds His palace, His temple. There is rest. We are not come to the temple yet - we have not rest: we get the tabernacle now, and "there remaineth a rest." There was a temple existing when these Hebrews were addressed, but that was not for us.

346 The temple is a dwelling for God. There never was a dwelling-place for God until redemption came in. Scripture never speaks of man getting back to innocency, or the image of God. God did not dwell with Adam; though in the cool of the day He came to walk with him. Neither did He dwell with Abraham. "The earth hath he given to the children of men" - "the heavens are the Lord's." But when redemption comes in, God is forming something for Himself. Thus, in Exodus 15: 13, "habitation" refers to what they had in the wilderness (Exod. 29: 44-46), but verse 17 to the rest at the end.

There were visits to Abraham (Abraham will dwell in heaven), but God could not have a habitation among men until He had made known redemption to them. The nature and character of God require it. Love is God's character: to enjoy God I must be with Him. Holiness is His nature. We are made sons of God ("the servant abideth not in the house for ever," etc.). In the divine nature communicated to us, we are capable of being at home in that house of God, and redemption gives the title.

The individual Christian is a temple now; but the temporary provisional thing is God dwelling with us. The full blessed thing is our dwelling with God; John 14. I go not away to be alone there, but to have you there. "I go to prepare a place for you." In verse 23 the Father and the Son make their abode with us till we are taken to abide with them. God's having a house, as a general thought, is the consequence of redemption. Here in Hebrews it is rather alluded to as to administration than dwelling. "Habitation of God," is the present thing; "temple" is future in Ephesians 2. It is spoken of in a larger and more vague way in Hebrews, because here it takes in profession. He that built all things is God. In one sense creation is His house; in another, Christ has passed through the heavens, as High Priest, into the heaven of heavens (through the two veils, as is represented in the type), into the holiest. In a third sense the body professing Christianity is His house, "whose house are we," etc. - the saints. There may be hypocrites amongst them; but they "are builded together for an habitation of God," etc. Christ administers in it, as Son over His own house. Moses was but servant in the building. There is immense comfort for us in this; first, because it is perfectly governed; second, when we look at the house, we may see all sorts of failures coming in; but though all may be failure, the One who administers in the house cannot fail. Therefore, though all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's, Paul could say, "Rejoice in the Lord alway," etc. There is One whom nothing escapes. Anyone who has a real care for the church of God, need never distrust. Paul, in looking at the Galatians, sees so much wrong that he does not know what to think of them: he changes his voice towards them. Ye that are under the law, hear the law. But in the next chapter he says, "I have confidence in you through the Lord." Christ is over His own house. Two things follow then. He will turn everything to blessing - Paul in prison, etc.; and there is present good too. When all the joints and bands do not act as they ought, the immediate ministry of Christ is more experienced. Christ connects everything with His glory; and faith connects the glory of the Lord with the people of the Lord. Moses did so. Faith does not only say, the Lord is glorious, and He will provide the means for His own glory; but it sees the means for it. Moses said, "Spare the people," when with God; and when he came down amongst them, he "cut off the people," because he was alive to God's glory (in the matter of the calf in the camp).

347 We have to count upon Christ for the church, not upon itself. Thus Paul, when tried by Nero, passes sentence as it were upon himself (Phil. 1: 23-25); he settles it that he shall be acquitted. Why? Because he sees it is more needful for them - one single church. It was divine teaching and faith in exercise which made him to judge thus.

There is failure on the part of the church down here as to responsibility, but Christ has perfect authority in His church, and He has interest in it. We have not to make rules for the church; it is the Master must govern the house, not the servants. There is one Master, and that is Christ. He is over the church, and not the church over Him. "Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence," etc. Ah! people say, don't you be too confident, because there is an "if." But, I ask, what have you got? What he presses is, that you should not let it go. Is that to be used to hinder my having the confidence? What did they believe? That Christ was come - a heavenly Saviour to them, and this far better than an earthly one. Do not give up that. There is a fear of giving up that confidence, not of their being too confident. What am I to distrust? Myself? Oh! I cannot distrust myself too much. But is it Christ you distrust? Will His eye ever grow dim, or His heart grow cold? Will He leave off interceding? A proof that I am a real stone in the house is that I hold fast the confidence, etc. Those high priests under the old dispensation were continually standing; but. He has sat down, because the work is all done. They needed for every sin a new sacrifice: sin was never put away. They needed a fresh absolution from the priest every time sin came up. Now, He says, "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." If you are under law, it is another thing; you have not got the confidence. If you talk of distrust, what do you distrust? If you trust in man at all, it is a proof you do not see that you are lost. If you give up confidence in yourself, and say, I am lost already, it is another thing. No one that has really come to redemption, has in the substance of his soul confidence in himself; and no Christian will say, you ought to distrust Christ. Our privilege is to have confidence in Christ as a rock under our feet, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God. His righteousness has brought Christ into the glory as a man, and the same righteousness will bring me in.

348 Does another person say, I do not know whether I have a portion in it? You are under the law: God may be ploughing up your soul - exercising it for good; but you have not been brought to accept the righteousness of God. The soul in this state has not accepted the righteousness of God for it, instead of ours for Him. You are still depending on your own heart for comfort and assurance. It is a very serious thing to get the soul so empty of everything that it has only to accept what God can give. It is an awful thing to find oneself in God's presence, with nothing to say or to present. You never get love to Christ until you are saved; and it is the work of God's Spirit. The prodigal found what he was by what his father was. Did the prodigal doubt his interest when the father was on his neck?

349 The remainder of this chapter takes up the people of Israel - the professing people in the wilderness. They did not get into the land, but their carcases fell in the wilderness. It is speaking of them on the road. The "to-day" quoted from Psalm 115 never closes for Israel, till God has taken up the remnant at the end of His dealings with them, after the church is gone up to heaven.

Verse 14. "Partakers" is the same word as that translated "fellows" in chapter 1. You are fellows of Christ if you are of this company. This place with the fellows is yours if you go on to the end. This kind of statement does not touch the security of the saints. Both Calvinists and Arminians might say, He will reach heaven, if he holds fast to the end. The certainty of salvation is the certainty of faith, and not that which excludes dependence upon God for every moment. I have no doubt that God will keep every one of His saints to the end; but we have to run the race to obtain eternal glory. Holding fast the faithfulness of God, it is important, along with this, to keep up the plain sense of passages such as the present, which act on the conscience as warning by the way. There is no uncertainty, but there is the working out our own salvation with fear and trembling. In 1 Corinthians 9: 27, personal Christianity is distinguished from preaching to others. It is not a question of the work, but of the person being a castaway, and this means disapproved or reprobate, that is, not a Christian. Compare 2 Cor. 13. In Romans 2 eternal life is spoken of as the result of a course which pleases God. No doubt, His grace gives the power; but it is the result of a fruit-bearing course. In a word, it is equally true that I have eternal life, and that I am going on to eternal life. God sees it as one existence, but we have to separate it in time. Walk that road, and you will have what is at the end of it. This does not interfere with the other truth, that God will keep His own, and that none shall pluck them out of His hand. Our Father says as it were, That is my child, and I watch him all the way, and take care to keep him in it.

Hebrews 4.

The word of God is connected with the apostleship; chap. 3: 1. In the last verses the priesthood of Christ is the subject. These are the two means of our being carried through the wilderness - the word of God, and priesthood of Christ. Israel were treated as a people brought out of Egypt, but liable to fall by the way. So the warning to these Hebrews (chap. 4: 1), "as to seeming to come short;" the word is softened. In chapter 3 we have seen them addressed as a body brought out under the name of Christ, but admitting the possibility of hypocrites among them.

350 There are two distinct things connected with the people - redemption, and being carried on when brought out into the wilderness.

The Epistles to the Hebrews and to the Philippians both address saints as in the wilderness. In Philippians it is more personal experience that is spoken of, for example, "I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer." In both it is as passing through the wilderness, and not yet in the rest.

Verse 1. We have "His rest." Not merely rest, but God's rest: and this makes all the difference. It is not merely as tired ones, and glad to rest: we are going into the rest of God. There is an allusion to creation when God saw all that He had made very good. He delighted in it, and rested. Spiritual labour now is not rest, nor the worry and plague of sin. God will rest in His love; Zeph. 3: 17. How could He rest here? Not till He sees all those He loves perfectly happy. How can He rest where sin is? Holiness cannot rest where sin is. Love cannot rest where sorrow is. He rested from His works in the first creation, because it was all very good; but when sin came in, His rest was broken. He must work again. God finds rest where everything is according to His own heart. He is completely satisfied in the exercise of His love.

When conflict and labour are over, we shall get into the rest in which He is. That is the promise. "A promise being left us of entering into his rest" - God's own rest. If affections have not their object, they are not at rest. They will have this then, and we shall be like Him. There will be also comparative rest, even for this poor creation, by-and-by.

These Hebrews who are addressed, are compared to the Jews who came out of Egypt, some of whom fell; but he says, "We are persuaded better things of you," ye "are not of them that draw back into perdition." What had they got? Their Messiah on earth? No. He was gone, and they were left strangers as to what was here below, and not having reached heaven either. That is what every Christian is: the state of his heart is another thing.

351 Verse 2. "Gospel preached." We have glad tidings preached to us as well as they. The apostle is speaking of the character of those who go in (heaven, God's rest, the promise for us, as Canaan was for Israel). Unbelievers do not go into rest - believers do. That is the door they go in by.

As to God's creation, there is not rest for them in it - it is not come for them. "If they shall enter," etc. This means they shall not, but God did not make the rest for no one to enter. He begins again; v. 7. David came five or six hundred years after Moses, and in Psalm 95 he says, "To-day after so long a time," etc. If they did not get into the rest by Joshua, there "remaineth a rest to the people of God." That is not come at all yet. It is to be under the new covenant, when Christ comes, the Messiah according to their own scriptures.

"He that is entered into his rest hath also ceased from his own works," not only from sin. When God ceased, it was not from sin, but from labour. Godly works are not rest. God rests in Christ. I have ceased from my works, as regards my conscience, because I have ceased from works for justification. I have not ceased from godly works - that rest is not come yet. Labouring to enter in here does not mean as to justification. "There remaineth a rest." We have the former, but there is more we wait for.

The two means of carrying us through, spoken of before, are the word applied by the Spirit, and the Priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We never get union with Christ spoken of here; there is no discerning, judging, etc., connected with that; but as Christians in the wilderness there is, and the intercession of Christ is needed; as distinct, separate Christians going through the world, beset with snares on every hand, we are addressed.

It is remarkable how the word of God is made to be the revelation of God Himself. "The word of God is quick and powerful, manifest in his sight." Whose sight? The word of God, the revelation of Christ. He is called the word of God - "God manifest in the flesh." He was the divine life - the perfection of all divine motives in a man in this world. The word of God brings the application of God's nature. All that He is, is applied to us in going through this world. That begins by our being begotten by the word - born again, of incorruptible seed - the divine nature imparted, which cannot sin because born of God. Then all the motives and intentions of the heart have to be displayed by this word. The written word is the expression of God's mind down here. Divine perfectness, as expressed in the life of Christ in the written word, is applied to us. What selfishness was there in Christ? I do not now refer to His going about doing good, but as to the feelings and motives of His heart. How much has self been our motive? Not like Christ. It is not gross sins that are spoken of here, but "thoughts and intents of the heart." How much self through the day!

352 In John 17 our Lord says, "I sanctify myself." Christ set apart as the perfection of man - Christ, a model man, if I may so speak - all that God approves in a man was seen in Christ. The same should be seen in us. "Sanctify them through thy truth." The word applied to us in all this path, in motives, thoughts, and feelings, is for this purpose. Christ was not only doing good; He walked in love, and He says to us, "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and given himself," "forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you." What comes down from God goes up to Him. Self may enter in our doing good; but only what is of a sweet savour goes up to God - "an offering to God." What is not done exclusively in the power of divine love, in the sense of an offering, is spoiled - self has come in.

"Dividing asunder of soul and spirit." God has created natural affections, but how much self and idolatry come in! Self-will, too, and self-gratification, how awfully it comes in! That is soul, and not spirit. The word of God comes in, and knows how to divide between soul and spirit, what looks like the same thing, the very same affections, as far as man sees. What a mass of corruption! Can we have communion with God when self comes in? How powerless Christians are now - you, and I, and everyone. There is grace, blessed be God! but, in a certain sense, how low we are! "I will give myself unto prayer," said one. All blessing comes from the immediateness of a man's life with God. There are rivers of living water. How are you to get them? "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink," and "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." A man must drink for himself first, before there can be rivers, etc. In the time of the prophets they had a message, "Thus saith the Lord," and then had to inquire the meaning of the prophecy, but with us, we drink first ourselves. We are so connected with Christ, that we have it ourselves from Him before communicating it to others.

353 What would make us fall in the wilderness? The flesh. It has no communion with God; flesh in saints, as well as in others, is bad. What would make us fall is flesh - the unjudged "thoughts and intents of the heart." The word of God comes and judges all that is of nature in us, after He has brought us out of Egypt. According to the new nature, everything is judged. Everything in Christ is applied to the motives and intents of our hearts - everything is judged according to God Himself. The word is a sword - not healing, but most unrelenting in its character. It detects poor flesh, shews it up, and marks its thoughts, intents, will, or lust. All is sifted. But are there no infirmities? Yes. But whenever the will and intent is at work, the word of God comes as a lancet to cut it all away. For infirmities, weaknesses, not will, we have a high priest, who was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin.

This is beautifully expressed in a figure in the Old Testament. There was water wanted: the rock was smitten, and the water flowed. (There are resources in Christ Himself, the smitten rock, for us; but besides, for us there is the water, a well in us.) They were also tried all through the wilderness. The two-edged sword was wanted. There were murmurings. They must be turned back. God turns back with them. How did they get through? What was on Moses' part (for he was like the apostle here), set forth? How was he to get rid of their murmurings? The rock has not to be smitten again. The rods must be put in. There are leaves, buds, blossoms on Aaron's - life out of death - living priesthood. Then go and speak to the rock. Suppose God had only executed judgment! How would they have got through the wilderness? There was the living priesthood come in; grace in the shape of priesthood. That carries us through; and all the infirmities, and even failures, when they are committed, are met by Him who has passed through the heavens, etc.

There is not the least mercy on the flesh. This is judged by the word. Moses, the meekest man, failed in that. Abraham, who had been taught God's almightiness, goes down to Egypt, and fails through fear. God glorified Himself. He glorified Himself at the rock in the wilderness, but Moses did not glorify Him, and he was shut out of the land.

354 Verse 14. There are things mentioned, very important, about the priesthood. 1st, The priesthood is exercised in heaven, where we need it; it is the place where God is. When it was an earthly calling, the priesthood was on earth. Ours is a heavenly calling, and Christ, our high priest, has passed through the heavens. Another important part is, Christ in no sense has any of these infirmities while He is exercising the priesthood for us. He has passed through all the course in holiness, obedience, and sanctity. When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them. He walks the sheep's path, and they follow Him. Christ went through all these exercises of a godly man (for example, wanting bread, and being tempted to make it, but not yielding to it). Everything that a saint can want as a saint, Christ went through before in perfection. There is the example of perfectness in Him, in the sheep's path; but that was not the time of His priestly work. He has passed through the road, and now can be "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."

In Hebrews we have, as another brother has remarked, more of contrast than comparison. The veil in the tabernacle, and the priesthood of Israel all in a contrasted state to that in which we have them. Our high priest is not compassed with infirmity. Mark the consequence of that: His being in heaven, He brings all the perfectness of the thought and feeling of the place He is in to bear on us. I have these infirmities and difficulties, and He helps me up into all the perfectness of the heavenly places where He is. This is just what we want. He can shew a path, and feel what a path is of passing through this world, and bear the hearts down here clean up into heaven.

People often think of priesthood as a means of getting justified; but then God has the character of a judge in their eyes. They are afraid to go straight to God, and not knowing grace and redemption, they think of enlisting Christ on their behalf. This is all wrong. Many a soul has done it in ignorance and infirmity, and God meets it there, but it is to mistake our place as Christians. Does our getting the intercession of Christ depend upon our going to get it? It is when I have got away from God - when not going to Him - I have an advocate with the Father. Again, Christ prayed for Peter before He committed the sin. It is the living grace of Christ in all our need - His thought for us, or we should never be brought back. It was when Peter had committed the sin that He looked on him. Even when we have committed faults His grace thus comes in. It is in heaven He is doing it: then how can we have to say to Him if we have not righteousness? The reason I can go is because my justification is settled. He has given me the title of going into heaven in virtue of what He is, "Jesus Christ the righteous," and what He has done. Our place is in the light as God is in the light - sitting in heavenly places in Christ. Our walk on earth is not always up to this. Our title is always the same, but our walk not. Then what is to be done? I am within the veil, and not in a condition to go there at all. The priesthood of Christ is there to reconcile this discrepancy between our position in heaven, and our walk down here. Jesus Christ is the righteous one: and the righteousness I have in Him is the title I have to the place. The priestly work restores me to the communion of the place where I am in righteousness. It is immediately connected with the perfectness of His own walk down here and the place where He now is.

355 Satan came to Him, when here, and found nothing. He ought to find nothing in us, but he does. I do not want to spare the flesh; then there is the word of God for that. But in all the feelings down here, as He said, "reproach hath broken my heart." In Gethsemane He was in an agony and prayed the more earnestly. He had the heart of a man; and all that the heart of man can go through, He went through but in communion with His Father, no failure possible. "Apart from sin," is better than "yet without sin," because there was no sin in Him inwardly any more than outwardly. In all these feelings He is now touched for us.

Verse 16. "Come boldly to the throne of grace." This is going straight to God, not to the priest. It is to the "throne of grace." We want mercy; we are poor weak things, and need mercy; in failure we need mercy; as pilgrims we are always needing mercy. What mercy was shewn to the Israelites in the wilderness! their garments not getting old; God even caring for the clothes on their backs! Think of the mercy that would not let their feet swell! Then, when they wanted a way, Oh! says God, I will go before with the ark to find out a way. That was not the place for the ark at all. It was appointed to be in the midst of the camp, but God would meet them in their need. They want spies to go and see the land for them; fools that we are to want to know what is before us. They had to encounter the Amorites, high walls, giants. A land that devours the inhabitant, is their account of it, even with the grapes on their shoulders. Just like us on the way to heaven. They cannot stand these difficulties. We are as grass-hoppers, say they; but the real question is what God is.

356 As saints we are weaker than the world, and ought to be: but when waiting on God, what is that? When they have not confidence in God, they find fault with the land itself. What a wonderful God He is! He says, If you will not go into Canaan you must stay in the wilderness; and He turns them, and turns back with them. It is grace, but the throne of grace. God governs: it is a throne. He will not let a single thing pass. See the people at Kibroth-hataavah! In case of accusation from the enemy, as Balaam, there is not chastening, but He says, "I have not seen iniquity in Jacob." The moment it is a question between God's people and the enemy's accusation, He will not allow a word against them; but when there is an Achan in the camp, He judges. Why? Because He is there. It is a throne. If you are not victorious, there is sin.

We may come boldly to the throne, etc. Still it is a throne (not a mediator), but all grace. If I go to the throne, instead of the throne coming to me, so to speak, it is all grace: I get help. I never can go to the throne of grace without finding mercy. He may send chastening, but it is a throne of grace and all mercy - "grace to help in every time of need." If you have a will, He will break it; if a need, He will help you. Do you feel that you can always go boldly, even when you have failed? humbled, of course, and at all times humble, but humbled when you have failed.

Hebrews 5.

Perfection here means the state of a full-grown man. There is much, and, in a certain sense, more, contrast than similarity in the allusion in Hebrews to the Old Testament types. We are now in a different position; those things which went before were only a shadow, instead of their giving us a distinct perception of our position. While they were figures, they did not disclose what we have at the present time. We have boldness to enter into the holiest; with them, the veil was there to separate them from it. In this passage it is important to see the contrast. Christ is the High Priest. "Every high priest taken from among men [though He was not taken from men, I need not say] . . . can have compassion on the ignorant . . . for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity." Here is contrast, though the general image is taken up. They had infirmity, and had to offer for themselves as well as for the people. If we do not see this, we may make great blunders in drawing these analogies. Absolute analogy in them would draw us away from the truth. There are certain landmarks of truth that guard the soul, for example, the atonement. The priesthood of Christ is in heaven. It has to be exercised as a continual thing in the place where we worship. We worship in spirit in heaven, and there we want our priest. Those sacrifices were the memorial of sin; we have no more conscience of sins. The priest is there, once for all, in virtue of the sacrifice made once and for ever. While in point of fact we fail, our place is always Christ in heaven. When communion is interrupted, priesthood removes the hindrance.

357 Observe the dignity of the person called to this office: "Thou art my Son." The glory of His Person is owned in order to His priesthood. "This day have I begotten thee," v. 5. He was as really a man as any of us, without the sinful part of it. He was like neither Adam nor us exactly. Adam had no "knowledge of good and evil"; Christ had - God has. But now men have the knowledge of good and evil, and, with it, sin. Christ was born of a woman, but in a miraculous way. The spring was sinless, and yet He had the knowledge of good and evil.

We cannot fathom who He was. Our hearts should not go and scrutinise the Person of Christ, as though we could know it all. No human being can understand the union of God and Man in His Person - "No man knoweth the Son but the Father." All that is revealed we may know; we may learn a great deal about Him. The Father we know: "No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him." We know Him to be holy; we know Him to be love, etc. But when I attempt to fathom the union of God and man - no man can. We know Christ is God, and we know He is man - perfect man, apart from sin; and if He is not God, what is He to me? What difference between Him and another man? Christ came in flesh. Every feeling that I have (save sin) He had. The quotation here from Psalm 2, "This day have I begotten thee," does not refer to His eternal Sonship, but to His being born into the world in humiliation. He is called to be high priest. He has this calling as a man, not as being taken from men. The glory of His Person comes first. Looked at in the flesh He was begotten of God; with us, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." But He in His very nature is associated with God, and associated with man. He is the "daysman that can lay his hand upon us both," Job 9. I may fancy myself clean when away from God; but when I come before God, I know He will "plunge me in the ditch," etc. "Let not his fear terrify me." God takes away the fear through Christ. Christ was perfect holiness, and He was ready for everything. His lowliness was perfect; fear is taken away by Him; He is even as a man, the holy One - on that side He lays hold on God, and on the other He lays His hand on us; thus on both He is the daysman to lay His hand upon us both.

358 The priest in Israel had to take offerings to cleanse himself. Christ is fitted in Himself without that. Aaron alone was anointed without blood; his sons after the sacrifice.

As to office, there is in Christ perfect competency. He is the Son, and therefore fit for God. He is Man, and so fitted for me. I am not speaking of His sacrifice, but of His Person. "This day have I begotten thee"; there is His Person. Then comes the office, "called of God an high priest, after the order of Melchisedec," without beginning of days, etc., not like man with descent from one to another, "but after the power of an endless life," without genealogies. These great principles are thus laid down concerning His Person and office - the Son and a priest after the order of Melchisedec. Before He takes the office, there is another qualification necessary. Here would be a difficulty (not in the earthly priesthood, for it was connected with the earthly tabernacle, and earthly worship, but) now it is in a heavenly place, and the worship is in heaven. Then the priesthood must be in heaven. He could not have experience of infirmity there. What must He do? He goes through all first.

359 Priesthood supposes a people reconciled to God. There was the day of atonement, and daily priestly offices went on with the reconciliation for the year. The day of atonement laid the foundation for the priesthood for the year. Then on that day the high priest represented the whole people - laid his hand on the scapegoat in order to their reconciliation (this was not the continued office); which Christ did on the cross, as the victim and the representative. He gave His own blood. He suffered as well as represented the people, and then He went within the veil, in virtue of the reconciliation He has made. One of these goats was Jehovah's lot (the other was the people's), and the blood was put on the mercy-seat. There was no confession of sins in that. Christ's blood being on the mercy-seat is the ground on which mercy is proclaimed to all the world, even to the vilest sinner in the world. But suppose a person comes and says, "I find sin is working in me: how can I come to God?" I say, Christ has borne your sins; He has represented you there, confessing your sins on His own head; and God has condemned sin in the flesh, in Christ. A person is often more troubled at the present working of sin in him than at all the sins past; but I say to that person, God has condemned the sin in Christ. God's character has been glorified, majesty, righteousness, love - all vindicated on the cross. God's truth is vindicated. He said, "In the day thou eatest thou shalt surely die," and Christ dies instead. Then when I get my conscience exercised, it is not enough to see God has been glorified in the death of Christ; I feel my own sins before God. Then I see that He has confessed my sins; and now, as Priest on high, He maintains me in the power of the reconciliation made.

Before He made the sacrifice, He had gone the path the sheep trod. It was before He began to represent His people - "who in the days of his flesh" - a past thing, before He exercised His priesthood. "When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them" in the paths of temptation, sorrow, difficulty. Therefore it is said of Him, "the author and finisher of faith," not our faith there. We go through our small portion of exercise of faith; He went through everything. Moses refused the treasures in Egypt; Christ refused the whole world. Abraham "sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country"; Christ was a stranger in the whole world. In all His path we see Him not screening Himself by His divine power, but bearing everything that a human heart could bear. There is not a trial but He felt it. If I speak of a convicted conscience, this is another thing. He did bear what caused that; but it was in our stead on the cross. In a still deeper way He took it all upon Himself. What entire dependence! "Prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death," etc. Especially in Gethsemane did He realise the full power of what He came to meet. In His walk we are to follow Him, to "walk as he walked." But in Gethsemane it is another thing - He was alone there.

360 There are three parts in Christ's life. In the beginning He was tempted, first, to satisfy His own hunger, and then with all the vanities of this world, but He would not have them, He did not come for that. The next thing was more subtle; the answer He gave, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" - thou shalt not try the Lord. Tempting is not trusting. When the people tempted the Lord, they went up to the mountain to see if God would help them. Christ would not take these things from Satan's hands. He bound the strong man, and he departs for a season; then Christ goes on spoiling his goods - healing the sick, raising the dead, etc. A power had come in grace, perfectly able to deliver this world from the power of Satan, to deliver us as to the consequences of sin - all the misery and wretchedness here.

But there was something deeper; man had hatred to God - they would not have Him. "The carnal mind is enmity against God." They entreated Him to depart out of their coasts in one place. For His love He received enmity. This world would have been a delivered place, if they would have had Him, but they would not; and man profits by the occasion of God's humbling Himself so as to be within man's reach, by seeking to get rid of Him! That brings out another point. Having taken up the people, He must take consequences. Satan says, if you do not give me my rights over them, you must suffer. Satan comes and uses all the power he has over man to deter Christ from going through. In the garden of Gethsemane, He calls it "the power of darkness," and says, "my soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death; tarry ye and watch," etc., but they could not watch with Him, they went fast asleep. As Satan has power in death, He brings it over Christ. Does Christ go back? No; but being in an agony, He prayed the more earnestly; He does not defend Himself. He might have driven away Satan, but He would not have delivered us if He had. No other cup did He ever ask to be taken away; but He could not be under the wrath of God, and not feel it. He was heard because of His fear. He went down into the depth where Satan had full power over His soul. He was in an agony, in conflict, but there was perfect obedience and dependence, "Not my will, but thine be done"; only He was crying the more earnestly to God, and then let His soul go into the depth under Satan's power. If He had not given Himself up, they would have gone away who came to take Him; they went backward and fell to the ground. Again He presents Himself to them, "I am Jesus of Nazareth. If ye seek me, let these go their way." He puts Himself forward into the gap. He goes to the cross; and there, before He gives up His soul to His Father, He has drunk that cup; then His soul re-enters the presence of His Father. Having gone through Satan's power in death ("this is your hour and the power of darkness"), He goes forward; God raises Him from the dead, and gives Him a place in glory. He is the glorified Man, as the second Man - perfect. Stephen saw Him as "the Son of man" on the right hand of God.

361 Now we might suppose that He had come to the end of His service, after humbling Himself and becoming obedient unto death as the servant. What more? See John 13. He is going to be just as much the servant as ever!

Three things we have seen connected with His priesthood, besides His Person. He has walked the same path we have to tread, only unfailingly, through it all, and even unto death. That is one thing. He understands the path. When there is sin, He dies. In His living, holiness is seen. The second thing is in making propitiation for the sins of the people - blood is presented. Thirdly, He is a perfect Man in the presence of God. I have thus the path trodden, sin atoned for, and a living Man in the presence of God - an Advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous. The foundation is not altered, righteousness remains. He has made propitiation for our sins. He has gone through all the trials of the way, and is proclaimed or saluted ("declared") of God an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. The trial is gone through, and the work is wrought out before He enters in, and He is in perfect righteousness in the presence of God. Aaron's order was not Christ's order at all. Christ's is Melchisedec's order; but the analogy is according to Aaron.

362 Verse 10. What was Melchisedec's order? Blessing. He blessed Abraham from God, and God from Abraham. When the full time of blessing is come for heaven and earth, He will have it as Melchisedec had it. It will be praise and power. We have the taste of it now; 1 Pet. 2: 9. When we are with Christ in glory, we shall shew forth His praises. While He is within the veil, not yet come out, He does not publicly take this title; outward blessing is not come. Why? Is He indifferent? slack concerning His promise? No; but if He put all this evil down by judgment, men must perish: but He is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish. While Christ is within the veil, the operation of the Spirit is going on, gathering in poor sinners. He has the title now, but not display. It is, therefore, after the analogy of Aaron. We enter with Him in spirit, there to offer up spiritual sacrifices. The display of power is not come, but we are within the veil: therefore the apostle presses them to go on unto perfection, full stature growth. What is my measure of a perfect man? In one sense, Adam was a very imperfect man, and what he had in innocence, he soon lost at any rate (imperfect, therefore, in the sense of being able to lose it); and certainly man is not perfect now in the Adam state. Where, then, is perfection? In the Man in heaven. I have it in the knowledge of my position now in Christ, not in fact there myself yet, but in Him; and we are to "bear the image of the heavenly"; in that sense perfect. The Father has set Him at His right hand. Then, suppose I have the knowledge of that, I am called to walk as such. Then why perfect? Because I have fellowship with Him, association with Him where He is.

Does any Christian say, "I am at the foot of the cross?" Christ is not at the foot of the cross. The cross puts a man in heaven. Christ is in heaven. You have not come to Him yet. You are labouring about in the thoughts of your own heart, and have not followed Him in faith to where He is, if you are at the foot of the cross. How do I see the effect of the cross now? By being in heaven. I have come in through this rent veil. (The person is not to be despised who is there; but you have not come in by the cross through the veil, if you are at the foot of the cross.) If you were inside the veil, you would know yourself worse - not one good thing in flesh. It is precious to see a soul exercised even in that way, as the prodigal son in the far country; but he had not come to his father then, he had not found out where he was. There was a mixture of self, not knowing his father, and talking about being a hired servant. It is not humility, as people think, to be away from God, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, as Peter. Is insensibility to God's goodness humility? The prodigal could not dictate and prescribe when his father was on his neck; he had no business to be in the house at all as a hired servant. It is not humility. It is a mixture of self with the knowledge of having got away from God. Where will you put yourself? You must take Christ's place or none. That is what is meant by perfect here. There is but one way of coming in; it is by Christ who is in the glory. We have no title to any other place. How is Christ there? Not in virtue of His high priesthood, but He is there in virtue of the offering for sin for us. "I have glorified thee on the earth." "Father, glorify thy Son." That is the reason the apostle speaks of the gospel of the glory. Christ is in heaven, the witness of the perfectness of the work that He has done; v. 13, 14. Milk is fit for a babe, and strong meat for a full-grown man; that is all that is meant. Do not let us look for a place the godly Jew had, but the place Christ has. Then he goes on warning them, if they are only on this Jewish ground.

363 On the cross Christ was drinking the cup; in Gethsemane He was anticipating it. Death and judgment are gone now; Christ cannot die again. The victory is complete. Sins are put away, and He is gone into heaven in consequence; and that victory is ours.

Nothing seemed to be a greater burden on the heart of Paul than to keep the saints up to their privileges. They saw Christ had died for them (and this had not the power over them it ought to have had), but they were risen with Him also; they were in Christ in heavenly places, within the veil; and how were they realising that? - "Are become such as have need of milk." There is a great deal of love in the heart when first converted. And there is another thing. When first converted, all these things are easier to understand than when more used to hearing them, and the world comes in. When there is freshness in the heart, the understanding goes with it. Great force is in that word "become" (chap. 5: 12) here. See the state they were in (Heb. 10) when they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had "a better and an enduring substance." Because they knew they had substance in heaven, they were willing to sacrifice what was here. When Christ had not that place in the heart, they were not willing to give up those things, and the understanding of the heavenly things would be dulled too. Freshness of affection and intelligence go together. When it is bright sunshine, things at a distance are easily seen. If it is dark, there is more difficulty. In the day one may walk through the streets without thinking about the way - one knows it; but at night one has to look and think which way. Just so with spiritual things; there is less spring, less apprehension, less clearness when our hearts are not happy. My judgment is clear when my affections are warm. Motives that acted before cease to be motives when my heart is right. I can count all dross and dung, when force is given to my affections. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

364 "Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age"; not to persons who have made a great progress, but persons of full age. There were things hard to be uttered, because they were dull of hearing. The freshness of affection being lost was the secret of all this. It is serious to think that freshness of affection and intelligence we may lose; but "to him that hath shall more be given." There are good and evil to be discerned; therefore I spoke of finding the way.

Hebrews 6.

Take this in connection with the beginning of the next chapter, "Therefore, leaving the word of the beginning of Christ," etc., instead of wasting your time with what has passed away, go on to the full revelation of Christ; be at home there, and understanding what the will of the Lord is. We cannot separate the knowledge of good and evil from the knowledge of Christ. When I come to separate between them of myself, how can I? How can I walk as He walked, without Him? I cannot do it. "In him." What is that? "Ye in me." Where is Christ? In heaven; then I am there too. My affections should be there too; my hope is to be thoroughly identified with Him. The portion I have is what He has - life, righteousness, glory: all my associations are with Himself. There is the difference between the word of the beginning of Christ and the full perfection - "being made perfect" (chap. 5: 9) or glorified. He went through the experience down here, and then went into heaven to be Priest, because our blessings, associations, etc., are all above, perfect up there, not down here. He had not reached that point of the counsels of God in glory when down here. Now He is there, and He has associated me with Himself in that place. I can see Christ has been through this world so as to sympathise with us in all our sorrows and difficulties. He has borne my sins; and where is He now? In heaven; and I am there too in spirit, and He will bring me there in fact. Where He is is His "being made perfect." The work is done, and now He is shewing me the effect of that - shewing me the walk belonging to the righteousness He has wrought out. He has taken my heart, and associated me with Himself; and He says that is the "perfection" for me to go on to. Where did Paul see Christ? In glory. If he had known Christ after the flesh before, he did not know Him so now (that was the beginning when on earth); but now he knew Him in heaven: and this great truth was revealed to him, that all the saints on earth were as Christ.

365 Paul had been a hater of Christ, having sought to root out His name from the earth; he had gone on in sin - if not a breaker of the law, a rejecter of Christ when on earth, and, more than that, he had resisted the Holy Ghost, refused the testimony by the Holy Ghost given in mercy to those people for whom Christ interceded on the cross. They stoned Stephen who bore witness, and Saul was helping in it. He was "chief of sinners," because wasting the church of God. He discovered the carnal mind to be enmity against God, not subject to God; he proved it in his own experience, and now he found there were saints not in that state - those quickened with Christ, and associated with Christ in glory. "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." They were not associated with the first Adam, but with the second Man, in Christ; this was their position. These people whom he had been persecuting were Christ. What broke him down was seeing Christ in glory, and all these associated with Him. Now he learns that he is dead to law, dead to flesh. The Christ I want to win is a glorified Christ. To win Christ may cost me my life. Never mind. That is my object. As to the first Adam, he was "weighed in the balance, and found wanting": I am out of it; not in the flesh, but in Christ. The old thing is entirely past; the Christian is crucified to the world, etc.; dead and risen again, having another object. He is alive from the dead, because Christ is; he is "accepted in the beloved"; he has the consciousness that this work of Christ put him into a new place (not glorified yet in the body): this was the "perfection." What was the state of his affections then? "That I may win Christ" was his desire. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." This was his object. His mind was full of it.

366 The Holy Ghost has come down to bring all these things to our remembrance. Believers are united to Christ (it is never said Christ was united to man) in glory. Then the apostle was living by the power of the Holy Ghost. What a trial for him to see these people going back to their "first principles," "repentance from dead works, faith toward God . . . eternal judgments" - all true! but if you stop there, you stop short of a glorified Christ. "Who hath bewitched you?" he says to the Galatians. He says of himself, "I know a man in Christ," and his spirit is broken to find the saints resting with things on earth about Christ. The Holy Ghost was come out to make them partakers of a heavenly calling; to associate them in heart and mind with Christ, and to shew them things to separate them from the world; not only to keep them from evil, though that is true too. They had a temple standing then, where Christ Himself had been. Why should they have left it if Christ had not judged the flesh? The middle wall had been put up; how should they dare break it down, if God had not done it? If God had not said, "I will not have to say to flesh any more," how could they dare leave the camp, and go outside? Christ glorified is the end of all the "first principles," and we have to go through the world strangers and pilgrims.

The only thing God ever owned in religion was Jewish. It had to do with the flesh. That is gone by the cross; all is crucified: your life, your home, your associations, are all in Christ. The doctrine of the beginning of Christ was not that. What do I find when Christ is on earth? He is speaking then of judgment to come, which they believe. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection of the dead; baptisms, which mean washings, etc. All these they had then, they formed a worldly religion, and were sanctioned by God until the cross. The Messiah coming on earth was the beginning; but now I leave that; I do not deny these things - they are all true - but I have other things. Saul might have been the brightest saint going under the old things, but not knowing Christ. But suppose persons got into the heavenly thing, being made partakers of the Holy Ghost, having "tasted the good word of God," and then gave it up, what could they do then? Suppose they had received it all in their minds, and then gave it up: what else was there for them? There might have been a going on from faith in a humbled Christ to a glorified Christ, but there is nothing beyond.

367 There is nothing of life signified here in their being partakers of the Holy Ghost. It brings very strongly before us the actual presence of the Holy Ghost, and power through Him; a very different thing from life; and what, notwithstanding, we are in want of knowing. We must have that besides life. Being born of the Spirit, there is power for us through the presence of a person, who may act in another without his having life. There may be light in the soul, without the smallest trace of life. In the case of Balaam, we read the Spirit of God came upon him: he had to see the blessedness of God's people, and speak of it. He had light, but there was sleep on his soul, and he has to say, "I shall see him, but not now." That was the opposite to having life. You see a man close to life, seeing all the blessing of it, but not having it. Now, if all the heavenly blessing is seen and rejected, what else could there be?

"Tasted the good word of God" - Simon Magus is an example of this.

"Powers of the world to come," or miracles, putting down Satan's power. In the future day this power will gain the victory over all Satan's power. Simon Magus wanted this power when he saw it.

"Impossible, if they shall fall away . . . seeing they have crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh," etc. The nation of Israel had crucified Him - they did not know what they were doing. Now these knew what they were doing. The Holy Ghost had poured forth the light, and now they did it for themselves. It was not ignorance, it was will. There are some who anon with joy receive the word - the very thing that proves there is nothing in it. They would have it in joy, and give it away in tribulation. The word of God does not always give joy. When it comes in and reaches the conscience, and breaks up the fallow ground, and judges the thoughts and intents of the heart, that is not joy. It racks the heart when it is to profit, but it is for life and health. Here is not merely the joy of hearing about it, but having tasted of the good word about a glorified heavenly Christ. It is not quickening that is spoken of here. Moses was quickened, but he was not baptised with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost did not come till Pentecost. He made the house shake where they were assembled, but that was not for giving life. Power is a different thing from giving life. Those already quickened were to be the habitation of God through the Spirit. There were manifestations of God through these things, tongues, etc., anticipative of setting up of the kingdom.

368 It is after salvation is given, after the soul is born of God, the Holy Ghost comes to the believer as a seal, an earnest, an unction. I might get a taste of the power without being sealed; but as a believer I have the seal, am broken down in myself, not only "with joy" receiving it. I am a sinner - no good in me. It is a direct question between my soul and God; not like Simon Magus, believing the miracles that he did. Before I was converted, I believed there was Christ as much as I do now. When Christ was on earth, there were those who saw the miracles, and went home again. But when the Spirit of God works in the heart, He shews what we are, and makes us submit to God's righteousness. It ploughs up the whole soul and being of a man - makes him submit to the righteousness of God - shews him his place in the risen Christ - shews him that all is his. That is a different thing from merely seeing it. If you have rejected these glorious things, there is nothing else for you. If you will not have Christ, there is nothing else. Here this warning is in connection with the Holy Spirit in chapter 10. It is connected with the sacrifice. Then what follows shews no change supposed in the man. "The earth which drinketh in the rain . . . receiveth blessing from God; but that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected," etc. The ground is just the same - the rain comes upon it, but it brings forth briers. So in men, there may be nothing in them to produce fruit. The result of life is seen in fruit, not power. The dumb ass might speak; but this was power, not spiritual life.

369 "But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation," v. 9. There is the work of love here; then there is life. Perhaps there is only a little bit of fruit; but the tree is not dead if there is any fruit - "things that accompany salvation," not power merely - not joy merely; that might be without a divine nature. But "though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and though I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." Judas could cast out demons as well as the rest, but Christ says to His disciples, Rejoice not because the demons are subject to you, but rather rejoice that "your names are written in heaven."

The connection of your heart with Christ, the consciousness of God having written your name in heaven, is the blessed thing. Here was fruit; love of the brethren was there - the divine nature was there, and the "full assurance of hope to the end" is the thing desired. We may look for that.

When the seed fell into stony places, it sprang up rapidly; there was no root. When the word does not reach the conscience, there is no root, no life, and therefore no fruit. You might weep over Christ, and have no life, like the women going out of Jerusalem. Flesh could go all that length without divine life. There might be working of miracles, without knowing or being known of Him. One atom of brokenness of spirit is better than filling all London with miracles.

Verse 6. The nominal church of God is just in this state. There is to be falling away, and they are to be broken off; prophesied of in Romans 11, to be cut off, if they do not continue in His goodness. The apostasy will come, and no renewing them again unto repentance.

Now a little word for ourselves - what we have got in Christ. We have heavenly things, we are associated with Christ in heaven; "because I live, ye shall live also." I have all in Christ. He is my life, my righteousness, before God. Then God rests with delight in me, because in Christ. What place have I in Christ? In heaven, and He has given me the Holy Spirit to know it and enjoy it, so that my soul rests on it as the testimony of God. God cannot lie. Abraham got a promise, and he believed in it; an oath, and he believed it. I have more than that. I believe He has performed it. I have a righteousness now in the presence of God; and we have more in hope, namely, the glory that belongs to His righteousness. I have life, righteousness, the Holy Ghost as the seal, and more, the Forerunner is gone in, and the Holy Ghost gives me the consciousness of my union with Him; not merely the fact that sin is put away. We have the Spirit in virtue of the righteousness. The Holy Ghost has come to tell me I am in that Christ. What is the practical consequence? If the glory He has is mine, I am going after Him. Then all in the world is dross and dung.

370 "They might have had opportunity to have returned": that is, where faith is exercised and put to the test. You who have known the Lord some time have had opportunity to have returned, how has it been with you? A stone left on the ground gradually sinks in. There is constantly a tendency in present things to press down the affections - not open sin, but duties, and nothing is a greater snare than duties. We have one duty, that is to serve Christ. On the side of God, it is all bright.

Hebrews 7.

.

The apostle, being now on the ground of priesthood, shews the excellency of the Melchisedec priesthood of Christ, and uses it to bring back these Hebrews from that which was after the "carnal commandment" to that which was "after the power of an endless life."

The order of the priesthood is according to Melchisedec, but after the analogy of Aaron - not yet come out from the holiest. Arguments are drawn from Scripture to shew that this priesthood is far more excellent than that of Aaron. One point of importance is its being another - "after the similitude of Melchisedec there ariseth another priest": that implied the setting aside of the other. Directly the Aaronic priesthood is gone, the whole system connected with it is gone: for that was the keystone. According to their own scriptures, there was to be another, and now that is come. And wherever Christ is concerned, the Spirit immediately bursts into all the beauty and excellency of it.

Genesis 14 and Psalm 110. These scriptures bring us greatly into the history of Melchisedec. They are all we have about him, shewing us the mystery of his person and glory. The people, when Christ was on earth, could not understand His being David's Son and David's Lord. In Psalm 110: 4, it is Jehovah, and not in verse 7. "He shall drink of the brook in the way"; in humbling Himself He shall have His head lifted up.

371 The history of Abraham is remarkably interesting in Genesis 13 and 14 - his having entirely done with the world, while Lot, in a selfish way, liked the world, and chose the world when he was a believer. Abraham does not this; he gives up the world in the power of faith. Lot was under the world: Abraham had complete power over the world because he had given it up. He would not take from a thread to a shoe-latchet. And then God says, "I am thy shield," etc. He had God. Giving up the world, he had victory over it, and has God for his shield.

It is after victory that Melchisedec comes out to meet him. In the future day this will be seen in Christ coming out to His people; it applies to ourselves in a heavenly way now. "Priest of the most high God." In that word, all the peculiar character of Melchisedec comes out. Abraham had overcome by faith. He knew God by faith. Now He is made known to him as "possessor of heaven and earth." The Gentile powers broken, God rules and does what He pleases; and Nebuchadnezzar gives Him the title of "Most High God." He takes to Himself His great power and reigns as Most High. This is not the name known to Abraham's faith; which was Shaddai. "I am the Almighty God; walk before me," etc. Abraham was called to walk before God, and He suffered no man to do him wrong in passing through the world. Jehovah, the one true God, brought His people into relationship with Himself-all the rest were false gods. We have the relationship of Father in contrast with these; but all these names are for faith to own. Most High is another thing; Possessor, etc.; "to reconcile all things to himself" (Col. 1), and "to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth," Eph. 1. He will be the possessor of heaven and earth. Melchisedec-priest, in this character of priest of the Most High, He has gained the full victory over the power of the world. The Heir of promise is the great victor; Psalm 91. He who has got the secret of who this Most High is (never the Father's name in Hebrews; it is the "throne of grace" spoken of) shall have the blessings of Abraham's God. So Hezekiah, taunted by the enemy, with "hath any of the gods of the nations delivered out of my hand?" 2 Kings 18: 33. I will have Jehovah the God of Israel, now despised, but He will overcome amidst the gods of the nations; Psa. 91: 2. No secret now in His name; v. 9. And He says, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God," Luke 4: 11, 12. Tempting God is trying whether He is as good as His word - to see whether it is true. Thou shalt not put God to the test. The knowledge of the Most High as Jehovah is Israel's God; v. 9. When Christ has taken His real power, He will be Melchisedec-priest: at least He will be Priest on His throne. The counsel of peace, as regards this earth, is between Jehovah and this Priest on His throne - "righteousness and peace have kissed each other." Aaron was never a king.

372 Melchisedec brought bread and wine after the victory. There is no thought of a sacrifice to secure blessing while living a life of faith; but he brings forth refreshment for the victor, bread and wine, eucharistic, accompanied with thanksgiving: bread, the symbol of that which strengthens; and wine, of that which refreshes the heart of man. The people on earth are fully brought into blessing. Melchisedec blessed the Most High God on the part of Abraham, and blessed Abraham on the part of God.

The earthly priesthood takes the character of joy and gladness on the victory being obtained. Melchisedec was king of Salem, and king of righteousness. This says nothing about divine righteousness; it is righteousness established. He rules according to it - righteousness looking down from heaven - righteousness in His person, and mercy shewn to those who do not deserve it. "A king shall reign in righteousness." "A man shall be as an hiding-place, and a covert from the tempest," "righteousness and peace have kissed each other"; righteousness is the character of the rule, and the effect of it is peace. We have it now in a higher way, a divine way. We have it in our souls; but it is to be on earth, in Melchisedec, king of righteousness and king of peace. In Psalm 110 Christ is sitting at God's right hand, and we connected with Him during the time He is sitting there - "until" His enemies are made His footstool. His people will be willing in the day of His power; we, through grace, are made willing now; v. 3. "Thou hast the dew of thy youth"; all the new generations of Israel when the fresh blessing comes in on the earth (a figure, of course). He will come in power, and rule over His enemies - He will judge the heathen. "He shall drink of the brook in the way," that is, willing to get the refreshment by the way, being perfectly dependent. "I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me"; and this is rewarded with exaltation. Looked at as His title, it is after the power of an endless life; but not exercised according to that yet. When "righteousness and peace have kissed each other," it will be. It was necessary that the atonement should have been made. The Jews had rejected promise just the same as law, and now they must come freely, through His grace, like any poor sinner.

373 But there is more as to dispensation; there is the question of the new covenant. We have to see what our part is in this; the new makes the other old. That old covenant was made at Sinai; it was addressed to man in the flesh, making a claim upon him. The new covenant is on the ground of the law being put into the heart, and forgiveness given. The new covenant was made with Israel and Judah. Have we nothing to do with it? I do not say that. His blood has been shed. "This is my blood of the new covenant shed for many." All that God had to do to bring the Jews in was done: their bringing in is suspended because of unbelief. Then what do we get? He was minister of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. We have the law in our hearts, and forgiveness. We have all the blessings of the new covenant - God's part all thoroughly laid. We have Christ in whose heart the law was hid; not the letter, that was made with Israel and Judah, though they are now outside. Then another thing: I am one with the Mediator of the new covenant. I am, as part of the church, a member of His body (that is not brought out here, but while He is gone in - not seen in the Aaron character), I am associated with Him. He has shed the blood on which it is all founded. He is gone to make good that part which is in heaven, and meanwhile I am connected with Him. I have the effect of the blood. He is there on the throne, a proof of its being accepted. He is the forerunner in the glory I am going into. He is a priest for ever, while I am here in infirmity. He is a priest, different from those priests who died, "after the power of an endless life." While He sits waiting till His enemies are made His footstool, He has done everything for His friends, and He has sent down the Holy Ghost to associate us with Him in heaven, and maintain us in communion till He comes out. There is no figure of the temple used here: it is all the tabernacle in the wilderness. He who is High Priest after the order of Melchisedec is gone in. There was provided some better thing for us, and we get this heavenly association with Him.

Notes from lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews

J. N. Darby.

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374 In Hebrews 7 the superiority of His priesthood is shewn; v. 3. "Continually" is surely one great thing for us, which is insisted on much. The constancy of our position comes out in chapters 9 and 10. The meaning of it is without any interruption, not only for ever. Aaron's priesthood could be broken up - pass from one man to another, but this is an untransmissible priesthood. It has the stamp of eternity on it in its very nature; so the value of His blood is for ever: continuous or perpetually is the force. What do we find in the state of souls generally now? Is their peace continuous? or are they, when conscious of failure, wanting to be sprinkled again? The Jew wanted a sacrifice for every sin; but with us there is one sacrifice uninterrupted in its efficacy - not broken in upon. The priesthood goes on continually. We fail, and there is the Advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous. It is after the power of an endless life - not like Aaron's, nor in the temple - but in the "true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man." Always there, untransmissibly, "to the uttermost," right through. "He ever liveth to make intercession."

Melchisedec was a man, no doubt, like any other - a mysterious personage appearing on the scene without an origin known. Whose son was he? All kinds of suppositions without any conclusion. Why? Because Scripture leaves us in the dark. As a Priest, Christ was without genealogy - not as a man. His mother is known. Again, He was not to be cast off at a certain age, as those priests were. He continueth ever. "Made like unto the Son of God" - only as a Priest. Royalty is connected with the priesthood. Abraham paying tithes to Melchisedec is another important point. God had given them Aaronic priesthood, promises, etc.; but there was something greater, something behind, which was above and beyond all this. Levi paid tithes in Abraham, shewing the superiority of Melchisedec to Levi; v. 9, 10. They must give it all up as applying to Aaron.

375 Verses 18-20 give the secret of the whole thing. There was the disannulling of what went before, because not perfect, and the bringing in of a better hope. "Did" is better left out. What is the result of that? We draw nigh to God; v. 19. Did the Jews do this? No. "Now we see not yet all things put under him"; but we have a better thing; "we draw nigh to God." Perfect atonement has been made - the veil is rent - the High Priest in heaven: and when He comes forth, we shall come with Him.

There is a time for the true Melchisedec when He shall come in glory. To be sitting on God's own throne is the highest thing. Now He is sitting on God's right hand in all the fulness and brightness of His glory; and while there, we get all our associations with Him - dead with Him, etc. And when He appears, we shall appear with Him. We may take it as to our union and our association with Him in priesthood: He is the High Priest, and we are priests. The Holy Ghost, being sent down, associates us with Him, while He is in heaven. We could not receive the Holy Ghost until Jesus was glorified. Then, having perfect righteousness, we are seated in Him.

Verse 25. "He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him." We do not come to Him (the Priest), but He goes to God for us, and we go to God by Him. As Lord, we came to Him; but as Priest, not. He intercedes, and brings us back when we have failed. He is watching always - thinking of us when we are not thinking of Him.

Verse 26. "For such an High Priest became us," etc. Why this? It became us! The Jews had worship on earth; we go higher than the heavens. Our priest is there, on the right hand of God. That stamps the character of our worship. "Higher than the heavens" is the place of our worship. In the fullest sense He sanctified Himself (John 17) when He went up on high. Instead of a priest joined with us in the place of sin or its consequences (which could not be - He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, but bore the sin on the cross) He is taking our hearts out of the present world to the scene where He is. The thing that fits Christ for the exercise of His priesthood is, that He can take me where sin is not. He has borne my sins. Sin was not put away under the Jewish service; but such is not the character of our relationship with God. We are dead - dead to sin; you cannot connect it with your place on earth. He is gone "higher than the heavens." We have no other connection with God than that in Christ, out of the flesh (not physically, of course, for we have the treasure in earthen vessels). Christ made "higher than the heavens" "became us." There is a great deal in the world that is undermining this. Men say we are not dead to sin, and are associating themselves, not dead, with Christ. This is all false. If not dead, I have no associations with Christ at all. The veil is rent, sin is put away - sin in the flesh is condemned - we are dead. I see more and more daily of the danger and conflict there is in connection with this, and the effort to bring our association with Christ down to flesh. He is risen. We have association with Christ in heaven. Our citizenship is there. Most blessed comfort for us it is, that all I have to go through here, Christ has gone through. He passed through all, "tempted like as we are, without sin." "He ever liveth to make intercession for us," while our hearts are associated with Him through the power of the Holy Ghost.

376 There are two great foundation principles connected with our coming unto God by Christ: 1st. The place, as giving the character of His priesthood; and 2ndly, the non-repetition of the sacrifice. "Such an high priest became us," etc. Our place of meeting with God is above the heavens, and the questions of - can I come? how can I come? - are met by His priestly work being carried on there, where we meet with God. He first came down to us in the place where we are as sinners; but in our going to God it must be in the place where He is. The place of the priest was the holy place, under the Jewish order; but with us there is no veil between us and the holiest. God is light. We walk in the light. We must therefore be able to draw near according to the light in which He is. The presence of God is purity itself, and the power of purity.

God has first visited us as enemies. He did not wait for us to go up to heaven; but when we go to Him as worshippers, being partakers of the heavenly calling, we are higher than the heavens. Our intercourse with God is in the sanctuary, in the light where He is; and a high priest is needed for this, who is "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens."

377 The Jews had priests who had infirmity; but in going into the holiest, we could not go in by these. There must be One able to maintain us in the place where divine righteousness has set us. The priest must be holy, harmless, and separate from sinners; that is, the work is carried on out of the region where sin is going on, the work of Christ on the cross having brought us there. He is separate from sinners (as to His own state, morally, He was always a Nazarite, but) He has set Himself apart as a Nazarite in connection with us. He is there where the worship goes on.

Failures are measured by the place where we are. Of Israel it was said to the priests, "ye shall bear the iniquity of the holy things." We are all priests - there is no separate caste of priests - and all our faults and failings are measured by the place we are in. The place to which we belong, and where our worship is carried on, and where our Priest is, is out of the reach of sin. When we are there in fact, we shall be able to let our thoughts and feelings free; we shall not want our consciences then. Now we must watch everything down here; but there is full liberty with God, there may be the freest, fullest letting forth of every thought and feeling with Him.

The other thing different in our High Priest from those high priests, is that He offered up Himself once, not for His own sins, but for His people's - for the church and Israel's. He has done it fully, finally, and once for all; it cannot be repeated. Once for ever constitutes the full character of the sacrifice of Christ. This gives us a very distinct place. Brought into the light as God is in the light, where sacrifice never can be made again, a Priest is there, by virtue of an unalterable condition, in the presence of God. If Christ has not borne away our sins, they never will be. His blood was shed, not sprinkled only. If once you have been sprinkled by the blood of Christ, has anything taken it off? Has the blood ever lost its value? I cannot talk of being sprinkled again, if the blood has not lost its value. I may have my feet washed with water for renewal of communion; but as to the person, it is never even washed with water again, though the feet may often need cleansing.

There were three cases of blood-sprinkling in Israel: the covenant, the leper, and the priest. The covenant was sprinkled once for all: it was never renewed, but is set aside by a better. The leper was sprinkled once, not again, and the priest. There was no replacing of the power of that blood. "If we walk in the light, as God is in the light, . . . the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." This does not change at all: it is heavenly in its character, cleansing and fitting for God in light; and it is everlasting in its efficacy. It is a new place where we are set, and set for ever.

378 Let me stop a moment to ask you, How far have you forgotten this? how far are you on Jewish ground? It is connected with "the full assurance of faith." We must be clean before we are there, as God is in the light. It is a different place altogether from that in which the question would arise as to what my state is. How do I get there? By the cross. But if I come by the cross, am I defiled or undefiled? I am brought into God's presence, and cannot be there without having been cleansed. Christ came to us in our sins, or else there would be no hope; but it is by virtue of His blood we go to God. How do you go - cleansed or uncleansed? Do we not know whether we are cleansed or not? We may be ignorant of ourselves, but we know whether we are cleansed or not. The way we get into His presence is by being cleansed. This is quite different from the standing of those whose walk was on earth - finding a sin and getting it cleansed, finding a sin and getting it cleansed. The fruits of the light are such and such things. If we are made children of light, it is not to diminish the light, but to judge everything by it. Such is the effect of our being there.

Hebrews 8.

"Set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens." Why so? Because if we have nothing more to be done, Christ has nothing more to do. (I speak not of the priestly work, but of bearing away sins.) He has set down - He is resting, having nothing more to do; chap. 10. The offering has been made, and cannot be repeated; chap. 8: 3. The whole of the priesthood is carried on in heaven itself. The offering was another thing. The offerer brought the victim, the priest received the blood and carried it in. On the day of atonement there was another thing: the priest had to go through the whole thing by himself - not carrying on the work of intercession, but that of representing the people. Christ took this place. He could say, "mine iniquities," etc.; for He bore our sins. We can never speak of bearing our sins; He, the sinless One, bore them for us. He was the victim, and at the same time, the confessor, owning all the sins. Then, as priestly work, He carries in the blood, having offered Himself without spot to God (the burnt offering in that sense). He was "made sin." He offered Himself freely up, and the sins were laid on Him; first He takes that dreadful cup, then goes and sprinkles that place. His priesthood is entirely in heaven.* The tabernacle was upon earth; there was the court of the tabernacle, and inside the court was out of the world, and not inside heaven. He was lifted up (John 12) to draw all men unto Him.

{*There was then on earth, while the Spirit was unfolding the heavenly priesthood to the Hebrews, another priesthood, no longer recognised of God, but going on. Its movement was one of transition; the object was not only to shew the actual heavenly privileges of the saints, but to invite them to go forth without the camp. Afterwards came the fall of Jerusalem, when the events themselves spoke to the same effect. Only we can see that the Hebrew believers are treated with great address in this epistle; for the sole conclusion which yet appears is that the promise of a new covenant declares the first antiquated and ready to be done away. We know, from elsewhere, that the cross had, in principle, abolished the old covenant, and that the blood of Jesus laid the basis of the new covenant.}

379 Rejected by the Jews, He was held up by God - the dead Christ, to be the attractive centre for the whole world. As coming in His service and mission on earth, He was coming among the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but when I see the crucified Christ, this is for the sinner, and then I get perfect love for the sinner and atonement for the sin - perfect grace. Then He goes by virtue of that blood through the rent veil into the holy place; and I come there in spirit into the very presence of God - not on earth. Those things were the example and shadow of heavenly things, and our place now is in the holiest of all.

No place is found for the first covenant. Be it remarked, that there is often great confusion about the covenant of grace and law. The law was given at Sinai. All the promises were given without condition - unqualified. When the people came out of Egypt, it was different. The accomplishment of the promise then depended on their obedience; and there was an end of the whole thing, because they could not keep it. Why did God bring in such a principle as this? With the promise, no question was raised of righteousness; but when law was given, there was something required of man: and the effect of this question being raised was to bring out sin directly. Why did the law come in? Because we are excessively proud creatures, we think we can do a great deal.

380 The law was not a transcript of God, but of what man ought to be; and when applied as a test to man, it brought out the evil there. Given to a sinner to tell him what he ought to be, it was too late - he had failed already: the golden calf was made before they received the words of the law. Christ, instead of requiring righteousness from man, bears the sins and works out the righteousness. It is much more than what the law requires that we have in Christ. The law never required a man to lay down his life - much less the Son of God to lay down His life. He glorified God in the place where He had been dishonoured, not only in a righteous walk upon earth, but God was glorified in Him.

Suppose God had swept away man for sin, in righteousness, where would have been the love? If He had only passed over the sins, without judging them, where would have been righteousness? There was infinite and unspeakable love to poor sinners, and infinite righteousness towards God. The whole ground of the Sinai covenant is gone - we are dead under it: it can go no farther. Law puts man under responsibility. Are you standing on your responsibility? You are lost if you are.

It is the whole question of the two trees in the garden of Eden - life and responsibility. Christ, as a man, takes that of good and evil, and dies under it. He puts Himself under the one and gives us the other, for He is life.

Thus, in chapter 8, there is an entirely new covenant, and the new makes the first old. In the letter, it is made with the house of Israel. But, besides, there is grace: not, I do not remember them, "but their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." I will never remember them any more. That is our place. A covenant made with man, as man, is certain ruin, because his righteousness is required, his keeping it is called in question. But here God says, "I will put my laws into their mind," etc. If man is under the old covenant, he is under an "if." If under the new, there is no "if." This covenant of the letter is made with Israel, not with us; but we get the benefit of it. "This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for many." This was putting away the breach of all obligation by death. Israel not accepting the blessing, God brought out the church, and the Mediator of the covenant went on high. We are associated with the Mediator. It will be made good to Israel by-and-by. Paul was the minister of it in the spirit; but he could not be as to the letter. They will need no minister of it, because every one will know it, when God writes it on their hearts; the thing is done - God will be their minister (reverently), when writing it on their hearts. We have it not in the letter, but in the spirit of it, and so have all the value of it, because the way we get it is that the Mediator of it becomes our life - we are forgiven our sins - we are associated with the Mediator. He is our life, and we have all the blessings of the new covenant within the veil. We have all the blessings, for the very reason that it is not executed with the people for whom it was made.

381 Now the question arises, How far are we standing on this ground? has your faith got hold of this fact that Christ has settled every question against us, and gone in because our sins are borne away? The true light now shines: this could not be said while there was a veil and an earthly priesthood.

Can you stand in God's presence without a veil, and knowing that the more the light shines upon you, the more evident that you are without a spot upon you?

Hebrews 9.

In the preceding chapter, the apostle has touched on a very important point, which, as regarded the Hebrews (and, indeed, any of us) was a most absorbing one: I allude to the two covenants. The first covenant made at Sinai had a very distinct character, namely, requiring man's righteousness, and therefore it gendered "to bondage."

What distinguished the law as a covenant was, that, instead of promise, it was blessing held out on the ground of obedience. The distinctive character of the ten commandments was, that they required obedience. This must be or must not be; there is no question of a new nature. Now, we are told, "without holiness no man shall see the Lord." It is not a question of how he gets holiness: the holy nature will desire to obey, but it is a different thing from the righteousness of obedience. God's nature is holy. I do not speak of God's obedience - it is His nature, and we must have the new nature to be holy. The law shewed God holy, but the condition of the law was, "If ye shall obey my voice." The promises of God are connected under the law with the obedience of man. That covenant is now altogether put away. We are called to obedience, and we are sanctified unto obedience, but this is different from being under conditions. The new covenant has made the former old. God brings in a new one, not according to the covenant He made with them when He brought them out of Egypt.

382 In chapter 9 it may be said that the apostle is pressing what the conditions of the new covenant are. If the old had been perfect, God would not have brought in a new one. God will not let man have blessing on that ground, and why? The reason is that He has tried man and found him unable to bring forth anything good. If it is to be on the ground of my righteousness, I cannot have the blessing at all. Man must be convinced there is no good in himself. Man could never place himself on that ground but as maintaining the pride of the human heart that pretends to be able to gain it. The principle of requiring something from man is entirely set aside, and those who know God's principle, know that it is only in the pride of the natural heart that man could take blessing in that way.

Unless grace, and simply grace, lays new ground, there is no hope whatever. God has brought in a new thing. He had marked out in the provision of bulls and goats, etc., another way of getting blessing. There must be coming to God by cleansing from sin, instead of on the ground of being clean. It was impossible for any such things to take away sins. There was no relieving the conscience by these ceremonial observances, which were but shadows, and not the very image of the things to come. Besides the day of atonement, there were continual sacrifices needed to keep them clean; but there was no coming to God (saving in the sense in which He says, "I bare you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself"). Christ died, the Just for the unjust, to "bring us to God." In the tabernacle service there was no coming near by the people or even by the priests. Nadab and Abihu took strange fire and offered that not taken from the burnt offering. Then God said, Ye shall not come at all times, etc.; but there was the great day of atonement, and the high priest even could only go in on that day with the clouds of incense.

383 There was no revelation of God whatever at that time: there was revelation from God, but not of God. He said, "I dwell in the thick darkness." Moses could go into God's presence without a veil. When he came out, he put a veil on his face; but when he went in, he took the veil off. Moses, as mediator - type of Christ - represented the nation before God, but then the figure dropped; and we find Aaron could only go in once a year. His work was done behind the veil. God could give revelations of Himself to them, but never were their consciences in the presence of God. There was an unrent veil between God and the people and the priests also.

This is very important to notice, because of the principle brought out in the contrast of our portion and the Jews'. We are in the presence of God, and we are always there (that is the Christian ground): they never were. Daily cleansing is needed with us, too; but still, we are always in the presence of God. This is very little realised by the people of God now. "If we walk in the light as he is in the light," etc. The work is done once for all, and we are brought nigh by virtue of that work; and if we are not there through that work, we never can get there. I am speaking of God looking for atonement, and our standing in the presence of God, not the children with the Father. Our feelings may be varying from day to day, but our standing before God never changes in Christ. And if we reject this one sacrifice for sin, there is no other.

Verse 3, etc. Within the second veil none could enter. God's reason for it is, "The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest." The object of the veil was to shew that the people could not come to God. He could give them laws, punish them if they broke them, enable them to look to Him; but they could not come near. If it is a question of being in His presence, I must come where He is. In His presence sin is not measured by transgression, but by what God is - "in the light as he is in the light." "Ye were darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." God's people are now brought into His presence in the light, and always there; it is where God has placed them by faith - not a question of their feeling. As long as the first tabernacle was yet standing, this was not made manifest at all: God was hiding Himself. Directly the veil was gone, He must have let in the Gentiles as well as the Jews; but the very nature of the sacrifices shut out the thought of one eternal redemption. The repetition of them shewed that sin was there, or they would not have been repeated. The one sacrifice for sins having been made shews the sins to be entirely borne away. The nature of those sacrifices was never to reveal God, and never to have the conscience perfect.

384 There is another practical thing to be noticed here. He does not merely say sin is put away, but the conscience is perfect; no more conscience of sins (not sinning); that is the same as a perfect conscience. We all have a conscience of sinning; but if I have a conscience of sin, I cannot come to God, but am like Adam hiding from Him. What we have here is not only sin put away in the presence of God, but put away from the conscience too. Many own the former, but think they need repeated forgiveness, repeated cleansing with blood. How could sin be put away? It could not be but by the suffering of Christ. Must Christ, then, suffer again?

There was piety in the Old Testament, and piety is a blessed thing, but there was never a purged conscience. We never find in the most pious persons under the law the sense of being in the presence of God. The high priest must go once a year within the veil with clouds of incense; but now the holiest is made manifest, the veil being rent from top to bottom, and the conscience as perfect as the light in which we stand.

Verse 7. Under the old covenant, it was only "the errors of the people" that were forgiven. Now God takes up the spring of a man altogether. The old covenant dealt with man on the ground of obedience; now God is bringing the sinner himself into a new condition before Him. The old covenant was a partial remedy with the declaration that they could not come into God's presence. While this kept up a testimony for God, now a new thing is brought out, not to patch up the old thing - that was the old even in its remedial character; but now it is the bringing in a new thing entirely - giving a new nature in Christ. The Jewish system provided no remedy for great sins ("keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins"); it was a provision for the old man without seeing God, instead of bringing man perfect, in a new nature, into the presence of God.

385 Verse 10. Certain things were imposed on them until the time of reformation. Christ came "an High Priest of good things to come." What does that refer to? Some may find a difficulty as to whether "to come" refers to what was future for the Jews, while that tabernacle was standing, or to what is now future. I believe both. All was new in Christ. It was to come on a new foundation. The basis is laid for the entire and perfect reconciliation of man with God.

Romans 3. God declares His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, etc. Righteousness was never revealed under the law - God bore with things, but there was no declaration of righteousness. Now it is "to declare his righteousness." Righteousness was revealed when the atonement was made. Directly it is other ground than promise given to those walking by faith, as Abraham, there is no coming into the presence of God. The old covenant goes on the old ground; the new covenant goes on new ground. The work of Christ and the blood of Christ are not provision for the sins of the old man, but for the perfecting of the conscience of the new man to set him in the presence of God. We could not be in the presence of God with one spot upon us; we are brought into heaven itself. He is gone in once into the holy place (v. 12), not gone in to come out again and go in; but by virtue of His own blood He is gone in once. God looking upon the blood cannot see sin. It is not a question of my value of that blood, but the conscience rests on the value God finds in it. "When I see the blood I will pass over." My heart wants to value it more, but the question is, how could I be in the presence of God with a spot upon me? God looks on that blood, and if He looks on the blood, He cannot look on the sin; if He did, it would not value the blood. Where is the blood? It has been presented to God, not to man, and God has accepted it. Impossible that God can impute sin to a believer; it would be slighting the blood of Christ.

Another thing is, it is for ever and ever done. What is faith? It is thinking as God thinks. If I say Christ is gone in once with His own blood, does He ever cease to be there? Then I cannot cease to be perfect; Christ has either done the work for ever or not at all. Another word gives it such power too, "having obtained eternal redemption," and it is "once for all." How long is it to last? For ever. There is not only cleansing, but redemption. He has taken me up out of where I was, into the presence of God - appropriated me in the presence of God for ever. Has He taken me up in an unclean state? While the veil was there, I could not be taken into God's presence; but now it is a question of the work of Christ bringing me there. Has He brought me there in an unfit state? Impossible! He has "obtained eternal redemption for us," "who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God." We get here, first, His own perfect will in it. He offered Himself; not only says, "Lo I come" but, here filled with the Spirit, He offers Himself up. Christ having become a man, He was obedient in all things; but another thing was, He came to offer sacrifice. As a victim, He was man, spotless man, and the giving Himself up as a sacrifice was His own act; through the eternal Spirit He did it. It is not here the point of sins being laid upon Him, but the giving Himself up for the whole question of good and evil to be settled on Him in God's presence. He gave Himself up for God to do what He would with Him, to make Him a curse if He would; and He was made a curse; yet it was His own will to come into that place.

386 It was redemption man needed (v. 12), not only a little cleansing. Redemption was being taken out of the condition in which we were. God's glory needed to be vindicated where God had been dishonoured. Here was man in rebellion, and in ruin as well as rebellion, under Satan, and He (Christ) must suffer, for God to be glorified - He offered Himself up. Here it was by the power of the Eternal Spirit. There was divine energy in the Man, not mere feeling, etc., and it was "without spot," when He was tried even unto death. He became a burnt offering, and this was a sweet savour to God. Every movement of His will was pure, purity in all His thoughts, and acts, and there was the unhesitating giving up of Himself to be made even that hateful thing, sin. He would be made sin, made a curse, even unto death; He offered Himself up without reserve. "He was made sin for us"; but He gave Himself up for it: therefore it was a sweet savour. None of the sin offerings were a sweet savour to God: the word used for consuming them is not the same as in the burnt offering. For the sin offering, it was merely a word used signifying burning; in the other it means a sweet savour. It not being imposed upon Him, but His offering Himself up, made it this. All through His life He knew no sin, but on the cross the sin was laid upon Him, and He went through death for it. It led to death - its wages. Therefore we read of the blood, "How much more shall the blood of Christ," etc. Two things there are, the person offering Himself, and the proof of His death for sin; blood being the proof of death. I here is a cleansing, a purging, daily; but this is with water, and not for forgiveness before God: the Father forgiving is another thing. "Without shedding of blood is no remission." How clearly this shews that if it is not done by this, it never can be; the blood never can be shed again. "Purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." Here, again, we come back to the conscience. "How much more shall the blood of Christ," etc. So we hear of "eternal inheritance" (v. 14, 15); there is perpetuity spoken of again, too.

387 In verse 13 two things have been alluded to, and not indiscriminately: the great day of atonement, when bulls and goats were offered; and the red heifer, which was for daily cleansing for communion. This was one thing; the other was done once a year, for then it was repeated year by year continually. The blood of the victim was taken into the holy place, and the body burnt outside. This was significant of Judaism done with. Israel was the camp. They had a fleshly religion - flesh in connection with God; and it could never answer. It was appointed to prove man. Here the blood was carried in, as the scape-goat took away the sins confessed over it into the wilderness. Thus the sins were gone. Now our position is having a place inside the veil by the blood, and sin gone. That is our place shewn thus in the type. The "heifer" was for sprinkling the unclean - not with blood, but with water and something connected with it, namely, the ashes of the heifer. A heifer was to be taken that had never borne the yoke; and a clean man was to slay the heifer, and sprinkle the blood seven times, always in the presence of God. Its value always is in the presence of God. But a defiled person, even through touching death, could not go there. The ashes were to be taken with the running water, shewing the sin all consumed in the sacrifice offered long ago. The things we have failed about are the very things Christ died for; and the Spirit brings to the conscience the sense of that defilement for which Christ died, and which He put away. This makes me feel the sin much more, while it makes me see it has all been put away. It is not so much the question of guilt, but of the terrible nature of sin that occupies me. It is the re-sprinkling with water, not blood; because the re-sprinkling with the blood would call in question its permanent value. The Spirit brings to my conscience and heart the value of Christ's death, and so communion is restored, which is hindered by a sinful thought, etc.

388 Two instances we have of sprinkling with blood once for all - in the priest and the leper; the whole walk and thoughts consecrated to God according to the value of Christ's blood. But that never loses its value. If I do not walk according to the value of it, the Spirit of God brings to my remembrance that my sin brought Christ to ashes. This gives a much deeper sense of the sin. We find out that we have allowed ourselves to be carried away by that which brought God's wrath out, and for which Christ agonised.

"To serve the living God." Under the old covenant, obedience was required from man in his Adam-nature; a veil was before God, and man outside - and he must stay outside. The sacrifices made a temporary provision for intercourse with God, but there was no coming to God. Christ, as High Priest of good things to come, brings the new man into the presence of God for ever. The veil is rent, and there is a risen Person with cleansing power in the presence of God. Such is the perfectness of the place in which we are set, and every inconsistency is judged according to it.

Verses 16, 17. The word "testament" is rightly used in these two verses. It facilitates the understanding of the passage to see this. Excepting these two verses, read always "covenant."

Thus we find a common event brought in as an illustration of Christ's death. He left us all the blessing in dying - it came into complete force directly. We are freed once for all through His death. There is no alteration of it. The blessings of the new covenant became available or valid after His death.

The first must become old if there is to be a new one: the bringing in of the new one involves dying. In this Epistle we get very little of the humiliation part of Christ's work. In the first chapter it is introduced in connection with His divine Person, who, "when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." The purging of our sins is spoken of by the way, and then we hear of His glory on high. The blessedness of Christ's sacrifice, Christ exalted, and having honour put upon Him, are more the subjects in Hebrews. There are three aspects in which the value of Christ's blood is here seen. First, it was the seal of the covenant, connected with its dedication to God. That was also done in connection with the covenant with Abraham; Gen. 15. A person, binding himself to death in the most solemn way, passes through the pieces of the sacrifice. It was the seal of the covenant. Second, it is purifying. Third, the blood is for remission.

389 First, the enjoining or sanction to it given by the blood. Another thing closely connected with that was consecration by blood. Blood was sprinkled on the leper for cleansing, and on the priest for consecration. The covenant sealed, and the people bound to it by blood, and the leper and the priest, are the three cases in which persons are sprinkled. There must be blood, the power of death brought in, or there was entire separation from God. The wonderful efficacy of the blood of Christ is that it brought in death; those separated from God are brought back by His death. "You who were far off are brought nigh by the blood of Christ." The blood was the figure of the life taken. When blood was taken, the whole being of man was given up, and the agony of Christ's soul on the cross was the separation from God. "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" The consequences of it are most important to us. Man with all his perverse will, all his sin, where is it all, if he is dead? It is all gone, if he is dead. "He that is dead, is freed from sin." There is an absolute cessation of the whole will and being in which he was, as a sinner. Christ has taken that place for me. Cain and Abel, as far as appearance went, were equally likely to get the blessing, but in the one was no faith. He did not own that death had come in between man and God. As long as man is seeking good from himself, he does not see himself dead. Are you seeking a dead man or a living man? You are seeking fruit from a living man, and not owning you are dead, if you are seeking fruit from yourself. I cannot search to see whether dead or not, if dead. Abel came by slain beasts to God. He had faith. We do not know how he learnt it, but death came in, and man was clothed in skins of animals. That is, in figure, what makes our peace. "He that is dead is freed from sin." There was nothing done for man while Christ was alive, as to the putting away of sin. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." All that was proved by it was, that man in his natural state could not be reconciled to God.

390 The first covenant was not made without the sprinkling of blood, but it threw back the man behind death. If you do not obey, all is lost; Jer. 34: 16-20. If they did not obey, they must die; because they promised obedience and sealed the promise by being sprinkled with the blood. In the case of Abraham, God made a promise to him, and sealed it by passing between the pieces, by death. The question was raised by the law of righteousness among living men. There were various figures which intimated the necessity of death coming in, but obedience was the rule, and consequently all was failure. Yet the principle was brought out all through - there must be blood. Now, under grace we see the whole putting away of sin. If we had died, judgment must have come on us. Christ coming into it, and bearing the judgment for us, we are free from the whole thing.

When God gave the covenant, He gave it this sanction - the sprinkling of blood. Aaron himself alone, was not sprinkled with blood, typical of Christ, who needed not to be consecrated with blood Himself, but brought blood in for others.

Then you get the sprinkling of vessels - not for forgiveness, but for cleansing. "Almost all things under the law are purged with blood" (not all things are purified with blood), because there is a purifying with water not connected with blood-shedding. Out of His side came blood and water, representing the effectual grace of expiation and purifying. You could not have man morally purified without death; you must have death. Out of a dead Christ the water flows. Water signifies cleansing by the Spirit with the word. But there must be death - not the cleansing of the living old man; the old man is put to death - I do not own him alive, but there is something belonging to you (your members on the earth) to be mortified and kept in death. The ground is laid for purifying by the blood of the heifer, which was sprinkled seven times before the door of the tabernacle; but water is the figure used for cleansing, namely, "washing of water by the word." "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." Reckon yourselves to be dead and to have the power of life in Christ. I have neither life nor righteousness outside of Christ. I have nothing without Him. If I look for water to purify, or anything, it must be by death I get it; then there must be faith. If I look at myself as a living man in the world, I find my will working; then I am not really dead. If I set myself to inquire, I am not walking in faith. I am told to reckon myself dead - that is faith. You cannot mortify your members till you can say, I am dead. If the old man is not dead, it is sin. There was no putting away of sin but by death itself - taking life. "Without shedding of blood is no remission" - not sprinkling here: you must have the applying the punishment to the One who takes the sin. In the remission of sins is involved the whole of God's character, majesty, glory. If God does not deal with sin as sin, there is no righteousness - it is indifference. There must be suffering for the sin; then as to death, I am clear of it.

391 Remission is not connected with sprinkling. This is important in a twofold way. First, there was actual suffering under the consequences of sin; and, second, this could be but once. It was done once for all, and if the forgiveness of my sins is not perfect thereby, it never can be accomplished. It will never be done again. We learn more and more the value of the blood; but the work of Christ on the cross has a perfect value, into which the angels desire to look. The thing by which I have remission never can be done again. When I speak of water, it has its importance only so far as it washes (there is washing and sprinkling spoken of); but not so with the blood; this had to be presented to God, the offended Judge. The efficacy of the blood is outside ourselves. As regards the man, he is cleansed once for all, but still that is connected with the man. That is not all; the blood has an efficacy in itself, as being the judgment for sin, and tells the tale to God that the judgment is passed over, the sin gone. God says, "When I see the blood, I will pass over." That makes the entire full distinction from personal application in cleansing. There is a special value in it for man, because a man when cleansed does not like to get dirty, while one not cleansed does not mind it. True, that as to the water when once regenerated by the word, it is done for ever - once for all; but there is besides the constant cleansing of the feet needed. There is no presenting of blood afresh to God - no fresh "shedding of blood." There is increase of spiritual search needed by us to know more of the value of the blood, but there is no fresh searching needed by God for Him to know its value.

392 Verse 21, etc. Three things were done on the day of atonement. Blood was put on the mercy-seat, representing Christ gone into heaven, the ground on which we can preach to all the world. That was connected with Jehovah's lot. His death glorified God, whether one or a thousand are saved.

All was in utter confusion by sin. What kind of world is this? Where is righteousness? Where is love? What folly there is in infidelity! How can men solve the riddle of all the misery we see around without God? Where is the goodness of God to be seen? How can it be attempted to be explained without Christ? Indifference to sin is not love. Men try to persuade themselves God will be indifferent to sin. When I see God's judgment for sin on Christ, I get at the centre of God's heart - righteousness is satisfied, and, what is more, God can rest in His love. And if you come as a sinner to God, and rest in Christ, it is a matter of the glory of God to see you there because of the blood

"The heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices." Satan and his angels are there and cleansing is needed. This purging is not remission. God must have His house cleansed as well as His people made righteous. Compare Colossians 1.

On the people's lot, the scapegoat, the particular sins of the people were confessed. This was substitution, v. 26. And there is perpetual value in the sacrifice. He once suffered. This suffering was not the mere fact of death. The agony of His soul when He cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," was far deeper than the suffering of the separation of soul and body. Death was looked at as the wages of sin; God's wrath was poured out on Him against the sin. (Death to Christ was not merely going out of the body into paradise.) This never can be done again. He has gone in once into the holy place. If He went in often, He must have suffered often. "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down." This does not mean for ever and ever, but unremittingly He is sitting at the right hand of God. I never can stand in the presence of God, but through the sacrifice of Christ, and that is never remitted. He has put sin away; why should He suffer again? He has put it away according to the glory of God. "Once in the end of the world hath he appeared." This may appear strange, seeing that so much of the world's history has gone on since Christ's coming: but it does not mean chronologically, but the closing in of the ages.

393 Up to that time God had been trying men as living men in the world. That is ended - man is not alive now (I speak of man morally, as judged by God); therefore it is said to the Colossians, "Why as though alive in the world?" Man has been tried as to life, and now the fig-tree is cut down. Did it bear fruit? No! and it was cut down. The fig-tree represented the Jewish nation, in whom God made trial of men under the best circumstances. "What have I not done to my vineyard?" Christ came looking for fruit from the fig-tree, and finding none, He said, Cut it down; let no fruit grow on thee for ever. The "time for figs was not yet"; the fruit-bearing time not come. God, as it were, said, "they will reverence my Son." No! then there is no fruit from man for ever. Man, looked at as in flesh, is under the sentence of death. "When we were yet without strength . . . Christ died for the ungodly." Man is not only ungodly, but without power to get out of that state. Christ must close the history of the old man, by bearing the sin, and must bring in a new thing. Then God makes a feast and invites to the Supper; when they not only refuse the Son, but they refuse the Supper.

Man has been fully tried; and now, if there is to be blessing, it must not be on the ground of responsibility, but wholly of grace, by the second Adam, Rom. 5. If I believe this, I find out the truth about the old man by little and little. At first we only see gross sins perhaps. "But what is to be done when I find I can do nothing," you say. Own you are undone. "In me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing."

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." Death is like the policeman to bring us up to the judgment. Then (v. 28) we have the counterpart of this in grace. "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many," "and to them that look for him," all believers, "will he appear . . . without sin." What does that mean? As to His own Person, He was without sin the first time; but now the same One comes back - what for? To deal about the sins? No! That He has done the first time: and now, apart from that entirely, He comes to receive them to Himself. For those who trust in His first coming, and look for His second, there is nothing but blessing. There is a work done in us to make us sharers in that which has been done outside us; but this is the question of the work done for us, outside of ourselves altogether. What had I to do with the cross of Christ? The hatred that killed Him, and the sins that He bore, are all that sinners had to do in it. Therefore there can never come a shade upon the love of God in the cross of Christ. It is perfect.

394 Hebrews 10.

The practical conclusion is drawn in this chapter of what is brought out in chapter 9 - the unity of the sacrifice; one offering by which the foundation is laid for the new covenant.

Instead of finding a man turned out of paradise on earth because of sin, it is now the second Man gone into the paradise of God in divine righteousness - gone in by virtue of a new title. which man never had before. The consequence is, when He comes again in glory, He has nothing to do with sin. He came once for sin; but when He comes the second time, it will be without any question of sin, to complete the salvation wrought out already. When He returns, it is to bring man into the full blessedness He is in Himself. "To them that look for him, shall he appear," etc.; not only for the church, but it is open for the remnant when He appears to the earth.*

{*The words do not express the fulness of the church's hope, which is, the being with Him. This alludes more to the appearing; but it expresses the hope of both, as pilgrims down here.}

The effect on the conscience of His offering for sin is shewn in chapter 10. It is not only a statement of facts there. My sin might be put away and I not know it; but Christianity shews us how the conscience is purged, not only the sins put away. If the conscience is purged, there is nothing between me and God. I have the full deliverance from all consequences of sin, and a title to glory, by virtue of the new thing. But what is my present state? My conscience perfectly purged. That the law could not tell us. It could never make the comers thereunto perfect. That was reserved as a witness for the gospel when the work was done. When a man is in the presence of God, the full effect on the conscience is known. There must be a repetition of sacrifice while the sin was outstanding. There was always a question of sin between God and His people under the law.

395 Israel in the last day will get salvation by virtue of the sacrifice; they will be blessed by Him from heaven; their thoughts will rest on Christ coming on earth to them. He will bring them blessing where they are, but not take them to heaven. That is not our case at all. We are with Him while He is in heaven. The Holy Ghost has come out in consequence of His being gone in. There was no blood taken within the veil, and the sacrifice not taken without the camp, until after the sin of Nadab and Abihu. After that Aaron was not to go at all times into the holiest, but once a year, to sprinkle the blood on the mercy-seat. The veil was not rent then; but sin being brought out, the blood must be taken in. The witness of acceptance for Israel is when He comes out. They cannot have it while He is within. We are associated with Him in heaven by the Holy Ghost coming out and making us know the value of His sacrifice. He will come and receive us unto Himself, that where He is we may be. We are to be associated with Him there.

Up to His death it could not be: God would have put aside the law if the fulness of blessing had been brought in; and the law was given to His own people, not to the Gentiles. The result of Christ's work is, that my constant state in the presence of God is the conscience purged. There is not a revelation, a prophet needed for that. The worshippers, once purged, have "no more conscience of sins." How many Christians there are who do not know they have no more conscience of sins! If you do not, you do not know the virtue of Christ's sacrifice. Are you going to be in heaven with sin upon you? You cannot be there in sins. The old state was that of men living on earth - falling, getting cleansed, and falling again. That is your condition, unless you are in heaven by virtue of that one sacrifice, without sin. The believer is introduced there in Christ - into these heavenly places, cleansed from sin (I am not speaking of what he is as a man on earth, but in Christ). Are you there? That is the question. Are you in the holiest as to your conscience, heart, and spirit, with "no more conscience of sins"; "in the light as he is in the light"; with no remembrance of sin before God? There is remembrance of sins under the law; but here "no more conscience of sins." Christ has not only entered within the veil, because there is no veil now, but I am in heaven by the veil being rent. What is the rending of the veil? The death of Christ. I must get there by His death because of my sins. I go in through that which takes them away. I am there without them. Remark how God takes up all this as His matter. The whole is done, without us, by God. The thing is done by Him, and the revelation of what is done is by Him too. It is God's work, and it is according to the truth

396 There were three things needed. If I was full of sin, some one was needed to think about me; some one was needed to do the thing required; and then one to tell me the effect. "By the which will we are sanctified." The work of the Spirit in applying the work of Christ, is not spoken of here. But there is, 1st, The will of God - "By which will," etc. 2nd, The work whereby it is done - "By the offering of the blood of Jesus Christ, once for all." Before I was born, it was once for all done. Did I do it? No! "By the obedience of one, many were made righteous." It was by the offering of the body of Christ once for all. 3rd, There is the knowledge of it given to me. Without this my conscience is not purged. I must be justified by faith: this is my knowing it, not God's knowing it. Here he says, "The Holy Ghost is a witness to us." This is the ground of the conscience being purged; it is not the quickening here: we have pardon after we are quickened. Peter speaks of being "sanctified unto obedience," etc.; we are renewed to obedience. It is His (God's) work to quicken my conscience, but, besides that, there is the testimony by the Holy Ghost. The thing is settled, and it is not a light thing. We adore Him for it. He says, "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." But you say, I sin to-day, to-morrow, etc. God says, "I remember" no more. If there is sin, what can put it away? There is no more offering for sin. If it is not put away, how can it ever be done? If He does remember them, there is no hope for me, because Christ will not die again, and "without shedding of blood is no remission." It is very important for the conscience to get into the presence of God, and know our whole condition as to sin there. Looked at as a Christian, there is no sin, for this one reason, that Christ has been in the condition in which I was. By virtue of His being in it and dying, the condition has ceased to exist, and He is gone a Man into heaven by virtue of the condition having ceased. God has said to Him, "Sit on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool." For the sacrifices provided for men in the flesh, there is substituted this one sacrifice of Christ.

397 Verse 5. "A body hast thou prepared me." Christ came once for all into the place of obedience to put aside all the other appointments. He took ears as a servant. Whatever man did in offering sacrifices, he could not get out of the condition in which he was. Another comes in. He takes away the first that He may establish the second. They brought of their voluntary will under the first; that was man. But in the second all is of God's will, and it is obedience to that. As soon as Christ has the body prepared, it is not His will at all. It was in the counsels of God long before. "In the volume of the book it is written of me," etc. There was the freewilling of Christ in heaven to give Himself. He undertakes the whole thing. Then when in it, He goes through all in obedience. "As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence." There is perfect love to His Father, and perfect obedience at the same time. There is God's will in all its perfectness - Christ offering Himself to be the obedient One; and I have not only the fact in purpose but all the value of a divine Being giving Himself up. "Lo, I come to do thy will." He is in the place of obedience.

"Above, when he said, Sacrifice and offering, and burnt-offerings, and offering for sin, thou wouldest not. . . . Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." Here I find the will of man altogether set aside. The will of man is wickedness, the principle of sin. A will independent of God is the very principle of sin. At the first, the will of man was disobedience to God. Christ had a free will, because He was God; but when in the servant's place, He had no will. The horrid pride of man forgets that his independence of God, his will not being moved by the will of God, is rebellion against Him, and that is our natural state. All but obedience to the will of another is sin. We forget we are creatures. Christ came to do God's will, never His own. This would-be independence of man (for, after all, men are the slaves of Satan) is entirely set aside by another Man coming in. He has to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. Every will of His was crossed. There was not a single thing to which He could turn in which obedience was not suffering. He suffered from God, too, for the sins of man. He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit. When tested by Satan's shewing Him good and evil, He gave Himself up (becoming specially the burnt-offering from the time of the conflict in Gethsemane). The first order of things is gone entirely. If I could have righteousness by the law, I would not have it, Paul says, because I have a better - the righteousness of God. If there could have been any righteousness by the law, there was an end to it now. A new thing is brought in.

398 Verse 11. "Every priest standeth daily," etc. They were always standing, because sin was always there to be put away. What they did to put it away never accomplished anything. They were dealing with offerings for men in the flesh, and they never did anything. But He has sat down. There was a righteousness fit to sit down on the throne of God, and there is where we are. It is on the throne Christ sits for ever. He is not rising up, like the other priests. The sacrifice was completed and He sits for ever. It does not mean eternally but continuously. The other sacrifices could not have this effect; but now His being there is the proof there is no interruption. The punctuation in some Bibles, makes no sense of it. It cannot be one sacrifice for sins for ever. He is sitting, never having to get up again, because the value of the sacrifice is uninterrupted in the presence of God, and the Holy Ghost comes out to shew me the result of it. The person who had the sins must be shut out of heaven; then Christ is shut out, if they are not gone, for He took them. But the Holy Ghost is the witness that He is there. If you are reasoning about it, saying, My sins are forgiven to-day, but to-morrow what I may do may be remembered against me, you are away from God. In the presence of God this is my whole condition, without my sins. In the presence of God, I am either a condemned sinner, or I have a purged conscience. Away from God we may reason. In His presence there may be awful distress for a moment, but faith brings into the condition of a purged conscience.

Verse 13. "From henceforth expecting." This is the patience of Christ. The conscience has nothing to do with the waiting. Righteousness has nothing to wait for; conscience has nothing to wait for. All is done. He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Not merely are those sanctified, sanctified by God, but He has perfected them; they are perfectly set apart, perfected by God by the very thing He has set them apart by. Then such can say, I am perfect for God, and my heart is happy with Him, because I am perfect before Him. It is so settled with Him that we are thoroughly perfected, that He can sit there quietly. Heb. 10: 12.

399 Now the Holy Ghost declares it all to me shewing me the practical consequences: "where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." The blood is presented to God, and it abides in unalterable efficacy. This makes nothing, not only of the gross superstitions connected with professing Christianity, but of all forms and ordinances by which men think to attain anything before God. If we are not abidingly as in the presence of God with a purged conscience, we have not got hold of the truth of God about it. When we realise this is our place, we have a different estimate of sin; evil is detected, and we know it can have no place, and the good is more understood in the presence of God; sin is judged in a much deeper way, than when there is merely terror and uncertainty.

Verse 19. "Boldness to enter into the holiest." This going through the veil is altogether ours. We know it is rent by the perfect love of God, and we go into the presence of God through the veil. The way is made manifest. We go where Christ is gone; the holiness that rent the veil has put away the sin. Verse 21: "having an high priest," etc. We do not go creeping in all alone; the High Priest who has done the work is there before us. I cannot go within the veil without finding Him there. The apostle is following Jewish figures, becoming a Jew to Jews. There were other priests besides the great High Priest. Instead of, like the Jewish priests, offering incense outside, we go within. There was the washing of the priests, as for us. The anointing is not in question here, but the sprinkling of blood and the washing of water. So, in substance, it will be for Israel by-and-by.

Verse 22. "Let us draw near," etc. The next thing, verse 23, is, "let us hold fast the profession of our faith," etc. The exhortation is to be in communion within, and not to be attracted by the world without, ordinances, etc., to which they were in danger of going back. Then (v. 24) I am to think of others, walk in the power of the fruits of the Spirit; and (v. 25) not only to have love to individuals, but to remember the assembly. Christ would praise in the midst of the congregation. A person may say, I am very happy in staying at home; but this will not do. To go to the assembly often brings persecution.

400 The "day" spoken of here is not the catching up of the church, but the appearing. The more the day approaches, the greater the difficulty of assembling ourselves; but the exhortation is to be found assembling as plain evident Christians. It is not said to hear a sermon, but assembling ourselves. The way of God's working is not only to make Christians, but to gather together in one the children of God scattered abroad. This is not to be fulfilled in the millennium. There will be different nations then, though they will come up to worship; and in the Old Testament times there was one particular nation, but no gathering together in one - it applies now. Church authority is not what is meant. It is not faith, but assembling ourselves together-is faith. Not of man's will, but Christ's, who, through His death, has a church or assembly that is not of the world, and that is manifested by our assembling together.

Verse 26. If you say, "I give up this assembling to Christ" - there is none other sacrifice for sin but that He has made. If you trample under foot the blood of that sacrifice, knowing what it is (I do not say being regenerated), but giving it up wilfully, your portion is the same as adversaries. A person who sees truth and gives it up, is always more bitter than any - he is an adversary. If they chose sin instead of Christ, there was no more sacrifice. It is a case of openly abandoning the Lord for your own will in sin; not failure nor disobedience, but apostasy.

We see throughout this epistle the importance of the place in which we are set, and the responsibility of walk according to it. Christ is ever in the presence of God for us. Consequently, our title is to enter there boldly; our place never changes, though sin, of course, hinders fellowship till it is confessed.

Hebrews 11.

We have already seen in this epistle that the Hebrews, instead of walking by faith, were in danger of turning back to the things they could see - things suited to them as men in the flesh, such as ordinances and objects of outward importance, of which the Jewish system was full. But Christians were called out of these; God was leading away from them. The constant tendency of all our hearts is to go back. It is a shame for Gentiles to take up with those shadows; in a measure it was natural for the Jews, because they had had the beggarly elements appointed for them to observe. Now there was something better. They were waiting for Christ to come again, and it is said to them, "He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry." In this epistle we do not have the place of the church, the body of Christ, brought out at all; in that connection the Lord comes and takes her to Himself. "I go to prepare a place for you," etc. Here, as pilgrims, there is responsibility before us, and we look for His appearing. In church character the hope is to be with Him. Here it is the heavenly calling and priesthood between us and God.

401 The apostle goes on in our chapter to shew the power of faith. It is not a definition, but a description of its effects. It is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Perfect certainty of realisation is the effect of faith. The definition of faith is that it "sets to its seal that God is true." It remains that, what we hope for, we with patience wait for. The promise is just as certain as if we had the fulfilment of it. We do not see it. If we saw it we should not hope for it, but we realise things not seen. This is the power of faith in the soul.

In this chapter we have faith in its active character - the working of faith when it is there. The thing that produces faith is the Spirit of God bringing home the word with power; and when the soul sees anything of Christ, it cannot rest satisfied without more. "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth," is the reception of truth in the soul. Then there follows the practical effect in the walk of the believer. There is a great deal of method in this chapter, more than appears at first sight; for it is not man's method, but God's. The divine mind is always at work according to the measure of divine love. Directly you get the clue to the divine mind, you get beauty and order. Thus, in Exodus, we have the account of the things for the tabernacle, and then the priests, and then again the utensils. The human mind sees nothing but disorder in all this; but when the object of the shadow is known, the most perfect order comes out.

Faith here is spoken of in connection with creation. That nothing could come out of nothing is man's wisdom! The philosopher could never of himself have found out how "the worlds were framed," etc. Creation is absolutely unknown by reason. "By faith we understand," but man's way of accounting for it led to pantheism, atheism, etc. Now men have got some knowledge of it from the Bible; but without Scripture it never could be known simply or certainly.

402 In the next exemplar of faith we see the ground on which man could be in relationship with God: in Abel, the faith that brought a sacrifice; in Enoch, that which led to walking with God, and the power of life in his translation. In verse 7, it is faith connected with God in government, and the consequent judgment of the world; in the next example we have that kind of faith that reckons on promise. It takes the promise of God, is satisfied with it, gives up everything, and gets nothing. All that flesh clings to is to be given up. These Jews had to do that. If I have nothing to do with earth I am a heavenly man. If I have nothing on earth, I am not an earthly man. God is not ashamed to be called the God of one whose heart and portion are in heaven; but He would be of one whose heart is on earth. This is the faith that gives character, heavenly character, v. 8-22.

Then you have the faith that counts on God, the active energy of life - not merely character, but energy; not so much the giving up as the active energy of the new principle in the soul. This is from verses 23-31. But the getting into the land is passed over, the rest promised is in heaven. They have possession of the land. It is different from passing the Red Sea and the wilderness.

From verse 32 come out all the various difficulties and traits of faith in which individuals had to stand against the professing people of God. This is a more difficult thing than any. If you want to live a life of faith, you must often live without Christians. People have to go alone with God and no one else, and if not, they must bring in unbelief to hinder them. Communion of saints is a happy thing, but there are times when you must act alone. Jonathan acted in faith, but Saul's folly spoiled the whole thing. We need the faith that reckons on God, let the people do what they like. This is not so brilliant an action of faith, but it is very valuable. A person who goes to preach in a heathen place knows what he has to do. His difficulty is not nearly so great as that of a Christian with the world, which professes to be Christian. If not very near to Christ, a man cannot discern what is the world and what is of Christ.

403 Verses 37, 38. They had to take what portion they could get here, and they died without receiving the promises, "God having provided some better thing for us," etc. The beginning of chapter 12 is founded on this. The chastening there is connected with the trials of faith; the chastening is against the flesh; v. 2. Our attention is taken off all the other examples of faith in chapter 11, and the eye is to be fixed on Him who has gone through all. "Looking unto Jesus." "Looking away" is the force of the expression. "He is set down on the right hand," etc. Of the Abrahams, Isaacs, Josephs, Moses, etc., we read, they "received not the promises," but of Christ it is not said, He has not, for He has. He "is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." He has the reward; and another thing, He has gone all the way, bearing mockery, scourging, etc. He has trodden every bit of the path of faith. The others had each their trial in a particular way, but the encouragement for faith now is that He has sat down, having run it all. David has not his reward yet. All these are not made perfect yet, but Christ is. Christianity was not brought in then. They were not brought into resurrection glory. There were others to be brought into a better thing. Jesus was the beginner and finisher of faith, and He has the reward.

It is well that we should see what the character of the reward is. Reward is never the motive for conduct; there would be no room for love in that; but it acts as an encouragement, when we are in the path which love has brought into, and encompassed with difficulties and trials.

These Hebrews were going back to the expectation of a Messiah they could see. They are reminded that none of those in whom they boasted did see what they waited for. "These all died in faith, not having received," etc. You want a visible Messiah; but none of these you glory in got what they waited for. With a Jew this was an unanswerable argument. The elders got nothing but by faith. So with us. What have we but what we have by faith?

Without going into the details of chapter 11, we have, first, the creation; then, respecting sacrifice, "Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." One thing to remark here is, how faith meets all cases since sin came in. It has nothing to do with innocence. Innocence does not need faith. When there was enjoyment all around, there was no need of faith. It was when sin came in that faith is known - a most blessed ordering of God; for it brings to us all that is required - righteousness, life, shelter in the judgment of the world. It can wander in a strange country, and bring in a living energy to overcome. It brings in God for enjoyment - communion - want of communion giving the sense of sin, and bringing back. It is the positive bringing in of God when sin had turned out of His presence. It takes out of flesh to God. It brings God in; or, rather, God brings Himself in His word and Spirit. There is no condition in which you cannot have it. The first thing we want it for is for righteousness.

404 Abel was a sinner; faith brings into a better place than innocency. I can enjoy nothing rightly according to flesh; but the moment I get hold of God, I am out of those things, and am connected with Him. When they were in the land, the occasion for faith dropped through, except where special need brought it out.

When sin had shut us out from God, righteousness is possessed by faith. "He obtained witness that he was righteous." Cain, before his heart was laid bare, was a very decent man; he was labouring in the sweat of his brow, and then went to worship God. What would you have better? It was this very thing that shewed he had not a single right thought about God. He thought he could worship God as comfortably as ever. Cain really carried to God the proof of the curse - just what the natural man does. What we find in Abel was entirely different: he brings in death; he takes a firstling of the flock, a slain beast, by which he acknowledges he is under the effect of sin, not merely outwardly. He brings blood to God - a sacrifice - a slain sacrifice - the only way. He acknowledges by it, he is a sinner, and lost unless the death of another comes in. He comes to God with a sacrifice, and this declares, I am lost without. This passage is so clear as to righteousness - "he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts." This is not only that righteousness is in Christ; He is my righteousness - I am "made the righteousness of God in him." Abel obtained a witness that he was righteous, not that God was righteous. Not merely that God had given the sacrifice, but there are the actings of God in the man. God provided the sacrifice, but faith acts in bringing it to God. "God testifying of his gifts." It is full of blessing. I have the witness that I am righteous. This is not experience.

405 I do not want a testimony for what I experience. I want a testimony that delivers me from the things I am occupied about in myself, when I am suffering from them. I get it from God's gift that is perfect. I am "accepted in the beloved." You say, There is something about myself I cannot get over. Remember, the testimony of the Holy Ghost in us is the contrary of the testimony of the Holy Ghost to us. In me He takes notice of every fault that is not righteousness; but the testimony to us is, "their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." If a person brings a note to me, he does not ask what I am. In bringing Christ to God, I bring perfection. This is a peculiar figure of Christ, the sacrifice of Abel. Christ made Himself our neighbour: Israel slew Him. They have the mark on them, having cast off Christ. But He is the sacrifice through which they will be restored. Faith says, I go to God by the sacrifice.

In Enoch, life has come in, as well as righteousness. Christ is "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Enoch, before his translation, had this testimony that he pleased God. In the Old Testament it is said he walked with God. If we are reconciled to God, we can walk with Him. Then the life is manifested in walk, and the power of that life is that he does not die at all. Christ said, "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." So those who are alive when He comes will not die. We may not die. We shall not all sleep. The "wages of sin" for faith are entirely done away. Enoch is not found, for God took him - he is not touched by death at all. That which is the power of death is done away. Another thing accompanying this is, that "before his translation, he had this testimony that he pleased God. Here I get life before death. That we have as a present thing, and if the Lord comes, we shall not die. His long-suffering is the reason of His not coming. Walking with God, we have the testimony that we please God. It is peace, comfort - joy of the favour in which we stand. The Spirit of God, instead of reproving us, brings the light of God's favour streaming in upon our souls. Glory we now see, through a glass darkly; but it is a real truth that the Holy Ghost is in us, and if we are walking with God, He makes us happy in His favour. Not merely I have done right in this or that; I do not think of myself at all, but of God.

406 If I care only for what natural conscience says, I do not get God's mind at all. That does not touch what God is at all, but what man is; it is saying that man may exalt himself - has responsibility to himself; but believing God is a great deal more, for it acknowledges responsibility to God. "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder," etc. It is coming to Another that is spoken of. Do I come to a person I am with? In coming, I think of what He is - what God thinks of a thing. We have to do with Him in a living way by faith. He is one who takes notice of everything. If you apply this practically at any moment, what a difference it will make! We are called to judge everything in the light. What do I mind about difficulties, if I know I am pleasing God? Such an one does not despise any; because, thinking about God, he goes from strength to strength. Intercourse with God shews him more of God's mind - he sees what God is doing. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." If he fail, there will be distress, thus walking with Him, because he has lost the thing he delights in. If accustomed to walk carelessly, he does not notice it. "Without faith it is impossible to please God." If there is diligence in seeking Him, there is the reward.

Verse 7. If Enoch's case is that of exceptional translation, like the church, Noah, like the Jewish remnant of the last days, is found in the place on which judgment was coming, and warned of things not seen as yet (besides being a preacher of righteousness, as we hear elsewhere), is moved with fear, and prepares an ark. His is the prophetic spirit; the world is condemned, and himself becomes heir of the righteousness which is by faith. He accepted God's testimony with the provided means of escape, and thus inherited that righteousness on which the new world is founded. Thus we have had faith in creation, faith in sacrifice, walking with God and testimony.

From verse 8 to 16 we have, not the great principles of human relationship with God from first to last, as in the preceding verses, but the faith which goes and keeps out as a pilgrim, with all the strength given for fulfilling the promises. And as these realised strangership on earth through faith, lived and died in faith, not in the possession of what was promised, so God regarded them with special favour, is not ashamed to be called their God, and will exceed their hopes of heavenly things. Further, we come (v. 17-22) to the faith that sacrifices the thing which apparently accomplishes the promise, to receive it from God alone, or confides, spite of all that tends to destroy confidence.

407 The preceding is rather faith's patience, as what follows is its energy. Thus faith in the history of Moses (v. 23-27) abides firm in the face of the utmost difficulties. Moreover, not providence, but faith, should regulate the believer. Again, we may observe in the next verses (28-31), that faith uses the means God appoints; which nature either refuses, or can only meddle with to its own ruin. But if the Egyptians were swallowed up - the type of those who, of themselves, think to pass through death and judgment, the harlot Rahab identifies herself by faith with the spies and the people of God, before a blow was struck on this side Jordan, and thus escaped the destruction which fell on self-confident Jericho.

Then follow statements of the actings and sufferings of faith all through the history of Israel after the conquest of Canaan, not detailed as before, but general; but all, like the patriarchs, without receiving the fulfilment of the promise. This was one grand lesson for the Hebrew Christians.

Besides, they were to bear in mind (v. 40) that God has provided some better thing for us. They are to be perfected, as well as we, in resurrection glory; but there are special privileges for the saints who are now being called - "for us."

Hebrews 12.

Two things are the effect of being in the presence of God - alarm of conscience, and encouragement. The presence of God keeps the conscience thoroughly alive, but it is strengthened to look above the evil while seeing the character of it.

God brings us into His presence to judge all that is contrary to Him and to strengthen us against it, and that is encouraging. He delights in us, and He delights in conforming us to Himself; thus grace comes in so blessedly, making us partake of His nature. It is of what He is He would have us partakers, not merely partakers of holiness, but of His holiness. He does not say, You must be holy, that is, it does not come out in that form: but He communicates the holiness - His own nature. See the contrast of grace and law. Does not God require holiness in His presence? That is true, but it is law. Grace means, that He delights to give it.

408 Separation from evil and power of good is the character stamped on all God's dealings down here - chastenings, etc. We have the secret of His ways and dealings, if we are near enough to Him to see. The Hebrews were declining in spirituality; therefore they had not the key to understand His ways. The hairs of our head are all numbered. When once the heart has hold of that, it must apprehend that it is of God's grace that He is so occupied with us. It is a wonderful check on will to know that He is so occupied. As in Job it is said "He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man."

We have seen the apostle had named all the worthies in chapter 11; but then he says "looking unto Jesus." Christ had run the whole course through, the others only a little bit of it. He despised the shame and has sat down; He has reached the end, having gone through the whole course of trouble and difficulty.

Verses 3, 4. Addressing them, he says, You are set here in God's behalf in the place where sin is, to get the better of it. We are all set here in a witness of divine good in the midst of evil in this world, and that with a power greater than the power of this world. Greater is He that is for us that he that is against us. We are called to be the epistle of Christ - to glorify God in all circumstances; not to be apostles.

We fail here and we fail there; but we are set according to His will here or there in this world to manifest Christ in it, and not merely to do the work.

In saying this, one immense truth is supposed, namely, that we have this life. Another is, that all questions between us and God are settled; then, whether we eat and drink, or whatsoever we do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. To use His name I must be authorised by Him.

All questions connected with us as sons of Adam are entirely done with. "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though alive?" etc.; Col. 2. You are not alive in the world at all; "reckon yourselves dead." That is the reason we are freed from the law. We are dead; and the law cannot have authority over our dead man. This position in which we are set as bearing witness, and all God's dealings with us, go on this ground - we are born of God. This is more than receiving life in nature. We do not read of being born of God as creatures, but as a Christian I am born of God. The effect of the communication of this life is having done with all the old life; we have a life "hid with Christ in God." All is settled; not only we have the nature, but perfect peace. "My peace I leave with you" - Christ's peace. No cloud of any sorrow was on Him. He has cleansed us to be without spot, and His righteousness is ours.

409 We having this nature, born of God, which has to be manifested (and alas! we find in nature many hindrances - temper, etc.), God sets about to do it for us, when we fail to resist "striving against sin," by chastenings, etc. We are set in the place of children and we must look to what God's thoughts are about us. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." I get the discipline, or chastenings, that God sends to those He loves. There is my will to be broken, perhaps, and tendencies to be found out in myself that I did not know of before, to humble me. I become exercised about good and evil. He hates the evil and loves the good, and is breaking us down, subduing the evil, wearing it out, etc. He is bringing us nearer to Himself. God is educating us as children. Sometimes when we do not see what He is doing, we get the blessing. Will works in us; He comes in to smash the will; and we see afterwards that we have got the blessing through it.

A babe does foolish things which perhaps we may be amused at, but it has not been taught better. A Christian is like a babe, to be trained and instructed. God's patience in taking such pains with us should cheer us. It is strange to talk of affliction cheering us; but if our wills are broken, that is a good thing.

There are various ways in which as saints we get tried (though we live in great quietness: there might be more persecution if there was more faithfulness); but through all circumstances God is threading our way, occupying Himself with us, our particular characters, etc., to break us down and instruct us. What we want is to realise that God loves us so much - we are of such value to God (more surely than many sparrows) as that He should take much pains to make us "partakers of his holiness." We are apt not to believe the activity of His love. Some trouble comes on us; God has been watching us individually for years, weeks, etc., watching us to bring this trouble which He sees needed.

410 It is of the greatest importance that there should be the consciousness of God's constant dealing with us in love. We are of that family, belonging to Him, God's family, and not of the world; therefore He deals with us as sons. "No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterwards," etc. This is all to encourage Encouragement is given, founded on the bond of grace between us and God. Then He gives us this blessed privilege of being the witness for God in this world. Everything that makes the condition of the heart better is good, and all is grounded on grace. Therefore it is said, "looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God" - "lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you," etc. Why does He press this? No profane or impure person! Oh, because we are come to God. Grace puts us in His presence, makes us partakers of His holiness; then He says, "looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace," etc., that is, should lose this entire confidence in God's love. This is the present practical enjoyment of what God is for you. If you lose that, you fail. There is nothing that links up the heart with God but grace. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace."

Walk in the sanctuary of His presence. You are not come to the terrible mountain Sinai; but having come to the perfect grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ, take care how you walk. Grace must be the character of our walk; v. 22. This is true blessedness. There is no hindrance of evil by terror. The effect of the fire from Sinai was that they "entreated the word should not be spoken to them any more." Was that getting on with God? We are not to terrify people by our lives. We may warn them if needful and use the law to hammer at people's hard consciences - all is well in its place; but we cannot be a witness in our walk of this. We are come to a different thing. We may speak of the law, but that is not where we are.

Now we must be living witnesses of what we are, and where we are. We are come unto Mount Zion, which represents grace. This is the result, speaking of the place we are brought to. It is to God. He speaks of what will be on this earth, and that is as it were looking down. Zion came at the end of the whole course of responsibility. As to the law, the result was, "Ichabod," for the ark was in the enemies' hand. The only link with God was broken. Then God came in and chose David, of the tribe of Judah - not Joseph (which was significant of a full tide of blessing in nature). The Jebusites conquered and gone, David founded the temple on Mount Zion. See 2 Samuel 5: 7, and 6: 16, 17. This was a new link with God in grace when responsibility was ended.

411 But this is not nearly all: the whole of the heavenly, and of the earthly part is spoken of here. Now we have something more - that which was in the purpose of God, which man never had before in any way. God is glorifying Himself in a way angels never thought of. We are come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem - to heaven. Then, when there, we find ourselves in the whole company of angels - the universal company of heaven; then "the church of the first-born" - a special assembly registered in heaven. We are that - not merely creatures as the angels are, but those registered in heaven, as having this special privilege - an assembly whom God has identified with Christ, the First-born. It is remarkable how they are singled out here. In the general muster, He cannot let them pass without distinguishing the "church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven." We are come to that; it is all the grand result. These are all sitting around Him. Then there is another characteristic of the scene, "to God the Judge of all."

There is Zion on earth, the heavenly Jerusalem above, the general company of angels, and the church of the first-born; then God Himself, and in the way of government, "the judge of all"; then the "spirits of just men made perfect," saints of the Old Testament in the character grace had given them, "or just men." They had run their course and they are there. Then begins what is connected with the earthly part - looking at the effect. We are come "to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant." We are not come to the new covenant, but to Jesus the Mediator of it. I am associated with Him who is the Mediator; that is a higher thing than if merely come to the covenant. He will make this new covenant with Israel on earth. But there is added "And to the blood of sprinkling." The earth will be benefited by the shedding of the blood of Christ: it cries peace instead of vengeance, as Abel's did.

412 Having come to the Mediator, I am come to the prospect of all the blessedness for earth. It is sweet to know earth will have it, but ours is the better part. We are to be a witness of whence we are. We come from heaven. In spirit it is true now. What is true in spirit is more real and palpable than what we see. What is passing in our hearts and minds is more what we are really, than what our bodies are occupied in. Christ was a carpenter (as really as any other carpenter), but that was not what He was. So with us, we are brought into all these things with God. Then the thing is to be always a witness of the place to which He has called us in grace. We are come; then we have God dealing with us in respect of this place to which He has brought us.

Do you say, this trial or that is enough to discourage me? But no; it is God who is bringing you into it and God is with you in the place, dealing with you in grace, according to the place He has brought you into.

In the midst of the company of heaven, one company is singled out - that is, ourselves. Surely this is enough to make us humble.

Hebrews 13.

The closing exhortations - that is, of our chapter - are full of importance, and are, as might be expected from all previously seen, in view of the path in this world proper to the saints, who have Christ appearing in the presence of God for them. They do not, consequently, rise to the height of the communications in Ephesians; for the subject throughout has been the heavenly calling, rather than the mystery of Christ and the church.

Brotherly love is to continue spite of obstacles. Hospitality is not to be forgotten, if we would fare like Abraham. Prisoners and the ill-used are to be borne in mind, considering ourselves and our own circumstances. Marriage is to be honoured and purity sought in or out of that state. Our conduct is to be without avarice, contented with what we have; for God will be true to His word of unfailing care, even as to these things; so that we say boldly, "The Lord is my helper and I will not fear. What shall man do to me?"

413 The Holy Ghost then tells the saints (v. 7) to remember their leaders who had spoken God's word to them, the issue of whose conversation was worthy of all consideration and their faith to be imitated. They were gone; but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. Let them not, then, be carried away by various and strange doctrines. Grace is that which establishes the heart, not meats by which those who walked in them were not profited. It is a mistake to think that Christians have no altar: they have one, whereof those who serve the tabernacle have no authority to eat. That is, the Jews have lost their place of privilege, which now belongs in an infinitely more blessed way to such as have Jesus. As in Him, so in us, the extremes of shame here and glory above are found to meet. It was not so with Israel. They had the camp, and they could not draw within the veil. And yet even they had the most striking type of another state of things. "For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek the one to come." Christians now must bear the cross, waiting for heaven with Christ. All middle ground is gone with the old covenant. But if we wait for glory, not the less but the rather should we praise continually, offering by Jesus to God the fruit of the lips which confess His name, and not forgetting sacrifices of doing good and communication.

Further, we are called to obey our leaders and to submit ourselves; for "they watch over your souls as those that shall give account." It is not that they are to give account of the souls of others, but of their own conduct in respect of others. Obedience on the part of those watched over would be much for these guides, that they might do their work with joy, and not groaning, for this would be unprofitable for the saints.

The apostle asks their prayers, which he could with a good conscience, occupied with the work of grace, and not the weakness and failure of a careless walk. Moreover, he besought it of them, that he might be the sooner restored to them.

414 And how blessed and suited to their need and comfort is his concluding prayer! "The God of peace that brought again from among the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, in [virtue of] the blood of the everlasting covenant, perfect you in every good work to do his will, doing in you that which is pleasing before him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

The name of Paul does not appear at the close any more than at the commencement; and this for obvious reasons in a letter to saints of the circumcision. But who else would have so spoken of Timothy? The writer was in Italy, and sends the salutation of such as were there. The apostolic under-current is apparent to a spiritual mind.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL.6.]

A Brief Outline of the Books of the Bible

J. N. Darby.

<19001E> 1

Preface.

The notes, from which this little book is printed, were completed and corrected by him from whose discourses they were taken at Birmingham.

Asked for by several, they are now published, in the consciousness of worthlessness as to all that is merely of man; but in the full assurance, through faith, of the power to bless of Him who has said, "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness," 2 Cor. 12: 9.

GENESIS.

In this book we have all the great principles of God's relationship with man, without bringing in redemption which makes a people for God and a dwelling-place for God in man. You never, save in chapter 2: 3, get the word "holiness" in Genesis; and you never have God dwelling with men.

Creation is first treated of; then innocence, lordship, and marriage, the figure of union with Christ. Next we have the fall, man's sin against God, and then in Cain man's sin against his brother. There is, at the same time, a witness of certain righteous persons, Abel in sacrifice, Enoch in life, and Noah in testimony of approaching judgment. You then get the complete corruption of the whole system, and the deluge.

Having had in Enoch a figure of the church, we get in Noah deliverance through judgment, and then the new world begins, God entering into covenant with it, and government introduced to prevent violence; but the governor fails, and God's plans as to the races of men are brought out. We find God making nations, in consequence of man's attempt to remain united so as to be independent. In the midst of these nations we have, in Nimrod, imperial power, individual and despotic, connected with Babel, the place of man's wickedness. In point of fact, the division of mankind into nations comes by judgment.

Shem's family having been owned on the earth - the Lord God of Shem, national existence is recognized as the principle of the constitution of the earth, God's arrangement. He now begins an entirely new thing. He calls out from that which He has constituted an individual to be the head of a blest race, whether fleshly or spiritual. Whatever individual saints there had thus far been, there had been no counterpart of Adam as the head of a race. This Abraham was. Election, calling, and promise are connected with this; consequently you have Abraham, a stranger and pilgrim, with nothing but his tent and his altar. He fails, like everybody, but God judges the world - Pharaoh's house - for him. We then get the distinction between a heavenly-minded and an earthly-minded man; the world having power over the earthly-minded (Lot), and the heavenly one (Abraham) having power over the world. In connection with this we have in Melchizedek the future priest upon his throne, and that as linked with God's supremacy over heaven and earth. Abraham's separation from the world having been evinced, Jehovah presents Himself to Abraham as his shield and reward. We then first get the earthly inheritance and people, that is, in promise. Abraham looks for the promise in a fleshly way, and that is all rejected. We have then the promise to Abraham of being the father of many nations, God revealing Himself as God Almighty. We have also His covenant, as thus revealed, with Abraham, and the principle of separation to God by circumcision. Chapter 18 gives the promise of the heir, and the judgment of the world (Sodom), and the connection with God, about it, of the heavenly people (Abraham) by intercession; while in chapter 19 we have the connection with the judgment of the earthly people (Lot), saved as by fire through the tribulation. What follows this, chapter 20, is the absolute appropriation of the wife, whether Jerusalem or the heavenly bride, as the spouse of the Lord. The old covenant (Hagar) is cast out, and, the heir (Isaac) being come, he takes the land (chap. 21). Chapter 22 begins another series of things. The promised heir being offered up, and the promise confirmed to the seed, Sarah dies (chap. 23). This is the passing away of the old association with God on the earth; and in chapter 24 Eliezer (in figure the Holy Ghost, or His work on earth) is sent to take a wife for Isaac (Christ), who is Heir of all things, and Isaac can in nowise return to Mesopotamia. Christ, in taking the church, cannot come down to earth; whereas, the moment we get Jacob, we get the head of the twelve tribes, who goes to Mesopotamia for Rachel and Leah, typical of Israel and the Gentiles. Jacob is the elect, but not the heavenly people; he goes back to Canaan, gets the promises, with all sorts of exercises, as Israel will, but, if he does, he must give up old Israel (Rachel) to get Benjamin, the son of his right hand.

3 In the brief notice of Esau's offspring we find the world in vigour and energy before God's people are; and then commences another history, that of Joseph, affording a distinct development of Christ connected with Israel, rejected by Israel, and sold to the Gentiles. He comes thus to be the head, having the throne, and governing all Egypt. He has done with Israel, receives a Gentile wife, and calls his children by names typical of Christ's rejection and blessing outside Israel when rejected; but he receives back his brethren in the glory. This part closes with two distinct testimonies, the will of Joseph about his bones, and Jacob's prophecy that they will all be back in the land and the promises to Israel be fulfilled.

EXODUS.

In this book we find God visiting His people; redemption, and the establishment of relationships with His people, whether it be by the testing of law, or the arrangements of grace, by which He could bear with them, with the distinct purpose of dwelling in them, and, moreover, of making them dwell in a place He had prepared for them. All is connected with four immense principles - redemption, bringing to God, God's dwelling among them, and consequently holiness. Priesthood is established to maintain the relationship with God when the people cannot be in immediate relation. Connected with all this you have, besides the judgment of the world, and the final deliverance of the earthly people. With Moses, the man of grace, you have Zipporah, who represents the church, but the children are witnesses of Christ's abiding connection with Israel.

From the Red Sea to Sinai we find the whole picture of God's dealings in grace in Christ by the Spirit on to the millennium, and the millennium itself.

In chapter 19 the people put themselves under law, and get law instead of worship founded on deliverance and grace.

LEVITICUS

Gives us God in the tabernacle, as in the midst of His people, ordering all things that suit their relationship to Him. The feasts represent Him as in the midst of the people, a circle round Himself.

4 NUMBERS

Treats of the journey through the wilderness, with insight into the inheritance (for us heavenly), and a full prospect of all God's ways in bringing them in, and of Christ Himself as the One who is to reign. Reference is made in this last remark to Pisgah, and to Balaam's prophecy.

DEUTERONOMY.

A recapitulation of all God's ways and dealings with Israel, as motives to insist on obedience, and to put the people on moral grounds in direct relationship with Himself. The three great feasts (chap. 16) have this character. The testing character of the law is stated, and at the same time the purpose of God in blessing, spite of failure under the law, is revealed; closing with the prophetic blessing of Israel, in respect to their then present condition.

JOSHUA.

The establishment of the people in the land by divine leading and power, according to promise, but through conflict, in which the faithfulness of the people's walk with God is tested.

The career of Joshua begins with crossing the Jordan in the power of resurrection, and has its place of power for conflict in Gilgal - circumcision - death to the flesh.

They eat of the corn of the land before they have any conflict.

JUDGES.

While Joshua is a book of victorious power, judges is the book of failure in faithfulness, so that power is lost: only that God intervenes in mercy, from time to time, to deliver and revive. Gilgal is exchanged for Bochim. Gilgal, the denial of the flesh, though seemingly of little importance, was the place of power; Bochim was the place of tears, but the angel of God was there.

RUTH.

The intervention of the Lord in grace to bring in the promised seed, and the restoration of Israel, but in the way of grace, on a new footing. On a famine in the land, Naomi, who represents Israel, goes away, and loses everything. Ruth comes back with her, and Boaz (strength) raises up the inheritance. It was old Israel, in some sense: the child was born to Naomi, but on the principle of grace, for Ruth had no title to promise.

5 1 SAMUEL.

The judicial priesthood connection is here broken. Both judge and priest go in Eli. The ark is taken - a total breach. Power, and the link of connection, are lost. Then God comes in, in His own sovereign way, by a prophet, as He had before brought them out of Egypt. (All on the ground of man's responsibility was gone; but sending a prophet was sovereign mercy.) Before He brings in strength (the king), He brings in prophecy - a notable thing this. Before Christ returns in power, it is the testimony of the Spirit and word, by which a connection is maintained between God and His people. From Eli to David on the throne this is a general principle - faith and power, not succession.

But flesh required governmental order,* and gets what it wants; but it breaks down before the power of the enemy. Then even believers who cling to it fall with it (Jonathan). If governmental order be established without Christ, they cannot like Christ to come and set it aside. The one in whom hope is must be content to be as a partridge on the mountains.

{*It is quite true that there was a want through the misrule of Samuel's sons. If the spiritual energy failed, there was a want in consequence. The church can only stand in power, so that when it turned to succession all was lost.}

Saul was raised up to put down the Philistines; Jonathan did subdue them, but never Saul who was destroyed by them. Jonathan was a believer associated with the outward order. The place of faith was with David. It is the place of the power of faith without the king.

2 SAMUEL.

Saul falls on the mountains of Gilboa. Then we get the royalty of David, in active power, not in the reign of peace, with the promise of maintaining his house in whatever way they conducted themselves. God would chasten them if disobedient, but not take His mercy from them. Then we get David's personal failure when he is king. There is another element - the ark and the temple come in question; the relationship with God is re-established first by faith, not according to order, but by spiritual power according to grace, all being - by that spiritual power according to grace. The ark was on Mount Zion, and there they were singing, "His mercy endureth for ever": while at Gibeon was the high place, where Solomon went. There the tabernacle was, but not the ark. Solomon is not seen at Mount Zion till his return from Gibeon, where God answered him. Consequent on God's interfering in deliverance and redemption, the place of ordered worship is set up, connected with earth - the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. It was after judgment, slaying the people and sacrifice. God loves Jerusalem, and so stays His hand in judgment, and shews by prophecy the path of reconciliation by sacrifice.

6 1 AND 2 KINGS.

Here we have the reign of Solomon, the establishment of Israel in peace, and the building of the temple, the figure of the great Son of David. This fails, looked at historically, in Rehoboam; and then the book of Kings is the history, not of Judah, but of Israel, with sufficient notices of Judah to carry on the history. You get the intervention of God by prophets in Elijah and Elisha, in mercy, in the midst of Israel, who had left the temple, one being a testimony to Israel on the ground of their responsibility, the other in resurrection-power.

First and Second Kings continue the history in Judah till the captivity, and then Lo-ammi was written on the nation. There are, of course, many details - various characters of faith, etc., as Hezekiah of faith, Josiah of obedience, Jehoshaphat of piety, but never, through association with the world, for success.

1 AND 2 CHRONICLES

Gives us the history of the family of David - ending, of course, like the former, with the Babylonish captivity.

1 Chronicles is David himself. At the close, David has the pattern of everything by the Spirit, and leaves it to Solomon to execute.

2 Chronicles is David's posterity.

Chronicles are more connected with the establishment of the kingdom on earth, Kings more figurative of what is heavenly. In the temple in Chronicles there is a veil (2 Chron. 3: 14), in Kings not. The veil will not be rent for Israel in the millennium.

7 EZRA.

The re-establishment of the temple and divine service according to the law, while waiting for the Messiah. But then there is no ark, no Urim, etc. It was an empty temple.

NEHEMIAH.

The re-establishment of the civil society and state under the Gentiles.

ESTHER.

The providential care of Israel when God is hidden from them, while Lo-ammi is written on them. He takes care of them while He is hidden from them and does not own them. God's name is never mentioned. The Gentile queen fails to shew her beauty, and the Jewish bride supersedes her.

JOB.

The possibility of the relationship of a man with God, in the great conflict referring to good and evil between God and the power of darkness; and that connected with the discipline of saints, in contrast with the alleged present righteous government of the world by God; the necessity of a Mediator being intimated, not unfolded; the power of Satan over the world made known, and his character as accuser of the brethren pointed out. God is seen as the originator of all (not of the accusations themselves, I need hardly say, but of the whole process) for the purpose of blessing His people; the whole being without any dispensational reference, while the conscience is thoroughly searched in those He blesses. You get in Elihu the wisdom of God in His word (Christ really), and then you have the power of God (also Christ) in God answering out of the whirlwind. The book may be regarded as typical of Israel, inasmuch as it is in Israel that these ways of God are shewn.

PSALMS.

The Spirit of Christ working and developing itself in the remnant of Israel in the latter day; only therewith shewing the personal part He has taken, whether to lay the ground for them, or to exercise sympathy with them; continuing on up to the border of the millennium, but not entering into it except prophetically. They are divided into five books.

8 PROVERBS.

The wisdom of God shewing its path to man, in contrast with the corruption and violence in man. The first eight chapters give us the principle, shewing Christ as wisdom; the remainder enter into details. It is to man in a remarkable way. A man of the world escapes by knowing the crookedness of the world: this book enables a man to escape without knowing it - wise in that which is good, simple concerning evil.

ECCLESIASTES

Is the result of the research after happiness under the sun adding, that man's wisdom, as man, is God's law.

CANTICLES.

The relationship of the affections of the heart of the spouse with Christ. This, on the ground of the special form of the relationship, is to be realized properly in Israel, though capable of an application, abstractedly, to the church and to the individual. (What Canticles treats of is not relationship, but desires, faith, getting the joy of the relationship with occasional glimpses, but not established known relationship. The place of the church, though the marriage is not come, is that of being in the relationship. Israel will not have this.)

There is a kind of progress observable. (1) "My beloved is mine" - this is the lowest point. (2) "I am my beloved's" - the consciousness of belonging to Him. (3) "I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me."

_______

We have had thus, subsequent to the history, the moral development of the heart of man, and of the Spirit of God working in various ways in his heart: specially in Ecclesiastes, the heart of man making itself a centre, and trying to feed itself; in Canticles, the heart getting out of itself into the heart of Christ.

9 THE PROPHETS.

In these (except Jonah, and, in a certain sense, Daniel) we find the action of the Spirit of God in the midst of His people, to maintain the authority and character of their original calling, testify against their departure from it, and reveal Messiah as establishing them in blessing on a new footing - sustaining thus the faith of the godly during the departure of the mass, and denouncing judgment on those who persevere in unfaithfulness.

ISAIAH.

Here you have the whole framework of God's dealings with Judah, Israel coming in, by the bye, with the judgment of surrounding nations, and especially of Babylon, looking at Israel as the centre, bringing out the Assyrian as the great latter-day enemy, Immanuel as the hope of Israel, and the securer of the land, although rejected when coming as a testimony, being Himself Jehovah - a sanctuary - but a stone of stumbling to the disobedient. We get, in addition, the details of the inroads of the Assyrian, and his judgment in the last days; and, included in the development of all this, we have the blessedness of Israel as re-established. This is the first part - chapters 1-35.

In the historical chapters (36-39) we get two great principles - resurrection, and deliverance from the Assyrians. It is a risen Christ who effects deliverance, which makes it so important. The captivity in Babylon is here intimated. This latter lays The ground for what follows.

In the last part you have God's controversy with Israel, first on the footing of idolatry, and, secondly, because of the rejection of Christ. In this Israel is first looked at as a servant; and in chapter 49 the place of servant is transferred to Christ, and, He being rejected, the remnant in the last days take the place of servant. All through this, though Israel be the object of favour, you get a definite contrast between the wicked and the righteous, and hence the separation of the remnant, and judgment of the wicked - the declaration that there can be no peace to the wicked, whether Israel or others (end of chaps. 48, 57).

In the part that refers specially to the rejection of Christ we get the revelation of the call of the Gentiles, the judgment of the people, the coming of Jehovah, and the full blessing of the remnant of Israel at Jerusalem.

10 JEREMIAH.

We have here the present dealing of God with rebellious Judah, making them Lo-ammi by the captivity in Babylon; next, from chapter 30, the revelation of the infallible love of Jehovah to Israel (Judah and Ephraim), and the certainty of their establishment under David, according to the order of God, in Jerusalem, Jehovah being their righteousness; then, after the history of Zedekiah, and the details of what brought in the captivity, and what passed in Palestine after it, we have the judgment of all the nations and Babylon itself.

LAMENTATIONS.

In Lamentations we get the sympathy and entering in of the Spirit of Christ into the sorrows of Israel, specially of the remnant; hence the hope of restoration.

EZEKIEL

Gives the judgment of Jerusalem - God coming from without, but all Israel looked at, and not specially Judah; the judgment of the nations around, of the ungodly oppressors in and over Israel; the dealing henceforth with individual souls as regards judgment; the setting up of David, and the new birth, as the means of Israel's blessing; the union of Judah and Israel in one stick; and, on their restoration to their land, the destruction of the Assyrian, or Gog, by divine power, in fact, by the presence of Christ; and, in the end, a vision of the restoration of the temple and of the order of the land.

DANIEL

Has two parts - the history of the Gentile empires, beginning with Nebuchadnezzar, the head of gold; and, secondly, special visions of Daniel (beginning with chap. 7), marking out the condition and circumstances of the saints in connection with the history of these empires more fully revealed, and the coming of judgment to set them all aside in favour of Israel. But he only comes to the door of the millennium without unfolding it.

HOSEA.

We have here the rejection of the house of Israel and the house of Judah distinctively, as Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi; the door secretly opened to the Gentiles by it; Israel's long - enduring deprivation of everything; and then the restoration of the whole under Jehovah and David in the latter days. Paul quotes chapter 1: 10, and 2: 23; Peter only the latter. From chapter 4 we get the most earnest dealing with the conscience of Israel, but closing with their return in repentance to the sure blessings of Jehovah. It is the testimony of the ways of the Lord.

11 JOEL.

Under the figure of the desolation left by a plague of insects we have announced the inroad of the northern armies in the last days, and the coming in of the whole power of man against God's people, and the consequent coming in of Jehovah to judge the whole power of man in the day of the Lord, and in the valley of decision. Meanwhile, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost upon all manner of people, and the promise of certain deliverance to whoever called on the name of the Lord. You may add, the summons to repentance of all who have ears to hear.

AMOS.

Gives the patience of God's dealings and ways, which he rehearses in connection with the precise pointing out of the iniquity of Israel's ways; but marking out the punishment of bordering nations on the same ground of definite moral evil. He notices the rejection of a testimony against the evil, and declares the sure, infallible, unescapable judgment of Jehovah on the whole people, the righteous remnant being as certainly saved; closing with the promise of building up the tabernacle of David, as head of the nation, and blessing the people.

OBADIAH

Is the judgment of Edom for their hatred of Israel, warning them that the day of the Lord is upon all the heathen, while deliverance should be in Mount Zion, and thence holiness and blessing, and the kingdom be the Lord's.

JONAH

Is the witness that, though God has chosen Israel, He has not given up His right as a faithful Creator in mercy over all the earth, while those that are connected with Himself must be subject to His power and bow to His grace: otherwise the sense of favour is unfaithfulness and self-exaltation. At the same time we get a type of death and resurrection as the way of blessing.

12 MICAH.

In Micah we have the general judgment of the people, Samaria and Jerusalem, for their transgressions, iniquities, and idolatry, and their rejection of the testimony of (God. Hence the whole land is treated as polluted, and no longer the rest of His people, who must arise and depart. He judges the princes and their prophets, brings in the power of the Spirit to judge even the chosen city of the Lord, but announces its re-establishment by Jehovah in grace in the last days; bringing in the siege of Jerusalem by the heathen, in fulfilment of God's counsels, though in consequence of the rejection of Christ, on account of which they were given up; and shews that the same Christ stands as their peace and defence, when the Assyrian comes in, in the last days. The remnant of Israel becomes the people of blessing to, and power over, others, while all evil in it is judged and destroyed, as well as the heathen who have come up against it. Having thus spoken of the restoration in the last days he returns and insists on the righteousness of God's ways, contrasts the attempt at ceremonially pleasing Him with the practising of iniquity which He hates, closing with the looking to Him to restore and feed His people as the God who passes by iniquity.

NAHUM.

The power of the world, or man as such, put down for ever; but with the testimony of the faithfulness of the Lord in the midst of His vengeances, and hence blessing to those that trust in Him and wait for Him. It is still the Assyrian Babylon is another thing altogether.

HABAKKUK

Is the soul exercised by the iniquity of God's people - first, with indignation thereat, and then with distress at their being destroyed by those who are God's rod to chasten them. He then gets the answer of God, shewing that He knows the pride of the wicked, and will judge it, and that the righteous man must live by trusting in Him. Lastly, he rises above all to the glorious power of God, exercised in the salvation of His people, so that he trusts in Him, come what will.

13 ZEPHANIAH.

In Zephaniah we get the utter judgment of the land for iniquity, hypocrisy, and idolatry, at the great day of the Lord, and of all the neighbouring nations around - everything of man's natural power, Jerusalem among them, because of her iniquity, though distinctly brought out as the special object of displeasure, as connected with the Lord. The prophecy then singles out the remnant in a very distinct and definite way, calling on them to wait on the Lord, who leaves them as an afflicted and poor people but delivered by the judgments which He executes, and rests in His love over Jerusalem, making it a name and praise among all people.

HAGGAI

Is occupied with the house, and declares that its latter glory will be greater than its first, at the time when He shakes all nations, and therewith encourages them to build, declaring that His Spirit went with them' as from Egypt, and that He will overthrow the throne of all kingdoms, but establish Christ under the name of Zerubbabel, as the elect man, as the signet on His right hand.

ZECHARIAH

Is particularly occupied with Jerusalem, and so shews the Lord dealing with all nations, having Jerusalem as a centre, using one nation to cast out another, till His purposes are accomplished; and then, when the glory has come, establishing Himself at Jerusalem. In the person of Joshua, the high priest, He justifies her against the adversary; He declares He will come, and puts all wisdom, the omniscience of His government, in Jerusalem. He prophesies of the perfection of the administrative order in the kingdom and priesthood, and the judgment of all corrupt pretension to it, which is shewn to be Babylonish, and builds the temple of the land by means of the Branch; judging the hostile power of the world, and using all this to encourage them at that time in building the temple. Thus far is one prophecy (chaps. 1-6).

In the next He takes occasion, by those who inquire whether they are yet to fast for the ruin of Jerusalem, to promise her restoration (only now, for the present, on the ground of responsibility); declares He will protect His house against all surrounding enemies; brings in Christ in humiliation, but carries it on to the time of glory, and of executing judgment by Judah upon Greece (Javan), gathering all the scattered ones. In chapters 11-14 we have the details of Christ's rejection, and the foolish and idolatrous shepherd, when He judges all the nations as meddling with Jerusalem, defends Jerusalem, brings them to repentance, and opens the fountain for their cleansing; and we then get, in contrast with the false spirit of prophecy, Christ's humiliation, the sparing of a remnant, when the body of the people are cut off from Judea at the end, with the final deliverance and the sanctifying of Jerusalem by the presence of the Lord, making her the centre of all worship upon earth.

14 In chapter 13: 5 we see Christ, the servant of man, the rejected one of the Jews, and the smitten of Jehovah. Read "for man possessed me from my youth." It then appears that it was among His friends He had been wounded in His hands; and the great secret of all comes out, that He is Jehovah's fellow, and smitten of Him. Note, where Christ is owned as God, He calls the saints His fellows; and where, as here, He is in deepest humiliation, God calls Him His fellow.

In these books, Haggai and Zechariah, the Jews are never called God's people, except in prospect of the future.

MALACHI.

We have here the testimony of the Jews' total failure when restored, according to what has gone before, in spite of God's electing love, which He still maintains; and then the Lord comes, sending a messenger before His face, but comes in thoroughly sifting and purifying judgment, owns the remnant who spake one to another in the fear of the Lord, in the midst of the wickedness, lifts them up, and sets them over the power of the wicked, the Sun of Righteousness rising upon them for healing. But at the same time He calls them back to the law of Moses, with the promise of sending them Elijah the prophet to turn their hearts.

THE NEW TESTAMENT.

The four Gospels give us Christ upon earth; the Acts the establishing the church in connection with Peter and with Paul, either in connection with the Jews, or lifting it up above them; the Epistles, partly addressed to particular churches in apostolic care, partly unfoldings of doctrine for the edification of saints, with the notice of the decay and departure from the truth of the church as formed on earth; and then the connection, through this decay and corruption, of the earthly church system, with the government and kingdom which were coming in. This last is the Apocalypse.

15 MATTHEW.

In Matthew we have Christ as Messiah, son of Abraham and son of David, according to the promise - Jehovah Emmanuel - bringing in the testimony of the kingdom and its healing power, laying down the principles on which men could enter into it (that is, the character of the remnant); and then displaying the various power which characterized and verified His coming. Passing on, though with enduring patience - patience which endures till He comes again - to His rejection by the nation, and the setting up of the kingdom in a mysterious way in the absence of the King, He still continues for the present His ministrations till His hour was come, but reveals the substitution of the church, and the kingdom in glory, for its present setting up by His presence. He then goes up to Jerusalem, arraigns the nation as a whole and in its various classes, and then subjects Himself to the whole distress and power of evil and of Satan which reigned in Israel, and to the smiting of the Lord of Hosts in the cup which He had to drink. He is raised from the dead, meets His disciples on the old prophetic ground of the remnant in Galilee, and commands them to disciple all nations in the new name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but we have no ascension to heaven.

Some special things are, that in chapter 10 He gives a testimony exclusively to Israel, which embraces all the time from His presence there to His coming as Son of man, provided the Jews are in the land. In chapter 23, in speaking to His disciples, He recognizes as subsisting Moses' seat. In chapter 21 He presents Himself as King, riding on an ass, according to Zechariah; then, having, as above, recognized Moses' seat, He declares the utter judgment of that generation as guilty of the blood of all the righteous, puts His disciples in the place of persecuted testimony, the house being left empty till they own Him as coming in the name of Jehovah; passing over all time until the abomination of desolation is set up, and thereupon, after the great tribulation, He appears in glory, and gathers all Israel. We have also parenthetically the various forms of the judgment of those who profess His name in His absence, and then the judgment of the nations on His return.

16 MARK.

In Mark we get the Lord's service (and therefore nothing of His birth) and specially His service as prophet. Matthew brings out the order of the facts, with a view to the development of principles, while Mark gives them chronologically. Luke has the same chronology as Mark, where he has any at all.

In Mark, as he reveals Christ's present service, we have in the parable of the sowing Christ's activity in the field at the beginning, and its cessation till the end, when He is again active in the harvest. All the intermediate particulars given by Matthew are omitted here.

In the prophecy on the Mount of Olives we have more references than in Matthew to the disciples' service. The commission in Mark is to preach the gospel to every creature.

LUKE.

In Luke you get, first of all, a beautiful exhibition of the state of the pious remnant in Israel, at the time of our Lord's first appearing, and the working of the Spirit of God among them, and at the same time the public state of the nation in connection with the Gentiles (chap. 1). You get the whole political world set in motion to bring a carpenter to Bethlehem (chap. 2). In connection with this remnant John the Baptist comes, announcing Him who is to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire (chap. 3). You now get the genealogy from Adam (having had Israel), and Luke gives us Christ as the Son of man in perfect moral display upon earth, and the grace of God which was displayed in His coming, although still serving in the midst of Israel. This service is unfolded in the various forms of grace, with particular reference to its moral elements, and shewing its extension to Gentiles, and the breaking up of covenant relations with the Jews, distinguishing not merely the character of the remnant, but the disciples as the remnant, "Blessed are ye poor," etc. (4-7). We get (in the demoniac of Gadara) a special picture, consequently, of the healing of the remnant in Israel, of the ruin of the people, and the mission of the delivered remnant, left as a witness instead of going with Him (chap. 8). In the transfiguration we find special reference to His intercourse with Moses and Elias as to His decease, insistence on the Son of man's being delivered up, and the judgment of self in all its forms, the declaration that the unbelief of the whole generation, including His disciples, will close His whole connection with Israel, and the claim of absolute devotedness to Himself (chap. 9). Then we see the patient service of Christ to Israel in sending out the seventy, but warning them it was final, and bringing in judgment, and intimating that whatever power He gave them in connection with the kingdom, their delight should be rather that they belonged to heaven. We then get, further, the principle of grace in dealing as a neighbour, instead of the claim of God towards a neighbour; the word and prayer with the gift of the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, and the hearing of prayer (this is all transition); the judgment of scribes and Pharisees for the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, by which He had proved that the kingdom of God was come among them, and bound the power of the enemy, so that He could deliver all who were under it; but that now, in the state in which the nation was, He was the test of deliverance and of going right, and they would be left to the power of Satan, of which they spoke. The hearing of the word was of more consequence than association with Israel according to the flesh - of more consequence than any fleshly tie. Thus the men of Nineveh and the queen of Sheba should rise up in judgment against that generation, and the blood of all the prophets should be found in them. They should be tested by apostles and prophets being sent to them; but these they would slay (chaps. 10, 11).

17 He then teaches the disciples to trust in God for everything, and to confess Him, the Lord Jesus, in the presence of all this opposition; and that the Holy Ghost should be given them; so that they who resisted and blasphemed the Holy Ghost in them should be judged as they who did it in Him. He taught them (the disciples) that all things should be made manifest. They were to be careful for nothing, but to seek the kingdom which it was the Father's good pleasure to give them. They were to have their treasure in heaven, and wait for the Lord. He then gives the character of the faithful and unfaithful servant in His absence - shews that His testimony will bring in division among men, even into families - warns the people to take notice of the signs of the times, and that even of themselves they ought to judge what was right; Jehovah being as one going with them to judgment, and they must agree with Him by the way (chap. 12).

18 We have then, in chapters 13 and 14, both in a parabolical way and in direct instructions, the setting aside of Israel, and the letting in of the Gentiles, with a declaration that, in order to follow Him, men must take up their cross, and be the salt of the earth.

In chapters 15 and 16, the ways of God in grace we have with sinners, still connected with the setting aside of Judaism. Thus we have, first, grace seeking and receiving sinners; secondly, future hopes substituted for present enjoyments; and, lastly, the veil drawn aside; so that what is heavenly is contrasted with all that had in Judaism been promised to such as were outwardly faithful.

You then get warnings against being an occasion of stumbling to little ones; and, on the other side, if there be an offence, exhortations to forgive it - the power of faith in the disciples; but that whatever is done, it is no more than duty. Liberty from Israel is then shewn to be the privilege when the Lord is owned in Christ's person. The kingdom was among them in His person; but He would come unexpectedly in His glory, and execute judgment, but know how to discern the righteous from the wicked. In the distress of that day, and at all times, men were to persevere in calling on God, and reckoning on His answer. Lowliness of mind is urged, both in respect to our faults and in regard to the spirit of meekness. The danger of riches, as a hindrance to entering the kingdom, is pointed out, and the sure blessing of giving up all for Christ (chaps. 17, 18).

He now goes up to Jerusalem by Jericho. This in all three Gospels is a distinct chronological point when He begins to deal again, and finally, with the Jews. Even here Luke brings out grace in Zacchaeus; and though a publicans the Lord owns him as a son of Abraham, He is owned as Son of David, yet brings in grace; "for the Son of man is come to seek and save that which was lost." Next the parable of the servants to whom money is entrusted differs in Luke, in that the responsibility of man is more brought out. Each gets the same sum, and a different reward according to what he has gained; whereas in Matthew He gives to each according to his wisdom and the capacity of each; and they all get the same reward. In His riding into Jerusalem we have to notice the expression, "Peace in heaven," which is peculiar to Luke, and indicates that Christ destroys Satan's power in heaven, and settles peace there, in order to introduce the kingdom. It is here He weeps over Jerusalem - the historical place for the incident (chap. 19).

19 In His answer to the Sadducees, when the different classes are arraigned (chap. 20), we have the introduction of the power of the first resurrection, as the proof of being the children of God. Here, as in Matthew, we get His exaltation to the right hand of God, as that which confounds the Pharisees as to all their expectations of the kingdom. He judges the scribes, and owns the poor widow who puts in her mite as better than all the rich.

Then in the prophecy (chap. 21) He does take notice, which Matthew does not, of the immediately coming destruction of Jerusalem, and does not speak of the abomination of desolation, but of Jerusalem being compassed with armies; referring, consequently on that first destruction, to the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled. He enters a great deal more into the spirit in which His disciples are to give their testimony, and meet the difficulties attending it.

We find here, at the passover, the extreme evil of man's heart, strife among them which should be the greatest. There is sifting by Satan, with special reference to Simon, for whom Christ had prayed; with distinct notice of the change of circumstances now from those of the time in which He exercised power, so as to secure them on the earth.

In the scene at Gethsemane and on the cross we have the Lord Jesus presented much more fully as man, and His own perfectness, faithfulness, and grace in them. It is not here Jehovah smiting His fellow, as in Matthew, but we see Him sweating as it were great drops of blood. It is the man suffering, and the perfection of faith and grace in the man so suffering (chaps. 22, 23).

This characterizes Luke all through, You oftener find Him praying, of which I may mention two instances, His baptism and His transfiguration. Another circumstance may be remarked, as regards Luke's gospel, as characteristic - the bringing together a quantity of circumstances in a single general expression, and dilating on some particular one which brings out some great moral beauty and truth, such as the journey to Emmaus, and others. If we have the case of Herod in Luke, and Pilate and Herod becoming friends through their enmity to Christ, we have here also the thief on the cross, His opening paradise to him immediately in contrast with the kingdom, and His intercession for the Jews. I may add, the uselessness of natural feeling for Christ where He is not followed.

20 You may remark the power of Christ in unspent unexhausted life when commending His spirit to the Father. The centurion owns Him here as the righteous man, and the effect also on the spectators and on Joseph the counsellor is stated.

Besides the detail of the two going to Emmaus, we may remark that He unfolds the scriptures, in chapter 24, to them, and makes Himself known to them in that which was the sign of death. He presents Himself very fully as the same man, Jesus' and eats in the presence of His disciples. He again insists on the scriptures as to be fulfilled, and that, as the book which we have in the Old Testament (law, prophets, and psalms) to this day. He opens their understanding to understand the scriptures, insisting upon this, that thus it is written. The mission given is that of repentance and remission of sins in His name among all Gentiles, beginning at Jerusalem. They were to be His witnesses, but were to wait for the promise of the Father, the Holy Ghost from heaven; and, in the act of blessing them, He ascends.

We have nothing here of Galilee, which we have in Matthew and John, where we have the Jewish thing. That was the connection with the remnant of Israel, while this is His connection with heaven.

JOHN.

In John we have the divine person of the Lord, specially as life and light, and, supplementary to that, the sending of the Comforter down here in His place, and then a brief view of the whole course of dispensations until the millennial kingdom.

The first eighteen verses present the person of the Lord Jesus: in verses 1-5, abstractedly, as to His nature, and the effect of His appearing; verses 6-11, John's testimony to this, and the effect of his coming; verses 12, 13, the effect and way of grace; verses 14-18, the Word made flesh; verses 19-34, John's testimony to what He would be as to His work and effectual power for man - Lamb of God, Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, owned here Son of God by the Holy Ghost descending on Him. In verses 35-42, John's testimony historically gathers to Him (this is the first day of active gathering); verse 43 to end, the Lord gathers. This, therefore, embraces all the dealing with the remnant during Christ's life, and hereafter, till He is owned by the remnant at the end, represented by Nathanael. Hence He is owned as Son of God, King of Israel, but takes a wider title too, that of Son of man, on whom the angels wait. Read "henceforth," for hereafter.

21 Note here particularly (v. 38-42), Christ is the centre, hence divine (else turning us away from God), God manifest in the flesh; and secondly, the path through the world - follow me. The world condemned, Christ separates out of it to Himself, as God anew revealed; and is the only path through it as man. In verse 51 He has a third character - heaven opened on Him as man, and the angels waiting upon man. He is the object of an opened heaven as man. Note, our part is as Stephen's - heaven opened to us, and He, Son of man, there. Note too, Christ has not an object to look at, but every man has one - He is the object.

Chapter 2: 1-22 is the double character of the third-day (millennial action) in Israel; the marriage; and purifying judgment.

The Lord (v. 23-25) does not accept a present reception according to the intelligence of flesh; but, chapter 3, a man must be born again. This is true even for the earthly promises made to Israel. But the thoughts of God for man go on to heaven, from whence the Son of man came down, where, in His divine person, He is, and whereof He speaks. God loves the world, and gives Him for individual faith not to perish. This introduces the cross, the Son of man lifted up like the serpent - the Son of God given. Condemnation hangs on believing or not in the Son of God, and it is because light is come into the world, and men love darkness. This is a great moral truth altogether outside Israel. He has fully revealed heaven as He knows it, and made man, by believing in Him, fit for it. John then bears witness to Christ, in contrast with himself and to his testimony, as divine and heavenly, as the One to whom His Father has given all; believing in whom a man has life; not believing, will not see life, wrath abides on him. All this ministry was previous to His entering on His public ministry, which took place after John's casting into prison.

22 Chapter 4. The jealousy of the Jews drives Him from Judea. In the woman of Samaria the new thing from outside and independent of Judaism is, in principle, brought in: God present to give, but in humiliation, which blessedly inspires confidence to ask, and He gives the desire, and spiritual spring rising to eternal life within man. But nature cannot receive spiritual things. God reaches the conscience by the word. This is recognized as of Him, and then Christ is known and owned as Saviour of the world. And though salvation be of the Jews, God, who is a Spirit, must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And the Father (the name now revealed in grace) seeks such to worship Him, meeting a needy soul. This is Jesus' joy in grace.

Chapter 5. Law, with all its ordinances, can do nothing through the weakness of the flesh; but the truth now is, that the Father and the Son are working, not man. They cannot have their sabbath in sin and misery. Such a sabbath is not owned; but as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to Jesus the Son to have life in Himself, and He quickens whom He will; and committed all judgment to Him,* that all should honour Him as they honour the Father. There is no confusion in these ways of honouring Him. He who hears His word, and believes on the Father who sent Him, has everlasting life, does not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. There is then a resurrection to life, and another to judgment (v. 30-47). He is presented as life to the responsibility of man, witnessed by John Baptist, His works, the Father, the scriptures; but they would not come to have it. The Jews would not receive Him: when the false one comes in his own name, they will, as they rejected Moses' writings, which spoke of Christ and His words now.

{*Though largely shown to be God, the Lord is, from chapter 1: 14, always looked at in John as a man living on earth, only manifesting the Father.}

Chapter 6 is a picture of the order of God's ways in Christ. Prophet already, He would not be King, but goes on high alone to pray. During this time the disciples are toiling without Him against the wind; He rejoins them, and they are at land. This is in connection with the passover, and Christ's proving Himself the Jehovah of Psalm 132. Instead of that now, He is the bread come down from heaven to give life to the world, and must be received inwardly as incarnate, but also as dying, as there is no life in any man; but it is spiritually. Also He was going up, Son of man where He was before.

23 Chapter 7. The Jews (His brethren) do not believe on Him, and He cannot shew Himself to the world. This is the feast of tabernacles; but He promises the Spirit to those that believe, instead of His visible presence, as rivers of living water (before as springing up unto eternal life). Jews (of Judea) and people (Galilee, etc.) are distinguished.

Chapter 8 gives the word rejected; chapter 9 the works.

In chapter 8 Christ is the light of the world, dealing with conscience in contrast with the difference between gross sins and sinfulness, and is the Light to lead. His word is the absolute expression of Himself. He is from above; unbelieving man is from beneath, of the devil, who is a liar and a murderer, and abode not in the truth. He is God. The Jews reject Him.

In chapter 9 He gives eyes to see. This is by incarnation, which in itself gives no sight, but when by the Spirit and word, He is thereupon known as the sent One, it does. He is confessed as Prophet, and then believed as Son, through the word received. The sheep are thus put out, but He goes before.

Chapter 10 gives us His care of them. He comes in by the appointed way; then He is the appointed way, giving salvation, liberty, and pasture; He lays down His life for the sheep, yet knows them, and they Him still - as His Father knew Him, and He His Father; laying down His life, He becomes the especial object and motive for His Father's love. He has other sheep (Gentiles), and there is to be one flock (not fold), one Shepherd. He goes from His obedient lowliness to being one with His Father. Father and Son are the names of grace.

In chapter 11 He is declared Son of God by resurrection-power. He is the Resurrection and Life. This answers to the character of His presence. When present, the dead live - the living do not die. But while shewing divine power, He is the dependent Son as man - feels for and with us, but is always heard.

In chapter 12 He is Son of David, and the time of His glory as Son of man is come; but then He must die. But before this He is received at Bethany, where the taught remnant enter into His death, laying the ground for the new thing, while thereon the enmity ripens. His death, as rejected by the hopeless and judicially blinded hostility of Israel, now comes fully before us.

24 Chapter 13. His departure does not close His service to His disciples. He fits them to be with Him when He cannot stay with them; and this is essentially necessary according to His true nature and glory. He came from God, and went to God, and the Father had given all things into His hand. Perfect original, and now in human nature continued divine purity and perfectness, and glorious position, with man traitorously hostile, He loved His own in this world absolutely and through all to the end. And having regenerated them by the word, He washes their feet as their servant, gives them like service as their example, shews His personal love to them, the advantage of habitual nearness to Him to be able to know His mind. On Judas going out He shews that the foundation of the new, but essential and everlasting, relationship with God is laid in the cross, under the title of Son of man. The Son of man is glorified in it, for what so glorious to man as to glorify and make good all the essential attributes of God? God is glorified in Him, and then does not wait for the kingdom or conferred glory of inheritance, but glorifies Him in Himself, and does it immediately. He then puts them, on His leaving them, on love to one another, and warns Peter he could not follow Him now. The path was through death, destruction, and wrath for man, as having only natural life. Note, in the washing, the first is washed all over, bathed. This cannot be repeated. It is the feet which pick up dirt in the walk; but the believer therewith is clean every whit, once for all.

In chapter 14 first, the Lord shews that, absent, He is an object of faith as God was. He did not go to be at ease, and they left in distress. If that had been the end, He would have told them. He went to prepare a place for them in His Father's house, and would come again and receive them. Then we learn what they had in His presence, and what they would have after His departure. They knew where He went, for He was going to the Father, and they had seen the Father in Him. They knew the way, for in coming to Him they found the Father. But on His going He would ask, and the Father would send, another Comforter to stay, as Christ could not, and to dwell in them. He had as yet been only among them. Through this last fact they would know Him, If a man kept His words, His Father would love him, and He, Jesus, would manifest Himself to Him; and if he kept His word, His Father and He would come and make their abode with him. He left peace with them, giving them His own peace. Next, he expected in His disciples such love that they should be glad He went, that is, be interested in His happiness - immense witness of nearness.

25 In chapter 15 Christ replaces Israel, the old but not true vine on the earth, and the disciples are branches, clean through the word. The Father purified the fruit-bearing - cut off the unfruitful branches. They were to abide in Him, and He in them. If a man (not they) did not, he would be cast out and burnt. If they abode in Him, and His words abode in them, they would dispose of power. Dependence, confidence first, Christ's words - the forming desires and thoughts next. In bearing fruit they would resemble Him.

Next, they were to abide in His love, This by obedience; and all this that their joy might be full. They were to love one another, as He had loved them. He laid down His life for His friends: they were such (not He their friend - that He is to sinners; but they His) - this that they might love one another. The world would hate them, as it had Him. Next, the Comforter would come, and testify of Him. He would as glorified send Him; and they would testify of Him as having been with Him.

Note in chapter 14 the Father sends the Comforter, He brings all to their remembrance that He had said to them. Thus their witness was made good. But He would also reveal His heavenly glory. Here He sends Him from the Father.

Chapter 16 is the Comforter, as present down here and His work in the world and in the church, in contrast with their own state in a hostile world and blinded Judaism. The disciples, absorbed with their loss, did not look to what God was bringing about; yet the Comforter's presence was worth His leaving. He would demonstrate to the world sin, righteousness, and judgment - sin in rejecting Christ; for His presence proved the rejected one, gone to the Father - righteousness, as He, having deserved it, was there (God's righteousness), and the world (disciples and all), who had rejected Him, would never see Him again. The breach was absolute. The world was convinced of judgment, because its prince was judged who had led it against Christ, in that the proof that Christ's power over him and his wickedness was there. Judgment was proved, for Satan's position was a judged one already. The Comforter would guide the disciples into all truth - shew them things to come - shew them Christ's things, that is, all the Father had. However in a little He would see them again (that is, after His resurrection), and they would enter into the consciousness of their relationship with the Father. As yet they would be scattered, and leave Him alone; but He had the Father with Him, and they might be of good cheer, He had overcome the world.

26 In chapter 17 Christ addresses the Father ere He departs.

Verses 1-5. He lays the ground of all He has to ask. He is to be glorified as Son, and as having finished the work - the kind of glory in relationship, and our title also to enter. He has power over all flesh, to give eternal life to those given to Him, a double headship over man, and in life to saints given to Him. The knowledge of the Father and of Him as sent is eternal life.

Verses 6-8 put the disciples in their position. He manifested the Father's name to them: so the relationship was founded. They knew Him as having all things from the Father, not Messiah's Jewish glory from Jehovah. All the Father's communications to Him in His position He had given to them, so that they might enjoy it fully as well as have it.

In verses 9-13 He prays for them, not for the world, but for those given Him of the Father, the disciples. His grounds are, they are the Father's (all is mutually possessed), and He, Christ, is glorified in them; the object, that they might have His joy complete in them.

In verses 14-19 they are put in the place of His testimony, the word (not words) that was in connection with place of relationship; not of the world, as Christ was not, but not to be taken out of it, but kept from evil. They were to be morally set apart to the Father by the truth - the Father's word. They are sent by Christ into the world as He by the Father. And He set Himself apart to the Father as heavenly man, that the Holy Ghost, taking what He was, might set these apart. It was Christ as well as truth, but still truth.

27 In verses 20, 21, He prays that those that believe through their word should be one in the Father and Son, that the world may believe.

In verses 22, 23, He has given them the glory, that they may be one in the display of glory that the world may know.

In verses 24-26 He would have them where He is who was loved before the world was. They are loved as He was, and He had and would declare the Father's name, that they might enjoy it, He being in them.

Chapter 18. We have to remark the character both of Gethsemane and the cross. It is still the Son of God above the temptation, seen out of the suffering; no "if it be possible let the cup pass"; no "why hast thou forsaken me?" but they go backward and fall to the ground, and He puts Himself forward that they [disciples] may escape untouched. And on the cross - knowing that one scripture has yet to be fulfilled, and recommending His mother to the beloved disciple, and charging him to be to her as a son - He gives up His own spirit. So He heals in the garden. Peter denies Him. So He answers the chief priests and Pilate, in calm superiority, leaving the former to settle it, to the latter witnessing to Himself as truth, yet submitting to him as to power given from above. The Jews deny all king but Caesar. The Jews are treated with slight, as everywhere in this Gospel. Of Him not a bone is broken, but He is with the rich in His death.

Chapter 20. We have a picture of the whole time, from the remnant then through the church period on to the remnant converted when they see the Lord. Mary Magdalene, who represents the remnant, called as a sheep by her name, is attached personally to Him; then the disciples become brethren, in the same relationship to God and the Father as Himself, are gathered and peace theirs, when they receive the Holy Ghost, and are sent by Christ for remission of sins; lastly the remnant (Thomas), who did not believe without, do on seeing; but they are specially blessed who have believed without seeing. Thus twice He had shewn Himself.

Chapter 21. Next comes the great gathering of the millennial time, when the net does not break at all: Christ had some already on shore; these are brought in from the great waters. Peter, restored, has to care for Christ's sheep, specially the Jewish flock; John is left to watch in his ministry over the church saints and witness of God till Christ comes: this carries us on to the Apocalypse. Thus we have the Peter ministry of the Jewish church with John's epistles and Apocalypse (these refer to Christ's appearing). The Paul ministry comes in between, and speaks of the hidden mystery, the church and the rapture, before the appearing.

28 ACTS.

This book, at its beginning, links directly on to the close of Luke, and we find the disciples acting in the intelligence of the scriptures without the power of the Holy Ghost yet given. Then, the Acts of the Apostles embraces the revelation of the gift of the Holy Ghost and His workings: first, at Jerusalem, where He is rejected by Israel; next, in His free operation outside Israel; and, lastly, in Paul, connected with the revelation of the church among the Gentiles at large, closing with his being delivered by the Jews to the Gentiles and his being sent a prisoner to Rome.

The coming of the Holy Ghost, while not undoing the result of Babel, overleaps it in grace by the gift of tongues, the first sign of His presence. We see the moral effects of His presence in devotedness and unity, and, forming the assembly, the remnant in Israel are added to it. "The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." But He still proposes to Israel the return of Christ (founded on Christ's intercession on the cross) upon their repentance; while declaring that the heavens must receive Him till the times when all that the prophets had said should be established; but Israel rejects His testimony. The Holy Ghost thus come down is received of Christ for this, consequent on His exaltation. They pursue their testimony in patience in spite of Israel's opposition, and are confirmed in the power of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is manifested in power, as God's presence in the assembly on earth, searching the hearts of men. He ministers to unity and order even in temporal things, and acts now in liberty according to faith and faithfulness in instruments of His own choice. This free action of the Holy Ghost calls out the final judgment of Israel, on every principle of relationship of God with man (but their conduct is characterized throughout by resistance to the Holy Ghost); but this is accompanied by the opening of heaven to him who, on the other hand, was filled with the Holy Ghost and gave the testimony they now resisted. His thorough likeness to Christ, through seeing Him in glory, is beautifully brought out; his death on the earth, and his being received into heaven. The making good church blessings in connection with Israel plainly becomes impossible. Here it is that Saul, the enemy, first comes in.

29 And now, before turning to any more positive facts, you get the free action of the Holy Ghost extending the gospel outside Jerusalem, consequent on persecution. Next, we find Saul, the apostle of enmity against Christ, broken and brought down by Christ, revealed in supreme heavenly glory, but identifying all Christians with Himself, as being Himself, "why persecutest thou me?"

Peter's testimony to Christ has been that the Messiah, the Prince of life, whom they had rejected, God had exalted; Paul's immediately is that He is the Son of God. Peter never preaches Him as Son of God. Paul's preaching consequently embraces the two points of the heavenly glory and the unity of the saints with Christ, and his preaching Christ as the Son of God. But Saul, while owned of the disciples, is for the time laid aside. Then the Peter - ministry continues; and the first Gentile is added to the church as existing among the Jews by his means, to maintain its constituted unity. The previous free action of the Holy Ghost outside Jerusalem at Samaria had been connected with it by Peter and John going down, and the disciples' receiving the Holy Ghost by the laying on of their hands. We now find the same free action of the Holy Ghost going to mere Gentiles in the great Grecian capital, Antioch. The connection is still kept up by the apostles sending Barnabas there, who goes and fetches Saul. We have then the testimony through prophets (another sign of the Holy Ghost), this same connection being maintained in another way, The prophets come from Jerusalem, and in result they of Antioch send help to those in Judea. We have then the proof of the service of angels to the church. This closes this part of the Acts.

The Holy Ghost now calls, through prophets, for the separation of Barnabas and Saul for the work to which He had called them, and they are sent forth by the Holy Ghost. It is a new kind of apostle. The first thing we find is a figure of the total blinding of the Jews who resist the Holy Ghost, and the eyes of Gentiles opened to believe. Notwithstanding this, Paul (for he is now called Paul) according to the Lord's mind goes always first to the Jews, and afterwards to the Greeks. John Mark leaves them. After having preached round, they choose elders for the churches, of whom we here read first among Gentiles. He then returns to Antioch, and there we find what the laying on of hands had been: that is, they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they had now fulfilled. "And there they abode long time with the disciples."

30 The church having now been freely established on heavenly principles outside Jerusalem, Satan seeks to introduce confusion by bringing in the law upon them; and God, to maintain unity, causes the matter to be referred to Jerusalem, so that the apostles there, and the church, should themselves declare the Gentiles free. The points to which they were subjected were not introduced by the law, but expressed the title of God in Himself and to all life, and the maintenance of the original purity in which God had originally constituted man upon earth. I see authority here within the church in the apostles. "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us," with perfect liberty of ministry. They dismiss Judas and Silas; and then we get another thing, Paul gathering fellow-labourers round himself: first Silas, then Timothy, whom he circumcises. This was completely illegal. He never rose more above the law than here. Now, we get the direct guidance of the Holy Ghost in the carrying out of his ministry; but that direct guidance as not excluding his drawing conclusions from divine intimations sent to him. Then we have Paul pursuing his ministry - kept of God everywhere - the very demons forced to own him - and as competent as the other apostles to confer the Holy Ghost: free ministry, under the guidance of God's Spirit, still going on.

And now Paul, returning to Jerusalem, intimates the close of his ministry in those parts to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus, predicting the efforts of Satan, and calling upon them to watch and labour with the same earnestness and energy as had marked his own labours amongst them. The elders, moreover, he expects to maintain themselves. He now returns to Jerusalem, the Holy Ghost warning him, and the disciples telling him by the Spirit, not to go up. On the suggestion of the elders at Jerusalem, he accommodates himself to Jewish ceremonies, the believers at Jerusalem being all zealous of the law. This brings him into captivity; but the effect of the captivity is to bring him into the place of testimony before the Jews, who refuse grace to the Gentiles, before Lysias, Felix, Festus, Agrippa, and Nero. But he is a prisoner all the time, and as such he works at Rome. (Paul's gospel was a prisoner at Rome from the first day.) This closes the testimony to the Jews; and thus closes the history we have of the dissemination of the gospel in apostolic times.

31 ROMANS.

This epistle unfolds the gospel of God as the testimony of the righteousness of God, and connected with the testimony of His wrath from heaven: but in doing so it begins with the depravity of the Gentiles, the hypocrisy of moralisers, and the guilt of the Jews, concluding thus all under sin, and meeting all this guilt by the blood of Christ through faith; proving at the same time thereby the righteousness of God in bearing with the sins of the saints during the past time, and laying the present foundation of divine righteousness for the time to come. From chapter 4 the apostle connects faith with the resurrection after Christ's deliverance for our offences. In chapter 5 he applies this to justification and peace in the assurance of God's love, and traces all up to Adam on one side, and to Christ on the other, as head, the law only coming in by the bye. In chapter 6 he applies it to a godly life, and in chapter 7 to the law; unfolding in chapter 8 the full liberty the Christian himself obtains by it, connected with the life and presence of the Spirit, God securing all by what He is for us, and how all this is made good to us through Christ, across all possible danger of separation from it. There are three parts in chapter 8: first, the Spirit as life, going on to the resurrection of the body (v. 1-11); then the Holy Ghost as a separate person, dwelling in us for joy, and sympathy with us in infirmities (v. 12-27); the third part (v. 28 to the end) being God for us - life, God in us, and God for us.

Note another thing. Except just for bringing in Christ's intercession, you never get His ascension in Romans, hence, not the unity of the body, which is only alluded to in its practical effects (chap. 12), but the relationship of the individual with God on the ground of grace reigning through righteousness - God's righteousness being very definitely brought out in contrast with man's, which has the law for its rule (this being useful to convict of transgression, lust, and powerlessness when we have a good will).

32 From chapter 9 to 11 inclusive, Paul reconciles special promises to the Jews with the no-difference doctrine of divine righteousness. In chapter 9, while professing his own love to the Jews, he uses (while recognising all their privileges) the absolute sovereignty of God proved in their own history by the exclusion of Ishmael and Esau though sons of Abraham and Isaac; confirming this by the witness that it was only the sovereign mercy of God which had spared them at Sinai: he uses, I say, this sovereign mercy to prove God's call of Gentiles as well as Jews, confirming this by quotations from Hosea. He then shews that the rejection of the Jews was foretold by prophets - that it is founded on a pretension to human righteousness. He contrasts, in chapter 10, the righteousness of the law with that of faith; shews the title of the Gentiles to the latter - the call involving preaching to them; and confirms this, as well as the rebellion of the Jews to the call, by their own scriptures.

In chapter 11 he raises the question, Is then Israel, finally and definitely, as a people, rejected? No. He gives three proofs - first, in his own person; second, that where there is the declaration that the Gentiles will be called, it is to provoke them (Israel) to jealousy, and therefore not finally to reject them; third, the positive declaration of scripture that the Redeemer would come to Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob. In connection with this, he puts the Gentiles, introduced on the principle of faith, upon their responsibility; shewing them that if they did not continue in God's goodness, they would be cut off from the tree of promise on the earth, as so many of the Jews then were, and that God could graft the Jews in again; this being the testimony to the wisdom of God, His having concluded all alike in unbelief, that all might be objects of mere mercy.

In the subsequent part we get exhortations. Only that in chapter 15 he resumes this doctrine, that Jesus Christ was "a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy."

In chapter 16: 26 substitute "prophetic scriptures" for "scriptures of the prophets."

33 1 CORINTHIANS

Is the internal ordering of the church by the guidance and power of the Spirit of God in the apostle, putting the assembly on its responsibility, and acting with it, but asserting his authority in case of need. He begins by owning the power of the Spirit amongst them in gift, and recognising the grace that would keep them to the end; but he presses the power of that Spirit in contrast with the wisdom of the flesh, asserting that we, believers, have the Spirit to search what the eye has not seen nor the ear heard - that these things are revealed by the Spirit to whomsoever God pleases, communicated by the Spirit, and received through the Spirit. We have thus revelation, inspired communication, and reception. (In chapter 2: 13, translate thus, "communicating spiritual things by spiritual words.") Another important thing is - we have the mind of Christ (chaps. 1, 2).

Then the apostle, having shewn that he had rightly laid the foundation, puts the building of God's building on the responsibility of those who carry it on, chapter 3. He defends his own ministry and authority (chap. 4), and then enters on details of conduct as to purity insisting on their exercising discipline on the wicked, as to going to law, marriage, and eating things offered to idols (chaps. 5-8). He again defends his own ministry, calls their attention to the fact that they may be partakers of sacraments and be lost after all, but in connection with the Lord's supper presses the point of not mixing themselves up with idolatry (chaps. 9, 10). Then, in chapter 11, he treats of comeliness in any spiritual ministration, praying or prophesying, founding it upon Christ being the Head of all men, and the subordinate headship of the man. He then treats, from verse 17, of order in the assembly, and especially at the supper of the Lord, giving at the same time a lesson of God's discipline in contrast with condemnation.

The subject of spiritual manifestation follows - the place gifts hold, the unity of the body, and individual membership of it (chap. 12). (Gifts are of the Spirit; administration by them is under the Lord; the operations are divine - of God.) He shews love to be better than the best gifts, the more excellent way (chap. 13); and returning, in chapter 14, to gifts, shews that those in which the understanding is in exercise are the most excellent, and that this exercise is subject to those who have them, with a view to the edification of all. He then treats (chap. 15) of the resurrection, of Christ's glory, and of ours in it. Lastly, he refers to the collection for the saints; and we get at the close, in the diverse salutations, the abiding liberty of individual ministry - the principle of some giving themselves up to the Lord's service among the saints, and that all such are to be respected and submitted to (chap. 16).

34 2 CORINTHIANS

Is written consequent on the apostle's getting by Titus the news that the first epistle had taken its effect. He had just been in danger of his life, and, speaking now freely to the Corinthians, opens his heart at large about it, and explains why he did not come to them on his way to Macedonia. In the first five chapters, however, he explains the power of life in Christ, connecting it with the work of Christ, so as to bring in the righteousness of God. He contrasts it with law in chapter 3, shews its supremacy over death in every way in chapter 5, and deliverance from judgment as an occasion of fear, while it urges by the love of Christ to deal with men's souls. In chapter 4 he shews the earthen vessel in which the power of this life is, that the power may be practically of God, the vessel being held to be dead under the cross, and the Lord helping this by His dealings. Hence only eternal things are looked at; and he knows no man after the flesh, but speaks of the ministry of reconciliation, and of himself and others as ambassadors for Christ, praying men, in Christ's stead, "Be ye reconciled to God."

This ministry is then proved real in every possible way (chap. 6). He urges entire separation from the world in order to relationship with the Father, presses their perfecting holiness in the fear of God, and recognises the integrity in them of the repentance he had called for, the news of which had comforted his spirit (chap. 7). He next enlarges upon the collection for the saints (chaps. 8, 9), and is then, against his will, forced to legitimate his ministry by speaking of himself (chaps. 10, 11), closing that part by reference to his being caught up to the third heaven, while his strength flowed not directly from that, but from the power of Christ working in his weakness, shewing still a little uneasiness lest all should not be right, and he should be forced to be what they might not like (chap. 12). He, lastly, appeals to their own certainty that they were Christians as proof of Christ's speaking by him (chap. 13).

35 GALATIANS

Specially contrasts law with promises, grace, and the Spirit, not so much with righteousness, though it be spoken of, shewing that it (law) came between the promise and Christ, and that it could not annul the promise - that it went only to Christ, or faith. Connected with this, he shews the independence of his ministry; briefly states that he was dead to the law which brought the curse - dead by the law, but as crucified with Christ; so that, as living, Christ lived in him, and he lived by the faith of the Son of God (chaps. 1, 2).

In chapter 3: 20 the point is, that the fulfilment of an absolute promise depends only on the faithfulness of one; but that the law having a mediator, Moses, two parties were implied, but God is only one. Hence, blessing under the law depends on the faithfulness of another as well as of God, and hence all fails. The promise was confirmed before God to Christ. Christ came after the failure, and we rest on the work of the Mediator, and not on the work of the second party. The law was added to produce transgression, not sin.

Another point: those who were under the law were delivered by Christ's taking its curse; so that the blessing flows freely, and that they may receive the promise of the Spirit.

In Galatians you find death applied to the law, the flesh, and the world, In chapter 6 we find a notice of the fact that there is a government of God which applies to all men, and brings its consequences with it as a general rule.

EPHESIANS.

In Ephesians we have the relationships of the saints with God the Father, and with Christ as ascended on high; first with God and the Father, which is our calling; then acquaintance with all the plans of God, as heading up all things in Christ, and thus the knowledge of the inheritance, and the place of heirs, and the Holy Ghost given as earnest till the redemption of the inheritance. He then prays the God of our Lord Jesus Christ (Christ being looked at as man) that the saints may know what God's calling and inheritance is, and the power that works in us, as shewn in Christ when God raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand, so as to set Him over all things, and make the church His body and completeness.

36 Thereupon he unfolds the quickening, raising, and sitting in heavenly places in Christ of the saints by sovereign grace, so as to shew the exceeding riches of it by His kindness to us. He then shews Gentiles afar off, and Jews dispensationally nigh, brought out of their respective places to form one new man in Christ, and thus become the dwelling-place of God on earth by the Spirit. Thus we have the assembly connected with Christ on high as His body, and on earth the dwelling-place of God by His Spirit.

He then develops somewhat the mystery, as now for the first time introduced, as a witness of the various wisdom of God in heavenly places. The apostle then prays the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that the full blessedness of this may be realised by Christ dwelling in their hearts by faith; so that, being rooted and grounded in love, they may be able to comprehend the infinitely wide extent of what constitutes God's glory in this character, and the love of Christ, so as to be at the centre of it all according to the fulness of God Himself. With this he desires glory to God in the church in all ages, implying the distinct, continuous existence of the assembly. (In chapter 3: 15 read "every family," instead of "the whole family." Note, in verse 18, the breadth, and depth, and length, and height is not "of the love." The whole of chapter 3 is parenthetic, and the first words of chapter 4 connect themselves with the beginning of chapter 3.)

In the first sixteen verses of chapter 4 the apostle unfolds, in connection with the headship of Christ, the unities into which we are brought, and the instruments of building and edification, as gifts, whether without or within. There are three unities: a real one, one of profession, and a universal one in God. First, one body, one Spirit, one hope. Secondly, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Thirdly, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in you all. We are to walk in lowliness, so as to endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The gifts are from the ascended man, who has overcome Satan and led him captive, so as to make those who had been Satan's captives the instruments of His own warfare in power, to gather and perfect the saints. At the same time He who ascended is the One who first descended into the lower parts of the earth, so as to fill all things. The measure to which the saints are to be brought up is that of the stature of the fulness of Christ Himself; the body being compacted, and supplying by every joint in order to its own edification. The first object all through this, however, is individual. We then get the exhortations connected with the new man being created of God in righteousness and true holiness. It is only the new man which has to do with righteousness and holiness.

37 Hence they are to be imitators of God, and act as Christ Himself has acted in love - the perfect expression of God - the new man. Further, in this new man they are light in the Lord: and the measure of their walk and works is the light itself, of which Christ, if they are awake, is to them the perfect outshining. Hence they are to be wise in the midst of this world. In going through relative duties, he enters on the relationship of the church to Christ, founded on the working of His love in this order. He first gives Himself for it; next, sanctifies and cleanses it by the word; and, thirdly, presents it to Himself a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Two things are to be remarked here: (1) That, in the analogy with Adam and Eve, Christ stands in the place both of Adam and of God. (2) The intimate connection between Christ's present operation and the glory. He sanctifies and cleanses the church, that He may present it to Himself. Then, besides the church being His wife, it is presented according to the analogy of Eve as His body, and Christ is looked at as nourishing and cherishing it, as a man would his own flesh (chap. 5).

Finally, Christians are exhorted to put on the whole armour of God, and in His might to combat, in entire dependence upon Him (chap. 6).

PHILIPPIANS

Is Christian experience, in which sin and the flesh are never mentioned, except to reject righteousness in flesh. It is a man superior to everything with which he has to say in this world. But chapter 2 speaks specially of a gracious and obedient character by reference to Christ coming down, and being obedient to death, in contrast with the first man. In chapter 3 we have the energy of divine life, looking to Christ glorified as an object to whose state he is to attain. In every respect he is superior to circumstances: his bonds have only furthered the gospel; when Christ is preached of contention, he rejoices in it, and it will all turn to his salvation. Salvation, all through this epistle, is the attainment of the ultimate result in glory, and this is the force of the word "Saviour" in chapter 3: 20. Life and death are both so blessed that self disappears, because he can have no wish, though in itself dying is far better. He decides his own trial for his life by the perception of what is for the good of the church. To him to live is Christ. Everything is dross or dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ; and he never does but one thing - pressing on to the glory. Though four years chained to a soldier, he knows what it is always to rejoice in the Lord; to be careful for nothing (chap. 4). God's peace keeps his heart, so as to be instructed in all things, to be full or hungry, to abound or suffer want - he is able to do all things through Him who strengthened him. Hence he counts upon his God for a blessing on the Philippians.

38 COLOSSIANS.

In the Epistle to the Colossians, who seem not to have held the Head very fast, the personal glory of the Head is largely brought out; but the hope is in heaven, and the saints are not seen sitting there. The life of the new man is specially brought out, where the Spirit would be in Ephesians, while He is not mentioned in Colossians, except in one single passage, "your love in the Spirit."

In the first place, after the apostle's prayer for them, in which a walk worthy of the Lord Himself and according to His power is desired, and they are viewed as meet for the inheritance of the saints in light, we get the double headship of Christ over creation and the body, along with His divine glory, in three particulars: He is the image of the invisible God; all things consist by Him; and all the fulness is pleased to dwell in Him. You then get the double reconciliation of the creation yet to come, and of the saints already accomplished; the double ministry also of Paul, of the gospel to every creature under heaven, and of the church, the hitherto hidden mystery made good among the Gentiles by Christ dwelling in them the hope of glory.

In chapter 2 the Colossians are warned against philosophy and the spirit of ordinances, separating them from the Head, in whom all fulness dwells, and in whom they are complete. Hostile powers being overcome by Him, they (believers) are dead and risen, so as not to be subject to ordinances in flesh. As this liberty is founded on their being dead in Christ, so the whole of Christian life is founded on their being risen with Christ, who is their life, and with whose condition they are entirely associated, so that Christ is all, and in all (chap. 3); and whatever they do, they are to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.

39 1 THESSALONIANS.

In 1 Thessalonians, as a general rule, we get the Lord's coming for the blessing of saints; and, in the second epistle, for the judgment of unbelievers. In the first, the saints are associated with the Father, the one true God, in contrast with the false gods they were used to. They are converted, and, through their faith, are a witness in all the world that they are converted to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven. The former people of the true God are looked at as in hostility to the gospel, which reveals the Father, and grace to the Gentiles. In the second chapter, the coming of the Lord Jesus is connected with the apostle's joy and crown in the saints to whom he had been blest; in chapter 3, with holiness before the Father, at the coming of the Lord Jesus with all His saints; and in chapter 4, with the full explanation of the rapture of the church to meet Christ at His coming. Verses 15-18 are to be taken as a parenthesis, verse 14 being carried on to chapter 5: 1, where the character of Christ's coming to the saints is contrasted with His coming to the world. Then, with divers short exhortations, God is looked to to keep them till Christ comes.

2 THESSALONIANS.

In 2 Thessalonians we have, first, the saints set right from the confusion into which they had got, as if the dreadful persecutions they were in were the day of the Lord, whereas in that they would be at rest, and the wicked troubled. la chapter 2, the apostle appeals to Christ's coming, and their gathering together to Him, as the evidence that the day could not be there; and then shews what the development of wickedness on the earth would be before that day came, and contrasts their state. In the last chapter he asks their prayers, and gives them divers exhortations.

Their state was very lively in the first epistle; and you may get in 1 Thessalonians 1: 3 the full character of Christian state and service.

40 1 TIMOTHY

Gives us the right ordering of the church in its normal condition; 2 Timothy, the path of faith when it is in an abnormal condition - when it is in disorder. You have in 1 Timothy 3: 15 the principle of Timothy's conduct. These epistles, and that to Titus, are not addressed to churches, nor were they to be communicated to the churches as such (the church of God has them, which is another thing), although that which guided the conduct of individual Christians in them is of unceasing obligation.

2 TIMOTHY.

In 2 Timothy Paul saw himself at the close of his career, and though the church had all got into disorder, and he was looking at his course as closed, there is no epistle in which he so much insists on the unfailing courage and energy of the saints, calling upon them to endure the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; but we see his mind got off the connection of the outward church with the body of Christ, and recognising piety and devotedness where he could find it. You may take chapter 2: 18-22 as indicative of the tone of the instruction. As regards the state of the church, the faith of some being overthrown, he refers first to the sure foundation of God, the Lord knowing them that are His; next, to individual responsibility, whoever names the name of the Lord is to depart from iniquity. Then, as regards the assembly, he takes the great house as the analogy of it, and shews that in such there are vessels to dishonour, and that a man is to purge himself from these to be a vessel to honour, and to follow righteousness, etc., with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart, as distinguishing those who are really saints, and associating himself with them. In the next place he warns of perilous times in the last days - a form of godliness denying the power, and insists, besides his personal authority, upon the known scriptures as a child might read them, and asserts that they are sufficient to make us wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus; and, further, that whatever has a title to this name is given by inspiration of God, adequate to make the man of God perfect, throughly furnished to all good works.

41 TITUS.

Timothy had been left to watch over doctrine, but is directed as to the order of the church. Titus had been left to set in order the things which were wanting, and ordain elders, and the body of the directions here are about sound doctrine. We get a full statement of what may be called the Christian scheme in chapter 2: 11-14; and in chapter 3 exhortations to patience with all through the sense of grace bestowed on ourselves.

In all these three epistles God has specially the character of God the Saviour, with a reference of this title to all men.

PHILEMON

Is just the way the apostolic spirit of grace enters into details of comeliness of conduct, and does not merely rest on great principles of doctrine. Leaving the world in all its own recognised authorities where they are, it leads the individual Christian to act as the light of grace in respect of the relationships into which he had been brought by the world.

THE HEBREWS,

Founding itself on the person of Christ in His divine and human natures, gives to the word the personal authority of divine communication and all human sympathies to the exercise of the priesthood on high, and thus connects the saints walking upon earth with heaven, without constituting them the body of Christ in union with Christ; thus setting aside all ancient Judaism, and giving a present heavenly call, but laying the ground for the after introduction of Israel by the new covenant. With this view, it puts all in Christianity in contrast, though in comparison and analogy, and a certain connection with what had gone before. The connection, however, only applies to the first part, the communicated word, because it looks on Christ, as to that, as still on earth.

In chapter 1 we get the groundwork of the authority of the communicated word in the divinity of Christ. This is continued in chapter 3, adding to it Christ's authority as Son over His own house, in contrast with Moses, down to chapter 4: 13, with the promise of rest to the people of God. Chapter 2 lays the foundation of future dominion and present priesthood in the human nature of Christ. This is continued from chapter 4: 14; the glory of it is expounded in chapter 5, as to the person and office of Christ; the impossibility of returning to Jewish elements is thereupon insisted upon, on the ground that if heavenly Christian things were departed from, there was no bringing back by some other power; and that from elements they were to go on to that, God having encouraged them by declaring the immutability of His counsel to the heirs of promise by word and oath, strengthening us thus who look within the veil, where Christ is entered for us as forerunner, a high priest after the order of Melchisedec (chap. 6).

42 This character of Melchisedec involves the necessary setting aside of the whole system of the law, the priesthood itself being changed from dying men to the living Son, the priesthood suiting us, being that of One holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens (chap 7).

In chapter 8, having the high priest set on the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, offerings are needed: but, before touching on the offerings, the change of covenant is declared on which this ministry is founded, inasmuch as He is the mediator of it. Now, for the better and heavenly tabernacle, we must have better sacrifices.

But in the tabernacle itself there was a difference. The veil was unrent in the Jewish tabernacle, as set up of old; but now the veil is rent, the Holy Ghost thereby signifying, that as long as that first tabernacle had any place, the way into the holiest was not yet opened. Remark here, that in verses 16 and 17 of chap. 9 alone the Greek word bears the sense of testament; in all the rest of the passage it should be covenant. The blood of Christ purges the conscience, not merely sins, and cleanses the whole scene of the creature's relationship with God. The next contrast is, that He had not to offer Himself often to enter into the heavenly tabernacle, for then He must have suffered often; but at the close of all the ways of God to test the world, He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. The apostle then contrasts the lot of man, subject to death and judgment, and Christ, as once offered to bear the sins of many, and coming, without any further question of sin, for salvation to those who look for Him (chap. 9).

He then discusses the whole bearing of this sacrifice, alleging that a person once cleansed by it has no more conscience of sins; whereas in the repeated sacrifices, there was a remembrance of sins. He then unfolds the origin of this sacrifice in the will of God, who prepared a body for Christ, who offers Himself to accomplish it in the same willingness; does accomplish it, and sits down for ever at the right hand of God, instead of standing, like the old high priests, offering often; because by the one offering He has perfected for ever those who are sanctified thereby. The Holy Ghost bears divine testimony to this, declaring, "their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." Thus we have the good will of God, the work of Christ, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost, to give us a divine security of unalterable peace. Thereon he exhorts them to enter into the holiest through the new living way of the rent veil, in full assurance of faith; warning them, that for the same reason, if the one sacrifice be abandoned there remains no other; shewing them that they have need of patience, but that Christ would soon come, and that meanwhile they must live by faith (chap. 10).

43 To this purpose, he shews that all the saints highly esteemed amongst them obtained their good report by faith. In this list he first lays down the great principles - creation, known by faith; sacrifice, offered to obtain righteousness by faith; walking with God by faith in the power of life; and acting on the prophecy of coming events by faith. We then get two great classes of faith - trust in God, and patient expectancy of faith, and the active energy of faith. All the detailed cases are taken when they were not in the land. He then goes through various sufferings endured of the saints by faith, proving that the world was not worthy of them, and that they died, not having received the effect of the promise, God having reserved some better thing for us, before they could be made perfect (chap. 11).

He then introduces Christ as the last great witness, who has overcome, and is set down at the right hand of God, and has there obtained the glory. He then shews that suffering has the additional character of parental discipline, but that withal they are come to grace, and not law and terror; but, in doing this, he gives the whole millennial result in heaven and earth, as that to which they are come in faith. He then shews that everything made will be shaken, and insists on their leaving the Jewish camp, that is, the principle of connection between religion and the world; but to go out to Jesus on the ground of His being a sin-offering; because, upon the principle of an effectual sin-offering, they must either be in heaven where the blood is, or outside the camp, or gate, where the sin-offering was burnt. He closes with a few exhortations (chaps. 12, 13).

44 JAMES.

In James you get the perfect law of liberty applied to the Christian's path; looking for patience, so that the will should not act, and confidence in God, so that wisdom and strength should be acquired. If there is evil, it comes from man - if good, from the unchangeable God, who of His own will begat us by the word of truth (chap. 1). He then, as he does afterwards, introduces sweeping denunciations against the spirit of the world and of riches. He speaks of three laws - the law of God, as to which, if we offend in one point, we are guilty of all; the royal law, "love your neighbour as yourself"; and the law of liberty, by which our conduct is to be judged, and where the will of God and the nature we have got run in one channel together. Mere faith of the head is treated as worthless, and its producing works is the test for man of its being living faith. But the works are only viewed as works of faith. Those he refers to would have been bad works, except upon that principle (chap. 2).

Redemption is not adverted to in James; but self-subjection is insisted on, specially as regards the tongue. Hence warning against being many teachers, and the true character of heavenly wisdom. The fruits of righteousness are sown in peace.

The epistle closes with a strong exhibition of the power of the prayer of faith. It is addressed to the twelve tribes; but faith in Christ, and the existence of the assembly, are distinctly recognised, although the synagogue be also recognised as still in existence.

1 PETER.

The Epistles of Peter, while stating redemption, refer especially to the government of God - the first to His government in favour of the saints, and the second in judgment of the wicked. The saints are not seen risen with Christ, but begotten again to a lively hope by His resurrection, and pursuing their pilgrimage, as strangers, towards an incorruptible inheritance, reserved in heaven for them, they being kept by the power of God through faith, but waiting for the appearing of Christ for full deliverances They are spoken of, however, as receiving the end of their faith, the salvation of their souls. He marks out the progress of the revelation of this: first, the prophets testifying beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glories following; then, the same things reported in the gospel preached by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; then, patience till the revelation of Jesus Christ brought these things to them: "Hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." On this ground they are called on to walk in sobriety, obedience, and holiness, on the double ground, that He who called them is holy, and that they call on the Father, who judges without respect of persons every man's work. But this is founded on redemption by the blood of Christ, and being born again of the incorruptible seed of the word, while they believe in God through Christ, whom He had raised from the dead, and to whom He had given glory, all flesh being as grass, but the word of the Lord enduring for ever.

45 The persons addressed are the scattered believing remnant of Israel in various countries of Asia Minor. Hence he distinguishes them as living stones, come to be built on the living Stone, owned of God and of them as precious, but a stone of stumbling and rock of offence to disobedient Israel. He then applies Exodus 19 and Hosea 2: 23, and hence exhorts them to walk blameless in the midst of the Gentiles who spake against them, which would force them to glorify God in the day of their visitation. He then exhorts them to suffer patiently, seeing that, like Christ, it was the Christian's place to do good, suffer for it, and take it patiently. This leads him to refer again to Christ bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, referring to Isaiah 53.

46 Then, with various exhortations on details of conduct, he refers to the government of God securing us in peacefulness but if they suffered for righteousness' sake they were happy beautifully adding that Christ had suffered once for sins, and that this ought to suffice. They ought to suffer for righteousness, if they suffered at all. He then refers to His being put to death in the flesh as the ground of their arming themselves with the same mind, inasmuch as in death there was found the having done with sin. He then presses the doing everything on the ground of ability from God, and as of God, whether it be spiritual, or in reference to common things. He then encourages in suffering reproaches for Christ's sake, which is an advance on suffering for righteousness' sake. (This is the only place where we are called Christians.) They are to rejoice in it as partakers of Christ's sufferings; but also with the consciousness that the time had come for judgment to begin at the house of God.

We then get exhortations to elders and to the younger, and to humbleness under God's hand, sobriety and diligence, and resistance to Satan, the apostle finally commending them to the God of all grace.

2 PETER.

In this second Epistle, which he writes to the same persons who have received (not the Messiah in glory, but) precious faith as the apostle had through God's righteousness, he shews that in the midst of incoming evil God's divine power had given everything necessary to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who had called them by glory and virtue. He then urges them to all diligence in everything that would give them an abundant entrance into the kingdom, and without which they would be purblind as Christians. He shews them that he must shortly put off this tabernacle; and writes that they might have the testimony after he was gone. He shews them that the transfiguration had confirmed prophetic testimony of the kingdom they were waiting for, and asserts that all scripture tends to one common purpose, being the fruit of one Spirit, and not of the will of man.

He then warns them of false teachers, denying the authority of Christ, whom many would follow, insisting on their wickedness, but shewing that God could deliver the righteous, and reserve the unjust to the day of judgment to be punished. He gives their character, specially in the working of the will of man in lasciviousness and insubordination; adding to this another characteristic - their scoffing at the doctrine of the Lord's return. He thereupon refers to the deluge as a judgment already once executed, and the day of the Lord, in which the judgment by fire would come, and all that nature trusted in disappear, pressing this as a motive of holiness upon the saints.

1 JOHN

Exhibits to us specially divine life in the person of Christ, but communicated to us, and the traits which serve as a proof that the life is there. He first speaks of this life as he had known it in Christ on earth; shewing it as the means of communion with the Father and the Son, so that our joy may be full. But He who was and is this life has given, yea, has been, the absolute revelation of God as light, so that we are placed here to walk in the light as God is in it, the blood of Christ cleansing us that we may do so; and in this we have fellowship together. But it shews us all sin in ourselves (chap. 1). Further, the intercession or advocacy of Christ with the Father, founded on His being the righteous one, and the propitiation for our sin, is introduced as the means of restoring us to communion in the light when we have failed in our walk down here through weakness (chap. 2: 1, 2).

47 Obedience to Christ's commandments, or practical righteousness and love to the brethren, are next presented as proofs of the possession of this life. Before unfolding this, he gives the ground of writing to the saints: that all are forgiven, and that babes in Christ have the Spirit of adoption. He divides Christians into three classes - fathers, young men, and babes. This classification he repeats twice. The fathers have but one mark; they know Him who is from the beginning. The young men are strong, are in conflict, have overcome the wicked one, the word of God abiding in them. They are warned not to love the world. The little children, while knowing the Father, are the second time carefully warned as to deceivers; but their own competency as having the Holy Ghost, and their responsibility to judge, are pressed upon them (chap. 2).

He then shews them, as already sons, that is, as having the same name as Christ, knowing that they will be like Him when He appears, and hence purifying themselves as He is pure. The contradiction of the new nature to sin is then brought out distinctly, sin being lawlessness (not the transgression of the law). This new nature is shewn in practical righteousness and love of the brethren. The obedient person, moreover, dwells in God, and God in him. The proof of God dwelling in us is, that He has given us the Holy Ghost (chap. 3).

He then gives directions to distinguish Him from evil spirits, by referring to owning Christ come in the flesh; but having introduced the Holy Ghost in connection with the new nature, he shews that this new nature is a partaking of the divine nature, which is love; and hence, he that loves is born of God and knows God, for God is love. This love is displayed in three ways. First, towards us, by God sending His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him, and to make propitiation for our sins. Secondly, as dwelling in love, we dwell in God, and God in us, He having given us of His Spirit, and thus His love is perfected in us. This is true of every one who really confesses that Jesus is the Son of God. Thirdly, that the love of God is perfected with us, so as to give boldness in the day of judgment; because, Christ being our life, and the Spirit of God dwelling in us, as Christ is so are we in this world. We love God because He first loved us; and if this be true, we love the brethren as God has commanded us (chap. 4).

48 This term brethren includes all that are born of God but the truth of this love to the brethren is tested by love to God, which is proved by keeping His commandments. To this end faith overcomes the world.

We have then eternal life declared to be given us, and this life to be in the Son, so that he that has the Son has life, and he who has not the Son has not life. The witnesses for this, that is, that it is in Christ, and not in the first Adam or as his children, are three - the Spirit, the water, and the blood: the water and the blood coming out of Christ's side in death, and the Holy Ghost given consequent on His ascension. This gives us confidence for asking everything according to God's will; and so for a brother who has failed, provided it is not a sin to death. The new nature we have received is incapable of sin; and he who has it keeps himself, and the wicked one touches him not. Finally, an absolute distinction is made between Christians and the world. "We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lieth in wickedness." Further, we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, that is, in His Son Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life.

2 JOHN

Insists upon love being governed by the truth; that whoever does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God; and that one who brought a doctrine which denied Him was not to be let into the house or wished God speed. A lady was competent for this.

49 3 JOHN,

On the contrary, urges the reception of those who went about preaching the truth; resists the hindrance of local authority, and commends Gaius, and as a fellow-helper of the truth itself. The doctrine of reward to the workman, through the perseverance of those who are the fruit of His work, is brought forward in verse 4 of this epistle, as in chapter 2: 28 of the first epistle.

Notice that 3 John 7 throws light on the word "ours" in 1 John 2: 2.

JUDE.

Having a great analogy to 2 Peter 2, refers, however, to a very different principle. Peter speaks of wickedness; Jude, of leaving the first estate, or apostasy. He traces this in the Christian system, from the creeping in of false brethren, to the judgment executed by Christ when He comes again; and he declares the objects of that judgment to be the same persons. He notices at the same time distinct characters of evil in Cain, Balaam, and Korah: natural departure from God; ecclesiastical corruption, or teaching error for reward; and, lastly, open rebellion. Lasciviousness and insubordination are again pointed out as their great principles. The saints are exhorted to edify themselves in their most holy faith, praying in the power of the Holy Ghost, and to keep themselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. They are to make a difference between persons dragged in, and spotted ones whom they are to save with fear. He looks to the saints, in spite of all the evil, being kept from falling, and presented faultless before the presence of God's glory with exceeding joy, for God is able to do it.

THE REVELATION.

The Book of Revelation is the return of the Spirit's witness to God's relationship with the earth, the church, as an earthly witness, being first contemplated and passed in review in its various phases, and then the saints of the heavenly calling being seen only in heaven; the preparation made for the introduction of the first-begotten into the world; the judgments of God caused to pass in prophetic vision before our eyes; and then the King of kings and Lord of lords Himself introduced, accompanied by the heavenly saints, to execute judgment, and to set up the kingdom which shall never be removed. At the beginning and close we have the thoughts and feelings of the saints, to whom the communication of the revelation is made: the first, in looking back at their own part in that which laid the foundation of Christ's title; and the latter, at their own portion with Christ Himself, in looking forward to the glory and what they have meanwhile - what the glory gives them the conscience of. The first refers to the cross, and its bearing on them (which brought in judgment on the world); and the second, to the glory of Christ and its present fruit.

50 The first chapter presents God as supreme and eternal, the Holy Spirit in His attributes of divine administration, and Christ in the glory in which He is connected with the earth. He is coming. Then He is seen as One having called John's attention to it on earth, not in service but in judgment, in the midst of the candlesticks, the place of light in the world, judging their state. We find a divine person, but the Son of man, having subordinate representative authority in His hand - (stars, angels of churches).

These things were seen - "the things that are" next. We get the history of the church: first, in its ecclesiastical state - the four first churches; next, in a state free from the gross corruptions come in, put upon the question of its personal fidelity to Christ. In the first four, are departure from first love, persecution, the world its dwelling-place, and false teachers seducing the saints; their corruption settled there, and the saints thus to wait for Christ's coming, who is given to them in His own heavenly unseen associations, and the visible kingdom too. In these characters, the character of Christ as walking amidst the candlesticks, is given, on which to base the warnings and promises. In the three last, they are new characteristics, save the stars, which are not said to be in His hand; and all refer to the coming of the Lord - more or less - which is spoken of as warning or promise in the two first. In the last it is not judged as Thyatira, but spued out of His mouth (chaps. 2, 3).

The vision then changes to heaven, and the world's judgment is entered upon as flowing thence. The saints are viewed as enthroned and crowned there. God's throne of judgment is set up there, and ministers of His government proclaim His glory, and the saints worship (chap. 4).

51 There the Lamb appears, and His title to open the book of God's ways is owned, and His glory is celebrated. The angels are seen for the first time, and standing around the inner circle who are connected with the throne. The elders, note, all through give their reasons for worship. The Lamb now opens the book (chap. 5).

The providential history of God's dealings in the Western Roman earth is given. Then the martyrs are seen, and cry for judgment; and there is a universal subversion of the subsisting powers, so that men are alarmed as if the day of the Lord were come (chap. 6).

The remnant of Israel is marked out for preservation the multitude of the Gentiles to be spared, owned (chap. 7).

The trumpets are the first four specific judgments on the Western Roman earth, on all earthly prosperity and power (chap. 8). The next two are the judgments on men, whose portion is on the earth, but in the east (chap, 9). Then a parenthesis shews the connection of the great Western beast or empire with the cast, and the testimony given there, which comes to a close before the end of the period of the second woe - trumpet; and last follows the seventh trumpet, which closes the whole scene (chaps. 10, 11.

A new vision of special dealings is now opened, and more connected with the religious condition of men; but the Jews, hence, are at once in the scene.

The Jewish people are seen, as heaven sees them, in the counsels and purposes of God. So there a Son is to be born, who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron - Christ; and, I doubt not, the whole church united to Him. But this is taken out of the way of the dragon to heaven and God's throne; and the woman - the Jewish people in the latter day in distress - flees from the persecution three years and a half into the wilderness. Thus the great elements of the whole scene are brought before us. Next it is presented historically. There is war in heaven. Satan is cast down, having then great rage; his time, he knows, is short; his career in heaven is ended; the accusation of the saints on the earth over; but he persecutes the Jews, who, as we have seen, flee; but he turns to persecute the witnesses amongst them (chap. 12).

Next, the earthly agents are seen: the beast, with seven heads and ten horns absorbing the other, receives his power from Satan for 1260 days, blasphemes what is heavenly, and persecutes the saints; a second beast, in the prophetic and royal characters of Messiah, ministers to and exercises his power, and makes the world worship him, doing miracles, giving breath to the image which he has caused to be made to him (chap. 13).

52 Then we have the remnant who suffer like Christ - the testimony, and judgments, and warnings of God; and, finally, the judgment of the earth, and the destruction of the wicked by the Son of man. This closes this vision (chap. 14).

Another great sign, not synchronical, or consecutive, follows. It reaches down to the third thing noticed in the previous chapter. Here the saints are viewed in rest, who pass through the time of tribulation. The sea of glass is mingled with fire (chap. 15). Then the vials are poured out. They are on the earth, and strike the beast's kingdom particularly, and those who dwell in it. Then all the kings of the earth are gathered; for the smiting galls their pride, and does not correct them; and the last judgment of God is executed even on Babylon (chap. 16), the beast remaining for the Lamb's (chap. 17: 14).

This gives occasion to give a description of what she is, how she rides the beast, and corrupts all nations: but then more fully of the beast himself and his horns, for whom judgment is yet reserved. The Lamb shall overcome them. Babylon is Rome (chaps. 17, 18).

When Babylon is judged, the marriage of the Lamb takes place, for He is now coming forth out of His heavenly withdrawal to be revealed in the earth (the rapture of the church belongs to church revelation - could not come into the Book of Revelation, though we may see the saints in heaven). Then He comes forth as King of kings and Lord of lords, as the word of God in judgment: the saints, witnessed in righteousness, in the fruit of their works, accompany Him. The beast is taken and the false prophet, and are cast into their final doom (the false prophet is the second beast now, being with the beast; his royal character has disappeared): the rest are slain. This is the judgment of power and war (chap. 19).

Therewith Satan is bound, and shut up in the abyss for a thousand years. Then follows sessional judgment, which will last. They are on thrones, for this is royal judgment, and judgment is given to them, all the heavenly saints. This is the first resurrection; then the second, in which the dead are brought up to be judged, not to life and to judge (chap. 20).

53 Then heaven and earth flee away, death and hades give up all, and God is all in all in a new heavens and new earth (chap. 21: 1-8).

Then the Spirit returns to give a description of the heavenly Jerusalem (as He had of Babylon and its relationship to the earth) during the millennium (chaps. 21: 9 to 22: 5).

After warnings to those who are in the time of the book, and to all, Christ comes forward Himself as the One who had given the revelation. This draws out in the bride, with whom is the Spirit, the desire of His coming; and her whole position - towards Christ, towards those who hear the word, towards sinners - is vividly expressed. John seals with his own desires those of the church, that Jesus should even come (chap. 22: 6-21).

The re-introduction of God's government into this world in Christ, in this book, and the discovery of the relative position of the church, is full of interest. It closes, in this sense, the canon and scriptural subjects (complete in this entirely), with the doctrine of the church. But as this was to come in meanwhile and was heavenly, the judgment already revealed, and the course of worldly dealings (on God's part that led to it), are confided to the church to close the book historically, as the church closed it doctrinally, as [herself] above the world.

Hints on the Book of Genesis:

Being the substance of remarks at a Scripture reading.

J. N. Darby.

<19002E> 54

Genesis does not begin with any counsels nor even with the existence of God, though both are given in the New Testament.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": this is the opening of the creation. There is nothing of counsels, but you are before the world, and also get more in the New Testament. Time begins with the responsible earth, the creation of that in which the first Adam was placed; but there is nothing of the plans of God here. Promises and ways come afterwards, and the existence of God is assumed very naturally. His counsels are not brought out. This is not unimportant to notice: the whole plan of God is not here at all. There is the sphere first created in which the man was to be put, and the broad fact that God created everything; but even so we do not get everything, for the angels are not here. Yet we know from Job that, when this took place, "the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy."

The subject is really the responsible man, though you must have the earth where the man was, and the dust to take and make him out of it. And when we come to know the truth, this is really important. The whole of "our glory" belongs to God's counsels. We had the two things in the cross: Christ made sin for us, which looked back on the responsible or first Adam; and also the foundation for bringing out God's counsels laid in the second Man. The first part only, as to responsibility, is here, promises come after. Even of creation it is only in respect of man, and not of angels. We see how different a sphere grace is from the creation, in that God takes up the first creature of the revelation here, and goes down through his sin below any creature, for it is unto death, and then takes him up far above all creatures in His Son, and so makes a totally new and different thing altogether.

What a petty thing is all the Darwinian theory of progress! The author of it goes through all the lowest things up to the highest; God takes man, and puts him (in the person of His Son) down lower than all. This is far more wonderful.

55 The first fact is, God created the heavens and the earth, that is, the universe. Nothing is said about what then happened.

In verse 2 we get the earth in a state of chaos.

In verse 16 "the stars also" come in by the bye; for God had created them when He made the heavens. Afterwards the earth "was without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep," that is, the formative agency of God.

The word "created" (v. 1) is right, that is, originally (though used of "great whales," and also said of "man," when it is progressive formation). But in verse 2 the action is only where the darkness was, on the face of the deep. The mention of the darkness sweeps away a whole range of geological infidelity, because they say light began here. But you find ichthyosauri had eyes, and they were created long before. All that is said is that darkness was upon the face of the deep, and not that there was no light; the contrary rather is implied. Where the ichthyosauri were, there must be light: and they are found in strata, which, if you take them for anything at all, would shew that thousands of years had passed since they lived. If you get a thing with eyes, it is fair to suppose that there was light for it. The deep was chaos, an unformed state of things. And this was subsequent to a state of light. I have no difficulty about the light. As for geology, it is not the object of scripture to teach it.

It is not that God formed the heavens and the earth (v. 1) in a chaotic state; but we here find (v. 2) the earth so, "without form and void." It is not said how long elapsed. However I do not at all believe the dates that are given, though we need not allude to this here.

The scriptures do not tell me about these early animals. Why want the Bible to tell me about fish that eat other fish? There they are; and I can go and see the fossils, if I want it. As for death too, it may have existed long before among these animals; there is nothing to intimate that it did not. If it be urged as the general thought that death came on animals because of sin, the answer is that so it did in this present state of the world.

Geologists pretend that a given sandbank must have taken so many thousand years to form, and so on. Without believing them, one can let them take any length of time they like; and still the word of God is sufficient for the believer. There is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and then, all that scene of them being there left out, this earth is without form and void.

56 Who could tell what God ought to create?

The passage in Isaiah 45: 18, "he created it not in vain (chaotic)," is conclusive that the earth was not created chaotic at first.

The earth got into the state of chaos - it may be by what destroyed the animals; but we know nothing about it: what I do know by faith is that God created everything.

Then follows a detailed account of this earth, as we have it God makes a place to put man in (Gen. 1: 3-31).

Not a word is heard that beasts were created immortal. Rather, I suppose, animals were made to be destroyed, because Peter says they were made to be taken and destroyed. Yet the expression, "beasts that perish," is merely a fact stated; and Peter may possibly only refer to the present state of animals.

But it seems to me a much more laborious thought that God created all sorts of dead animals lodged in strata and stone, and elsewhere, though I do not care to take up the question myself

As a general fact there is an order from the positions relatively of these animals, shells, fishes, etc. There is a proof of order in these, though I have no interest in it myself one way or another. Clearly too scripture leaves a gap, and that gap is ample for any such purpose. We find God creates things "good."

There had been pitch darkness; and then it is not that the evening and the morning make a day, for they would not. But after the darkness, which did not count, we get the light, and then the evening and the morning make the day. The pitch darkness did not count for time. God causes light to be; that is day, and He calls it day: then came the evening and the morning with the light again, In Israel it is clear they counted any part as a whole; if a king reigned as from December 30, they would count in a whole year, and the king that had reigned through that year had that year too, and this creates many difficulties in chronologies. You must count the day first, and then get the evening and the morning to complete the day. The morning is the coming back of dawn. It comes from the revolving of the earth now; but when God said, Light be, it came at once, and that is day, not morning. It is broad day, it lights all up; and it is said, "He called it day." Light was. The sun is not mentioned here, though I have no doubt it was created long before. But as to the earth, there was light before the sun was set to give light by day. This is revealed. Think now, if I had been making a book, should I ever have thought of making a difficulty like this on purpose?

57 They say by light there is no gold, or silver, or lead in the sun, but plenty of iron and other things. When observing a total eclipse, they were astonished to see like little red mountains round the sun; by enlarging the spectrum they lessened the light as the sun shines, and then they saw all this without an eclipse.

If the question be asked whether God created everything in the earth in maturity, such as the coal measures, I answer that, if God had said it, I should have believed it directly, in spite of all the geologists in the world.

Observe, in verse 20, "and fowls that may fly" should be, "and let fowl fly." It is not that the water brought them forth, but God formed them out of the ground (see Gen. 2: 19).

"The firmament" is the expanse. God made a heaven, so to speak, to this earth.

I believe myself that they were six days of twenty-four hours each, having no scripture reason against it.

Now we get after the six days' work, in verse 25, "and God saw that it was good"; and what is important for us to notice is, that the creation of that day is finished like the others (except the first two), "and God saw that it was good." He has done with creation, as creation, and now begins counsels in the most solemn way: "Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness, and let them have dominion," etc. Thus the creation as the sphere and scene is quite complete, and then God makes man in His own image, and sets him over it all. But you have it in the most formal manner: the subject creation is completed, and then the lord of it is brought forward in this way. I get, over fish and fowl and beast and everything that is created, something in God's counsels that is lord over all. Man stands quite alone: all is finished; and then he has dominion over it.

58 "Image" is different from "likeness." In the image he stands as the representative of God. If I say, image of Jupiter, it is not likeness merely, but the image stands there to represent him. And so did man. He was there the centre of all the affections of the whole world, and he ought to have stood so. You never have an angel set over anything so, but here man is the central object of all, and he represented God too. But he was also made after God's own "likeness." He was not righteous and holy, but sinless and innocent. Righteous supposes a judicial estimate of right and wrong, but man had not this at all until he had eaten the forbidden fruit. Till then there was nothing evil in him: when fallen, he got conscience to judge good and evil.

Likeness is moral. Man was made like God morally; he was made upright.

There is a figure here in man and woman before the fall for the apostle uses it so. But Eve came out as a distinct thing.

It is well to notice that God takes counsel "let us," etc. If you make the distinction of the persons of the Godhead, I am not aware that creation is personally attributed to any but Christ and the Spirit. Every operation is the direct work of the Spirit, not that He is an independent Spirit, but God. The three are united in scripture. The Son was working, and He says, "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works," and again, "if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils." But you do not find stated in scripture that the Father created; it says God; and this is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is so far important to see that we have the divine agency. The particular operation of miracles was by the Spirit. "If I by the Spirit cast out"; by "his Spirit garnished the heavens"; and when Christ was raised, He was "quickened by the Spirit." I can allow nothing, therefore, that attempts to lower our thoughts of the Son and of the Spirit.

Holiness supposes good and evil, and the hating the evil and the loving the good; innocence does not know of evil. In righteousness I see judicial authority about it, but holiness is the nature repelling or delighting in. Righteousness is the judgment formed either in mind or in act.

So God created man in His own image. Verse 27 states the fact, though they were created afterwards. The animals were there, and now God says, I am going to have something higher; and man stood there representing God in the earth, made with no evil in him. He still has that character, though it is all in ruin. 1 Corinthians 11: 7 says he is the image and glory of God. James 3: 9 speaks of men having been made after God's likeness.

59 Then God gives the seeds to man, and the green herbs to animals,

We shall see in chapter 2 that man's responsibility rested entirely on the forbidden fruit, the eating of which was evil only because God had forbidden it.

"To every beast of the earth I have given every green herb for meat." This would imply that animals were not carnivorous. There is a difference between cattle and beasts; but in that statement the cattle are left out; the "beasts" are what we call wild beasts. It is perfectly competent to God to have restricted them for the time, or to have changed them.

Chapter 2. It is striking to notice that, except in setting the seventh day apart, you never have holiness mentioned in Genesis, nor do you get it anywhere until redemption is accomplished. And you never get God dwelling with man until then. He visits Adam and Abraham, and no more; but the moment we find redemption, holiness and a dwelling-place for God are spoken of. God created them in innocence, but there is no habitation for Him on earth then. Immediately after redemption, He says, "make me a habitation," and He did dwell among them. So, the moment the people were redeemed, He says, "be holy."

Here we have a day set apart to God, to which I attach no small importance, and to what the day means also. In connection with the question, I believe the sabbath-day is an essential part of man's nature and of his rest in God. I remember saying, outside a town in Germany, when looking at some crows flying, "Well, there is a creature that has nothing to say to God, and to it one day is the same as another." But the fact that man has something to say to God proves that he must have a day set apart from the remainder. It was God's rest here, and man was to have part in it. According to the commandment, everything men had was to enjoy that day (Gen. 2: 1-3).

Man ought to have enjoyed it before Exodus 16, but did not, because the first thing he did was to sin. The point of this is, that it is the rest of the first creation; and, now that sin has entered in, you cannot have a rest in the first creation. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." How can a holy God have rest in the midst of sin and misery? What kind of rest can God have here? That is Christ's answer. God could have destroyed them as sinners; but if not, He must work.

60 If revealed to Adam, he did not enter into it. There are signs of it from Adam to Moses in a way, but no sign that man really kept it. Man had fallen away from God, and all was wrong, There is nothing to shew that he did not know of it.

It is referred to in Hebrews "As I have sworn in my wrath if they shall enter into my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world." Then he quotes this passage, and says after, "there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God"; and you get this too, that our Lord says, "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." But then He takes it up in the Gospel of Mark in this way: that He, Christ, was the head of it, and so was not bound by it.

Christ was dead and gone into the grave on the Sabbath this indicates a great deal.

The sabbath is given in Exodus on the ground of creation, but in Deuteronomy because they were brought out of Egypt. Exodus is a typical book, and Deuteronomy consists of direction for what they were to do in the land, Exodus applying only to the wilderness in its latter half.

Then there is a very important thought - God was resting, and man does not enter into it but still there is a rest. The next point is, God sanctified it He set it apart from all the rest of time. The reason was God had rested, and, sin having come in, man could not rest in sin.

Now we come to "Jehovah God" (chap. 2: 4). Some have made a great talk about the difference between God and Jehovah, His nature as such, and His relationship with Israel. He was specifically revealed to the Jews by that name, because it is a term of relationship, and it was important for the Jews to know that their national God was the eternal true God, and no God beside Him, Jehovah Elohim.

First in creation you have God, Elohim, made this, and that, and the other. Now we find Him having to say morally to a particular part of His creation; and the moment we come to relative things we get Jehovah, as in chapter 2: 4. The whole chapter becomes relative now. Read verses 4-7. There is the history of the character of man in his great moral elements - man not made like the beasts of the field, but formed out of the dust of the ground; and when He has done that (and there one sees what death simply is, "dust thou art," and death is going back to it), then I get something that is not dust, something directly from God, and this makes all the difference.

61 The beasts were formed out of the earth, and the man is formed into shape first, and then God says, "I am going to connect this with myself," and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. By "connect" I do not mean that the man might not fall away from God in will, for he could; but the breath of life which made him a living soul was directly from God; He was capable of dying, but still he had the breath of life from God immediately, which was a thing distinct from every other animal.

"A living soul" means anything that lives by blood and breath. I say this because it says, "whereinsoever was the breath of life, died"; all animals were living souls. Man was, and the animal was; but the essential difference was that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living soul. This might be separated from his body, and the body return to the dust. That is what is referred to in "for we also are his offspring." As I said to an Annihilationist, Do you mean to call a pig God's offspring? Neither would Adam have died if he had not eaten of the forbidden fruit. His body is formed first without life, and the way he gets life is by God's breathing into his nostrils the breath of life; he receives it as a creature, but direct from God. Adam was not made as other animals were.

"This mortal," or "mortal body," leaves the soul by implication immortal. "Mortal" is always used of the body; and it is clear that death does not touch the soul, for you have the wicked man in hades after death. I am quite satisfied that it is true to say "immortal soul." The opposite thought is founded on the words, "who only hath immortality," spoken of God, of course (that is, who only hath it in Himself); but this does not mean that He cannot communicate it. So the angels are only immortal by God's making them so, and we the same. If I were immortal in spite of God, then I might do as I like without fear of death. In the rich man and Lazarus is a perfectly clear case: the one goes to torment, the other to Abraham's bosom, after death. But they say "these are only figures." "Yes," I reply, "but figures of what?" I am not going to Abraham's bosom, but I am to Christ. I asked them this, "Could God give eternal life to a dog?" Yes. "But would the dog be answerable for what he had been doing while he was a dog?" and if he would not be, Christ had not to die for him, and so they destroy atonement. Put it in another way: if I am a mere brute, only a clever brute, until I get Christ as my life, my responsibility is gone.

62 But man was put in his place of responsibility not to eat the forbidden fruit, a thing in which there was no evil, save that it was forbidden.

And you get a striking thing here, one which has been a question even with heathens, and it is also a ground of discussion between Calvinists and Arminians: the tree of life, which is free gift; and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is responsibility. Man has been trying to unite these in himself, and never can. Man did take the responsibility-tree, and was lost.

Then the promise came to Abraham to shew that grace was really the thing after all - the tree of life; and then came the law, the other tree. People have made the life dependent upon the responsibility-tree, which is utter folly.

But we find in Christ the two principles united; for He is the man who charges Himself with our responsibility, as He is Himself the life. If I have Christ for my life, with whom also I have died, I can bring the two together. But if taken out of Christ, it is impossible to unite the two things, any more than they were one in the garden.

If Adam had eaten of the tree of life, he would have been an immortal sinner. As he was, we have got the responsibility-man, not the man of God's counsels; but to faith the first or responsibility-man is set aside for Christ, the Second man. We have Christ as our life, and are bound to live in that life, and not in the old man. When it comes to a question of responsibility and judgment, I say I am not in the old man, but in Christ, And in my actual condition I say, Christ is in me, and I am to manifest Him as my life.

But there is more than this. God took the man, and put him in the garden to dress and keep it, gave him one commandment, and then said, "It is not good that the man should be alone." So He gives him a wife, and also puts him in the place of authority, which is shewn by bringing everything to Adam to be named. Giving a name is an act of authority all through scripture. And Adam says of his wife, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman." There we get the institution of marriage, but, above all, Christ and the church. We see dominion which is entirely in Adam, not in the woman. Dominion belongs to Christ; but, being rejected, and accomplishing redemption, He is exalted on high, and instead of dominion He gets the church, which He associates with Himself now, as well as when He is in the dominion. This is the place of the church, which is neither the Lord nor the subject creature, but is associated with the Lord over the creation. God's plans are here in imagery. Adam was "the figure of him that is to come" (Rom. 5: 14) He was head over all things to Eve, who was bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. We have in this relationship two states, the actual responsibility as created (which Christ was in a certain sense), and then what was historically true, the image of Him that was to come. Christ gave up everything, leaving father and mother (that is, Israel, if you take it as a figure). How often we hear it said, that Christ was bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh! No doubt He did become incarnate; but really it is when He is in glory that we are made bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh; the other is never said in scripture.

63 Thus we have the responsible man set up, but still a figure of Him that is to come; and as Eve out of Adam, we are all taken out of Christ, in a sense; we are quickened together with Christ when He has gone down into death, and we are set aside in the place He has taken. just so the deep sleep fell upon Adam, and the rib is taken and made a woman, and is brought to him.

But observe in chapter 3 that the point is not knowledge of good and knowledge of evil, which is a mere blunder. The question of the tree was not conscience. If it had not been forbidden, he was just as free to eat as anything else. Thus we acquire the knowledge of good and evil, and hence conscience. You see it as early as anything in a child. It slaps its mother, say, and you hold up your finger - it understands very well that it has done wrong. God says, "the man is become as one of us"; that is, he has got intrinsically the knowledge of good and evil. If a boy at school steals one of his companions' marbles, he hides it, for he knows he has done wrong. It is no question of commandments here; though it was by the breach of a commandment that conscience was got.

64 Adam was enjoying good in the garden, although the knowledge of good would not have been so full. I quite admit my knowledge may be corrupted; still, I do a thing because it is right. I may think I am doing a very good thing to put my father in the Ganges at a certain time of life, because then he will go to Buddha or some one; but it is only the difference of good and evil I know; it is not knowledge of good and knowledge of evil. The thing for Adam was not an intrinsic knowledge of good and evil, which was not required, but only a question of obedience. Man got a conscience by the fall, and he never got a conscience till it was a defiled one. But it may get hardened or seared.

Observe, in the account of the fall, that, before a lust comes in, there is another principle shewn, which is, that Adam, like Eve, lost confidence in God. The devil suggested that God kept something back from her because it would make her like God. "God doth know" - this is the reason you "may not eat this" - you will be as God, "knowing good and evil." At this suggestion, that the Lord had kept back the very best thing, Eve lost her confidence. But mark, when Christ comes into the world, I see Him walking through the world where all the evil is, to shew to man that, no matter how defiled it all is, we can have the fullest confidence in God. He comes to win back man's heart to God. There He was reconciling man to God. Were you, a woman, ever such a sinner, who could not shew your face to a fellow-creature, come to Him, and God will receive you. But this loss of confidence is just the same in all of us. If I trusted God to make me happy always, I should always do God's will. Suppose I do not trust Him to make me happy, then I must turn to myself. This is just what we see: men do not trust God to make them happy, and so they try to make themselves happy, This is the world.

We were speaking of the beautiful character of Christ's coming into the world in humiliation, God coming to win back man's heart to Himself. This goes beyond the chapter, but it is produced in souls at times before forgiveness is known. When there is a clear gospel, forgiveness comes out first, but many are like the poor "woman that was a sinner," who had her heart towards God or Christ, though she did not know forgiveness yet. There was faith in His person. She was attracted by the grace in Him, and broken down about her sinfulness (Luke 7). So many a pious soul now does not know forgiveness.

65 It is all a mistake to confound trust with faith, though no doubt faith produces confidence. You can hardly separate the two things, but there is this in faith: "he that believeth his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true." In Luke 7 it was a living word. But when I have the Spirit of adoption, I am a son. Christ revealed the Father: "I have manifested thy name"; "I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it." The moment the Son was there, the Father's name could be revealed; but it was not until the gift of the Holy Ghost that they had the Spirit of adoption. But in Christ here below, God was coming into the midst of sinners in love, and winning back their confidence; and one sees in the poor woman that was a sinner a heart trusting Him, though His work was not yet completed.

The temptation was, "ye shall be as God," not gods, "knowing good and evil." Eve takes, eats, and gives to her husband, who eats: thus their eyes were opened. The counterpart is seen (Phil. 2), and intended as such, in Jesus, "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; wherefore also God hath highly exalted him." That is, Christ in taking the place of the second Adam went exactly opposite to the first one. Adam was in the form of man, and set up to be as God; Christ is not only a man, but God, and did not set up, like Adam, to take what did not belong to Him, for He was God, but, having laid all aside, He became obedient unto death, the death of the cross. He goes down all the way, till He comes right down to death, death, yea, death of the cross - the exact contrast of what Adam did. You see the progress in Eve, When confidence is lost, the woman saw that the tree was good for food: lust comes in. It was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. Accordingly she eats, and then Adam eats. He was not deceived; the woman Eve was, and so was in the transgression.

66 The devil came hiding himself in that serpent, using it as an instrument of mischief.

"Dust" means utter and entire humiliation, as "lick the dust" "Arise ye that dwell in the dust," and so on. It is constantly used in this way. In Daniel 12 it is the same, "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth." In the text it is used to express the judgment that shall be upon the power of Satan.

It is curious in the olden times that they used to eat serpents to get wise. And it is wonderful how widespread was the idea of wisdom in the serpent. AEsculapius had a serpent in his temple. A serpent with his tail in his mouth was the image of eternity, the whole circle was in that. The Agatho-demon, or good demon, in Egypt was a winged serpent, They found represented in Mexico (though I do not know how far you can trust pictures) a woman under a tree, and the serpent offering the woman an apple. It was found as a picture. There was a great collection of such things: but it is all dispersed now. There were traces of similar things among the Druids, but evidently the Druids came from Persia.

Fallen, they knew good and evil, and that they were naked; they are under the shame of sin; and then we learn how utterly powerless all human means are to hide sin. The moment they hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, all the fig leaves are simply nothing. They were used to cover themselves from one another; but the moment God was there, they say that they are naked. Afterwards God made them coats of skins; it was a very different thing when God did it.

We do not know in what words the command was given; it is merely told us generally. It was pressed upon Eve's mind that she was to have nothing to say to it; she does not give exactly the words of God, "in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." It was probably her own impression, not the exact words of God - just the main effect produced on her mind.

It is well to remark that, before ever God turned Adam out, he had got away from God: I do not mean his heart merely, but he had a bad conscience; he went and hid himself in the trees of the garden, and that is the first of it. But the great question, besides what had been done, is, "Where art thou?" This is a far wider question than that to Cain - "What hast thou done?"

67 There is no history of man in innocence. The first thing we find in the history of man is the fall. Children were begotten after the fall, and all else follows. The fall comes in first both historically and morally; and so it has always been. The first thing Noah does is to get drunk. The children of Israel made a golden calf even before they had really got the law, though they had just promised obedience. It was the same thing with the priests, Nadab and Abihu: they offered strange fire the very first day; and then Aaron was forbidden to go into the most holy place in the garments of glory and beauty. Was not all this serious? It is not a question of the "first day" exactly, but of their first act noted in scripture. And it is just as true of the church. Peter says, "The time is come that judgment should begin at the house of God"; Paul, that "all were seeking their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's"; and then John says, "even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know it is the last time." All the apostles tell us so, though they stemmed the torrent while there. So Jude says, "of these Enoch prophesied, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment," etc. There they are, he says; more morally there, perhaps, than historically.

We see then that man departed from God before ever God turned him out; that is, his conscience drove him away from God, and in the end God drives him out. How God detects everything! "I was afraid because I was naked." . . . "Who told thee thou wast naked?" Now it comes to what he has done; the first point was, "Where art thou?" To Cain it was, "What hast thou done?"

As a matter of doctrine, I was led distinctly to notice this in the Epistle to the Romans. There first it is, "all have sinned"; then, "by one man sin entered." Thus it is our condition: what we have done is proof and fruit of it. Adam cannot be with God at all. Such is his condition; and then God asks, What have you done?

It was God looking for man, perhaps I should hardly say in grace; it was God coming in. Of course God knew everything; but, speaking as to His manner of dealing, He is expecting Adam to have intercourse with Him. God could go and walk there, and, according to the principles of His position, expect that Adam would receive Him as his benefactor. It is, "What has come of you?" so to speak. If one expects a person to be there, one says, "Where are you?" This brings out of Adam what the real state of the case was and when God asks, "How did that come about?" Adam does a base thing, for he says, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." It is "whom thou gavest." If you had not given me the woman, I should not have done it! as much as to say, "You may settle with the woman." And God says, "Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten": this is what He condemns Adam for. And whenever we make an excuse, this in fact is what we are condemned for. Adam listened to the woman instead of to God. People say, "I was tempted," and this is true; but why did you yield to the temptation? It was not a lie, in the outward sense of a falsehood; but he had followed the woman instead of God.

68 Then what the woman said was true, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." When the woman of Samaria said, "I have no husband," it was true; but the object of it was to conceal the truth for all that. It was legally true, but ethically false; true in fact, but truth told to conceal the truth all the while.

It is important to remark here, that all the judgment stated is in this word simply. There is none of the truth that comes out afterwards, when life and incorruptibility are brought to light. Men try to spin this out into what is more (and there is an immense deal more to a spiritual mind): but the actual judgment is in this world. Thus the serpent is not here cast into the lake of fire; God says, "because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust thou shalt eat all the days of thy life." There is nothing about the final judgment of Satan, "and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." You may see something more there, figuratively and mysteriously prophetical; but that is no present thing: the actual judgment on the serpent is in the former verse.

Another thing to notice here is that there is no promise to man. As regards a great deal of the Arminian system, much of which is infidelity, all of it is cut up by the roots. There is no promise to man. The promise is a future judgment pronounced on Satan, which has no application to Adam; for it is clear he was not the seed of the woman. Then on the woman it is merely the sorrows of childbirth, and she is made, not simply a companion, but subject, to her husband.

69 All depends on whether this distinction is made: it is no question of restoring the first man. The promise brings in another man instead of the first, And it was not even by the seed of the man, by any descendant of man as man, though He is the Son of man, but it was by the woman it came in; as we read in Galatians, "made of a woman," and "under the law" too - the two things, one applicable to man, and the other special to some.

What is here is this: God cast out the man; yet Adam fled away from God before he was turned out. But when God turned him out, this was judicial, and God put cherubim there, and a flaming sword, turning every way to keep the way of the tree of life. That is, Adam was not only going to dust, but could not get at life again; it would have been horrible if he could. He was an outcast from God altogether, and this is everlasting misery. Once partaking of the tree of life would have immortalised.

But it is no question here of judgment being everlasting. It is separation from God. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also, and thistles, shall it bring forth unto thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." What was to happen to his soul, there is not a word about. The question of the inner man is quite untouched. When God drove him out, the soul did not die; neither was it dust to go back to dust, for soul was not made of dust. But to be driven out was eternal misery, though one must have a spiritual mind, in a sense, to know really that it is infinite misery to be shut out from God.

As to original sin, it is well to say what we mean by it, as men's thoughts differ widely. We read that "by one man's disobedience sin entered into the world": there we find that the sin of Adam put him in this position. There are two things in what is commonly called original sin. It does not consist in following Adam, but that I am alienated from God, and also that I have an evil nature. The two go together, just as reconciliation and a new nature go together. My heart is renewed from and to God.

70The first is that man departed from God. I have sometimes said, when they have talked about the race damned for eating of the tree, that it is not God shutting man out for an apple, but that man shut out God for an apple. His heart was separated from God, and then he got lusts and self-will instead of subjection. Then follows the judicial part, "Where art thou?" - where? that is, as to my state (not what? a question of my deeds), though men are judged according to their works. When there is spiritual intelligence in me, the first thing that strikes my conscience is my deeds. Ordinary evangelisation takes up what man has done; but this alone never sets one clear with God. A soul still has to learn another thing, and that is where he is; that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. But the preacher who dwells on this does not reach the consciences of people. If I take the "What hast thou done?" and the "Where art thou?" then I have all. From this point of view men as men are alike bad, and the prodigal son was as great a sinner when he just crossed his father's threshold as when he was eating the swine's husks, because he had from the first turned his back upon his father. Nor is the work done in a soul, until it finds out how bad it is in itself, the tree bad, the root bad, itself away from God. My works refer on to the day of judgment; but by what I am I am lost already.

Both are perfectly true of every man. It is works rather in Adam's breaking the law, and still more distinctly in Cain, in whom it is sin against a neighbour or a brother. Adam sins against God. Cain's terrible act brings the inquiry, "What hast thou done?" But the what or where we are is a great deal deeper in the testimony of the thing than what we have done.

Nothing is more important than to have these two clear before the mind. "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." This is not what I have done. "By one man's disobedience sin entered into the world, and death by sin": this, too, is not what we have done; but we "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God," this is what we have done, that is, it is sins.

71 The right translation of Romans 5: 12 is, "for that all have sinned," not "in whom."

The judgment in Genesis 3 was upon Satan, though it was there for Adam to lay hold of. There was no promise to the fallen Adam, no promise to man in sin any more than innocent. Evil came in by the devil; with man, by temptation. God was over it: this is the reason why He suffered evil and the fall - in view of a greater good to come in. My answer to him who asks it is, "why, you foolish man, if you had not been a sinner, you would not have had Christ at all." And this is a true answer too, because it was in God's counsels to introduce and reveal Christ in glory ultimately.

God created not merely stones, but moral beings, beings with responsibility; and if responsibility be a fact, there is liability to good and evil, as it means having to answer to Him. To a man in the state described in Hebrews 6 there is no restorability; the passage says so. Again, there is no restorability to angels, because they full when they were in the good itself. Jude tells us of angels who kept not their first estate.

So Ezekiel 28, from verse 11, is commonly, and, I have no doubt justly, applied to the fall of Satan. It is not the same as the prince of Tyrus, who is judged historically in the beginning of the chapter. "Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God: every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God, thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee." Then in verse 17, "thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness," and so on. Under the figure of the king of Tyre clearly, but under figure, we see this, which goes far beyond the idea of a mere king of Tyre, and, I doubt not, it is Satan. The prince of Tyre who was there was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. On the other hand, I see no foundation for the king of Tyre representing Adam. Satan "was a murderer, and abode not in the truth," so that he is a fallen being. The meaning of the word "covereth" refers to a cherub, and gives the idea of protection, I suppose. There is power and beauty in the creature. These precious stones are here in creation, as again in grace in the priesthood, and yet again in glory in the new Jerusalem. All this diversified beauty from God was upon him, and the light shines from the creature as from the precious stones. We have no detail, for God was not teaching men about Satan. He abode not in the truth, he was not kept in dependence by God's power; and angels fell with him, because it says "the devil and his angels." Where Adam sinned in the presence of good, it was only natural goodness received from God; he was not in the glory of God in the upper creation.

72 But other angels fell apart from the devil. Of some scripture says, they are "reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day"; whereas Satan roves all about the world now, and others with him, so that they are not in chains under darkness. Jude says, those that "kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day; even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them, in like manner giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." They, doing evil, are set forth for an example, their condition now being an abiding testimony to their judgment. "In like manner" refers to giving themselves over as the cities did. "The sons of God," in Genesis 6: 2, were angels, just as in job, "the sons of God" presented themselves before God.

All is confusion everywhere, except what grace has done, whether it be angels or anybody else; no creature stands when left to itself, and so as to angels, we read of "the elect angels." The good angels are looking on, and therefore a woman is to have her head covered. All creatures have a sphere of responsibility - I do not mean Satan, of course, but moral creatures. Verse 24 is to be taken literally: why not? The infidel would refuse it, and improve man. You do get relief in a way afterwards: so Lamech named his son Noah, and said, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed." It does not say the curse was taken away; but there was a comfort concerning it. There was a certain testimony to the state of things. The curse is not gone; but it was mitigated in its effect. On the other hand, in chapter 4, Cain was cursed from the earth. He got an additional curse: "The earth shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength." In the garden Adam did not toil to get food: he ate the seed, and the animals ate the grass; but when driven out, he had to toil to get things to eat - "in the sweat of his face." Then after the flood seed-time and harvest are secured, agriculture in a way is blessed: not the curse gone, but man comforted, so that I should think it is less work to get things out of the earth now than it was before the flood. It would seem that the end of chapter 8 implies a change; for there is a promise that, though there might be toil and difficulty, yet "neither will I again smite [that is, in the flood) any more every thing living, as I have done: while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease He gives sufficient for agriculture, but the seasons remain. In Israel it was not the labour removed, but the amount of blessing on the labour increased. Adam had to dress and keep the garden, and he might well enjoy it.

73 In the millennium the labour will continue; but they shall not plant and another eat the fruit, and so on. Still, the works of their hands go on. The labour does not cease, nor will it be in sorrow that they eat. The earth shall yield her increase, but men must toil to get it. Scripture shews that some part of the earth will be barren, as marshes shall be given to salt. The actual judgment goes no farther than death in this world, and no farther than the body - this mortal body. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." The question of the soul is utterly untouched. Those who oppose the truth as to this identify eternal life with immortality; but when we have eternal life in Christ, we do not cease to be mortal. The whole thing is really a stupid blunder.

I consider that Eve is called "living" there as being Adam's faith, though you may not lay it down as a dogma. It is remarkable, coming in just after the curse and after the judgment on Satan too. After death has come in, she is called the mother of all living, not of the dying. But it was no object of God to tell us whether Adam was saved or not.

The cherubim are connected with a judicial throne and judicial power, and so always judicial. I speak of it practically so - what judges a thing right as well as what judges a thing wrong. The cherub is always God's judicial authority and power. There were cherubim on the veil in Exodus 26, as over the ark and elsewhere. On the veil it is the symbol of judicial power, so in Ezekiel when he sees them. So it is on the tabernacle: only on the mercy-seat it is judgment for us. It is not merely a throne judging what is wrong, though this is true, but a judgment on my behalf, according to what the blood of atonement is. Law takes up man on responsibility; and this is met for me by Another at the mercy-seat. The difference between them and seraphim appears to be that cherubim are judgment, according to the responsibility of man - judgment from God, of course; and the seraphim have to do more immediately with God's nature. The only place they are expressly mentioned is in Isaiah 6; and there they cry, "Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts." The only other being that is called a seraph is the fiery serpent in the wilderness. [See Num. 21: 6, 8; Deut. 8: 15].

74 There are two elements of judging with God. The first thing is, Have I maintained that which was set up to be? and the other is the Lord's coming, when I shall be in God's presence, Can I then stand in the glory of God? can I abide this test then? In Isaiah, we have the first in chapter 5, "What could I have done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?" that is, as a vineyard, what has it borne? And then, in chapter 6, Jehovah is seen high and lifted up, and how could a man stand in His presence? "These things spake Esaias when he saw his glory, and spake of him," John 12.

In chapter 4 of Revelation, the four living creatures are seen full of eyes before and behind, crying, "Holy, holy, holy," having the cherubic and the seraphic characteristics too. It is extremely instructive. "And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four living creatures, full of eyes before and behind." So stood the seraphim. "And the first living creature was like a lion, and the second living creature like a calf, and the third living creature had a face as a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle"; this is cherubic. "And the four living creatures had each of them six wings about him, and they were full of eyes within, and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come this is seraphic again. Farther on we find the judgment of the beast and of the false prophet, and then God coming out in His holiness at the end. In Israel we have the cherubim all through; and when Nebuchadnezzar comes, the judgment on man according to his responsibility. The only thing in which we see the holiness and righteousness of God in itself is the altar outside in brass, and inside the blood put on the golden altar. Thus we have the two obligations (or measures rather) of righteousness. Israel meets God on the ground of what man ought to be outside at the brazen altar; and then when the blood is upon the mercy-seat, the golden mercy-seat of God, there is the righteousness of God as it is in itself. "The Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in him." The two attitudes of righteousness in the cherubim are at the gate of Eden, and then upon the mercy-seat. At Eden they bar the way against Adam in judicial righteousness; whereas God was sitting on the mercy-seat, and, though He was not approachable because the veil was there, yet He dealt with man; and, if righteous, He accepted man there; and when the blood was on the mercy-seat, there was that which met the character of God. Therewith God Himself was satisfied, for this was Jehovah's lot. There is more known now, because the veil is rent. Christ's work not only took away my sins, but glorified God in His judicial character. It is His righteousness to justify the believers.

75 In the garden it was the exclusion of man, but in the cross we find not only the sins borne, but much more; for there is such a work of Christ as glorifies God, besides putting away our sins. There is Jehovah's lot in full. Towards the poor thief on the cross the Lord will not wait for the kingdom to be set up in grace in the world, but there is a positive going to God where He is. And we have more than sin put away; we have also that which lays the ground for the accomplishment of God's counsels in bringing us in His Son into His presence. This is no part of responsibility; it is nothing of me - putting me into the glory, but the fruit of God's counsels accomplished in Christ. Christ does meet my responsibility by dying; but there is a great deal more than that. His delight was with the sons of men, and He is going to have them in the glory with Himself. Christ glorifies God, and the answer to that is that He goes into the glory, and this as our forerunner.

It is only in the kingdom, I take it, that the cherubim pass on into any connection with the church. We get inside the heavenly city; what is judicial would be outside. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it, that is, they dwell in their own glory; but the nations of the millennial age walk in the light of it. We inside, we have the glory of God lightening us; and they outside walk in the light of the city itself. Christ is glorified in His saints, but they who are outside will never see it as we see it inside. So, in the transfiguration, the disciples fear when they see Moses and Elias enter into the cloud (Luke 9: 34).

76 To understand better Psalm 99, which speaks of sitting between the cherubim, let us look at the Psalms from 93 to 100. They are descriptive of the bringing in of the First-begotten into the world. It is a most beautiful series from the commencement in Psalm 93 to the accomplishment in Psalm 100. Psalm 93 gives the thesis. In the rejection of Christ there was judgment in Pilate, and righteousness in Christ. Taking the world as such, we find the one righteous man absolutely on one side, and judgment in the place of authority on the other; but when Christ comes to reign (Ps. 94: 15), judgment returns to righteousness, and they go together. Then it is asked, "Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?" There is the cry of the remnant then. In Psalm 95 is the summons to them to return while it is still called "to-day." In Psalm 96 the heathen are summoned. In Psalm 97 He is coming. In Psalm 98 He is come. He hath shewed His righteousness, He hath remembered His mercy. In Psalm 99, having come and made known His salvation, He sits between the cherubim, taking His place in Jerusalem. Then Psalm 100 summons the nations to come up and worship in peace. Moses being the lawgiver, and Samuel the first prophet, the psalmist takes the originators of things in Israel to call upon the name of the Lord.

Notice the psalms also that go before. Psalm 90 opens with "Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations." Israel goes back to Jehovah, having been their care-taker all through. In Psalm 91 "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." "Most High" was first stated to Abraham. It is God's millennial name. So what the psalm says is really that, if you dwell in the secret of Abraham's God, you shall have all Abraham's blessing. It is a beautiful conversation, so to speak, in the psalm.

77 In Proverbs 8 it is the wisdom of the counsels of God. "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was; when there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth, while as yet he had not made the earth nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world; when he prepared the heavens I was there, when he set a compass upon the face of the depth, when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the foundations of the deep, when he gave to the sea his decree that the waters should not pass his commandment, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by him as one brought up with him," (as His own beloved nursling), "and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men." Wisdom personifies Christ there. In Luke the heavenly host say, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in man": the proof of this was that His Son became a man. We could not have a part in counsels until redemption was wrought, but when it was, we are brought in. Now in Proverbs we see Him always rejoicing in the habitable parts of His earth before the earth was made; and so when He comes He does not take up angels, but sons of men.

But in Genesis it is not what wisdom was before the foundation of the world, but the foundation of the world, and man put in his responsibility, In Proverbs 8 His delight was not in creation itself and (therefore we have "habitable"); it was in the men themselves. But we have no counsels brought out until Christ died. In the first seven chapters are good and evil, corruption and violence; and then in chapter 8 God's wisdom in His counsels. And in the former chapters you have too the divine mind expressed in the relationships that God has formed; it is "my son, hear my voice," and so on. It is remarkable it is nearly always Jehovah in Proverbs, while you do not find Jehovah in Ecclesiastes at all.

When fallen, Adam got Christ for the tree of life. So Augustine exclaims, "Oh, happy fault!" that Adam sinned. God never would have been known as He is if it had not been for sin. There would have been no need for grace, redemption, righteousness, that is, as to man. But now all that God is has been displayed, and this in the cross, righteousness of God against sin, the holiness of God, and the love of God. These would not have come out at all if man had not sinned and they are the things that the angels desire to look into.

78 "Prudence," in Ephesians 1, is wisdom in putting it all together.

God does not shut the man out until He has covered his nakedness - sovereign grace at the very beginning. It is the intimation that God covers him in mercy.

I have no doubt that death had come in, because it is skins, and animals must have been killed; how, it is not said, but this is the case with many things, because it is not the object of revelation. They had made themselves aprons of fig-leaves, and still were conscious that they were naked as ever, for they hid themselves in spite of it. But God clothed them, and then they were not naked at all. It was grace coming in, but only, of course, the sin thereby covered. And I think there was faith too, because it comes immediately after Adam calling his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

But we read, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life because God would not let him take of it and live for ever: that would have given him life in sin. Man might have attempted to countervail the whole thing, and to set up the old man thoroughly.

Thus the turning out of the garden was more than judgment; it was mercy, when we come to think of it. It could not be allowed that man should not die in spite of God. So it was judgment, but mercy at the same time in another way. There would have been no possibility of a flood to destroy, or anything else to put an end to man's wickedness.

Now came Cain and Abel (chap. 4). The question is early raised, whether a man can worship God without Christ. Cain was a wicked person; but, as appearance went, he was doing what was right in paying what he owed to God. But really it was bringing the sign of the curse; it was going to God as if nothing had happened; it was the most perfect hardness of heart, because, if I come to God at all, why have I such toil and labour? why give the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul, except I am away from God, and something as happened? The whole thing tells its own story. Man has been driven out, and he cannot come to God on the same footing as if he had not been put away. When in the garden there was any feeling of God, he goes and hides himself; but now, when outside, he goes hardened to God. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." But how did he know that this was right? He knew of these beasts slain for skins, and he may have had more for aught we know. "By which Abel obtained witness that he was righteous," was by sacrifice as well as by faith. Both are in the verse, "God testifying of his gifts"; but sacrifice is the least thing referred to. We see that the man is pronounced righteous. In Hebrews the point is not God giving a thing to us, but faith carries Christ in hand figuratively, and God says, "you are righteous." What is the value and character of my righteousness? I say, Christ. Abel is pronounced righteous: but the measure and character of his righteousness is Christ.

79 Cain came as the expression of horrible hardness of heart; to him and to his offering God had not respect. So Cain was wroth, and Jehovah says, "Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?"

Should it be "sin," or "sin-offering," lieth at the door? I am disposed to think it a sin-offering; only that the sin-offering is never mentioned historically until we come to Leviticus, under Moses. It is in this kind of way, "If thou does well, shalt thou not be accepted? and unto thee shall the desire of thy younger brother be, and thou shalt rule over him; but if thou failest to do well, there is a remedy, and therefore thou oughtest not to be wroth," "Lieth at the door" means crouching. It is not the expression, "It is at your door," as we say; and therefore I was inclined to take it, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" ("and if thou doest not well," there is a remedy, in parenthesis) "and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." I have no quarrel with the other view, because sin did lie at his door.

"And Jehovah said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? and he said, I know not: am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done?" It is not only now the testimony of sin against us, to say what have we done as sinners. But we hear from God, "Where is Christ?" The Holy Ghost is come, and convinces the world of sin, but more than this. He comes and says to the whole world, on God's part, "Where is my Son?" Then there is haughtiness too in Cain's reply, "Am I my brother's keeper?" as though why should God ask?

80 Besides this and more, another important principle comes out - the practically self-righteous man rejecting Christ is then turned out; he leaves the presence of the Lord, and dwells in the land of Nod (that is, "vagabond") where his son is called Enoch, and he builds a city, calling it Enoch too, after his son. Thus he stretches himself in the world, and gives a family name to the town, and the history shews us artisans, and arts, and sciences, all in the train. He goes out from God, and settles himself in the place of judgment, to do his best with it, in open defiance of God. God neglects nothing, and Cain cannot get out of the reach of His hand, of course; but in his own will he was entirely outside. Cain sets to work to make the earth as comfortable as he can without God; Adam did not want all that in paradise.

As to lake dwellings, and caves with stone hatchets, and many similar things, we have to remember that in New Guinea people are doing the same thing now: how would London like to do so? In Switzerland and Italy they have been finding, covered with bog, and in the lakes, a hundred villages, and all kinds of remains - what the people were eating, and what clothes they wore, as round the Lake of Geneva and elsewhere. And they have learnt the natural history of those times. There was a stone in a hole that they could not make out, and at last found it was what they wove with. Occasionally they have discovered a thing that came from Phoenicia, which was civilised at the very time these villages appeared to have flourished. In North America, lying under some magnificent trees, seven hundred years old, was a piece of native copper, or a square cradle, put ready to be carried away, with other distinct marks of an earlier civilization than the present.

Civilization does die away in places; but I know of no case of light from God going away, and bringing in barbarism.

It was God's providential government when Satan made the Chaldeans go and take Job's goods. If we refer to the sentence on Cain, there was no direct government at all in that, it did not kill him. Man is now left to himself until we come to the second world. God protects him, putting a mark on him, lest any finding him should kill him. This I believe to be a figure of the Jews unto this day.

81 Cain is "I have gotten," Abel is "vanity," because he went to nothing. Eve fancied she had gotten this man from the Lord - that this was the promise, while it was only from nature. Cain means "gotten," Seth means "appointed," and Abel means "the dying man." Eve thinks she has the man that can inherit the blessing. It was not so, as we well know. If you take flesh, the Jews were [Cain] the men from the Lord, and it only resulted in their killing the Lord; first that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.

Chapter 4: 23 may be taken historically, and it is true but typically it refers to the Jews at the end. There is self-will in it every way. Typically it is the remnant of Israel in the last day; but we must not dogmatise about that. Cain is a figure of Israel having killed Christ, and made a vagabond on the earth. At the end the remnant of Israel will own, like Lamech, they have killed this man to their wounding. In the historical sense he kills somebody, and says, "I have been touched, and I will be avenged."

If one disputes this sense I do not contend for it. A man once took me to task about a parable, and said, "What proof do you give me of its meaning so-and-so?" My answer was, It is like honey, which is given you, and you ask me to prove that it is sweet! If you cannot taste, I cannot prove it.

Seth is the man appointed instead of both Abel and Cain: God hath appointed, in contrast with I have gotten, as Eve said of Cain. So now, Seth from God.

Calling "on the name of the Lord" (v. 25) was dependence; but Cain's family would not own the Lord at all, the appointed man and his family would. In short, it is the same dreadful truth as to Cain there as in 2 Thessalonians 2. Only it will be final by-and-by. And what is noticeable is that Cain was settling himself in that place without God; it was not so much resistance as independence.

After Seth the appointed man comes in, they began to own Jehovah specifically. This is the meaning of "then began men to call on the name of Jehovah."

As to the discrepancy between the Hebrew and the Septuagint, as to the years in chapter 5, I say nothing, save that there is a curious fact in this, that to each of these lives the Septuagint adds a hundred years. Thus "Adam lived 230 years, and begat," instead Of 130. This adds fourteen hundred years to the time of the world, the Samaritan Pentateuch more still. It is not a casual mistake, but done on purpose, for it is to each, and it is only carried down to the point where, if they had gone one more, they would have pushed it over the flood; but there it stops. In Matthew the genealogy is a copy of Jewish records. I do not doubt myself, though it has been disputed since the second century, that Luke's is Mary's genealogy. Luke takes it back up to man, but Matthew from David and Abraham, because his reference is to promises. In the Talmud they have got Mary the daughter of Eli.

82 Then we get afterwards the length of years pretty much the same, except Enoch, where stands the important fact that heaven is brought in for anybody that has faith to look at it. God had men for heaven in the midst of all the confusion; as with Elijah, He had seven thousand left that had not bowed the knee to Baal.

Enoch is a figure of those caught up, Noah of the remnant of the Jews that go through the tribulation. In Noah the world is comforted, the figure of the millennium,

As to any consecutive meaning in these names, certain people have made something out of them; but I think nothing of this and the like spinning of webs out of the imagination. We must look for scriptural warrant, at least for the principle and this is lacking here.

We are coming to the world we have been reading about destroyed by the flood. Hitherto it has been the old world with a wonderful series of principles in it, which is the character of Genesis, especially at the beginning.

Man is seen in his original responsibility (but with a number of figures in it) before God began to deal with him. It is a distinct principle of condition that there were no specific dealings, no government, no nations, no law, no promises, no covenant. There was the revelation or prediction of the Seed of the woman; there was Enoch with a prophecy; but no dealings of God. No miracles are stated.

Afterwards we find government put into the hands of man; then the law; and last, Christ Himself.

God's prolonging man's life at that time acted instead of writing the word; we see God's wisdom in it so. At the flood we get life shortened by half; and by half again, when the earth was divided and portioned out to the people. It would not do, in the way the world is now, for men to live 900 years.

Noah was a just man, and did know God.

83 The two grounds of condemnation are found in Romans 1: the one is, the visible world in its witness the other is, men's having known God previously. For (1) "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." Then comes (2) "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God." These are two distinct things. They did not heed creation: and they gave God up when known. But Enoch walked with God, or "pleased God," as in the New Testament it is said. It never says so of Adam, because he walked away from God, and did not please Him.

In Genesis 6: 3 the Spirit is said to strive with man in the testimony God had given by Noah; He preached by Noah to the spirits, now in prison, of men drowned at the flood.

God gave men 120 years to repent. It was no question of age. Man never got 120 years as a fixed portion, though life was thus long in Moses' time.

Enoch's prophecy was preserved, but we know not how. It exists in tradition; but only in scripture have we it given us as it really was. It is preserved in books, and was well known in the second century; indeed they talk about Job borrowing from it. Bruce brought three copies of a book of Enoch from Abyssinia; of course this was an apocryphal book. There is a regular system in it by which the Lord judges, and so on. I have no doubt the book was written just after the destruction of Jerusalem, and against Christians. The writer sees the "tower of the flock," as he calls it, destroyed; and he could see no farther. He was a Jew writing in favour of the Jews, and talks about perverse men, who were Christians. It has reference to the history of times before the flood; and it has a kind of vision which Noah relates to his posterity, or an angel tells him things. He makes the flood come to the earth because it got a tilt. Enoch's prophecy was preserved traditionally and incorrectly. It is a testimony to shew how really the coming judgment was looked for. Bruising the serpent's head is given in a way as coming to destroy the power of Satan.

In chapter 6: 11 are the two general characters seen in man; the earth was corrupt before God, and filled with violence. So it will be at the end: Babylon is corruption, and the beast is violence. So with ourselves, we find plenty of the corruption and of the violence too.

84 But "Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah," that is, divine favour rested on him; personally righteous doubtless, but all through grace of course. Moses says, "If I have found grace in thy sight"; it is a common expression. In the next chapter God says of Noah, "Thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." But the earth was completely filled with violence. Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually; if sin comes in, it is sure to ripen up.

God changes His mind, but only as to creation (v. 6) or the like - never when there is a purpose. It is, if the thing totally changes, that God judges differently about it. So it was now, and therefore God would destroy man. It is not as if some change took place in God, but the aspect of His mind is changed towards an object that has itself changed,

"All in whose nostrils is the breath of life" included man and beast; all go together in that kind of language. Then at the right time God takes Noah with his family, and all enter the ark, "and Jehovah shut him in."

As to the number "forty," it seems to me to have the sense of endurance in it. Forty stripes save one is thirty-nine; for they need a three-thonged rod, so that they could only give thirty-nine by the law, not to exceed forty. It is a length of duration and trial in that way, testing and patience and endurance. So Moses in his three periods of life. Again, Ezekiel lay forty days on his right side for Judah, as a sign, a day for a year, according to the years of Judah's iniquity (Ezek. 4). Jonah's proclamation was yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown; though they did not yet come under the penalty, they were tried. Elijah had been forty days apart, as Israel of old in the wilderness forty years. Here it was till the ark floated.

As to the "two of every sort" in chapter 7, and "seven clean" in verses 2, 3, the first were male and female, to keep them alive; when they were clean beasts, he took fourteen. I have no doubt the "clean" were what were customarily given for sacrifices. Who would offer a ravenous wild beast in sacrifice to God, but sheep or oxen? This difference of a provision for the race and for sacrifice is bound up with the different use respectively of God (Elohim) and of the LORD (Jehovah).

The fountains of the great deep were all broken up, and the windows of heaven opened, that is, above and below, all together broken up: in what way we cannot tell, but they were. Then we hear of a raven, an unclean thing, which could fly about in this world without difficulty, whilst the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot.

85 Tisri was the first month, that is, part of September and October. The fourteenth day of Abib was the end of March, as Abib began in the middle of our March, and went on to the middle of our April. It was five months that the waters prevailed; and after the end of the 150 days the waters abated, and the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, the waters being two months and a half in running off.

I believe the flood was all over the earth, wherever man was. There is no mistake. People have called the universality in question, using general terms, as if it only covered the inhabited earth. But scripture says, "the mountains were covered," "and the tops of the mountains were seen," and so on; this looks like universality. You must let in a miracle in any case: and so it is all one after all. Suppose Mount Ararat, fifteen or sixteen thousand feet high, in northern Armenia, was covered; well, if the waters were not all round, and away too, they would have run off, and covered somewhere else; there must have been a miracle anyhow. The universality of the flood, absolute universality, seems to me to be positively meant and intended, because of destroying the world that then was. God puts an end to the whole system of the world. It was as complete a judgment of the earth and all that was on it, on the part of God, as it will be presently by fire. Everything in the whole order and system of the world that had life perished, "the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished": so Peter tells us, and anything that enfeebled it I should not admit: all mere physical things are consequent upon it. Either reject the word of God, or else Mount Ararat was covered. As to universal destruction, everything in the world was put an end to. The world that then was is distinct from the world that now is; and this is of immense moral import to us. God says He will never do it again, but the next time it will be by fire.

We see (chap. 8: 20) that offerings were usual, as they had been from Abel and it was an act of faith. These were sweet savour offerings; the burnt-offering involves sin, but not so exactly sins. It is not a guilty conscience which brings a burnt-offering as such, Christ comes and offers Himself a sacrifice for sin, gives Himself up to absolute obedience to glorify God; and, the blood being shed, atonement is made; but the burnt-offering is the perfectness of His obedience in suffering everything for God's glory. Sin-offerings were not a sweet savour. The burnt-offering was the glorifying God in that place, taking up the righteousness of God against sin. In the sacrifice of sin-offering I see positive sin laid upon the victim.

86 It is not exactly thanksgiving here, which would be more the character of a peace-offering. It was offering to God a full acknowledgment of Himself, as the basis of renewal after judgment. This is how Noah offered. Through the eternal Spirit Christ offered Himself without spot to God, to be a sacrifice. Many want to make out that He bore our sins up to the cross; but when He offered Himself, He was a spotless One, and the Lord laid our sins upon Him. In the two goats on the day of atonement the bringing up of Jehovah's lot was in order to the slaying; but the slaying followed; and when once it was slain, the blood could be taken in. So I find, after the gift of Himself, He is made sin, or the sins are laid upon Him. Besides the meeting of our responsibility, God was dishonoured about sin, and Christ stands in that place of dishonour for God's glory, not merely to put away my sins.

Now it is this that gives the great character to Noah's act. He did not come with a sin-offering, as that would have been going to God for his sins, but with a burnt-offering, and Jehovah smelled a sweet savour. Of course there was no possible ground for any blessing except upon the footing of the sacrifice of Christ. Now we have, what we find in the case of Moses, the general coming in of sacrifice, in its result, as a ground of blessing. In chapter 6 "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." Now in chapter 8, when Noah offers, Jehovah smelled a sweet savour, and Jehovah said in His heart, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done." The moment the sacrifice has come in, God says, as it were, "If I am to smite the people and to curse them, I must always be cursing them!" Now therefore He goes on the ground of sacrifice, because (this is the point) man is so bad. Previously the evil was before God, bringing His judgment. Now it is before Him, and through sacrifice, a reason for not cursing the ground any more.

87 It was so in the case of Moses and the people. "Jehovah said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people; now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them," Ex. 32: 9, 10. And then in Exodus 34: 9, Moses pleads, "If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Jehovah, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us, for it is a stiff-necked people." And we know, I know, that sin in me is the ground of my being lost; and yet sin in me is the very ground of my going to God to keep me, now that sacrifice has come in. It shews a wonderful character of grace, its overflowing fulness, to give, as the ground of God's being with us,, what was the ground of judgment; that is, when once sacrifice has come in.

What is often said of Noah's carpentry is man's imagination. Yet if he had plenty to do, he had plenty of time. But let us bear in mind that, as to preparing the ark, it is not necessary to suppose that he and his sons did it all by themselves. Such things are not much if no doctrine be founded upon them.

In chapter 9 it is said to Noah, "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea." This was not said to Adam.

In Noah it was more power than what is called natural authority, as in Adam. After the ruin of Israel, in Nebuchadnezzar it is another kind of thing, it is rule wheresoever the children of men dwell, another sort of authority (nothing about animals and fishes and birds there): he had dominion where his empire reached, though he never made it all good, any more than Solomon did.

Then it is found that, God having saved the sons with Noah men of the second race were brought into blessing. But the life of man slain by a beast, "at the hand of every beast will I require it." We thus see that God maintains His title to life, even a beast's life. They must come and offer the blood to God. Man had no flesh to eat before He gives it to man. We all know that many are seeking to do away with capital punishment; but what do they care about God? The whole order of God is broken up now. Even a beast killing should die. Verse 6 gives the reason: "In the image of God made he man"; so that it is always true up to the end. Men only think of what fits men; but we as Christians have nothing to do with that.

88 Even Christians who take a very prominent part in the advocacy of the abolition of slavery go along with the world.

Man's life was going to be shortened and the whole system was changed. I am very glad that the appointment of God is seen to be there, so that it be not turned to Jewish principles.

"In the image of God made he man." It was despising God's image to kill man. Again, a man was free if he caught a fox to eat it then, not a Jew after the law was given.

It does not necessarily follow that clean and unclean were known, though there is some distinction when Noah was taking the animals into the ark. There we see that some were reckoned clean and some reckoned unclean. Cattle and beasts of the field were distinguished to Adam, and we find Abel a keeper of sheep. When Leviticus comes, it limits the offerings to sheep, goats, bullocks, and so on. It may have been instinct in man in a way at first, and that God put His positive sanction on it when He gave the law.

And now He establishes His covenant, and His bow is set in the cloud, the token of the covenant. This, I take it, is the reason that the rainbow is round about the throne in Revelation 4. It is the covenant with creation seen there, as of old in Genesis. Only it is "like unto an emerald." The presence of the bow in Revelation means that God's covenant with creation is remembered that there should not be a flood again. The bow is given to be for a token of the covenant rather than that it was created then. God might, of course, have put plenty of clouds above the earth without a rainbow. He says, "I do set my bow."

The moral point at the end of chapter 9 is that the blessing given him is abused to destroy all his competency to govern. Noah gets drunk: this is not exercising authority. Afterwards comes in the wickedness of Ham; and then "blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant." In contrast with this He cursed Ham in Canaan, that is, in his family. Everything went by families now. Shem was the root of God's family, with the name of Jehovah even then attached to. it, whose lot it would be to judge the races of Canaan and to take their place.

89 In verse 27 the "he" is Japheth, who "shall dwell in the tents of Shem," and Canaan shall be Japheth's servant as well as Shem's.

The family of Japheth pushed out far and wide, and did dwell in the tents of Shem.

As to the colour, especially black, I do not pretend to account for it in mankind. The Egyptians were not black; they are always painted red in the hieroglyphics. Their pictures in Nubia are seen with prisoners all black. What Livingstone found in Africa was, that if there was a wet country along with heat, there the people got black. The Portuguese are black in certain hollow islands. As to what people have stated about races, I have no hesitation in saying that there is nothing solid about it whatever.

We have had in a certain sense the whole history of the new world as regards Noah and his sons, the altar, his drunkenness, and so on. In chapter 10, 11, you get a statement all by itself, before you come to God's dealings with the world as now commenced afresh.

We have first the history of Noah's generations.

In verse 21 Japheth is stated to be elder son. In verse you have "by these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families in their nations." There you get "nations" which is an immense thing; then the sons of Ham, who stretched from the Euphrates to the Nile and got hold of Canaan somehow; the sons of Shem come last.

Chapter 10 is not history, but a survey of the whole earth. There were no tongues or nations at all till Babel; if you try to put this chapter into time, you will go all astray.

Then in Ham you have another principle, and that is a royal conquering power. "Cush begat Nimrod," who began to be a mighty one in the earth, with beasts first and then with man. He was a mighty hunter, wherefore it is said, "Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord, and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar." Then Asshur goes out and builds Nineveh. These are the first great monarchies.

"Before the Lord" means just that he was very great; as Moses was fair or beautiful "to God," and in Hebrews "exceeding" fair. So too, in Jonah 3, "Nineveh was an exceeding great city" is a city "great of God" (in margin and literally).

90 Then we learn how the dispersion came.

I suppose Eber (verse 21) is mentioned because the Hebrews came of him. There is another fact in verse 25: in the days of Peleg the earth was divided, and at that moment man's life went down to just half at one bound. You see it in the next chapter. Eber lived four hundred and sixty-four years, and Peleg lived two hundred and thirty-nine. Here, so far then, we have the history of the world: the world is settled, and it is all regulated in its general principles with all the races still going on; then in chapter 11 it goes back to the races, "and the whole earth was of one language and of one speech." And they set to work to build a city and a tower, that they might make a name: not out of the reach of another flood, as some say, for this is the greatest nonsense possible; it was to be a great central temple to their own name. Babel was in principle apostasy, for it was a name for themselves instead of God. It is man uniting for himself. They say, Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad. They wanted to concentrate themselves there so that they should be all one. And this is just the great idea of the present day. But then the Lord comes down and confuses them, and they are all scattered.

This is followed by the specific generations of Shem, until you come down to Abram and a totally distinct line of things. We have had the generations of Noah, a genealogical history; and the generations of Shem are a specific thing besides. In it you find the shortening of life we spoke of, when the earth was divided.

They went to the East and got a name, they were the direct descendants of Eber. God did not call them Hebrews; it was the other nations. Some take it from Arba in Hebrew, for the word means to come over, because Abraham came over the river.

Languages do blend, though kept apart, and I do not doubt providentially too. We cannot say much about it in England; for we have two or three languages together, Latin, and German, and so on.

Then we go on to Terah. Abram comes first, not because he was oldest, but because he was the important one. All that we have got thus far is the fact that the whole world is parcelled out into nations, and this comes from the judgment of Babel because man would not be scattered. And you hear nothing of Noah in all this: his power is gone, though he was alive all the time. He lived to Abram's time if you take the Hebrew computation. Shem lived to Isaac's time, who was twenty-eight when Shem died. Noah died a few (twelve) years before Abram's time.

91 We have seen how the world was settled, and, after Noah has gone from the scene, the nations divided, and the fact of God's judgment confounding their language. The languages we know come, I believe, from Sanskrit or Zend. Latin and Greek, they say, were sister languages, and not mother and daughter (and they call them now Aryan), and all the languages of Europe except the Basque, and so all the northern languages of India. Then there is the Shemitic and that class of languages, the Turanian, the North American languages having been Shemitic made up since. Scythian or Assyrian they cannot read yet. They have made out the Shemitic and Aryan, but not the Turanian. Such are the great roots of what has covered the world.

There was nothing to hinder Moses from speaking Hebrew: the Jews all spoke it among themselves. It is a very child's tongue, not an elaborately formed language at all. Besides, God may have made him know it perfectly. They have found an inscription put up by Mesha, king of Moab, the sheep-master, in an old Phoenician character. The Samaritans still keep nearly the same. When the Jews came back from Babylon, they had only the present Hebrew characters.

Thus the old world is done with, and certain great principles shewn, and then the new world is set up, being split up into these nations; and with that the beginning of what will be the beast's (that is, in Babel) empire was set up in Nebuchadnezzar, but the germ of it is here. And we have the sphere in which God's plans and purposes come out.

Then as soon as we have the world parcelled out into nations, peoples, tribes, and tongues, God's providence doing it, the first thing He does is to tell a man to leave it all. "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house into a land that I will shew thee," Gen. 12.

Providence is never the guide of faith. God may govern by providences, He overrules things, and so on; and I may be forced to use a circumstance, or it may come and stop me because I am like a horse or mule that must be held in by bit or bridle; but providence is never the guide of faith. In the case of Moses, was there ever anything more providential than that Pharaoh's daughter should come and take him up just as he was exposed in the river, to be brought up as her own son? But this is not the guidance of faith. I may be controlled by circumstances; God may use them so, He will lead the blind by a way that they know not, yet this is not seeing.

92 But the principle here is, that He calls one out - Abram. The first dealing of God, when He had put the framework of the world to work in, is calling one out to work by. And there is another principle; when He does call him out, Abram is the father of the faithful. As we had a bad race in Adam, we have a race of God now. The Jews were the fleshly seed of Abram, but Abram is the head of God's people at large. There is another thing, and that is what all hangs upon: election, calling, and promise, belong to this family, and to nothing else. God takes Abram out: this is election. He calls him, and the God of glory reveals Himself to him, giving him the promises. It is not church ground here, but it is grace, in election, calling, and promise. These are the first three things.

"Election" means choosing. And the calling is of those whom He has chosen; it is the making good their election. In "many are called but few are chosen," the two are in opposition, not as here where they go together.

Then Abram is to go out by faith; the necessary consequence when he is called. There is trust in God, believing His word and so we get upon a new footing altogether.

It is not the old world with just a testimony of Enoch, but God positively dealing in the new world. As the apostle reasons, the first thing after the world is settled is grace, then law after; but now we get into the direct dealings of God, which is an immensely important thing. There was no dealing of God before, except the flood, and this finishes that state. There was a revelation of important principles, sacrifice, and so on, but no dealings of His.

Abram did not go out at first, or rather he went out, but did not go in; he left his country and kindred, but not his father's house. "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abraham's wife; and they went forth from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan, and they came unto Haran and dwelt there." Stephen says in the Acts, "after the death of his father," whilst chapter 12: 4, says, "So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him, and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran, and Abram, and Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." In Joshua 24: 14, 15, you find the occasion on which God called Abram out - the worship of other gods. All the world had gone into idolatry, and the nations into which God had separated it.

93 The God of glory had revealed Himself to him, and it becomes quite a new scene. It is all on the earth of course you get nothing of heaven here, but the land and earth.

I believe Abram went afterwards to heaven, but here it is, "I will make of thee a great nation" (not you shall go to heaven), "and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

In 2 Peter 1: 3 it is by glory and virtue (it is the dative of the instrument there, not "to"). He says, There is My glory, and you must have the courage to cut your way through to it. In Abram's case the God of glory appears to him; but what He calls Abram by is the land. In the second epistle of Peter the principle is the same exactly. Only, as we have Christ in the glory above to whom we are called, so Abram was called to go and possess the land. Clearly the force of the word virtue - there is moral courage.

As soon as Abram had got to the place that God had called him to, he was obliged to look higher still, or did so however. Our calling and our place are identical; but with Abram, he went forth to go into the land of Canaan and came there, while God did not give him so much as to set his foot on. And so it was he had to look for something else: not that he ever gave up the land.

The city for which Abram looked stood very much as the glory in Peter practically, but his calling was to the land. Abram found he had to look for something else by being in the land where he had no city, no possession, and he had even to buy a grave in it - that was all. He had a tent, and he had an altar there, but no more. In that sense it is the picture of the life of faith. God says, "I will make of thee a great nation, and thou shalt be a blessing." He puts him as a centre of blessing: "Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee"; and then you get the thing that is insisted on in Galatians (chap. 3): "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed," though we have nothing about the seed here stated: the great nation is the fleshly seed. Abram is the root of the tree of promise.

94 There is no promise to Abram and his seed as to our blessing; there was to be a seed of his like the stars for multitude, but this is not "one." What you get in chapter 22 is, "because thou hast done this thing," when Isaac was offered up, "and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." The promise was given to Abram and confirmed to Christ the Seed: it was never given to Abram and the seed, but confirmed to the seed. The offering up of Isaac was the occasion, for then the promise was given in resurrection, and it is confirmed to the seed. You do get Abram and his seed when you come to the land. In Galatians 3 change the order of the words, "Now to Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed," and he says, "If it be a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto," etc. He insists that you cannot have the law along with Christ: "Now to Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed," which is Christ; and the promise which was confirmed before of God to Christ, the law, which was 430 years after, cannot annul. When God has confirmed it, you cannot disannul it, nor can you add to it. You must take the promises as they come: this is true of man's covenant, much more of God's.

Another thing is, that the promise was absolutely without condition. The law brought them under conditions: there were two parties to it. But there are not two to this covenant - it is an absolute promise without any condition whatever. "So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him," and so on. "And the Canaanite was then in the land, and the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land, and there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him." There we see another thing: not only God appeared to him and called him, but God reveals Himself to him in the place of promise; and this makes worship. He is in the place promised, though he had not got it yet; and there he builds an altar. Then he goes about to a mountain on the cast of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east, and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. There we have Abram's history as the child of faith and the father of the faithful. The rest of the chapter is his failure as the child of faith, and what comes of it. "And Abram journeyed going on still towards the south, and there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there." He has not consulted the Lord; but he tells Sarai to say that she is his sister - a kind of picture of the way in which the church has denied her Lord.

95 I think I have found that typically viewed the woman represents a condition, and a man rather the action in the condition or conduct if you please.

The church is Christ's wife, but has denied its real place and gone into Pharaoh's house. But you will find another thing: the Lord delivers Abram and Sarah, but judges Pharaoh.

"And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south, and Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold, and he went on his journeying from the south even to Bethel, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Hai, unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first, and there Abram called on the name of the Lord." Down in Egypt we have no altar, and no calling on the name of the Lord: God takes care of him, and watches over him; but Abram is no worshipper there, nor until he gets back. He goes down to Egypt, forced, as people say, by circumstances, not in the place of dependence or communion: it is the character of the position. You find the same thing in Jacob, only he came back to Shechem.

Where you get "all the families of the earth," it applies to us, although it will be really made good in the millennium in another way. Galatians 3: 8 says, "The scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed: so then they which be of faith are blessed - with faithful Abraham," and thus we come in.

96 The promise in somewhat different terms is given to Isaac and Jacob; but in Abraham is the root of the olive tree, and therefore all the great general principles are found. In Isaac the reason is, "Because Abraham obeyed my voice," whilst in Jacob we see God's dealings with Israel, that is, as to mere general principles. And so about Isaac you have very little given except that he is heir of all his father has, and he is brought up and takes a wife. In the case of Jacob after Sarah's death, it is an earthly picture; there is no resurrection glory or the like.

Now you see Abram had been snared a little in going down into Egypt. It looks like providence and provision. But when he gets back, we come to another principle: a person that had been walking with Abram not by his own faith, but by Abram's, is before us, and that kind of thing cannot go on for ever; that is Lot. And they could not dwell together in the land, so Abram gives up everything. Lot chooses the world; he is a believer, but he sees "the plain of Jordan that it was well watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt as thou comest unto Zoar: then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan." There Lot goes and settles and loses everything he has, because he was a believer. But in Abram's case, the moment Lot has left him, God says to him, "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever, and I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth," and so on. It is very striking and definite.

Abram did in the famine slip a little into what was not the life of faith, but Lot went quite astray, and he vexed his righteous soul from day to day. Yet it was no thanks to him that his soul was vexed; if he had not gone there, he would not have been vexed. And he is no witness either. They tell him presently, "This fellow came into sojourn, and must needs be a judge." He had no business to be a judge in Sodom; and he calls them his brethren. "I pray you, my brethren, do not so wickedly." His whole place was wrong.

97 Then again, "Abram removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord." There he is living the life of faith, sojourning, and building his altar where he goes.

Next, we see in Abram power over the world. Lot has been taken prisoner. The four kings beat the five and Lot was carried off. Abram arms his servants, comes upon the kings, gets the victory and Lot's things back. But he will not take from a thread to a shoe latchet; he will have nothing to say to it at all. Here then we get Melchizedek, and a millennial picture. You have the heir of faith beating his enemies entirely, and then, looking at it as the accomplishment of victory, Melchizedek comes forth to meet him, and says, "Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God which hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand." It is the final triumph in that way, looked at typically, with Christ as Melchizedek coming out to bless upward and bless downward: just what Christ will be in that day. Thus viewed Abram represents Israel, I have no doubt, in that day; but Christ will come with the armies of heaven. The history of Lot comes in here by the way, just shewing that the believer, if in the world (or with it rather), has no power against it.

Melchizedek's priesthood is special; but we have had an altar before. There is no establishment of a family priesthood yet. Abram as the head was the natural person in the family to be priest, and they were all living in families: whoever was head would offer. Abel was not the head of a family, but he offered as Noah did; and Melchizedek also.

Here we have immense principles: a person justified by faith, called out from the world, having no altar while in Egypt, and, when back in the land, no possession, but only a tent, and with that an altar - great principles of the life of faith; and in chapter 14 a typical expression of what has yet to come on earth, a royal priest at once in Melchizedek.

In chapter 15 we find Israel. There is the sacrifice in full first, and then the covenant of Jehovah with Abram, and the communication of special features in Israel's history, the Canaanitish nations to be judged, and limits of the land, besides the prophecy of the deliverance from Egypt. "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterwards shall they come out with great substance; and thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, thou shalt be buried in a good old age; but in the fourth generation they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full."

98 We may notice that all that comes out to Abram after Lot is separated is, I will give thee the land, and thy seed shall be innumerable. Next, in chapter 15, after Lot takes the world, and Abram gives up everything, he then gets the promise a great deal clearer. Abram, having refused the world, brings in God saying, "I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." He had in God the two things he would not take from the world. "I am thy reward," says God; and then Abram says, "What wilt thou give me?" Whatever you think of the request, still the Lord allowed and bore with it, answering him most graciously; just as Peter was the occasion for the Lord to bring out blessed revelations, though Peter was not very brilliant in some respects.

"And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness." There you find the great principle of God's ways, stepping in chapter 15 right into Israel's position by faith and death. Abraham has no heir. God says his seed shall be as the stars of heaven; it is a numerous seed; and the land again, but more follows. And he gets it all by faith, and by faith righteousness too.

It will be seen as to faith, if one go through carefully all the uses of the Greek word, that with the dative in the New Testament it is believing in a person, and eis or en gives the ground of confidence. In the case before us faith is counted to Abram for righteousness; it is the general broad fact that it is imputed or reckoned.

But the ministration of imputed righteousness is a monstrous proposition. If you take it as the value of something imputed, it is the value of faith - just the way Roman Catholics take it. If not so, you must take it that God has counted righteousness because of it, which is the principle; but if you try to make it so much made up and imputed, you must make it faith that is imputed. Abel is counted righteous according to the value of his gift. Romanists say that faith is counted for righteousness, but charity is greater still - man's love, not the love of God in Christ.

99 There was practice, of course, but there was no righteousness revealed in the Old Testament. It was prophesied of, but it is now revealed in the gospel. All that is stated in the end of Romans 3 is "the forbearance of God"; and if you ask why He did forbear with these person's faults, I can tell now, because it is all revealed.

Again, now there is another character that they had not, and that is, "accepted in the Beloved"; and more, as we may learn in the Epistle to the Ephesians, etc.

This is the first time faith is mentioned, though no doubt it was there before, as Hebrews tells us; but it is the first time it is brought out. And then, too, I find death - God binding Himself by death. We know by Jeremiah, and other means, that death was used to ratify a covenant. So here God binds Himself by bringing in death, but the power of death passes, in a sense, on Abram; it is when a deep sleep comes upon him that he gets the blessing. I see a peculiar character here, because God comes in as by a smoking furnace and a burning lamp. That is, it is light that shines, and also a furnace that burns and consumes the dross, just as we talk of a fiery furnace. Now will God take His place. He tells Abram about his seed, and signifies that He will lead them by a lamp, and purify them by fire. Abram came under a deep sleep, and a horror of great darkness fell upon him. That is, he came under the power of death as to his own condition; it was not actual death, of course, but the shadow of it - the type. So we must die with Him. Death must pass upon any flesh in order to inherit the promises.

He says here, "In the fourth generation they shall come hither again," while in Exodus 12: 40 they sojourned in Egypt 430 years; yet Galatians says the law in the wilderness was 430 years after the promise.

But Exodus does not say in Egypt only, but their sojourning was 430 years; the Samaritan Pentateuch and others give "in Canaan and in Egypt." From the promise to their going down into Egypt was exactly half the time. The words in verse 13, "shall afflict them four hundred years," is a general statement in this place. Egypt is the great thing. And the "come hither again" refers to the land clearly.

100 Verse 12 may illustrate "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." Practically it is the same thing, though here it is the general principle, and more like Romans 6. It is death passed upon him. Flesh (as such, I mean) could not inherit a promise; nor even will Israel in the millennium, except through death and resurrection.

The fowls, in coming down, came to defile it, if possible - that is, the activity of life. It is a mystical scene. Abram keeps it all pure and clean. The broad fact is to keep the sacrifice untouched, the foundation of everything. It was the valley of the shadow of death Abram had to go through.

We have had the seed promised in a general way; and now Abram wants to get it according to his own will in the flesh, and he takes Hagar (chap. 16). Ishmael is "he that is born after the flesh," which is really of the law, an attempt to get the heir on legal ground, and take the promises. It was an attempt to get the heir by the flesh, which all came to misery and confusion. Hagar gets turned out, that is, the old covenant.

But when Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and there was no hope of seed naturally - his body was now dead - God reveals Himself by His name to him, "I am the Almighty God." He had never given His name to him before, but now He gives it, taking up in it the character of the dispensation, and then brings in Christ later on. God had reserved Himself, so to speak. We have not Christ in this scene, but the one who is the figure of Christ comes afterwards. God Almighty, El-Shaddai, is the name by which God appeared to the patriarch, the first of His three names - Almighty, Jehovah, - and Father. We were speaking of them before.

Chapter 16 is a kind of parenthesis. Abram has got a promise, and tries now to make it good independently of God. But when Abram is set aside, his body now dead at ninety-nine years old, God reveals Himself, and says, I am going to give you a numerous seed, and you must circumcise them, and so on. That is, now that you are viewed as dead, I can do something with you.

God's name is Almighty; but He waits until Abram was virtually dead, and then He has him circumcised, which was the seal of the covenant he had got. Then he gets the promise of the seed, personal seed, really Christ. "And I will bless her [Sarah], and give thee a son also of her." Abraham falls on his face and laughs, "and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety-nine years old, bear?"

101 Abraham's was the laughter of joy, I believe; but Sarah was ashamed of her laughing, because it was unbelief And the getting a promise of a seed of his own makes Abraham think of Ishmael, that he might live before God.

Next Jehovah comes with the two angels (chap. 18). The world must be judged where Lot is, and where, in fact, the fleshly seed is. The promise of the seed is renewed. Abraham has intercourse with the Lord, hearing the promise of the seed come into this world to be heir of the world: so the apostle says. Then in what follows is the confirmation of the promise, God visiting Abraham, and the promise is immediate of Isaac - of his appearing; and an immediate promise that God will return at the time of year. Then Abraham has communion with Jehovah at the top of the mountain, while the others, the angels, go down to judge the world.

We have the world and Israel in Sodom and Lot, while Abraham looks down upon it all. He is in intercourse with God, and God is there talking with Abraham about what He is going to do with the world. Abraham is called the friend of God, and here it is seen. I talk about my business and what has to be done with my friend, but not of what I am going to do for him until it is all arranged. God does not tell Abraham what He is going to do with Abraham. But the person who has the seed promised completely and immediately coming in is in full intercourse with God about what He is going to do with other people.

It is beautiful to see the Lord does not judge Sodom until it has all got so bad that there were not even ten righteous persons there. If there had been ten, God would have spared the cities. Abraham goes on interceding until this is shewn out.

The Lord was there incognito, as we say, until the tent scene is over and the angels are gone, and then it is all open. While in the tent, Abraham addresses Him with full deference, but the Lord does not come out with the secret until He gets alone with him. Read chapter 18: 1-5. Abraham says, My lord, not My lords; he has perfect consciousness that One is superior, and his faith evidently sees through it all. In verses 10, 14, it is, "I will return"; in verse 17, "Shall I hide?" and so on. "And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom, but Abraham stood yet before the Lord" (v. 22). He sends on these two angels, and we find them at Sodom directly afterwards. Then Abraham calls Him "the judge of all the earth." He addresses Him as Adonay (in verses 3, 27, 30, 31, 32), but it is Jehovah. It may be the administering power; but Abraham sees who the administrator is. I believe myself that all the appearances in the Old Testament are the Son's.

102 If Abraham goes as far as he dares, God judges the whole thing, but spares the righteous. He was in the church's place, as Lot in the Jew's place was saved so as by fire. So Noah was in the Jew's place, but Enoch gives the church's place in the earlier history.

In what follows we see the origin of the people of the land whom the Israelites were not allowed to destroy - Moab and Ammon.

It is striking here to notice the incapacity for anything definite in unbelief. The very place where Abraham was talking with Jehovah, Lot had looked at as most barren and, desolate; but when he sees the cities of the plain burning, he would like to go to the mountain, the place of faith, though first, he says he cannot go there. When in the world, you are afraid of God's judgment there; and so is Lot, till at length he slips off to the mountain, the place of faith, obliged to get there at last.

In chapter 21 Abraham is seen planting a grove (a kind of boundary of the land, as I suppose), and there we hear of "the everlasting God," because God was there, the One that, secures the land for ever to His people. Jehovah is the everlasting God, and when He gives a promise, He is sure to make it good at the end. I believe the everlasting gospel is the Seed of the woman that shall bruise the serpent's head, that is, the declaration that the Lord shall destroy with power when He comes in judgment. It is the announcement that the hour of His judgment is come, the unchanging good news right from the beginning and onward. From the first Christ was to bruise the serpent's head. The Christian has the special relationship - union as associated with Him who is going to bruise the serpent's head - being thus identified with the King of the kingdom.

As we come to a break now, it may be well to run over the chief great principles of what has been before us. Genesis is an important book in this way, that it contains the principles from which all start; a great deal of instruction as to ways and life and so on comes afterwards, but here is the framework of the thing. First, there is creation itself; this seems very simple, but in a way it is not, for it is only by faith we know it. None of the heathen knew it, and infidelity now is going back to their darkness, for infidelity is but modern heathenism. In John's Gospel we go before all that even, for we can say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him." It goes back beyond creation,

103 As soon as the fact of creation is set out in chapter 1, you see the world as the sphere in which God is going to put man, and in which all moral relationships are to be brought out: here stands first the responsible man; then his naming the animals; then his wife is given (chap. 2). There is thus the creation of this world and of what is in it, creatures and so on and man, as a centre and lord of it, in God's image, the world fashioned for the purpose, and the rest of God, which man never entered into. Then follow the relationships in which God set man, to Himself, to the inferior creatures, and to his wife (in which the church is typified). Next man's responsibility is tried by temptation, and we see his utter failure, but the judgment on Satan, the serpent, with a promise to the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head (chap. 3). But the first man is driven out from God, and then he becomes the head of a fallen race, though Eve hopes to get the promise in the flesh, saying that she had got a man from Jehovah. Alas! man completes sin by killing his brother, and the world is set up without God; but God gives another and an appointed seed, Seth (when men called on the name of Jehovah), in lieu of the slayer and the slain. Christ was slain; the world slew Him; but He is coming again in glory; this is what all that typifies (chap. 4). Then comes the genealogy of the race of Seth, and one walks with God who is transformed and taken away to heaven (chap. 5). Last comes the total corruption and wickedness of man up to the flood, with Noah preserved through it, man and animals too (chaps. 6-8). This closes the history of the first world. Next Noah founds the relationships of the new world upon sacrifice; but he fails himself entirely: and, having given the prophecy of the world's establishment in his three sons, his history closes. God gives a promise not to bring in a flood any more, but there is no great principle in this that I know of Government was set up to restrain; but this fails, and it closes Noah's history (chap. 9).

104 Then we see the settling out of the world in nations from the three sons of Noah (chap. 10). There is the world in nations and families, and this happening by the judgment of God upon their setting themselves up to be independent of God at Babel, making themselves a Shem or name. Then we see Abram brought in by Shem's genealogy, which is merely a peg to hang it on, as it were (chap. 11). But he is an elect one, called out, and the promise is given him to be the head of God's race in the earth. Then he, having followed the calling of God, is in the place of promise, a stranger and a worshipper: through pressure of circumstances he gets out of that place, loses his worship, gets into the power of the world, but is delivered out of it (chap. 12). We have then his entire abnegation as to the world, and a full revelation of the sphere of promise, or subject of promise (chap. 13). Then we see Abram's victory over the world, and the revelation of Melchizedek as priest, when the victorious kings are defeated (chap. 14). Thus millennial blessedness is brought in, and this closes that part of the history, when we have come to the royal priest blessing Israel, and God the possessor of heaven and earth. The broad abstract principles finish with chapter 14.

Then in chapter 15 we see righteousness connected with faith for the first time, and also the promise of the seed, a covenant founded on death, with details of the land. Then in chapter 16 we see a fleshly attempt to have the seed in the flesh. But in chapter 17 grace acts. God reveals Himself by His dispensational name to Abram, giving him promise of the seed, and the seal of circumcision on it. "A father of many nations have I made thee." Confirmation is given, followed by Abraham on high in communion with God, and when the world is to be judged, he is a prophet interceding inside with God. Peter's comment on this is, "the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation." This is down below. So we have Enoch, the heavenly man, and Noah, the earthly remnant; now we have Abraham the heavenly man, and Lot the earthly remnant. This is a second witness.

105 Now in chapter 20, though I have a little more difficulty in my own mind about it, Abraham is seen failing, in respect of those that were strictly the vessel of promise, to Abimelech who was within the land. The Philistines have always that character, it would seem, those who were professedly within. It is failure before those who are outwardly in the place of promise, the denial of the truth of the church of God. Abraham says, "she is my sister," and not my wife. It is only in David's time that the Philistines were rightly dealt with and put down ultimately.

As Lot by going to Zoar saves himself in a little city, being afraid to go to the place of faith; so we have in chapter 20 a rebuke put upon Abraham in respect of Sarah, the vessel of promise. The world knows very well that the church ought to be for the Lord.

In the next chapter (21) the son of promise is born, and legalism, or the legal covenant, with the child of flesh is cast out, that is, Hagar and Ishmael; now Abimelech, or the Philistine, who is in the place of promise, the son being born, becomes subservient to Abraham. The borders of the land are given. Abraham figuratively takes possession of the land of promise, and worships. He plants a grove too - the only time he ever does so. He was only in a tent before; now he plants a grove, which was Abraham's act, but had specific reference to the seed and taking possession of the land.

After chapter 14 is the place of the break really, because there we get to the millennium; then come the details in connection with Abraham's conduct and the promise of the seed.

Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac at Mount Moriah begins a new series (chap. 22), which gives us thereon the promise confirmed to the one Seed, not to the numerous seed, but the promise of blessing to all nations (in chapter 12) confirmed to the Seed; and this after death and resurrection, which furnishes a completely new principle. Abraham has given up the promises according to life here, and taken them in resurrection, "accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure," Heb. 11. All was taken up in resurrection, founded upon sacrifice to God.

Then in chapter 23, we see the old vessel of promise dies. Sarah is not the church now in any sense, but the Jews; the vessel dies, that is, Israel is really set aside.

Isaac being the heir of everything, Abraham sends down what represents the Holy Ghost - Eliezer - to get a wife for his risen son. Isaac is on no account to go back to the old land; he represents the risen Christ. So Abraham sends down his chief servant to get a wife out of the place of his own family for the heir of promise. Eliezer confers gifts on her, and brings her out, all things being given to the son and heir. Abraham sends his other sons away, but Isaac's wife is brought into the place of the vessel of promise, Sarah's tent. This is all the history of Isaac (chap. 24).

106 The Jews were the vessel of promise, and now the church is become so.

When we come to Isaac old and blind, the history leans really on Jacob. We have done with all the first great principles of faith, and the risen one, Isaac, and we find the Jewish history in Jacob. It is the history of Christ, in a way, all through, but the history of the heir in connection with the earthly promises; whereas Isaac was figurative of the heavenly ones. Jacob gets a wife in Padan-aram, the house of Bethuel, his mother's father, but Abraham tells Eliezer, "Beware thou, that thou bring not my son thither again."

Then we get Jacob, who is a poor sample anyhow, but who values the promise, though for the earth, while Esau does not, but forfeits his birthright. It is by grace Jacob comes in, because he had no title; Esau had title, but in the election of grace the elder was to serve the younger. In point of fact it comes about by the profanity of Esau, while Jacob does value it, though the means by which he got it were evil.

That is a great lesson. We now have to do with the means. God secures the result, and all we have to consider is the right means, Isaac could have crossed his hands, or in many a way have acted under God's control, just as Jacob did afterwards with his own grandchildren, without his going and listening to his mother, and deceiving. Then we have the renewal of the promise to Isaac; at the same time he is forbidden to go down into Egypt. He has never anything to say to the world in his Isaac character. He is not to go into it himself, but his wife is to come out of it. Alas! he follows his father's example, and denies his wife, not in Egypt, but in the place of the Philistines. It was his failing in the place of promise. I think you get Isaac upon lower ground altogether: he digs up again the wells his father first dug, which the Philistines had stopped, and then surrenders them. You get decay, besides denying his wife; but when he comes into the place which God had given as a limit, to Beersheba - there they have to own him when he is within his limits. Before, it was a contention with the spirit of the world where he was, and he has to yield.

107 Now we get Esau and Jacob, and Jacob gets the blessing as he got the birthright, still by deceit. As we saw before, Jacob goes down to get his wife himself. I have no doubt that Leah represents the Gentiles, and Rachel the Jews. And we are down upon the earth, we find Jacob looking for blessing here, and he promises tithes (chap. 28: 22). And God does take care of him, but this is not enough. He goes acting with duplicity towards man. It is worse than earthly ground indeed here, though God still takes care of him.

If Jacob at all represents the Lord here, it is not in his conduct. He loves Rachel, who represents the Jews, but he gets Leah instead of Rachel, and is there paid in his own coin. At the present time Gentiles are being blessed instead of Jews. God blesses Leah, but then you must mark all the wretched course of the low state of faith. Laban cheats him, and he cheats Laban. There was faith in a sense, but faith going through a thoroughly carnal way to get the blessing. Then Jacob runs away. God does take care of him, and brings him back to the land, as He will bring back Israel. After he had been a slave twenty-one years, He brings him back with his children. You get Mizpah, or Jegar-sahadutha, or Galeed, and much instruction in it all, for the Lord takes care of the believer; but where he walks in this low carnal way he is chastened through and through; twenty-one years a slave - cheat, and is cheated; he believed, and got to be believed, but his means were carnal, and it was discipline in every possible way, because he walked carnally. Then Esau is coming, and poor Jacob again lies, sends all the troops before him, flocks and so on; God sends two hosts of angels to meet him; but how little of real faith! He sees God's hand, and says, "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy servant: for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands."

You see the arrangements; you see all the weakness of this carnal system, though he did trust God in the main. It was all a low kind of life. God does not allow Esau to touch him, yet he says, I cannot overdrive the cattle a day or they will all die, "let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant, and I will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me, and the children be able to endure, until I come unto my lord to Seir." Yet he had not the most distant idea of going to Seir. Then having sent away the cattle he remains behind (chap. 32: 23, 24). "Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the break of day." God, who would not allow anybody to touch him, takes him in hand Himself, wrestles with him, gives him grace to overcome, but will not reveal Himself, and makes Jacob halt all his life. It is all discipline, though there is blessing. Jacob gets blessing because he believed in the promise.

108 It is very hard in Jacob's story not to get into detail. You get a great deal more experience in one who is walking badly than in one who is walking well; you have not a bit of all this in Abraham. But it always is so: in ups and downs is a great deal more of what you call experience, if not walking well. The other's life is much simpler. All was given in a few words in Enoch's case: "He walked with God, and he was not, for God took him." Mark the difference again between Abraham and this: Abraham is up on high interceding with God for others, and Jacob down at the brook wrestling for himself. Jacob was a prince with God, and prevailed; but it was God wrestling with him and would not reveal Himself. Abraham intercedes for others and wrestles for nothing for himself; whereas Jacob has to contend for himself to get the blessing. He did get the blessing, for there was power through grace. Then another thing: he goes and builds an altar, making another blunder, buys a piece of land, and so on. Abraham bought a sepulchre: that was all. Jacob settles in the place: then these wicked people propose to marry and go on together. The altar he built he called El-elohe-Israel, God the God of Israel, with difference from his former altar. God had given him strength to prevail, but He did not reveal Himself to him; there was power given in the conflict, but no revelation of God. And then come all the affairs of Dinah and Simeon, and so on, all bad together; whereon God says to him, Do you go up to Bethel: this was where he started from,

God says, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother." The moment God says so, out comes what Jacob knew all the time he had never done with: there was a quantity of idols in the house, and now he thinks of it. It is not that he did not know of it, for he did; but there is no real putting away of idols until we get into the presence of God. Observe, when the idols are buried, the first thing God did was to tell him His name. He did not before, but now that is the first thing: "God appeared unto him, and said unto him, I am God Almighty," the name He had given Himself to Abraham. And then, though the intercourse was short, and there was no intercession for others, God went up from him just as He did from Abraham. You do not get here as much bright blessing, but God does reveal Himself now and talks with Jacob and does not wrestle with him.

109 This brings us back to the history of Israel. Jacob goes through humbling discipline, and at last God is revealed to him; then in Rachel's dying who represents Israel (she had borne Joseph, figure of Christ) we have Benjamin, that is, Christ going to the right hand of God. Rachel called him Ben-oni, son of my afflictions; but his father called him Benjamin, son of my right hand. When this man was born, then Israel (Rachel) was cut off, but his father takes him as son of the right hand of God. Israel is ended in that character entirely.

Next, the world is seen set up in power before God's people are (that is, Esau): no want of kings and dukes there. That closes the history of Jacob really.

Now we have the history of Joseph, that is, in the main. His brothers, Jacob's sons, were a good-for-nothing set as ever were; and Joseph with all his dreams, interpreting, gives us "the wisdom of God," but himself a despised one. Soon after we get him manifested as the "power of God." He is a distinct figure of Christ, rejected by his brethren, sold to the Gentiles; he shews himself there, the patient godly one and having the wisdom of God, while he is the delight of his father too; and then he is exalted to the right hand of power.

It is a well-known history. Everything in the world (Egypt) is ruled by him, and in that character he receives back his repentant brethren, and puts them into the first place in the world; that is, Israel. In the midst of all that you get Judah going on with wickedness in chapter 38: really it is the genealogy of the Lord Himself in flesh. And that is the whole history until you come to Jacob going down to Egypt, and that type closes (never run one type into another), and there he dwells in the land of Goshen. Still Jacob looks to the land as the place of inheritance to be buried there; and, remark, Joseph becomes the first-born, the heir: the birthright is his. It is Christ in that character. It is said so in terms in 1 Chronicles 5, that the birthright was Joseph's.

110 In chapter 48 Jacob crosses his hands to put the sons of Joseph rightly in their place; as in chapter 47 you see how he could bless Pharaoh, though without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better. Thus Jacob blesses the highest king of the earth in that day.

Then you find the blessing of the children of Israel, and I think that of Jacob is a general view of Israel. The blessing of Moses is much more historical. This is general, and down to Dan; with the exception of Zebulon, you get present blessing. The place of strength and power was in Judah: though it goes on after all with failure, Judah was in the place of power, and that is judgment in one shape or another; and then in Dan you find the power of evil. Outwardly Dan lost his place and had no place. I suppose the apostasy is connected with it. The Jews had a tradition that Antichrist will be of his tribe,

All is failure in Israel until you come to "I have waited for thy salvation, O Jehovah."

Reuben, Simeon, and Levi are corrupt and violent; Judah is connected with God's purposes as to the royal stock; Zebulon a haven of ships, and Issachar a strong ass burdened, are linked with prosperity in commerce with the nations, or Gentiles; then Dan is to judge his people. Thus when Israel joins with the Gentiles in that way (Zebulon and Issachar), you get the serpent brought in; and then Gad is overcome, but overcomes at last; and then all is power and blessing after that in Asher and Naphtali, in Benjamin and Joseph.

It is the history of the tribes of Israel divided into two parts. All is failure first, and then abundant blessing.

At the end (chap. 50), whatever power and magnificence Joseph had, his heart is in Israel; and he waits for his bones to be taken up when they should go back to the land, for they had buried Jacob in the land, and he passes in faith over the Egyptian bondage and looks on to their return to Canaan.

The First Man and the Second

Genesis 3.

J. N. Darby.

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Man is by nature both a sinner and ruined - shut out by sin from the presence of God: and man, shut out, could not get back as man. The last Adam brings us back, not in the same way, but in a heavenly one - not to an earthly paradise, but into the very presence of God in heaven. He does not bring back to innocence, but to the "righteousness of God"; for the believer is "made the righteousness of God in him." This scene in Eden shews out God and man.

There is the natural conscience of man; for he acquired by the fall the knowledge of good and evil. A man steals, and he is conscious he has done wrong. Whether or not God's law tells him so, his conscience knows it. Look at Satan's temptation. What was his object? He wanted to make God's creatures think that God was not so good to them as He might be - that He was keeping back from them something that would be for their good - that He was jealous of their becoming as Himself. The natural heart is always calling God in question for having made it responsible to Himself. Its very nature is to question God's goodness.

Satan's great lie was, "Ye shall not die." It is his constant aim to make men believe that the consequence of sin will not be that which God has said it shall be.

When the woman had listened to Satan, lust comes in. Once away in heart from God, she must follow her own way. And what are men doing now? Helping one another to make themselves comfortable away from God, and in those very things that they know He hates. Beloved friends, should you like to meet God just as you are? You know you would not. If God should say to you, Come and be judged, you would wish to have it put off. You know you would. And, moreover, you do not like to think about this unreadiness. What did Adam do, and Eve? They hid themselves from God - nay, further, they hid themselves from themselves and from one another; for the covering of the fig-leaves was just to hide the shame of the nakedness which they discovered. And when they were hiding away from God, they were away from the only source of blessing. It was saying, The light has come in, and I must get far from it: just what the conscience of itself does now in the natural man.

112 Mark the character of the sin. They believed that the devil told the truth, and that God did not. Whatever thoughts they had in their hearts, they acted upon this. And men are still believing the devil's lie - hoping to get into heaven their own way, when God has said that nothing defiled shall enter in.

He wanted too to make them think that God was not so good to them as he would be - that God was keeping back from them the very best thing they could have. And are not men now looking to Satan for happiness, instead of believing God? Man cannot believe that it is God's mind to make him happy.

And now, beloved friends, this is not only a history of Adam, but it is a history of man, of yourselves. You may say, I have done very little harm. Well, then, you shall be taken on your own ground. Is it little harm to make God a liar? What had Adam done? He had eaten an apple. Do you say, And what was that? What harm was there in eating an apple? Alas! Adam and Eve cast off God, and that was the harm. Whether it was eating an apple, or killing a man, as afterwards came out in Cain, the principle was the same. It was casting aside God's authority, and making Him a liar. The root of the evil was there. It had only to bring forth and bud. Suppose I see a plant peeping above the ground. It has but two leaves; but I say, Here is a thistle, cut it up. I do not wait till it is grown to see what it is. And so with sinners. The evil is there, and has only to be developed. A little evil is seen, and there needs only time to manifest all.

Adam hides himself from God. Is there no harm in having so broken with God, as to want to get out of His presence? And it is not God you have harmed (as it is said in Job, "What profit is it to him if thou art righteous?") so much as it is yourselves. The God of love brings down into man's conscience the knowledge of the harm he has done to his own soul. One weighty reason why God has given His blessed word is to shew man what he has done to himself before God. It is in love He has given it; for if He were dealing with men in judgment He would have left them under it.

God called to Adam. When God speaks, it awakes the conscience; but this is not necessarily conversion. God speaks to shew man to himself, and bring him back to blessing. Alas! man is afraid of the only place where holiness can be happy. The awakened conscience shews the presence of God. You would not hide yourself from a policeman: and why? Because you know you have not done anything to make you afraid of him. But you would hide yourselves from God if you could: and why? Because you have done that which you know He hates, that which separates you from Him. Man cannot bear to meet with God.

113 It is remarkable that the only thing in man as such which one might in a certain sense call good in him - that is, conscience - only drives him away from God. Sin has made man get away from God, and it has forced God to drive out man from His presence. See man's sad condition - sinner, ruined, and shut out from God. And there is no way back to God except one, and that is through the Second Man. If Christ comes in by the door into the sheepfold, there is no getting in some other way. He is the door, and whoso enters must come by Him. The flaming sword kept every avenue to the tree of life. There was no possibility of creeping up to it by some unguarded path.

Innocence, once gone, can never be restored. It is the same in common every-day things.

Man cannot get back to God by himself. Everything around us shews that man is out of paradise: toil, and suffering, and sorrow, and sickness, and necessities, and death, tell us of it every day.

There is another character of evil in our souls - and that is a readiness to excuse ourselves. Adam laid the blame on the woman. "The woman whom thou gavest me," etc. It was as much as saying, Why did you give me this woman? It was your gift caused the sin. He wanted to put it off from himself as a question between God and the woman. It was not untrue, and yet it was as far as possible from the truth. It is the way of our guilty nature to throw upon another the sin in which our own will is concerned. And God judged Adam out of his own mouth. The excuse he makes is the very reason for which God condemns him. "Because thou hast hearkened," etc. Our excuses are thus our condemnation.

There is not a word of comfort in all that God says to Adam or his wife. It is all sorrow and suffering in prospect - toil and pain. God shews man his sin to convict his conscience, not to make him happy. Grace comes in, and salvation, and therein he can rejoice. But God wants sinners to feel their sins, and not to find any comfort except in Him. He must take them out of themselves for that. If my child has been perverse, do I wish him to be happy about it? No; I want him to feel his naughtiness. I am longing to forgive him, and winning him to forgiveness; but he must feel his sin.

114 God did not leave these poor condemned sinners without comfort. But it was to the serpent He said, "The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head." It was a new thing that God was bringing in - a new person and a new way. Christ was the "seed." Where the sin had come in, the remedy was to be brought out. The blessing should come by the Seed of the woman through whom the curse had entered. This was the perfection of grace. And grace is perfect in another way. If sin has come in, sin must be entirely put away. He who shut man out from heaven has fully provided that which shall shut him in again. To be brought nigh to God through the precious blood of Christ is the place of believing souls. And how is this blessing brought? Because of the grace which is in God. Christ loved us and gave Himself for us.

God must have us see our sin as between Himself and us. We shall be justifying ourselves till we justify God in condemning us. We are then of one mind with God. To see sin as God sees it is repentance. It is "truth in the inward parts." It is holiness and truth in the heart. And then there is all grace to meet the need that is thus found out. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." A man judging himself in God's light, without seeing Christ as the promised Seed of the woman, is almost in despair; but "God commendeth his love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." We do not want a good Adam, - but a great God and Saviour. In the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, see all the wrath for sin laid upon another; and that other, who? What the soul wants is pure simple grace to meet it just where it is. If you were driven out of paradise yesterday (it is as though God were ever saying) here is comfort for you. When you learn that you are ungodly and without strength, behold what has been done to bring you back. Are you so content with God's judgment about you, as to submit to this grace? It is the woman's seed that must be the hope.

Sin must be perfectly put away. The sinner brought back to God must be spotless. Christ does not enter heaven again till He has accomplished this. "When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down," etc. When all was finished, He took the throne of righteousness. It is a more living and mighty truth to my soul, that Christ, as the last Adam, is in the heavenly paradise, than that the first Adam was cast out of the earthly one.

115 It is through grace, and through grace alone, that we get to know God. If I could present myself at the door of heaven, and seek admittance on the ground of my own righteousness (supposing for a moment it were possible), how should I stand there? For "to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt." I might know God as the One who dwelt there, but it would be a cold entrance; I could not know Him as a God of love. What grace is shewn in paying a man his wages for His work?

No, it is my joy to find it all in another, and not in myself God justifies me when He says, My Son has been given for your soul, and died for sin. We are clothed with Christ - we have put Him on. If I be asked, On what ground do you expect to get into heaven? I say, I am become the righteousness of God. What more could I have or want? If asked what I am in myself, I say, A poor sinner, and this to the very end; but I am now in Him who is the delight of God. True, I do not know Him fully, but He has redeemed me; and I am in Him that is the life. He is in me, and I in Him; and where He is, there I shall in due time be also. Now I want to serve Him better and to shew forth His praise. Perfect power will by-and-by come in, and not a particle of my dust can be left behind. The body is His as well as the soul. Death has been vanquished for it. We are still in the body, and bear it about with us as yet in the bondage of corruption; but Satan's power is crushed. The serpent's head is bruised. We have to do with him now, but his power is broken. He has been overcome, for Christ went down under the full power of him that had the power of death; and He came up from it triumphant, for it was not possible He should be holden of it.

We are told, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." We are not to overcome him (that we never could do), but when he meets Christ in me, he cannot stand that, he must flee. "Thou shalt bruise his heel." The blessed Son of God came down to go through this for us. He said, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God": and that will was our salvation. "By one offering he perfected for ever them that were sanctified"; but then that offering had to be made, See the Lord Jesus Christ coming down from heaven in love, to devote Himself to God for our salvation; and this changes a man's heart. Jesus drank the cup of wrath for sin, full and to the dregs. He tasted death - was shut out from God's presence - endured the hiding of His countenance; and all this, that He might bring us back into the presence of God without judgment and without sin, but with everything that could make us happy and blessed for ever. He lived in God's love; He dwelt with the Father; and He knew well what He was bringing us into, what He was giving us to share. But He knew too what the holiness of God was, and what His wrath was; and therefore He knew what He was delivering us from. How I shall hate sin, if I have seen Christ agonizing for mine upon the cross!

116 Well, the moment a poor sinner looks to Jesus by faith as his divine sin-bearer, his sins are all gone - they are put out of God's sight for ever. And Christ is in heaven. Could He take the sin there? No; His very being in heaven proves it all left behind. The poor sinner gets the fruit of all that He has done, and all that He is - pardoned through His blood, brought nigh to God Himself Peace has been made through the blood of the cross. And the glorified Man is in heaven, appearing in the presence of God for us - of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God.

Genesis 3

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It is not only the word of God which lets us know that there is sin and misery in the world. Man knows very well that iniquity and defilement are in himself, and no one is satisfied with his portion here below because he is ill at ease in his own heart. The word of God shews us much more - how Satan entered the world, and the consequences of sin in our relations with God.

The first thing the old serpent does is to put something between God and us, to put himself between both. The only thing which can render us happy is that there is nothing between God and us, and that God loves us. Satan begins by rendering the soul distrustful of God, and suggests to the woman to wish for a forbidden thing, and to satisfy the wish, hinting that God does not love to gratify us, and would keep some great good from us. The enemy does not direct our mind either to the goodness of God, or to our obeying God. The woman knew well why she ought not to eat of the fruit of that tree, and that death would be the inevitable result. Had not God forbidden and threatened?

God has warned us of the consequences of sin. He had said, "In the day that thou eatest, dying thou shalt die," But Satan, who ever seeks to deny and lower the truth of God, says to the woman, "Ye shall not surely die . . . ye shall be as God." And it is true that the fall has rendered man much more intelligent relative to good and evil; but Satan hid from him that he would be severed from God, and with an evil conscience. Their eyes were opened, it is said; and they knew that they were naked as they looked at themselves.

All that which is near us appears more important and greater than that which is still distant. The forbidden tree being near, and the judgment of God far off, Eve takes of the fruit and eats. So the spirit of falsehood says till this day to men, Ye shall not die; the threatenings of God will not take effect. He conceals the warnings of God; and one does then what Satan and one's own lusts push one on to do. If a Christian is not vigilant, his conscience will lose its activity, and in place of seeing God he will see his own nakedness.

Man still uses leaves to cover his nakedness. He does his utmost to hide from himself the evil which is there; but when God reveals Himself, it is quite otherwise.

118 God draws near as if nothing had happened; then what ought to have been a joy for man without sin becomes, because of sin, the source of immense alarm. Adam flees, and seeks to hide from before the eye of God, as if he had succeeded in veiling his nakedness to his own eye. What a horrible thing for man to be thus hiding himself before God!

Adam fears, for conscience is always touched by the presence of God; it takes away every hope of enjoying sin when it penetrates into our conscience. Then one only sees God, who is feared, without our being able to appreciate Him.

The relations of man with God were thenceforward broken, and in a manner irreparable, as to man.

"Who told thee that thou wast naked?" says the Lord. Adam answers by accusing the woman, and God who had given her to him. Dastardliness always comes into the soul with sin. Adam wishes to excuse himself by lies, and to leave the fault and blame between his wife and God. He leaves to God the care of arranging the thing with the woman. Thus a bad conscience fears God too much to confess its sin, yet it knows too well that it has sinned to deny it. If you had full confidence in God, and were perfectly sure that God loves you, you would be very happy. But Satan is here; and his great power consists in producing distrust where there is happiness and intimate relation with God to destroy in our hearts. You trust your own will and your own efforts for your happiness; but, distrusting God, you will not, you cannot, confide to Him the care of this happiness, and leave yourself to His mighty love.

The beginning of sin is the unbelief which doubts God. Thereby in effect Satan began. He persuaded Eve that God had kept something for Himself that the creature might not be too happy and blest.

The woman was wrong in conversing with Satan; she ought not to have listened to a voice which insinuated distrust of God. What Satan did then and always, he persuades every man that God is too good to condemn us because we sin; and man, spite of his sin and his conscience, hopes and persuades himself that he will not be condemned. It is the voice of the old serpent. Now God has shewn by the death of His Son that the wages of sin is death.

Conscience being evil, every effort of the world is to hide from itself its nakedness before God. It would remove from men gross and outward sin, drunkenness, murder, and robbery. It seeks by law, and efforts of philanthropy, individual and co-operative, to blot out the open effects of sin in the world. Such are the aprons of fig-leaves, which remove nothing at all, but serve for the moment to hide from ourselves our nakedness and our misery, to avoid thinking of the justice of the condemnation God has put from the beginning on the sin that dwells in us. Now that sin is between our conscience and God, one wishes at least that there should be something to hide us before Him. With this end in view, man employs what he calls innocent things. Thus the trees were so, but man made use of them to conceal himself from before God. God had given all to man in this world; but man uses it now only to deprive himself of the sight of God, and thus pretends to be innocent in employing these good things after such a sort!

119 When the voice of God awakens conscience, people still wish something to hide them from Him; but this is impossible. God says to Adam, "Where art thou?" There is no means of hiding any longer. If God said so to each of your souls, would it be your joy to be in His presence? God alone is our resource and refuge when we have sinned. It is only God who takes away guile from the heart, for He alone can pardon. Now if you hide yourself from God, where are you for your soul? God had not yet driven Adam from His presence till Adam fled from the presence of God. Conscience tells us that if we have sinned, no leaves or trees can hide us in His presence. If there be a just God, man is wretched in his conscience; he cannot be quiet in sin but solely on condition that there is no God. Every hope of unbelief is that there be no God, or, what comes to the same thing, that He be not just or holy.

Adam wishes to excuse himself, as if he had not lusted himself, as if he had not followed the voice of his wife instead of hearkening to God, as if he was not responsible for having failed himself. Now if there were not lust in us, sin would not be produced. In the midst of all God's goodness, who has given His Son for poor sinners, you have no confidence in God, and this is a state of sin. It matters little how it is manifested, it displays ingratitude and distrust. Eve listened and believed Satan, instead of hearing and believing God. This, man ever does; and he hopes for salvation and eternal life though he sins. All the efforts you make to be happy shew that you are not happy. Why the arts and pleasures of the world if the world were happy? All that which would have been the effect of God's presence in your hearts and consciences would stop your pleasure. Therefore if all your pleasures are incompatible with the presence of God, what will they be for you in eternity? Will they carry you to the foot of the throne of the Holy and Just, to shew Him that you have spent many innocent hours far from Him? There are not only disobedience, distrust, falsehood, which are sin: there is worse still - the state of soul which seeks to be light and giddy, far from the presence of God.

120 Man may withdraw himself from God's presence whilst grace lasts; but he will not be able when God shall judge him. Satan will help you, your best friends according to the world will also help you, to withdraw yourself from His presence, to deny and forget it, but that will certainly not go on longer than the time of grace granted to us. Therefore, while it is called today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. God knows that you are sinners: He knows the iniquity of Satan, who would make man his prey; but there is an answer to that which Satan knew, and of which man could have no idea: God makes a revelation of grace (v. 15). A promise is not given to those who are incapable of enjoying it. The natural man cannot enjoy what flows from grace, because faith is necessary to that, and confidence in God. The question thenceforward is wholly between the serpent and the second Man. God says nothing to Adam but words which shew the actual consequences of sin; He says to the serpent what He will do. Thenceforth the only hope for lost man is in this promised Seed; and even before he is driven from His presence, God reveals what Jesus will do to destroy the work of Satan.

There is not a single sign of repentance in Adam after his sin. He had shewn the dastardliness, meanness, and fraud of his heart; but God only occupies Himself with His counsels and the answer He has in Himself. He announces the Seed of the woman, whose glory and power are developed throughout all His word.

Now it is no longer an anticipation or promise of grace: Jesus is come. Wretched man thought that God did not wish to give him something through jealousy of his happiness; but this was the lie of Satan. God, who seemed to refuse a fruit to man innocent, has given His Son to man a sinner. And the heart of man is so perverted that he has no confidence, though God has given His Son. Jesus, instead of fleeing from condemnation, went to meet it; He took on Him the sins of His bride, instead of loading her with fetters. He has by death destroyed him that had the power of death. The effect of the death of Jesus is to inspire us with perfect confidence. The death of Jesus put us in relationship with God, without fear and without difficulty, because it clothes us when we are naked and miserable. There is nothing but grace for us after the judgment which has struck the Son of God.

121 Is your confidence in God? Do you believe that He gave His Son, that His love did so to save fully poor sinners? This confidence gives peace and obedience, because nothing is more precious than the love of God; and this love makes us prefer obedience and its consequences spite of all the difficulties. May God touch your heart, and give you to render Him glory by receiving all that His love has done for you!

Abram

Genesis 12.

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The contents of this chapter are peculiarly important, as unfolding the dispensations of God. In other parts of scripture may be more fully seen what the means were by which the purposes of God should be accomplished, and the great object in which those purposes found their result; but the principles on which the dealings of God hinge are nowhere more clearly produced. It is, in fact, their first exhibition, and therefore (however succinctly) they are definitely and very completely produced and stated; - not in theoretic principles philosophically declared, but in the statement of that on which they all depended, and in the exhibition of which, therefore, they could alone be fitly taught; - that is, in the sovereign acting of God upon the principles in which we were thereby to be instructed.

Thus it is that the scripture continually teaches by realities, for in them God is introduced. No theory can reach God - the human mind is incapable of it - but God acting is always the adequate exhibition of Himself; and thus the object of faith is exhibited in the way in which He is revealed; while at the same time those with whom the history may be conversant present all the characters of man, as subject to God, or in the exercise of that will which requires to be corrected, as being alienated from Him and opposed to Him.

The great point of the chapter is the call of God, and the principles on which it proceeds. The calling of God is a cardinal point in His dispensations. It is identified with grace, and in it there is no repentance; God does not swerve from it. It expressed His purpose, as it is written, "The gifts and calling of God are unrepented of," Rom. 11: 29. Of this there had been heretofore no mention; individuals may have been called (as assuredly every saint had been from Abel downwards), but until this chapter it does not form the subject of the revelation of God.

It is important to consider what subjects the scripture previously presents; they were substantially two - Adam and Noah; creation, and creation secured by government. That Adam was placed at the head of natural creation will be called in question by none. That Noah stood as the representative head of government I learn from the committal of the sword to him, or at least from the revelation of the principle to him, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." There might be repentance in these things, though in gift and calling of God there could be none. He was not declared as the God of Adam, or as the God of Noah; but He was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; "this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations," Ex. 3: 15. Creation, in point of fact (as to its existing estate), was repented of - "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually; and it repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth, and it grieved him at his heart; and the Lord said, I will destroy"; and He did destroy, sparing favoured Noah; as it is written, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them," Gen. 6: 5-7. But God's calling is His purpose, and He hath sworn in His holiness, and He will not repent.

123 The natural good of creation in the hands of the first man had not only proved fallible and corruptible, but it had failed, and become corrupted; and destructive judgment had been executed upon it by the hand of God, few, that is eight souls, being spared, together with what was with them in the ark, out of all in whose nostrils was the breath of life. To Noah (as I have before said) the principle of government was communicated, in order to restrain evil in its effects; that violence might no more cover the earth, but that in detailed instances the wrath of God might be vindicated against it - life belonging unto Him. Sin, however, in its principle, still remains at work, exhibiting itself in the failing of Noah the saint, and in the recklessness of the disrespectful father of Canaan.

As regards this part of the history previous to Abram (that is, the earth under government), we have the fact recorded of the division of the earth amongst its various nations and families; this we find in Genesis 10, where the fact is stated, the origin of which we find explained only in chapter 11. But first let us consider the fact - the earth was divided (a new and not a necessary circumstance for it as placed under government) into distinct nations, separated by place, language, and (as to the various lower branches), we may add, more immediate origin. Thus, whatever may have been the particular changes since, the earth under government assumed the form which it now bears. Various indeed, in particular parts, might be the interchange, division, or growth of power; but the characteristic state of things continued to be the same, and in fact its great features were indelibly impressed. Indeed not only is this the case, but it is interesting to observe, that if we take the list of nations spoken of as gathered together under the wilful king in the latter day, and under Gog in Ezekiel, we shall find ourselves brought back to the same nations, and tongues, and families, which are presented to our view at the outset, as the immediate consequence of the establishment of this principle of government in the hands of Noah, and as formed into actual condition by the sin of Babel. The rest of the intermediate scripture is the history of calling and grace.

124 To the sin of Babel I would now turn. In the history of Babel we have shewn the sin of man, under the circumstances in which the one family of man was then placed; even in assuming the earth to themselves; in seeking to make a name, lest they should be scattered; a city, which they purposed should be an abiding monument and centre of power, but on which God writes Babel. Until they were scattered abroad, they had one speech, and one tongue, and thus they were practically one family, having a common bond of association. But the lust of ambitious selfishness was at work, and this union was broken to pieces. Hence they were separated and (the earth subsequently being formally divided among them, Genesis 10: 25; 11: 18), they became, to every intent and purpose, distinct nations. Although its origin was sin, and its character confusion, the reaching out of grace was shewn in the testimony of the day of Pentecost, as extended toward the world, and as contrasted with anything towards the Jews merely; this I remark in passing, but it is not on this that I would now dwell.

But although circumstances were thus altered, the principle of government remained untouched; however it might be exercised, righteously or unrighteously, it was placed in the hand of man "not bearing the sword in vain," "the minister of God to execute wrath." It might be exercised according to its institution, in repressing evil, although merely by power; but even this in the sin of man was not the case; the result is described in Psalm 82.

125 "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods.

"How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked?

"Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy.

"Deliver the poor and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

"They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

"I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.

"But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

"Arise, O God, judge the earth, for thou shalt inherit all nations."

The judges of the earth had all gone incorrigibly wrong - they neither heard, nor yet understood. God was obliged, therefore, to take the matter into His own hands; He was obliged to arise and to judge the earth. Thus is shewn the failure of power in the hands of man from another part of scripture, as is also shewn in Daniel 7, etc.

We have thus brought before us in Genesis, up to chapter 12, creation, and then its failure and its judgment; next we have government of the renewed earth introduced for its peace, in consequence of evil having been proved in man. Man's pride, rebellion, and self-sufficiency, are shewn: together with a judgment, which did not alter the principle of the dispensation (for had it been otherwise, evil would have been without check), which was to continue until God should take it into His own hands, but which exhibited how man failed under it, in its common form; how under the consequent judgment it assumed the form of distinct nationality; and how the lust of personal ambition and power, or of obtaining a great name, was associated with the divinely sanctioned principle of government, and thus came into existence the beginning of kingdoms; however unrighteously this principle was exercised, it still continued to be unalterably recognized of God. Here were all the principles drawn out, and the scene was closed.

The circumstances might vary, but there was no change in the principle till God takes the matter into His own hands. Countries and kindreds were now formed; and inasmuch as they were separated one from another by the spirit of intelligible association, so much the more were they united in stronger personal and local interests; selfishness became national, and adverse interests became (not simply personal) but those of countries, and peoples, and tongues.

126 But into the midst of all this there was a new principle introduced. The calling of God - a principle and a power which, while leaving these untouched, acted paramount to them all - to natural relationship, and to formed associations.

"Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee." Here is distinctly shewn the calling of the "father of the faithful." Country and kindred were recognized as existing; how they were formed in creation, and under government (as established in Noah), and the subsequent circumstances, we have already seen.

They were now left just as they were. They were not meddled with. In fact, in their own place (though corrupted), and as having instamped upon them that they had been God's ordinances, they were both distinctly maintained. There is not to this day any abrogation of them, nor indeed ever will be in principle, though they will be transferred to Christ, and under Christ they will be unto righteousness and blessing. "A king shall reign in righteousness," and although the queen and Jewish partner of His glory shall be taught to forget her father's house (being called through grace, not descent), yet the offspring of the remnant shall be blessed with them; instead of the fathers shall be the children. However, therefore, evil may have overrun them, both government and relationship, home, etc., are principles in no way rejected, nor could they be abstractedly. But the calling of God acts paramountly to them, or else there could be no other principle, and the prevailing of man's evil in them would be left unremedied.

But in the wisdom of God, the corrupted state of things was no longer judged or acted upon, but the witness of better things was introduced; had they been judged, then must have been the end in utter destruction, or the premature assumption of all into the hands of Supreme power. Yet even that by which evil was to be suppressed, that is, government, being corrupted, was now become the instrument of evil. Hence entirely new hopes could alone be introduced, and not merely a present amendment, for that must have come to the same end; but new principles, not destroying the sanctioned and appointed instruments of God, for such destruction would have proved, not so much the evil of man, the creature, but the evil and foolishness of the Creator's appointment. This appointment was left just where it was, to be judged in due time upon the maintainers of it. But in grace another principle was introduced - the leaving in self-sacrifice all these things for better hopes. The existing ties of country and kindred are recognized, but in THE CALL OF GOD there is set up a paramount claim: - "The Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house."

127 We have then, in the calling of God, the assertion of a paramount claim on God's part upon an individual in grace, leaving everything out of which he was called without further change; only calling him out of it. This is one very strong, distinct, and new principle, not previously revealed, consequent upon, and acting in, an especial and paramount way, in reference to the existing relationships, which had arisen out of what was previously ordered and appointed. No declaration of blessings or principles to men where they were, but the calling of them out thence, and thus a personal calling is what we find. The principle further established in it mere personal obedience, upon the ground of this call, to individual responsible action. "God had said to Abraham, Get thee out." Here on the word of God the individual responsibility of obedience attached. It necessarily and avowedly involved the breaking of subsisting relationships in person, as to his own interest in them, but without affecting them, as they stood in themselves, in the least. He was to leave his country, and his kindred, and his father's house. They might still continue just what they were before (they might, or they might not): this was a question of Providence; obedience to the words and calling of God was the only point in grace to Abram, the only point to be considered by him. The word of God led the way in the direction which was given, and gave the promise to him as that which should encourage him in acting. "Into a land that I will shew thee"; this was the certain hope of certain faith, by which a man is made entirely a stranger where he was before at home. It was indeed merely a promise, but it was a promise which involved not only the certainty of God, but also the guidance of God unto the thing promised - "to a land that I will shew thee."

128 Let us turn more to the detail of this calling of God; we have seen already that its grand distinguishing feature was separation from the world. "The Lord had said to Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house." This was the substance of the present character of the calling, as acting upon a nationalized world; and thus was brought forward the specific character of the church.

There was involved then in it the immediate favour of God, not in present comfort, but in personal calling. The personal revelation of Himself to Abram, as it were, identified him with Himself and with His purpose, and with the blessing of an appointed inheritance. This calling, however special and personal, however distinguishing in favour, necessarily involved obedience. The call of blessing to Abraham was a call to get out of his country unto a land which God would shew to him, and thus it necessarily involved obedience. Whatever the power which acted on his mind might be, obedience was the result; for in the very terms of the call it was manifest - no obedience, no blessing. He was (to use the words of scripture) "sanctified unto obedience," for there was nothing else now given but the command, "Go out" - "the Lord had said." It was not to gratify the present selfishness of Abram's nature, saying, "this is thy country," but it was "Get thee out of thy country" - to go where? "to a land that I will shew thee." It implied, therefore, implicit confidence in God for faithfulness, power, and love. Taking Him for the security and the portion (as the scriptures reveal it), he went out, not knowing whither he went. It is on this that the Spirit of God so specially tests as characteristic of his approved faith. By separation from the world, on the ground of implicit confidence in God, he lost everything, and got nothing but the word of God, scaled of course to his soul (for his faith rested in it) by the power of the Spirit of God. The God of glory had appeared to him in the matter, and God would shew to him the land. So Abram departed.

Here then is the pattern and character of the church, and also of the individual believer; they are called of God in faith out of all that into which the world and nature have been formed (and while not meddling with these things, or disowning them in their place, but recognizing in them God's ordering hand, and moreover the sin of man): trusting in a promise not at once fulfilled, but taking God, and God alone, as the security, the warrant, and the guide; it is faithfulness, as being assured of the present loss of all things, and the present gain of nothing; it is a walking by faith, and not by sight, not only as regards present things relinquished, but also as to things hoped for - things to come - "for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" But they are sufficiently assured of God; and in Him, and knowing Him, or rather being known of Him, they are ready to give up all for His word. Thus it was not the reward that was taken as the portion, but God, the promiser of the reward, and therefore it was faith. The object was as simple as the security. "They went forth to go to the land of Canaan"; the result was as certain as He who called was sure; "they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Such is the history and the character of the church of God in its calling. Called out by God into separation from the world, which it leaves just where it was to go into a land of promise - a land which God will shew it - it walks by faith, and not by sight, going forth to go thither, and thither surely coming, according to the calling and power of God.

129 A darker picture now remains - the actual practical conduct and condition. There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down into Egypt. This was not confidence in God, who had brought him thither, nor was the land of Egypt the land of Canaan, as was afterwards well proved.

And here I would remark, what will, I believe, simplify the use of many types, and be found (at least I have so found it) that men who are types represent the energy of faith, the spiritual energy of the church, under the circumstances in which the type represents it, or perhaps its failure therein; and that females who are presented to us as types represent the state and condition of the church.

Abram may act in faith in going out, and he may act in want of faith in denying his wife; Sarah is the New Covenant, Hagar the Old, a free-woman and a bondwoman: one, more or less,, presenting the acting of the Spirit of Christ, the Gibbor, the bridegroom; the other, the estate or condition in the dispensation, whether clothed with the sun or in the wilderness, in bondage or in freedom. And thus it is that they may vary; thus David, or Ahaz, or Manasseh, would be very differently presented as a type of any individual: but respecting the church or Jewish economy typified by a woman, it was all one (as being the possessor of the throne of David), because the economy, or condition of the church in which they so acted, was all one. I state this merely to illustrate what I mean; the woman is the state in which the dispensation is; the man is the conduct of faith in it.

130 Here then we have Abram and Sarai introduced; and afterwards the actual conduct of the church, and not the calling, is the thing brought before us.

Present circumstances were distressing in that land into which the promise of God had called him. It was still a land of promise; the Canaanite was then in the land. Abram felt the famine to be grievous, but we find no reference to God, no recurrence to Him, no directions from Him, no exercise of faith; there was no previous direction for this. The fact is all we have - Abram went down into Egypt. Alas! too true. But was the God of Abram near? He had not inquired this, but was acting on his own prudence and reasoning. Fear of the Egyptians came upon him as he drew near their land. If there was not famine for the saint, there was the denial of the blessing and indissoluble bond which subsisted between the church and its bridegroom, represented in faith by those who stood in that relation before God. He came into the regions of the prince of this world for his own comfort to satisfy his present need, not of faith in God. The consequence was, the immediate denial of the holy separation from the world and union with Christ which belonged to the church: she was his sister, not his wife; true, perhaps, in one sense, but deadly in its actual character as to the faith of God's elect. She was very fair to look upon, for indeed God had set His beauty upon her as His daughter, the object of His love, as of Himself, as well as being the spouse of Christ the Son; she was commended in the world. The faith of the church had denied and disowned its unalterable affiance to Christ. The church was taken into the world's house, the house of the prince of this world; and the prince of this world entreated Abram well for her sake.

He who had denied the bond, and given up that which was essential in their connection, obtained thereby plenty and ease at the hand of the prince of this world; "he had sheep, and oxen, and he-asses, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels." But was this comfort to him? Was it satisfaction (if he had any truth of heart) for the circumstances in which he was placed? And if we turn from the mere beggarly circumstances of the type to the blessed and indissoluble union between our blessed Lord Christ and the church, how does it picture the shamefulness, the baseness, the want of faithfulness, in unbelieving believers, in surrendering this charge of God, this deposit of faith! How must every camel, every servant, every ox, as it passed before his eyes, with the stamp of Pharaoh's kindness upon it, have smitten Abram's heart with the thought, "But where is my wife, I have sold my wife for this!" Did he not know that she was so? Had his feeble falsehood to others dimmed his own thoughts and feelings? Had he forgotten in his love of sheep' and oxen, etc., that the wife given him of the Lord was sold for their sake? Could he persuade himself that she was his sister, and might be Pharaoh's wife, and not his?

131 Where was his trust in God? where the integrity of his way? Bitter was that time to Abram, or sad the forgetfulness of an unrighteous heart. The he must have lain heavy on his heart, but he must receive his sheet) and the oxen; cutting as it might be, he had involved himself in the circumstances, he stood upon his own declaration that she was his sister. Had Abram intended this? No! it was an unlooked-for circumstance; it was unbelief, which continually produces in judgment the evil which it seeks to avoid. The sons of men would build a tower lest they should be scattered abroad, and the Lord scattered them because they built it. Abram, fearing lest Pharaoh should take his wife, says she is his sister (as if God would not preserve him), and therefore Pharaoh takes her into his house. But it was the first step that was wrong - Abram went down into Egypt. He went down without God out of the land of faith and promise, and he could not expect (for God could not bless unbelief, though He might judge sin that acted in it unrighteously) to meet God there; his heart knew Him not in power there; and as he must act on something, he acts on his own resources prudently; but as he had departed from faith in God, so was faithfulness in the position of his wife with her true husband departed from: and he was blessed in the world (yea, and by the prince of this world) for his unfaithfulness.

132 If Satan gets the church, in its state and condition, into his own house (however mercifully God may preserve it), he will bless the faithless instruments of the betrayal with the things of the world. Such, then, is the history (not of the calling, but) of the practical conduct of the church: not of the calling of God, which we saw in its sure infallibility before, together with Sarai and all he had, but of the acting of men in the place to which they are called - in their departure from it, not acting in faith; and such are the results. The end is not that Abram is honoured, but that the Lord vindicates Himself in plaguing Pharaoh and his house with great plagues, because of Sarai Abram's wife. He asserts and maintains the title, and Judges and will judge the world for thus taking another man's wife. The church is the King's daughter, and is taken in the lust of its own dominion by the world. And this the Lord would, and was entitled to, visit. But still the sin was Abram's, his blessings all this while were curses. And it is worthy of remark, that it was an Egyptian handmaid that typified the fleshly covenant of bondage: the world always genders unto bondage, for it is ever opposed to the Spirit of God; and whenever, therefore, the world comes in, it merely produces, and in result is identified with, bondage (where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty). For the world in its results is developed by bringing an expectation and an endeavour to procure the inheritance by a covenant of works. Such has been the actual fact in the church, and will be, because the Spirit is opposed to the world; and, that being grieved and absent, the other takes its place, with the indulgence of lusts, resting on works, and union with the world. But while this was an ultimate result, I would now rest merely upon the picture which is actually presented to us in this chapter, of the cause, character, and consequence of the working of the spirit of unbelief in the church, called out indeed, but looked at as in the hands of man. In the early part of the chapter we have its calling of God, and its results as well as character. The latter part shews its conduct in man, the shame, worldly comfort, unbelief, and sorrow; but also the merciful interposition of that God, who, when we have wearied Him with our sins, acts and delivers for His own name's sake, and vindicates., in righteous dealing toward the world, what the unrighteousness of man had plunged unfaithfully into its power.

133 I feel that I have very feebly drawn out what is here presented to our view; but if I have drawn the attention of the children of God to the application of the plain typical principles here set before us (as applied to the history of the church of God in this brief account, as that of the world had previously been given), so as to lead them by the Spirit to judge from the Lord, and not from anything else, whether the world or expediency, I shall be content; and I pray the Lord to bless it.

History of Abram

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I have been particularly interested latterly in the history of Abram; and I send you a brief outline of what has struck me in this history as a picture of many interesting elements of the life of faith. There is a difference between public worship and personal communion brought out in this history, and the intimacy of the latter, and the ground on which it is built, which have especially occupied me. But I can, on account of other occupations, only give the outline.

His life, in as far as it is presented to us as a life of faith, begins by his calling, when in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charan. The God of glory appeared to him, says Stephen. In a word, it was God's revelation of Himself to him, by which he was called into the path of life. Object of divine election, Jehovah's revelation of Himself to him calls him out of darkness and subjection to the power of Satan (for his family worshipped other gods beyond the flood out of the land of promise), and gives to him the promises, in connection with a faith which set out, on the simple word of God, to be led where God Himself should shew him his country and his home. He was to quit all for the word and promise of God. This is the first element and character of the life of faith. The Lord gives sufficient of the details of this history to shew that, till Abram had fully broken with all God called upon him to leave, he could not, though he had left much, and might plead the best claims of nature for the rest, attain the end for which he had left all the rest. He had left Ur, come to Charan, and dwelt there. However, after Terah's death, he left Charan, as the Lord had said to him, and now comes to Canaan. This begins the second part of the life of faith: that which passes in the place of promise.

In that life we are called on to set out, trusting God towards the place of promise and hope, called by the blessed revelation of God to our souls. And we are called to walk with God in this place of blessing and communion into which we are entered in spirit. This is the second part of our Christian life. It is found here (chap. 12: 6-8). Abram walks up and down in the place of promise - to us heavenly places. The Canaanite, the hostile power of evil, is still in the land. Joshua will, in time, root them out; but for Abram's walk of faith, they are still in the land, while he walks there in hope. How true it is, and how far we are from always sufficiently bearing it in mind.

135 The Lord appears to Abram; this is the ground of worship, as well as of walk. He does not evidently appear to him to cause him to set out, leaving all; for He appears to him when he is, though a stranger there, in the land to which God has brought him. But He appears to draw out to Himself the affections of him whom He has brought there. But it is not in that condition Abram is to possess or inherit it. He would have lost much by such a possession, his being a stranger there led his heart and hope, through grace, to a city which had foundations - a better country, that is, a heavenly. We can surely say, it was expedient for us that Christ went away. Oh, how sweet the heavenly associations and hopes to which He has drawn us, and into which He has introduced us by the Spirit He has sent down on His going up on high. How truly He has set man in heavenly places with God. How far better than the establishment of an earthly kingdom, however glorious it may be. There is something peculiarly excellent and blessed in a life of faith, dependent on God for enjoyment in what is not seen. A man of the world, one, at least, whose life was passed as such, a sage of their own, has said, "Whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, exalts man in the scale of intellectual being." How much more so when it is God who fills it all up, and that in the creating and unfolding of affections, which are awakened and formed by Christ and have Him, and the divine perfectness which is in Him, for their object and their source.

But to return to the history we are studying. The Lord appeared - made Abram feel practically that he was not to have the land - God, and confidence in Him was his portion - he was a stranger there; promise as to this, was his proper portion, but in his seed he should inherit it. There was a settled purpose of God, and this purpose he was thus to know. How blessed, thus, to rest in God, our heart founded on communications from Himself, and that He can bless us in teaching us to trust Him enough to live the life of faith, to be content with Him. The heart of a stranger, who has God with him, is, of all, the best in this world; it was, in the most perfect way and degree, Christ's judgment God will execute to introduce others into actual blessing; we have all with Him, and now, and indeed for ever, in Himself. We have no need of judgment to enjoy our portion, though we know judgment will issue and work deliverance for all else.* This is the church's place, and it is a very blessed one - she suffers with Christ. This position in Abram's case drew out worship. It is its true and real power for us. It was to the God who appeared to him that he raised his altar: the revelation of Himself by God in the place of promise, draws out worship; as the revelation of Himself, when we are far from it, sets us in the way to the place of rest that God is to shew us. It is this blessed revelation of Himself by God putting us into conscious relationship with Himself, flowing from what is known to faith only, which forms the ground of worship. It is His favour, direct interest in us, His having brought us by His revelation into connection with Himself, which in and by this confidence creates worship. Our worship answers to the revelation we thus have, while it is founded on the grace of it. The revelation of His purpose, and of the way of the accomplishment of His promise, accompanies and makes part of the revelation on which it is founded. But this puts the soul into permanent intercourse with God of this kind. The worship, to Abram, realizes the various parts of the home promised to faith, to be possessed when pilgrimage is over; and when he realizes the enjoyment of it, his pilgrimage, his altar, is renewed. He goes around the place of promise and hope, where he is yet a stranger; but when he pitches his tent in the enjoyment of it, then he raises his altar too. This is a sweet and happy picture of the life and occupation of faith. These two elements - the setting out on the journey towards the place of promise, and the happy acknowledgement of God in it, form the two parts of the life of faith.

{*Note how this brings out in its true character the rapture of the church. If my portion is in anyway in this world, evil must be removed by judgment in order to enjoy it. But if I am entirely a stranger and a pilgrim' having no portion here, evidently there is no need of such judgment for my enjoyment of my portion. God Himself is this portion, for I have renounced all here. He has only to take me up to enjoy when the time is come in His counsels to do so.}

136 The rest of this chapter, on which I do not enlarge, shews the failure of the believer, who is apt, if the place of promise does not afford him all for present need which he wants, instead of consulting God, to go down to the world for help. This, though accompanied by outward prosperity - as it has been with the church - leads to further unfaithfulness. Abram has no altar here, nor till he returns to the altar he made at the beginning, where he had last had one - no new communion - no further acquaintance with the place of promise. All he can do is through grace to get back to the place he has left.

137 When Abram had returned to the altar he had left to go southward, he again gets into worship. Here, though perhaps the prosperity of Egypt had given occasion to the strife and sorrow, the conduct of Abram is beautiful and characteristic of one having the heavenly portion. If Egypt had betrayed him, it had at least taught him a lesson. Returned with this experience into communion with God, he has enough in this to give up all the rest in grace. There is a moment when our own faith is put to the test: often we walk by that of others; but our own state must be tried. Lot, a believer, chooses the world (and contrary to every right feeling), and vexes his righteous soul in the midst of what was the very object of coming judgment. As soon as the worldly-minded believer and his portion are together, the distinction, made by faith and faithfulness in the disinterestedness of heavenly happiness and grace, where God was a sufficient portion, was given effect to by the worldly wish of Lot. Abram is told to go over the whole place of promise, and know its length and breadth; northward, southward, eastward, and westward, all its extent - it all was his. That is, when once the heart has left all that selfishness would have of what might seem within the limits of the land, but was taken by the carnal heart to please itself, the full extent and blessed details of what we are to enjoy with God is made known to us - and experimentally. We have here, then, after the general character of the life of faith, and failure in it, an important experimental element of it: after failure and restoration to communion by grace, and complete victory over, and renunciation of the world, such a sense of the value of the heavenly and unseen things, as frees from the influence of the world. The consequence is, an escape from being entangled in what is the scene and object of judgment, and a full experimental knowledge of the inheritance of faith. Note, Abram escapes, and gets the increased privilege by walking in the path of faith, where there is no perception of the consequences. Abram had yielded through weakness and want of faith in trial; but his heart was right, and after the trouble his fault had occasioned, and his restoration, the very effect of this humbling experience is to give the superiority to all worldly influence which saves him entirely from the fatal mistake of Lot.* Here the Lord, though He does not appear as when He called, or revealed Himself in the land of promise, speaks to Abram. And Abram, after removing his tent, builds an altar where he comes to sojourn. For our worship is in the measure in which we enter into the details of our portion from God.

{*We have failure in each of these features of divine life. He does not quit his father's house, and therefore stops half-way, and is no way in the place of promise; and he goes down into Egypt. In the third case, Lot represents the failure, and Abram maintains his heavenly ground.}

138 We have here three, in a certain sense four, of these altars, in what we have hitherto read. Firstly, the one built on the Lord's revelation of Himself in the land, which gives the general character of the worship of faith. Secondly, one shewing the permanent abiding character of worship in his strangership. In Egypt, out of the place of promise and faith, none; then (what made me say, in a certain sense a fourth), the return to the place of strangership and worship in the place of promise; and, lastly, when his exercised heart had renounced all but God, and God (the worldly-minded believer having chosen the well-watered plain) had made him realize all the extent of the scene of promise, he builds an altar there to worship the God who had bestowed all on him, assured him in the possession of it, and given him the present knowledge of and enjoyment of it in hope.

But renouncing the world is the path to victory over it; the choosing of it is captive subjection to its power. Lot is carried away captive by the powerful ones of the earth, along with those among whom his worldly propensities had led him. Abram, free and walking in the faith of God, has more force from Him than all the kings, conquerors or conquered, and delivers Lot and the kings who could not help themselves. The full victory of faith is here presented - ours is not with carnal weapons, when it is gained; and what is figured will only be fully accomplished in connection with the Jews. This brings Abram under Melchizedek blessing, God taking the character, which is properly millennial, of possessor of heaven and earth. Praise and blessing constitute the priestly work of Melchizedek. This is the victory of faith, and the full blessing of Christ (priest and king over God's universal dominion) being established - all enemies being overcome. But it historically gives occasion, not merely to renouncing the world completely, but to the refusal of the least dependence on it. Abram depends on God for wealth and everything. In such a relationship - receiving from the world, depending on it, for advantage as its debtor, is pollution. Thus closes this part of Abram's history, and the worship which belongs to it.

139 Details of the most interesting kind are given in what follows; but they are the development of his personal relationship with God. What we have examined is, in its general characters, the public life of faith. What follows enters into the private and personal communion which belongs to the life of faith, through the divine grace which visits it. We do not find worship, but what we may be allowed reverently to call intercourse. In one place we are told God talked with Abram. Abram, no doubt, fell on his face, the fitting position in such intercourse; and even when he, in all liberty, pleaded with Jehovah for others, when Jehovah appeared to him in the form of a man, it was with the fullest recognition of the divine glory of Him with whom he spoke. Still it was not worship, but communications from Jehovah to Abram, and in return Abram's with Him.

This has evidently a peculiar character of blessing and privilege - a grace, an intimacy to which our highest and most adoring attention is due. And if we have the lovely picture here of this gracious familiarity of God with the earliest and, so to speak, infant movings of faith, surely in the riper knowledge of all His ways, and of all His grace, which we have by redemption, and through the gift of His Holy Spirit, this privilege is not lost. It may have a deeper character - a more reverent one, as filled with a deeper knowledge of God - more confiding, because His love is better known - less familiar, but more intimate; still it exists, and the gracious picture of it in Abram's case is not lost for our instruction. It has a Christian, not a patriarchal character; but the same God who loves us, and the same faith that trusts Him, meet through His grace to receive the gracious communications of that love, and to tell our wants and the feelings of our hearts, and the wants of others too, to One on whom we know how to count. These communications have a very different character, both on the side of the Lord, and (in consequence of that) on the side of Abram, but they were all what I may call personal.

140 The first occasion of these communications from God was Abram's definite refusal to take anything from the world, even where he had rendered it the greatest possible service. He would have nothing to say to it from a thread to a shoe-latchet. His faith had got the victory over its power. His value for his own relationship with God refused its proffered reward. God meets this in Abram, and says, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. His defence in battle had been God; his abundant reward, not the poor and perishing gifts of a world, to which its debtor after all always owes something - at least, acknowledges that he will receive from it - but the Lord Himself. Such, in general, is the blessed announcement made by the word of the Lord to Abram.

There is a difference between the communications of chapter 15 and chapter 17. God does not, so to speak, personally visit Abram in chapter 15. He communicates to him what He is for him in a vision, a great and special blessing, but evidently different from the personal revelation of chapters 17 and 18. The two communications have this essential difference: in chapter 15 God declares what He is for Abram, in chapter 17 what He is: and this last leads to much deeper communion, and a larger unfolding of grace and imbuedness with the mind of God, than the revelation of chapter 15. This latter makes Abram's wants and desires the measure of His blessings, or, at least, they characterise these latter. Hence Abram is thrown back upon himself. God meets him there in full grace, but meets his wants and wishes. Now this is most precious. God shews His most tender condescension. He inspires us with confidence: we can tell Him our wants, open our hearts to Him, in consequence; and all the communication that results, while it makes us know God better, leads us up to that knowledge of Him which makes us see our own littleness in what we have presented to Him as the object of our desires, and gives us to find our joy in Himself, and draw our feelings towards others from Himself, and our assimilating enjoyment of what He is for ourselves.

Thus, when God had spoken to Abram of His being his shield, and his reward, Abram says, "What wilt thou give me?" The first want of his heart is presented to God. God had told Abram He Himself was his reward; but where our feelings and need are referred to, if God presents Himself as our portion, the human heart will turn, by the very confidence that is produced in it, to its own thoughts and its own desires. Abram's reward led Abram to Abram's wants and feelings and wishes. Though God, and even because God, had said He was his reward, the love and goodness was felt, but did not put aside, nor lead Abram, beyond, what Abram desired to have from that goodness, if it was there. God knew all this, and used it for the occasion of bringing out His own thoughts and purposes. This is the grace, then, that comes down to the heart of man himself, and draws it out in confidence towards God, but thereby leaves it in the circle of its own wants and feelings; but its wants and feelings, such as they can exist in connection with God; but then, remark, not going beyond this world, beyond what man wants as conscious of his position here.

141 The interference of God in goodness to us in this sphere is full of sweetness, but it is not in its object heavenly. As a man upon this earth, Abram wanted a son to continue his name, and posterity to inherit and enjoy the promises. God was fully minded to give this. The natural wish and desire of Abram, Abram connects with the testimony of divine favour. God had, in the revelation which Abram had received when in the land, promised a seed to Abram connected with the inheritance of the land. Abram naturally wished to associate the promised blessing and glory with his own descendants. If his desire had been merely to enjoy God in heaven, such a wish had had no place; the moment his thoughts rested on earth, and God had promised him blessing there, such wish came in. It fell in with God's purposes, but took, necessarily, if the blessing was to be made precise, an earthly character. Our wants, whatever character they may have, necessarily have their place on earth. We may bring God into them, but it is into them we bring Him, and there indeed He is gracious enough to come.

I have said, that the answer of God when making His promise precise, necessarily took an earthly character. The fifteenth chapter of Genesis makes this evident. The numerous seed and limits of the land are given. Some principles are also given full of blessing, but which characterise the position of Abram; most blessed in themselves, but still meeting man's need and weakness, not properly communion in the truest and highest sense. God was communicating with Abram, and Abram speaking with Him; but it was not communion in the sense of the enjoyment of God Himself, and in conformity to His nature. Righteousness is imputed to Abraham; blessed truth! How could he stand before God, or be the blessed one of God, without it? He believes in the power of resurrection in God, and in His faithfulness to perform His promise, and it is counted to him for righteousness. It is the first time this great and all-important truth is taught in Scripture, or even the word for it found; and, I doubt not, intentionally so, though we know there were believers before. But now, in the great root of the tree of promise, this fundamental truth was to be brought out. The very ground of man's blessing was laid here, but it was still meeting man's need. He could not be before God or inherit the promise without it. He had it not in himself. God counts his faith to him as such.

142 Next, to assure the feeble heart of man, God binds Himself by covenant. Most gracious condescension, indeed; but what does it meet in this wondrously condescending grace? - "Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" God then, while nature and man pass through the dark shadow of the power of death (and this Christ as man has done for us), passes between the pieces, and binds Himself in a covenant of death to accomplish this desire of the believer's heart, according to His own thoughts; and promise lays the sure foundation of it in Christ. The very limits of the land are pointed out, the power of those that held them is naught. In this very remarkable passage, we learn the blessed and perfect assuring of man in the righteousness of faith, and the immutability of the covenant; only it is not communion in life, but earthly, and meeting need, though the thing given was pure grace. God has a people, and He gives them a law.

Chapter 16 I pass over. It is not the life of faith, but the effort of flesh to obtain the blessing in its own way; the promised blessing, but under law. It is, typically, legal Israel. (Compare Gal 4.)

In chapter 17 we have the revelation of God Himself to Abram. Jehovah appears, but He does not appear as formerly, to call on him to leave all, and come to the land; nor merely to communicate promises. He reveals Himself in what was to be His own name of relationship with Abram - Himself under this name - and gives Abram a name in connection with Himself. This is the highest way of revelation. To us it is the communication of a still better name, a far nearer relationship. The Father's name is revealed to us by the Son, and we are called sons. This is the best and highest possible revelation of God in relationship, for it is that of the Father to Christ the Son Himself. Still we have, as to Abram, this kind of revelation. God does not here reveal what He is for Abram, but what He is. Abram was to walk before Him known in that character. "I am the Almighty God - walk before me." Hence Abram falls on his face, and does not ask for anything to meet the desires of his own heart. God talks with him. Such is the character of this wondrous interview. Jehovah reveals His intentions, and gives Abram a name in connection with them. God does not bind Himself through sacrifice, He only assures to Abraham the various blessings. But He puts Abraham into the condition of intercourse with Himself, as belonging to Himself, by the sign of the death of the flesh (there, of course, in figure, still he is thus placed in the enjoyment of the relationship). Thus God is revealed to Abraham, and Abraham brought into personal relationship with God. He knows Him as none else does.

143 God is about to judge the world (chap. 18), and He now appears to Abraham to give him the immediate promise of the son as about to come. He comes in human form, with two others, angels also in human form. These latter went on to Sodom to execute judgment on it, and at the same time deliver Lot. But Abraham saw at once who approached, and would [detain] Him awhile. With exquisite propriety, he does not (while shewing unfeigned reverence) break through the disguise which hid from others the presence of Jehovah. The angels were there, Sarah was there, it may be others. He deals with the mysterious guest as He presents Himself, only with the utmost attention and reverence. However, promises belong but to One, and He it is who speaks to the patriarch. But, the word of present accomplishment being given, they rise up to go on their way; and now Jehovah will deal with Abraham as a man deals with his friend. He speaks with Abraham, of what concerned not himself but the world. It is not Abraham's wants, or even Abraham's walk, but the intention of God which He would have him know, opening His thoughts and counsels to him. (Compare Eph. 1: 10, 11.) The two men go on towards Sodom; and Abraham and the Lord remain together. What a place of privilege and blessing! It is not worship. It is not a call to follow when the Lord led. This had all hid its place, It is communion, personal intercourse with God about what concerns Himself and His ways; intercourse founded on God's revelation of Himself, and on personal acquaintance with His character, grace working on the heart, and producing intercession.

144 The whole scene is instructive. His son and heir is promised as a present thing. That is our own hope. It is a settled one, independent of all that happens to the world; our own peculiar hope. We are in communion with God, on the ground of His special revelation of Himself to us, and the expected heir is revealed as coming. God then deals with us in the intimacy of friends, and tells us His purpose and plans, awakening in us, by the grace He exercises towards us and the confidence it imparts, the spirit of grace and intercession founded on what He is, on our knowledge of Him.

Abraham does not ask anything for himself here; he pleads for others. Indeed, what could he ask, when enjoying converse with God, and the certain and present promises of the son? He is in the place of blessing, and walking in the spirit of communion, and of the God he now knows. This began with the revelation of Himself by God. Now that Abraham is alone with Him all is boldness, though reverence, with one well known. The very silence of Abraham when others were there, and Jehovah had hid Himself, belonged to a knowledge of Him which none else had. Jehovah surely had clearer judgment, and even surer ways of deliverance and mercy than even Abraham knew; but we speak of the terms on which Abraham was with Him. It closed this wondrous conference; and when Abraham's words were exhausted, and the Lord had answered him to the end, He went His way, when He had done communing with Abraham. What a place for the child of faith to be in!

And such is our place. God has revealed Himself, yet more fully and nearly. He tells us the good pleasure of His will, according to the good pleasure He has purposed in Himself. He tells us of the soon-coming Son. He tells us, though but as a part of His will and counsels, of the coming judgment of the world. Our place is in grace with Him who communes with us.

Lot's Choice: a word on Present Advantage

Genesis 19.

J. N. Darby.

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There is much profitable instruction in tracing, in contrast, the characters of Lot and Abram. Both were saints of God, yet how different as to their walk! how different also as to their personal experiences in regard of peace, joy, and nearness to God! And there is ever this difference between a worldly-minded believer and one, through the grace of God, true-hearted. In the scriptural sense of the term (2 Pet. 2: 8), a "righteous man," Lot was "vexing his righteous soul from day to day." Abram walked before God.

The Lord cannot but be faithful to His people, still He does mark in their path that which is of faith and that which is not of faith, and Lot's trials are the consequences of his unbelief There is one thing very marked in his course throughout - great uncertainty and obscurity as to his path, and as to the judgment of God, because of not realizing that security in God which would have enabled him to walk straightforward, whilst there is no hesitation in things connected with this world. And it is thus with ourselves if we have not taken Christ for our portion heartily. Abram's was a thoroughly happy life - he had God for his portion.

Lot is seen rather as the companion in the walk of faith of those who have faith, than as one having and acting in the energy of faith himself. This characterizes his path from the beginning. Therefore, when put to the test, there is only weakness. In how many things do we act with those who have faith, before having it for ourselves! It was thus with the disciples of the Lord, and the moment they were put to the test there was weakness and failure. The soul will not stand, when sifted through temptation, if walking in the light of another.

God's personal call of Abram at the first is mixed with a sort of unbelief in Abram, much like the reply in the gospel, "Lord, suffer me first to go home and bury my father." He sets out, but he takes Terah, his father, with him, and goes and lodges in Haran (he could not carry Terah with him into the land of Canaan). Now God had called Abram, but not Terah. He left everything except Terah, and entered into possession of nothing. But he tried to carry something with him which was not of God, and he could not. It is not until after Terah's death that he removes into Canaan, to where God had called him. (Compare chap. 12: 1 and Acts 7: 4) "So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him . . . they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."

146 Lot (though having faith) goes in the path he treads as the companion of Abram. As to actual position, he stands with Abram. He is truly a saint of God, though afterwards we find him treading the crooked path of the world's policy.

God blesses them. The land is not able to bear them so that they may dwell together (chap. 13). They have flocks, and herds, and much cattle, and there is not room for them both - they must separate. Circumstances, no matter what (here it is God's blessings), reveal this.

They are in the place of strangers, that is clear ("the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land"). They have nothing in possession, "not so much as to put a foot upon"; all rests on their valuing the promises (Heb. 11: 9). They have just two things, the altar and the tent. Journeying about, and worshipping God, they are strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Abram confesses that he is such; he declares plainly that he seeks a country,* "wherefore," we are told, "God is not ashamed to be called their God." (He is never called "the God of Lot.") This acts upon the whole spirit and character of Abram.

{*In chapter 12 Abram goes down into Egypt. This is evidently a mistake; for he comes back again to the place of the altar which he built at the first. He had no altar in Egypt.}

The land is not able to bear them that they may dwell together, there is a strife between their herdsmen, they must separate. Abram says, "Is not the whole land before thee?" take what thou wilt, do not let us quarrel "if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left" - the promise is my portion; I am a thorough stranger, the city of God is open in glory before me. His heart is upon the promises of God, and everything else is as nothing in comparison. It might seem a foolish thing to let Lot choose - to give up to Lot the right to do so is certainly his own; but his heart is elsewhere, his faith goes entirely free from earthly advantage.

147 Not so Lot; he lifts up his eyes* - the plain of Jordan is well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord, and he chooses it. There is nothing gross or wrong in itself in his choosing a well-watered plain, but it just distinctly proves that his whole heart is not set upon the promises of God. Thus is he put to the test; and thus, in the way of the accomplishment of God's purposes, character is displayed. Abram's conduct has for its spring a simplicity of faith which embraces God's promises (Heb. 11: 13), and wants nothing besides. Faith can give up. The spirit of a carnal mind takes all it can get. Lot acts upon the present sense of what is pleasant and desirable; why should he not? what harm is there in the plains of Jordan? ** His heart is not on the promises.

{*"And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee I give it, and to thy seed after thee," etc.}

{**A man says, What harm is there in the well-watered plains of Jordan? are they not the gift of Providence? I answer, The devil has planted Sodom in the midst of them.}

The companion of Abram, he is brought to the level of his own faith.

But he will dwell in the cities of the plain if he chooses the rivers of the plain. It is not his intention to go into the city, but he will get there step by step. (He must find trouble in the place he has taken pleasure in.) There is not the power of faith to keep him from temptation. When there is not the faith that keeps the soul on the promises, there is not the faith to keep it out of sin. It is not insincerity, but people's souls are in that condition, and God proves them.

Abram's path all the way through is characterized by personal intimacy with God, constant intercourse with God, visits from God, the Lord comes to him, and explains His purposes, so that he is called the "friend of God" (2 Chr. 20: 7; Isa. 41: 8; James 2: 23); and this not only as to his own portion, but as to what God is going to do with Sodom - the judgment He is about to bring on - Sodom, though personally he has nothing to do with it, and the promise is his hope (chap. 18). So now He tells His people what He is going to do about the world. Though their hope is connected with their own views, with the promises, and the heavenly Canaan, He takes them into His confidence as to what is to happen where they are not to be.

148 Lot the while is vexing his righteous soul - does he know anything about the purposes of God? Not a word. He is saved, yet so as by fire; though a "righteous soul," his is a vexed soul, instead of a soul in communion with God - vexed "from day to day" (there is, so far, right-mindedness that it is a vexed soul). He is there before the judgment comes with his soul vexed (whilst happy Abraham is on the mount holding conversation with God); and when it does come, how does it find him? with his soul vexed, and totally unprepared for it, instead of in communion with God about it.

"The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation," and He delivers "just Lot." But whilst thus vexing his righteous soul with their unlawful deeds, the men of the city have a right to say to him, 'What business have you here?' ("this one came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge," v. 9) - you are quarrelling with sin in the place of sin.' They have a perfect right to judge thus. All power of testimony is lost by reason of association with the world, when he ought to be witnessing to his total separation from it; there is vexation of spirit, but not power. When Abram got down into Egypt, he had nothing to do but to go right back to the place of the altar he had built at the first. Lot testifies, but he cannot get out of the place he is in; the energy that ought to have thrown him out is neutralized and lost by his getting into it; his daughters have married there; he has ties where his unbelief has led him. It is far more difficult to tread the up-hill road than the down-hill road.

Whenever the counsels of God are revealed to faith, it brings out the spirit of intercession. The word to the prophet, "Make the heart of this people fat" (Isa. 6), at once brings out, "O Lord, how long!" So here Abraham pleads with the Lord to spare the city. (But there are not ten - there is not one righteous man in Sodom, with the exception of Lot.) As regards his own position, he is looking down upon the place of judgment. And in the morning, when the cities are in flames, he finds himself in quietness and peace on the spot where he "stood before the Lord" (v. 27), not at all in the place where the judgment had come, solemnized, indeed, by the scene before him, but calm and happy with the Lord.

The Lord sends Lot out of the midst of the overthrow. Angels warn him, and faith makes him listen. But his heart is there still. There are connections that bind him to Sodom, and he would fain take them with him. But you cannot take anything with you for God out of Sodom, you must leave it all behind. The Lord must put the pain where you find the pleasure. "While he yet lingered"; there is hesitation and lingering in the place of judgment, when the judgment has been pronounced; he ought to have left it at once; but the place, and path, and spirit of unbelief, enervate the heart - "the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters" - the Lord being merciful unto him - "and they brought him forth, and set him without the city." And now it is, "Escape for thy life, look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain, escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed," v. 17. As for the goods, the sheep, and the much cattle, he must leave them all behind. If the Lord's faithfulness is shewn in saving Lot, it is shewn also in breaking the links that bind him to the place. His mind is all distraction; he says, "Oh, not so, my Lord. I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die." He has lost the sense of security in the path of faith. Such is ever the consequence of the path of unbelief in a saint of God, he thinks the path of faith the most dangerous path in the world. Lot has become used to the plain, and the mountain (the place where Abraham is enjoying perfect security and peace) is a mountain. The Lord spares Zoar at his request, and lets him flee thither, but on seeing the judgment, he flees to the mountain, forced to take refuge there in the end.

149 This is an extreme case; we shall find the same thing true in various degrees. Abraham could give up (that sacrifice always belongs to faith); but there are trials to the believer because of unbelief - because he is a believer, but in a wrong place. Lot was a "righteous man"; but when he did not walk in the path of faith, he had vexation of soul and trouble - a righteous soul, but where a righteous soul ought not to be. Observe his incapacity simply to follow the Lord. Observe also his uncertainty. So will it be with us, if we are walking in the path of unbelief, there will be trouble which is not our proper portion, but which comes upon us because we are in a wrong worldly place, the trial that belongs to unbelief. We may be seeking the compassion of the church of God, when we are only suffering, like Lot, the fruit of our own unbelief - the simple path of faith having been departed from, because we had not learned to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. Giving up is our proper position, simple sacrifice, in the knowledge and present consciousness that "all things are ours." But the promise is "a hundredfold more in this present world," and that is not vexation of spirit.

Outline of the Book of Genesis

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CHAPTER 1.

Creation - which seems a simple thing, but is not, and is only apprehended by faith; it is the first element of faith, spoken of in Hebrews 11. Then the formation of the earth, where God put the responsible man, the centre and lord of it, and in which all the principles of man's relationships with God are to be developed.

CHAPTER 2.

The responsible man in the relationship in which God has set him to Himself, the world, the creatures, to his wife - Eve, in whom the church is typified. At the beginning of it is the rest of God, into which man never entered.

CHAPTER 3.

Man's responsibility is tried by temptation, and his total failure. The judgment on Satan, and the promise of and to the seed of the woman; but the first man is driven out from the presence of God.

CHAPTER 4.

Adam becoming the head of a fallen race, though Eve hopes to get the promise through the flesh, man completes sin by killing his brother, and the "world" is set up without God. God gives an appointed seed in lieu of the slayer and the slain.

CHAPTER 5.

The genealogy of the race of Seth - the Lord being called upon; and in the midst of it one is seen walking with God, and translated to heaven.

CHAPTERS 6-9.

The total corruption and wickedness of man, and the flood closing the history of the first world. Noah is preserved through it, and the animals. He founds the relationships of the new world by sacrifice, but fails entirely himself as governor. He gives in prophecy the history of the world in his three sons: his own history closes.

152 CHAPTERS 10, 11.

The settling out of the world in nations and families, in these three sons, and that happening by the judgment of God on their setting up themselves independently of Him, to make themselves a name - Babel.

Abram is brought in, through Shem's genealogy, as a "peg to hang it on." An elect one is called out, and the promises given to him, to be the head of God's race upon the earth.

CHAPTER 12.

He, having followed the call of God eventually, is in the place of promise, a stranger and a worshipper. But through pressure of circumstances he gets out of it, and into the power of the world, denies his wife, and has no worship.

CHAPTER 13.

His entire abnegation as to the world, and the full revelation to him of the sphere of promise.

CHAPTER 14.

His victory over the world., and the revelation of Melchisedec as priest, and millennial blessing brought in, after his conquering the kings, and God possessor of heaven and earth. This closes that part of the history.

CHAPTER 15.

The promise of the seed, with the covenant founded on death, and of the land. Righteousness is connected with faith; this, as the seed, has come in in any sense.

CHAPTER 16.

The attempt to get the promised seed by the efforts of the flesh.

153 CHAPTER 17.

The seed according to promise. God reveals Himself to Abraham by His dispensational name, and gives him the promise of the seed, with the seal of circumcision also. Abraham is to be the father of many nations, and the heir of the world.

CHAPTERS 18, 19.

God visits Abraham, and confirms the promise as an immediate thing. Abraham on high in communion with God, and the world judged below in connection with Lot in Sodom, and the righteous one saved out of it. "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished," 2 Pet. 2: 9. [We had Enoch, the heavenly man, and Noah, the earthly remnant. Now we have had Abraham, the heavenly, and Lot, the earthly.]

CHAPTER 20.

Abraham failing in respect of faith, as to those who were externally within the place of promise - Abimelech and the Philistines - is delivered, and as prophet intercedes for them. (The church could not go on with these mixtures.) Then, having denied his wife, the rebuke is put upon Sarah - the church; or Israel, as the vessel of promise, as the case may be. The world knows very well what the church ought to be for Christ, and how to reprove her.

CHAPTER 21.

The son of promise is born, and the law cast out (Gal. 3, 4) - Hagar and Ishmael. And further, Abimelech and those Philistines who were in the place of promise - the son being born - become subservient to Abraham, who figuratively takes possession of the place of promise, planting a grove, and worships. He was only in a tent before.

CHAPTER 22.

Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac upon Mount Moriah; thereupon the promise is confirmed, not to Abraham, but to the seed, as before given in chapter 12. This leads to another principle: he had given up the promises according to life here; he gets them in resurrection, on the ground of the complete sacrifice offered to God.

154 CHAPTER 23.

As the heir died, so the old vessel of promise (Sarah) dies thus Israel is set aside.

CHAPTER 24.

Abraham sends down Eliezer (who represents the Holy Ghost) to get a wife for the risen Isaac, who is in no condition to go back to his old country, all things being given to him as son and heir. The bride is taken out of the old land, gifts conferred upon her: she is brought to Isaac, and into the place of the vessel of promise - Sarah's tent. The Jew had been the vessel of promise, the church now is. This closes Isaac's history as the risen one.

CHAPTER 25.

We have now done with the first great principles of faith and the risen one - Isaac, and we come down to the earth and the heir of the earthly promises - Jacob, the Jew, who goes down and gets a wife there. Jacob, who values the promises that Esau despised who had the title to them, comes in by grace and election without tide (Rom. 9). In point of fact it came by the profanity of Esau, but the means of getting it were evil; still God secures the result. We find the immense principle, that we have only to take care that the means employed are right in possessing ourselves of all that God has promised. God might have made Isaac cross his hands in the blessing, or the like, to secure the promises to Jacob.

CHAPTER 26.

The renewal of the promises to Isaac: - he is forbidden to go down into Egypt - the world; he is to have nothing to do with it in his Isaac position. Follows his father's example in denying his wife; but Abraham did it in the place of promise, Isaac on lower ground (decay in the place of promise). He has "contention" and "hatred" in the place of the world; but when he gives up the wells, and gets into his own limits - Beersheba - then he is owned by those who were there.

155 CHAPTERS 27-31.

Esau and Jacob. Jacob gets the blessing as he had got the birthright, by deceit. He goes down to what represents the world to get his wife. Not as Isaac, who got a wife sent up. He looks for blessings and earthly promises, and vows tithes to God if God will take care of him. However, God does so. This is very low ground, but still there is faith. He uses duplicity towards man, and he is cheated himself - "paid in his own coin," so to speak.

He gets Leah instead of Rachel. He has got the Gentiles looked at as on earth; still the Jews are loved - Rachel. He represents the Lord in His ways, not in his conduct: he loves Rachel. The Gentile, Leah, never loved like the Jews upon earth; but God blesses Leah.

God brings back Israel with his children, after having been a slave for twenty-one years, to his land.

The instruction we get is this: the Lord takes care of the believer, but he is cheated, and worried, and slaved, and reaps in discipline the fruit of his own ways. We mark a wretched state of faith in him: there was faith, but his was a dismal., earthly history - attempting to get his object in a carnal way., and he is chastened all through.

CHAPTERS 32-34.

Esau comes, and again we find lies. God sends a host of angels, and he sees His hand, but nothing raises his faith, and we see the utter weakness of fleshly ways, and the spirit in which he walks - low and earthly. The Lord will not allow Esau to touch him, but takes him in hand Himself, and wrestles with him at Jabbok when he had sent all over. He will not reveal Himself, but makes him halt for life, giving him faith to overcome. You get a great deal more experience in one that walks badly than in a person that walks well. The man that walks with God has very little experience, but all he has is with God. "Enoch walked with God, and was not, for God took him"; that is all about him. Abraham has no wrestling, but is up on high, interceding calmly with God for others, in communion; Jacob is below, interceding for himself, and God wrestling with him, not he with God, who gives him power for the conflict, but will not reveal Himself. Jacob had asked Him, but He would not tell him His name.

Then he makes another blunder. He buys land (not a sepulchre, like Abraham), settles in the place, and builds an altar there, calling it El-elohe-Israel. He was this, but no revelation. Marriage proposed with his family there.

156 CHAPTER 35.

Now God says, Go up to Bethel; there He would appear to him. The moment he is to go and meet God he thinks of the idols, which he knew all about quite well before. There is no putting away of idols until we get into God's presence; then they are put away. The first thing God now does, when the idols are buried, is to tell His name, which He did not at Penuel. The intercourse is short: no intercession for others; not the same bright blessing as with Abraham, but intercourse, talking with him. God goes up from him at this place.

This has brought us back to Rachel, Israel's history in fact. She dies. She had had Joseph; now she has Benjamin. She calls him Ben-oni, the son of my sorrow; Jacob calls him Benjamin, the son of my right hand. This points to Christ at God's right hand, who was the son of affliction also.

CHAPTER 36.

The world set up in power before God's people are; Esau, with kings and dukes. This closes the history of Jacob.

CHAPTERS 37-48.

Now the history of Joseph begins, with his dreams; and so on. He is despised, but he has the wisdom of God, as soon after the power of God. Rejected by his brethren, and sold to the Gentiles, he shews himself all through as the godly one in patience and lowliness. Then he passes to the right hand of power, and receives back his repentant brethren in that character, and puts them in the best of the world - Goshen.

[In the midst of this history Judah is going on in wickedness (chap. 38). Yet it is the Lord's genealogy.]

Jacob could bless Pharaoh: the less is blessed of the better. He looks still to the land and asks to be buried there. Joseph gets the birthright. Jacob crosses his hands, and puts things in their place. (No one type runs into another.) Joseph thus steps into the place of the first-born; in Chronicles it is said so in terms. The birthright was his, and he gets the double portion.

157 CHAPTER 49.

Then you have the blessing of the tribes of Israel in a general view, prophetically, of their history. Reuben, Israel's firstborn, fails; Simeon and Levi, corruption and violence, failure of those who seek to maintain their rights by nature's force; Judah, strength and honour, but all goes on till failure is complete; then all is judgment till you come to Dan, in which you get the power of evil - apostasy - the serpent. (The Jews have a tradition that Antichrist will come of this tribe.) When Israel joins with the world, you get the serpent. Then there is turning to the Lord for salvation, and all is changed. "I have waited for thy salvation, O Jehovah." Faith waits until God interferes. Gad, he is overcome, but overcomes at the last. In Asher we see blessings flow; in Naphtali, goodly words; in Joseph, a rejected Christ exalted. Benjamin is the son of God's right hand, in victory over all His enemies.

CHAPTER 50.

Whatever power and magnificence Joseph had, his heart was in Israel, and he gives commands concerning his bones - they were to be carried to Canaan. He has faith as to Israel's hope and portion.

The Passover and the Red Sea

Exodus 12-14.

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We always find in the deliverances of God's people that God is also going to punish the world. He bears testimony against it, a universal testimony, without excepting anybody. The law distinguishes men according to their acts, but the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, because they have not believed on Him whom God has sent. Hence the gospel begins with treating the world as already condemned. God has made trial, in every way, of the human heart. The gospel supposes that this probation is closed, and declares all the world lost. Souls often desire, and therefore need, to prove what their own strength is, and find they have none; even converted souls sometimes try to commend themselves thus to God. But it is to dishonour Jesus, and to deny their own condition as judged of God.

In Egypt God was content with the first-born of each house as a manifestation of His judgment. Pharaoh would not let the people of God go. When God demanded as a right that they should serve Him, the world - Pharaoh its prince - would not yield. Signs and plagues were then wrought to arrest their attention, and enforce the rights of God, but Egypt would not listen. Pharaoh was hard, then hardened, and at last becomes a monument of judgment for the instruction of all men. So it was in the days of Noah, and so it is now that the world once more is warned of the approaching judgments of God. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel.

Meanwhile God demands a complete submission to His revealed will. He demands that the world should submit to Jesus: all those who will not shall be forced to do so when judgment comes, and then to their own confusion and endless sorrow. God presents His Son in humiliation, in order to save the world; but without submission to Jesus all is useless, because this is what God requires and values. To believe in the Son is eternal life, is salvation; to reject the Son of God is judgment. God will have a surrender of the heart to Jesus, as Saviour and Lord, a surrender to His own grace in Him. Thus is the heart and everything else changed, and all question as to good works is set aside. All here turns on receiving or rejecting Jesus. God passes over everything. Zaccheus may speak of what he has been in the habit of doing, but that is not the point now: "This day is salvation come to this house." If Jesus is welcomed, there is life; if Jesus is refused, there must be vengeance by-and-by for those who do not submit. How happy for the poor convicted sinner that he has not to search in himself for something to present to God! If the heart is open, Christ is the grace and glory and perfection that is needed, and the moral effects soon and surely follow.

159 Still, the word of God presents the certainty of judgment. Satan has possession practically of the world, but God retains His rights. The unconverted are deceived by the enemy, and are in his power. Satan does all he can to make the world believe that they are free and happy, that they are, or may be, righteous and good enough. But God has His rights. The world will not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and hopes to escape judgment. Satan, too, takes advantage of all that God would employ to awaken and bless the soul. Thus, with the unconverted in Christendom, natural conscience is ashamed of that which the heathen do even in their religion. But this is used of Satan to persuade men that they can present themselves before God, and worship Him in private or public, because there is nothing in these lands so gross as among Pagans. But God holds to His rights, and nothing is well if Jesus be not received in faith.

In Jesus all that is perfect in God and man is presented to the conscience. The holiness of God is there, not condemning, but in perfect grace; but God will have an entire submission to Jesus. Nobody that comes is cast out. He is God in all His goodness to attract hearts, He is man in all His lowliness to exercise no will, no choice, but to receive every one that comes to Him, for such is the will of Him that sent Him; but God desires submission to Jesus. If Jesus is rejected, this is the conclusive proof that the heart will not have God in any way that He takes in presenting Himself to man. It is the evidence of man's heart, of his pride, his hardness, and his levity. Nothing like these can stand in the presence of God, and Jesus manifested His presence in love. Pride is ashamed of the cross. Vanity cannot go on before Jesus, despised and rejected of man. God searches the heart in this way, and man does not like it. He is bound to own himself a sinner, to submit his conscience, and give up his will; but he will not. It is the joy of Jesus to seek the wanderer; but to return in his rags, to shew his wretchedness, is most distasteful to man's nature: grace alone can make him do so. His pride therefore hates grace more even than law. The heart cannot endure to be laid completely bare; but if man is to be blessed, God must search the heart, and He saves the soul for ever. God acts according to what He is, not according to our thoughts. If man will not believe in Jesus, God will manifest what He is by judgment.

160 Egypt must be smitten. But first we have the security of such as submit to God, confiding in the sprinkled blood of the Lamb. Israel was well aware of the judgment about to be executed upon the land of Egypt, It should always be thus with renewed souls. They ought to consider the ways of God when He will judge the world in righteousness.

When God reveals the judgment, He reveals also the means of escaping it. The soul which has the fear of God keeps close to His word, and the question is raised between God and Israel. Could Israel stand if God came in judgment? The Egyptians were sinners, and would surely be judged; but if God came down to judge, what were the children of Israel? Where were their sins? God directs Moses that they should take of the blood of the slain lamb, and strike it on the two side-posts and on the upper door-post of their houses. "And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt." To the mind of man it was folly, but the simplicity of faith honours the word of God, and acts upon it. The destroying angel of Jehovah passed through the land, and if there had been Israelites ever so honest, but without the blood on their door-posts, he must enter and slay. For God was under this sign judging sin, and sin levels all distinctions; and where the blood was not, there sin was in all its hatefulness to a holy God - sin unatoned for and unjudged.

So now it is, Christ and salvation, or no Christ and no salvation. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. There is the utmost certainty for those within the blood-sprinkled doors. It is the Lord who executes the judgment by His angel. It is impossible for Him to be deceived, and impossible for man to escape: but He says, "when I see the blood I will pass over you." There need not be a doubt, whatever the judgment.

161 It is not said, when you see the blood, but "when I see" it. The soul of an awakened person often rests, not on its own righteousness, but on the way in which it sees the blood. Now, precious as it is to have the heart impressed with it, this is not the ground of peace. Peace is founded on God's seeing it. He cannot fail to estimate it at its full and perfect value as putting away sin. It is He that abhors and has been offended by sin; He sees the value of the blood as putting it away. It may be said, But must I not have faith in its value? This is faith in its value, seeing that God looks at it as putting away sin. Your value for it looks at it as a question of the measure of your feelings. Faith looks at God's thoughts.

God, then, sees the blood: on that we rest to escape judgment, not upon our own view either of sin or of the blood of the Lamb. God Himself estimates the blood of His own Son, as He it is who fully hates our sin: we feel both most when we enter into this, and rest on it in faith. Faith lays hold of His judgment of sin, and feels the need of His value for the blood of Christ.

This is the first great question - a question between a holy God and a sinful people. God appears as judge. The expiatory blood of redemption bars to Him the way as judge, and it secures the people infallibly; but God does not enter within - its value is to secure from judgment.

The people, having eaten in haste with the bitter herbs of repentance, begin their journey; but they do so in Egypt; yet now God can be, and he is, with them. The more we know Christ, and enjoy His purity, the more gravely shall we feel our sins. It was then that the Israelites ate the Lamb, but they ate it in security. It would have been sin to have thought that God could fail in His word or His deliverance: and it is sin now to doubt that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.

Israel may be in Egypt, but they are no longer slaves there. Their loins are girded that night, their shoes on their feet, and their staff in hand. Such, too, is our position in the world. Israel begin their journey with the question of sin settled. They had been secured, and they knew it, even in the midst of God's judgment of sin. When the revelation of God enters the heart, one cannot find peace till the revelation of His grace is as clear to us as that of His dealing with sin. The Christian finds his judgment fallen on Christ Himself; he begins with submitting to the righteousness of God, who condemns our nature and acts, root and branch, but shews us the condemnation borne by the Lord Jesus.

162 Have you submitted to Jesus? God demands it. He asks for no other offering nor sacrifice; He presents Jesus, and shews you what you are. The worst sinners in the world may be received in grace by Jesus. "Behold now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation."

When Israel went forth, the rage of Satan knew no bounds. Pharaoh made ready all the chariots of Egypt, and his horsemen and his army, and pursued after. Never had Israel been so sad as they were on the eve of their new deliverance. But now that sin in their case was settled, it was a question solely between God and the enemy. "And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore. And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians: and the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord, and his servant Moses."

It is well to distinguish the judgment of the first-born from that of the Red Sea. The one was the firstfruits of the other, and ought to have deterred Pharaoh from his rash pursuits. But the blood, which kept the people from the judgment of God, meant something far deeper and far more serious than even the Red Sea, though judgment was executed there too. What happened at the Red Sea was, it is true, the manifestation of the illustrious power of God, who destroyed, with the breath of His mouth, the enemy that stood in rebellion against Him. It was final and destructive judgment which effected the deliverance of His people by His power. But the blood of the paschal lamb signified the moral judgment of God, and the full and entire satisfaction of all that was in His being. God, such as He was, in His justice, His holiness, and His truth, could not touch those who were sheltered by that blood. Was there sin? His love towards His people had found the means of satisfying the requirements of His justice; and at the sight of that blood, which answered everything that was perfect in His being, He passed over it consistently with His justice, and even His truth. Nevertheless, God, even in passing over, is seen as judge. Hence, likewise, so long as the soul is on this ground, its peace is uncertain, its way in Egypt, even though all the while truly converted; because God has still the character of judge to it, and the power of the enemy is still there.

163 At the Red Sea, God acts in power according to the purposes of His love. Consequently the enemy, who was closely pursuing the people, is destroyed without resource. This is what will happen to the people at the last day, already, in reality - to the eye of God - sheltered through the blood. As to the moral type, the Red Sea is evidently the death and resurrection of Jesus, and of His people in Him; God acting in it, in order to bring them out of death, where He had brought them in Christ, and consequently beyond the possibility of being reached by the enemy. We are made partakers of it already through faith. Sheltered from the judgment of God by the blood, we are delivered by His power that acts for us from the power of Satan, the prince of this world. The blood keeping us from the judgment of God was the beginning; the power which raised us up with Christ made us free from the whole power of Satan who followed us, and from all his attacks and accusations.

The world who will follow that way is swallowed up in the waters. This is a solemn warning; for the world who call themselves Christians do take the ground of a judgment to come, and the need of righteousness; but not according to God. The Christian goes through it in Christ, knowing himself otherwise lost and hopeless - the worldling in his own strength, and is swallowed up. Israel saw the Red Sea in its strength, and thought escape was impossible. So an awakened conscience dreads death and judgment. But Christ has died and borne judgment for us, and we are secured and delivered by that which in itself we dreaded. The worldling, seeing this, adopts the truth in his own strength, as if there were no danger, and is lost in his false confidence. To the believer, what was the subject of his fear - death and judgment - gives him joy, now that he knows the results, in God's hand, of the death of Christ. "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." Honey is taken out of the lion's carcase. The resurrection of Christ is the standing witness that the Christian's judgment is past, and that the world's judgment is coming (Rom. 4; Acts 17). Christ is risen, and therefore we are justified in Him; so is the world to be judged by Him.

The Red Sea and the Wilderness

Exodus 15.

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It is easy to understand Israel's distress, - the sea before, shutting them in, and Pharaoh and his host pursuing, so that they were sore afraid, and cried unto the Lord, and said to Moses, "Because there were no graves in Egypt hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?" Although, as we see, they had cried to the Lord, they had not in their hearts reckoned on His delivering them. It must, therefore, have been a wondrous thing to them when God was so publicly manifested to be on their side. And so is it with our hearts, when thus tested with trial on every side; shut in, as it were, with trouble of one sort or another, our hearts are often found buried under the circumstances, instead of calculating upon the God who is above them either to sustain us under them or deliver from them.

Israel, we can see, was dealt with in unqualified grace, whatever might be their murmurings, etc., till they reached Sinai, that they might know how entirely God was for them. Afterwards, through their folly in putting themselves under the law, which they ought to have known they could not keep, they brought upon themselves a different line of treatment. In the sixteenth chapter, when they murmured for food, God gave them quails (as well as manna) without any reproach, that Israel might know that God was feeding them on the ground of perfect grace. But afterwards, when they again murmured for flesh (being then under law), we read that, while it was yet in their mouths, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote them with a very great plague. But God would first have them know how entirely bent He was on doing them good, bad as they might be.

It is well to distinguish, for our souls' profit, the difference between the Passover and the Red Sea. For a person may hear the gospel and receive it with joy, and be rejoicing in the forgiveness of sins; he may see the loveliness of Christ, and have his affections drawn out towards Himself; but if full redemption is not known, as typified by the Red Sea, if he does not know himself to be risen with Christ on the other side of death and judgment, he is almost sure to lose his joy when temptation comes and he feels his own weakness. The joy of chapter 15 is that God has absolutely redeemed them out of Egypt and brought them in His strength to His holy habitation. A very different thing from the joy of the Passover - being delivered from just and deserved judgment. In the Passover Jehovah had made Himself known to them as the God of judgment. The blood on the door-posts screened them from judgment; it kept Him out, and He did not come into their houses to destroy. Had He come in, it must have been in judgment. At the Red Sea it was another thing - even God coming in strength as their salvation. The Passover delivered them from His judgment, the Red Sea from their enemies. The moment His people are in danger from Pharaoh, He comes in. The very sea they dreaded, and which appeared to throw them into Pharaoh's hands, becomes the means of their salvation. Thus through death God delivered them from death; like as Christ went down into the stronghold of Satan, went down under the power of death, and, rising again from the dead, delivered us from death. Thus was there an end of Pharaoh and Egypt to them for ever. The Red Sea is redemption out of Egypt; God Himself is their salvation. He whom they had feared, and justly, as a Judge, is become their salvation. They are redeemed; no longer were hoping for mercy, but able to rejoice that judgment was past, and to sing His praises for having brought them to His holy habitation - to God Himself; in the light as He is in the light; and brought there before they had taken one step in the wilderness, or fought one battle with their enemies.

166 There is no conflict properly till redemption is known. They did not attempt to fight with Pharaoh, but only to get away from him. They groaned under his yoke, but did not combat against him. How could they? They must be brought to God first - be the Lord's host before they can fight His enemies or their own. And so it is with an individual soul. I have no power to combat Satan while I am still his slave. I may groan under his yoke, and sigh to be delivered from it; but before my arm can be raised against him, I must have a complete and known redemption. The Israelites are not only happy in escaping the pursuer: it is a full conscious redemption from Egypt and Pharaoh; and they can count on God's power for all the rest. "The people shall hear and be afraid,: 11 the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away," v. 14, 15. Their joy does not arise from having no enemies, but from God's own divine power taking them up, and putting them in His own presence.

167 "Thou shalt plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance," v. 17. This was yet to be done; but they were already with Him in His holy habitation - not theirs but His. And thus are we in His presence, brought to God, though not yet in the place prepared for us on high. So, in Ephesians 1, the apostle prays "that they may know what is the hope of His calling, and the glory of His inheritance in the saints." It was God's land they were to dwell in the Father's house in which our home shall be. It is His glory, and He will bring us into it. No fear of the enemies by the way: to faith they are powerless. Full confidence belongs to redemption. Is it then, as men would say, all plain sailing now? In no wise. It is the wilderness, and there is no water; and, mark, it was by the Lord's command they pitched in Rephidim.

Does this make redemption uncertain? Not at all. Yet it is a dreadful thing to have no water; it was certain death in those countries. Had He then brought them through the Red Sea and unto Himself to kill them with thirst? When at length they did come to water, it was bitter. But this was to prove them, and bring out what was in their hearts. The bitter water did not shew what was in God's heart (redemption had shewn that); but in their hearts lay much that had to be manifested and corrected. They must drink into the power of death. Being redeemed for ever, they must learn that there is nothing for them in the wilderness. All supply must be from God Himself. This is the very effect of redemption, and there is so much in us to be brought out and corrected. But He makes the waters sweet.

We must all learn death (being redeemed we have life) and it cannot be learnt in Egypt. They had no Marah in Egypt. It is wilderness experience. Redemption must be known first, and the effect will be death to sin, to selfishness, to one's own will; and all this is very trying. A person might be tempted to say, All this trial comes upon me because I have not redemption. Not so; it is just because you are redeemed. We may seek to avoid the bitter waters of Marah, but God will bring us to them. He must break down all that is of the old man, and then, in His own good time, He will put in that which sweetens all. But because God has brought me to Himself, He is putting His finger on everything (be it love of the world, setting up self, my own will, or whatever it may be) that hinders complete dependence on Him, or my soul's full enjoyment of Himself. But count it not strange, though it be a fiery trial which is to try you; for as surely as you are redeemed, so will He break down your own will. Yes, beloved, God will make you drink of the very thing (death) that redeemed you.

168 And now Israel is going on with God, and He is dealing with them. He gave them statutes, etc. He did not do so before He had redeemed them. They had been troubled before by Pharaoh, but now it was from God. This was the effect of having to do with God, and now they learn God in a new character - "the Lord that healeth." A different thing from His promise, that if obedient He would bring none of the diseases of Egypt upon them. They are exercised by God, but it is that they may know Him as the Healer: it is for this that the whole heart has to be brought out before God. We cannot escape it. He will so order circumstances as to bring it about. Sometimes we are humbled before men: this is very trying and bitter water; but then what a wretched thing it was to be seeking to magnify oneself! As soon as the tree (the cross) is in the waters, they refresh the soul. This is joy in tribulation - joy in redemption first, but now in the healing. First, God makes us to sing in the knowledge of redemption; and then, if we are to have the practical effect of redemption, which is the enjoyment of God Himself in our souls, the flesh, which would always hinder this, must be broken down in whatever form it works. It was to prove them. God knew what was in their hearts; but they did not, and they must learn it.

After this they come to Elim. Now they experience the natural consequence of being with God - the full streams of refreshment - as soon as they were really broken down. Had Elim come first, there would have been no sense of their dependence on the Lord for everything, and nature would have been unbroken. But trial produces dependence, and dependence, communion. It is only for this that He delays, for He delights in blessing His people. The numbers 12 and 70 are different figures of perfection: perfect refreshment, perfect shelter, and all this in the wilderness, and rest then.

They must be exercised at Marah, that they may fully know and enjoy Him at Elim. Redemption brought them indeed to God, but now it is joy in God. And so it is with us. Although we are redeemed, we cannot have these springs from God Himself, flowing through our souls, with unbroken flesh. But whatever trial we are in, however deeply we may have to drink into death, there is resurrection as well as death: and when we see God's hand in it, when we see the cross of Christ in the bitter waters, we understand God's mind and purpose in them, and they become sweet to us. We cannot walk in the way of faith without faith, so we must be put to the test. Not that, for the present, tribulation seems joyous, but grievous; but afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits unto them that are exercised thereby.

169 Flesh is not faith. If I lose my trust in God for one minute, that very minute the flesh comes in, under some form or other. Whenever I feel perplexed or at a loss, the eye is not single: it shews I am out of communion' otherwise I should know what to do. If the eye were single, the whole body would be full of light. Or there is something yet to be detected in us, something we have not yet found out in our own hearts. It may not be wilful sin; but there is something He will exercise our hearts about, something as to which He will manifest Himself as Jehovah the Healer. Thus we learn to rejoice in tribulation also, and then to rejoice in God - finding springs of joy, refreshings in the wilderness in that God who brought us there. Let us, then, not count trial a strange thing; for we know its purpose, even that we may joy in God Himself.

Priesthood

Exodus 28.

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The apostle says, Moses made all things according to the patterns shewed to him in the mount; and again, these "things were patterns of the heavenly things." The doctrines themselves are in the New Testament; the details of things connected with them are in the types.

Priesthood supposes accomplished redemption: not to bring us in, but what we get when brought in. "See how I have borne you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself," the Lord says to Israel. As a people, they were brought to God; but, a feeble and infirm people, they needed this help by the way. We are brought by redemption into the light as God is in the light; but down here we want His priesthood to maintain our walk before Him in the light. The priest is clothed in special garments. These garments are merely figures of that which is real in Christ in the exercise of His priesthood. That which was peculiarly the priest's garment was the ephod. "Doeg turned and fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons who did wear a linen ephod." David with the ephod "inquired of Jehovah." The ephod was made of two pieces: one before and one behind. There were two shoulder pieces, joined at the two edges; a girdle wound round the body to confine it; above that, a foursquare - double, to be a breastplate, containing the names of the children of Israel. There was to be a holy mitre on the head, and upon the skirt of the ephod the bell and the pomegranate.

All was connected with His people in the priests' garments. If it is the breastplate, the names are engraved in it. If it is the shoulder pieces, the names of the children of Israel are there. If it is the Urim and Thummim, the names of the children of Israel are there. Again I say, it was not to acquire righteousness, but to maintain their cause before God. He is there, acting before God on the people's behalf.

It is not true, then, that we have to get some one to go to God for us who believe. Christ is there for us; and grace is exercised, not because we return, but to bring us back. It is not said, "If any man repent," but, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." The love Christ exercises about us springs directly from Himself. With Peter, it was not after he had fallen that Christ says to him, "I have prayed for thee," but before. His intercession for Peter was going on all the time; and it is because of our getting wrong, not because we are right, that it is exercised. Our feebleness and failure become the occasion for the exercise of this grace. When the intercession of Christ answers in the way of warning, chastening is not needed. Christ looked upon Peter, and it was before Peter wept. The look was just at the right moment. We know not what Peter might have done next, but the look causes him to weep,

171 The priest goes to God for us, not we to the priest. Righteousness and propitiation are there already, and by virtue of His being there, and being what He is there, He can set them right.

Priesthood is Christ undertaking the cause of His people, through the wilderness, maintaining us in the presence of God; keeping us in God's memory, so to speak - "for a memorial." This is a different thing from His shepherd character, strengthening the sheep down here; but it is sustaining them according to the power of inward grace before God. He bears them all in a detailed way, each by name, engraved. As a shepherd He calls His sheep: but also, according to our particular individuality, He bears us on His heart and shoulders. God looks upon us according to the favour He has for Christ Himself. If a person sends his child to me, I receive it according to the affection I have for the father. The priest was there in the garments proper to his office.

When we think of Christ as a priest, we should have in remembrance our individual imperfectness. In one sense we are perfect, but that is in our membership with Him - union with Him our Head.

The breastplate was never to be separate from the ephod, v. 28. "That the breastplate be not loosed from the ephod." Whenever the high priest went into the presence of God, it was in his garments. He could not go without representing the people. It is impossible for Christ to stand there in the presence of God without us.

The girdle was a sign of service; it is the characteristic of a person in service. Christ is a servant for ever. When He became a man, He took upon Him the form of a servant. He might have asked for twelve legions of angels, and gone out free; but then He would have gone out alone. No! He says, I have got my work to do, my wife to care for. And thus He chose to be a servant for ever. He became a servant when incarnate, but He was bound a servant for ever when He gave up His life (Ex. 21). Yes, and He will be the servant; for "He shall gird Himself, and will make them sit down to meat, and come forth to serve them." His divine glory never changes, of course; but He will never give up this character of servant: for ever and ever we shall have this "First-born of many brethren," this new Adam head of the family.

172 Verse 29, "Aaron shall bear the names," etc. Whatever value the Priest has in God's sight, He brings it down upon them. He bears them on His heart. All the love that Christ has for them, He bears them before God, according to this love. Then in answer they get whatever they need: it may be chastening, it may be strength. He obtains for us all the blessing we need, according to the favour that God bears Him. There is not only the personal favour, but the Urim and Thummim, the ground of their favour, which is in God Himself. The blessing is given according to the light and perfections of God (the meaning of the words being lights and perfections). He bears our judgment according to the light and perfections of God. That is where we are as regards daily judgment. We walk in the light as God is in the light: and as we want cleansing, there is the blood. If I commit a fault, what then; am I condemned? No, because Christ the righteous One is there; but then God must deal with an individual according to this light and perfection. He deals with us according to our need and weakness. He will make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear, because Christ is there. He deals with us just where we are, taking into His account our standing as to grace of course. When they have to learn things of God, it is by the Urim and Thummim also. it is according to the light and perfections of God that He instructs and guides me.

The feebleness, failings, and infirmities, instead of being the occasion of condemnation to me, are the occasion of instruction. The names He is bearing are those for whom there is no wrath. Christ bears Peter on His breast, and He does not pray that he should not be sifted, because He saw the self-sufficiency of Peter needed to be broken down; but He bore him on His heart, and obtained for him the thing he needed, that his faith fail not. His priesthood is exercised for me in putting my heart in a right position before God (not on account of wrath), and He bears us continually before the Lord.

173 There is reference here to another thing we have in virtue of Christ having gone up on high - the Holy Ghost. He received of the Father the gift of the Holy Ghost. He received it alone; but we, the skirts of His garments, get it shed upon us in virtue of His finished work - His accepted work (Psalm 133). The bell and the pomegranate may signify the gifts, testimony and fruit of the Holy Ghost, when Christ went into heaven, and when He will come forth again. "And his sound shall be heard when he goeth into the holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that he die not." The mitre is "holiness unto the Lord," and it was to be always upon his forehead.

It is not only when I have failed that Christ intercedes for me, but in holy things; when I go up to worship God, there comes in something that cannot suit the holiness of God - something that has not a bit of sanctified feeling in it; a distracting thought, admiration of fine music, etc., and this for want of habitual communion with the Lord. Well, then, can I say, I have failed, and let it go? There is holiness in Christ for our worship. True, we ought not to be satisfied without the full tide of affection going up to Him from us; but we are accepted because of His work. The iniquity cannot be accepted, but it never goes up. The Christian is always accepted, because in Christ. I may always go to God, because of the continual priesthood exercised. Christ bears my failures that they may be judged; my weakness, that I may get strength; but His heart is always engaged for us. Not merely the abstract love of God for us, which is always true, but this love of Christ ever ready for our necessities. There is evil that wants correction, but He will not put us out of His sight for it: but because you are accepted, He will remedy it.

The object of it all is that our soul should be up there with Christ, walking according to the perfectness of God Himself. When we see Christ for us there, we can venture to apply this light and perfection to our ways. How He has provided for us in love and holiness, for holiness we see stamped in great letters upon it! He is the Apostle and High Priest of our profession. The sinner wants the Apostle, the message from God about acceptance. The saint wants the High Priest.

174 Priesthood

Exodus 2.9.

There is a desire at all times in the people of God, whether in Jewish ignorance or Christian life, that they should always have God dwelling with them. Thus, in Exodus 15, as soon as Moses had come out of Egypt, he said, "He is my God; I will prepare him a habitation." So we are "builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit."

We do look to God's dwelling amongst us; yet we have much more thought of dwelling with Him. This was not the case with Israel. We have boldness to enter into the honest, Christ having passed through the heavens for us, as Aaron passed through the tabernacle for them. Israel could not enter within the veil; but Christ has rent it, and opened a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us. God having, in the cross of Christ, put sin away, we can stand in the light of His presence. Here we find the presence of God among them. This is not redemption, the object of which is that we should be with God. We could not meet God without redemption. Christ suffered, the "just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God."

We learn in this chapter how we can thus be in the presence of God constantly and abidingly. We are really, in title, made "kings and priests to God and His Father"; our provision and character being this, provision is made in Christ for us, so that we can be continually in the presence of God. There was to be the burnt-offering continually at the door of the tabernacle, the place where the Lord met with the people. We are consecrated to God to be priests. Christ has not yet taken upon Him His office as King; but He has taken the priesthood, and therefore we have got, even now, our priesthood. He exercises in heaven continually a perpetual priesthood, filling up in this respect the figure of Aaron, though the order be of Melchisedec.

We see here how we are put in the place of priests, and yet Christ is personally distinguished. Aaron goes first (v. 5-7) alone, to represent Christ; then the sons (v. 8) to represent the whole Church, the priests. In referring to the cleansing of the leper, we have the way a sinner is cleansed from the evil that is in him. It is the same ordinance as regards the leper and the priest; but the leper wants to get cleansed as a sinner, the priest that he may be consecrated to God. If not cleansed in every respect we could not stand before God at all. There was sprinkling of blood on the leper, on the right ear, the right hand, the right toe: his thoughts, his acts, his walk, must be all cleansed, by being brought under the "blood of sprinkling." So in this chapter we are consecrated in the same way. In verse 4, "Aaron and his sons thou shalt bring unto the door of the tabernacle," etc. You do not find Aaron washed by himself, because Christ did not need it. They are washed together as a figure of the Christian body. Christ as a man identifies Himself with the Church (1 Cor. 12: 12). Aaron was anointed (v. 17). The Holy Ghost descended upon Christ when He had been baptized.

175 But before unction we need to be cleansed. The word of God applied to the heart and conscience with power by the Spirit is called washing with the word. "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." This is not habitation but washing. Christ came not by water only, but by water and blood. The blood was for expiation, the water for washing, in order to meet God. In anything of Christ's work, it is not a question merely of atonement, but of meeting God. If I think of meeting God, it is what God requires. There must be perfect cleansing. It turns the eye on God Himself. I shall always know evil in myself; but if God is satisfied, so may I be. It is wholesome to look within and judge myself; but I shall not get the blessed peace that flows from faith, if I am looking for it into my own heart. When we see God is satisfied with Christ, then comes in peace; it gives the highest standard of right and wrong, but peace, because God is satisfied with Christ. Washing by water is repeated, not by blood.

Moses clothes him with the priest's robe, and there is no sacrifice here, because Christ required none. He was a perfect man in obedience and love. As man, Christ identifies Himself with His people. He comes into the same place as regards the walk of holiness. He was anointed with the Spirit and with power. All He did was in the power of the Spirit (v. 7, 20 21; Acts 10: 38). Christ was anointed as man. When He ascended on high, there He received the promise of the Father, and sent down the Spirit to the saints, so constituting them the Church.

Next, we come to the sons of Aaron (v. 8, 9). We are going to get them introduced into the priesthood, and now comes the sacrifice. Aaron needed none (v. 10-13, 14). There is no sweet savour in the sin-offering or trespass-offering. It must be burnt without the camp. Here it is a sin-offering - sin must be totally put away before our consecration. It is the nature judged before God. Christ is made sin for us, that we may be made priests. We have these two aspects of the value of Christ's work. First, the sin is charged upon Him. In the Hebrew there is no difference between "sin" and "sin-offering." Here He is the sin-offering; He who "knew no sin, made sin for us," etc. Secondly, the other character was offering Himself up to God, all the devotedness of a life of obedience offered up; this was a sweet savour to God. "Therefore hath my Father loved me, because I Jay down my life that I may take it again," John 10.

176 In verses 15-18 we find Aaron and his sons not merely having sin taken away, but accepted of God in all the perfection of Christ. If I am looked at as a sinner in myself, the sin is put away, but this is not all. Aaron and his sons put their hands upon the sin-offering; they also identified themselves with the burnt-offering. All the savour of everything that Christ has done, we are in: everything was consumed (v. 18), and put to the test; nothing failed; it is all gone up, and we are in it before God. Here we get our blessed position, previous to consecration as priests. For this, it is not a question of what I think of myself; but the measure of my acceptance is what Christ is in God's presence and estimate. We cannot measure grace by any thing that is fitted for us, but by what is fitted for God.

Verses 19, 21. We come now to the proper character of those persons that are cleansed and accepted. Now it is to consecrate, and, as in cleansing the leper, the blood is put on the right ear, right hand, and right foot - the acts, thoughts, and walks. We are now consecrated to God in all these. We have to render unto the Lord our bodies as well as our spirits; for we are not our own, but bought with a price. Every act that Christ did was as perfect as His sacrifice, but every step made it increasingly difficult. So we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Christ's conduct and Christ's devotedness are the measure of our walk before God. There is not so much as to set one's foot on left for self-will. Christ did not come to do His own will. Even to death He went, the death of the cross, So with us, if the eye is single, the whole body is full of light. If the heart is right, it makes the aim right. The apostle says, "Not that I have already attained . . . but this one thing I do," etc. He exercised himself day and night "to have a conscience void of offence." Then it is real liberty. If the heart be right, it will be joy; if not, it will be terrible, because there is not the smallest liberty given to self-will. In many things we fail; but if we feel what sin is and the claim God has on us, it will be our privilege to do His will. It is not a pretence that we are set up as something wonderful. No, it is faith in the blood of Christ that has cleansed us as to purpose and thought according to the perfectness of Christ; and now we are consecrated to serve God. It is simple Christianity.

177 Verse 21 shews them consecrated by the blood put upon their persons; but not only so, for there is the anointing with the Spirit of God to give power and energy for action. It was put on the "sons' garments with him." I have got the power of Christ in heaven, and the power of the Spirit that comes down from Christ for garments (that is, for all that I appear in before the world). It is "with Him," a thorough, complete association by the power of the Spirit with a crucified Christ who is now in heaven. Thus we get real thorough joy and gladness of heart. The first fruits are with God, the result are in what we shew to men. If peace and joy are in my heart, let me go in that, and it produces joy and gladness in my ways. The beginning of all practical fruits is from what we have with God, and then there is a testimony to men. What we really are with God shews itself out. It is, or should be, the effect of the consciousness of union with Christ.

This anointing of the Spirit can be put on us, because the blood is on us. Aaron had no blood put on him. The Spirit is the seal. The least relic of sin would prevent Him from sealing; but when the blood has cleansed from sin, then the seal is applied. The presence of the Spirit is the witness of the blood-shedding; the fruits are the witness of the Spirit. We thus get a wonderful power, stamp, and measure of holiness. If we believe in Christ., we are so cleansed that the Spirit can come and dwell in us. The Spirit is the seal to the value of Christ's work, not to what He is going to produce. Now He can fill Aaron's hands (v. 23, 24). What is produced by the Spirit is Christ's after all. I can come with an object now that I know God delights in it. Suppose I praise Christ's name, I know God's delight rests on it; it may be imperfectly done, but I know what the thing is to God, not the manner of my presenting it. It is the sweet savour of Christ to God.

178 We feed on Christ (v. 31, 32), now that He has given us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. We gather strength and grace, and comfort, the perfectness of Christ Himself, as our souls' food. "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." We come so to think of Christ, so to realize in our hearts and spirits what He is, that we live Christ. What a man thinks is what he is, more than what he does. A man may think of sin, and love it, and desire to do it, but will not because of his character; he may be a hypocrite. If I realize Christ in my heart, I am a Christian.

Verse 42 shews a continual burnt-offering at the place where God meets the people. Christ is before God day by day continually, a sweet savour. I cannot go to God without finding the savour of Christ there, in the perfect sweetness of His offering.

The reason (we hear in Genesis 8) God gave for not cursing is that He looks to Noah's sacrifice, not to the sin. God deals with us in virtue of what the Mediator is, instead of what we are. It ought to be always in our hearts, but it is always before God. When the daily sacrifice was taken away, the Jew could not go to God; there was no savour; see Dan. 8: 11.

In verses 42, 43, it is "I will meet you to speak there to thee." It is through Christ we gain everything. Finally, God says (v. 45, 46), "I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God." It is by the Spirit He does so now. The whole Church is His dwelling-place. He is not merely a Redeemer, but a constant dweller with the people; as verse 46 shews, it was not to do an act and then leave them. So it is with the Church in a still more blessed way.

But let us never forget that sin is put away first; then there is the continual savour where God meets us; and we are consecrated to His service. It supposes that the heart is right; for I cannot wish to be consecrated to God and have my own will. The death of Christ will never find its intelligent value in our hearts, if we want to escape the consequences of consecration. If we are consecrated, the motive of every action should be that Christ may be glorified. You cannot be happy unless Christ be everything. We may have to condemn ourselves daily; but when we think what a savour is before God we on with confidence.

"Show me now thy way"

Exodus 33, 34

J. N. Darby.

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The study of this passage brings out very clearly the position in which grace sets us with God, and the blessed confidence it gives us in God; and at the same time the effect of a mixture of grace with law, leaving us really under the latter, at any rate as to our state of mind, where the atonement is not applied, though really all exercise of grace depends on it.

To arrive at a clear understanding of both these states, as depicted to us in the passage, we must carefully distinguish between Moses and Israel. Of Moses it is said, "I know thee by name, and thou hast found grace in my sight." He stood in grace. The effect of this I will consider further on; I turn first to Israel. Israel had just made the golden calf. As a formal institution they never came under strict and absolute law. God had spoken to them out of the midst of the fire, and they had undertaken obedience. But before Moses had come down from the mount, they had made the golden calf, and broken that first link of all., "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." Moses consequently never brought the two tables of the law given of God into the camp - how could he place them beside a golden calf? - but broke them at the foot of the mount, and left the camp, setting up anticipatively a tabernacle of the congregation outside the camp; and there God met with Moses, and talked with him face to face, as a man talks with his friend.

But he is told to go up to God again in the mount; and here we may look at the state of Israel. He had told them, "Ye have sinned a great sin, and now I will go up unto the Lord; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin." He does so, "and Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold; yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book." They were put fully under law, each man responsible for his sin, which is most righteous, of course, as law and judgment; but atonement was not made, but personal responsibility left everything on the individual. Blessed be God, Christ has not said, "I will go up . . . peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin He has made a perfect atonement (and thus gone down), and sat down on the right hand of God. But this was not so here. Who indeed could do it but He?

180 However, the people are, through the mediation of Moses, in a measure, as to present dealings, put under grace. The people humbled themselves, and they are spared, and God's presence goes with them. God retreats into His own sovereignty to be gracious, and shew mercy. So surely it always is. As Jehovah He then declares His name: not the gospel, founded on accomplished redemption, full forgiveness, and acceptance in Christ, who has wrought it; but the terms of God's forbearing mercy in His government of Israel.* "Jehovah, Jehovah Elohim, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty (just what God does through Christ by the atonement); visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." Such are the terms of God's dealing with Israel, on Moses' intercession, while they were put back under law, and the latter and commandments renewed. It was, as I have said, a mixture of grace and law. Grace that spared and, as a present thing, forgave, but put back under law again, under which, as a strict and absolute rule, Israel had wholly failed.

{*I do not doubt all three, as every mercy is founded on an atonement. See Romans 3: 25.}

And such is a vast part of current Christianity: admitted failure under a broken law; mercy that has spared and, as a present thing, forgiven; and then men put back under law as a rule of life to keep it.

But Moses could not make atonement, and Israel was put back under law, though spared in mercy. But Christ has made atonement, we all blessedly know; and "when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." There was no "peradventure" here. He finished the work His Father gave Him to do, and is glorified as Man at the right hand of God, in a glory He had with the Father before the world was. Hence the gospel is a ministration of righteousness - the righteousness of God is revealed in it to faith. Men are not under law, but under grace.

181 Remark here that it is the law, here as then added to grace in the ways of God, which the apostle calls the ministration of death and condemnation. The first time Moses came down from the mountain, his face (the circumstance the apostle alludes to) did not shine. When he had all God's goodness pass before him, and came down the second time, it did.

Still, as we have seen, and as is evident, the people, though spared by grace, were put back under law; and this was the ministration of death and condemnation of which the apostle speaks. For, in fact, if atonement be not made, grace only makes transgression worse, at any rate in the revelation of God; even in partial glory, with law it must be condemnation to a sinner. Law after grace, in a word, is what the apostle teaches us is condemnation; law after atonement is worse than absurd. It is putting away the sin, and then putting under it, or making the law of no authority and no effect. But vague grace - sparing, and then law, is the state of multitudes of souls; and that is what the apostle tells us is death and condemnation in its nature, and indeed the veil is soon over the reflection of grace to the soul (that is, the perception that exists of grace is soon lost).

The difference between Moses and Israel is touchingly alluded to in 2 Corinthians 3, where it is said, "When it shall turn to the Lord the veil shall be taken away." For Moses, when he went into the sanctuary, took it off. But it is done away in Christ.

The people, then, were under law.

Let us now turn to Moses, who had found grace in God's sight. First we find single-eyed desire towards God and His way. It was not, a safe way across the wilderness, but, "Shew me now thy way," and that, "that I might know thee." This is single-eyed and beautiful (chap. 33: 12, 13), and this is the way, as in John 14, of finding practically grace or favour in our walk, as Enoch did. But then he can intercede, "This nation is thy people": for he did not separate himself at all from their interests, and wanted God's presence with them. God meets what is in his heart: "My presence shall go, and I will give thee rest." He will not call the people, indeed, "My people," but there will be His presence (through Moses' faith), and then in the way rest.

Moses at once presses on the manifested grace, "If thy presence go not, take us not up hence." He must have God's presence, and he brings the people in. This only (v.16) separates evidently a people to God, a notable point. Thus it is known that favour rests upon them, for Moses is - emboldened by grace, yet just in word and thought in the place of faith, "I and thy people have found grace." It is by his mediation, for that was the true exercise of faith with a heart for God's people; but the same faith will say "Thy people," and that is granted too.

182 Then (for he cannot see the face of God, that for sinners was in atonement, and Christ, the blessed One, alone could do it) the goodness is passed before him, when the glory of his face had passed by, and sovereign mercy, as we have seen, spares. This is the blessed confidence of grace: only we have to say that now we can look at the glory in the unveiled face of Christ, because atonement is made, and the glory is the witness of acceptance and of sin put away.

But there is more as to this grace. We have seen how God is with us in grace in His own way, and knowing Him. But, we shall see, it meets the evil of our nature. This is shewn in the most striking way in this passage. First, God had said, "I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee," "for thou art a stiff-necked people." He could not tolerate sin in His presence, and He would not go at all, though He would not let them go up as spared. This gave occasion to the pleading of Moses, which we have considered, who felt the value of God's presence. It was everything to him in holy desire; he could not do without it: and holy boldness through the grace shewn him (for he had found grace, and was told so) - he claims and obtains it. And now he stood in grace and known goodness; and when all the goodness had passed before him, he says, bowing his head to the earth, "If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord (Adonai, not Jehovah), let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiff-necked people," the very ground God had given for cutting them off! And could we go? could we get the better of our stiff neck, of our flesh, and get safely through the wilderness, if God were not with us?

But, oh, what a change grace has made! Here is the very reason for consuming in just judgment, the motive for asking God to be with us. How complete this grace! God, in whose present grace we stand, is our resource against the evil in us, which was the just ground in itself of cutting us off. How very perfect and complete this grace is, and the ground of God's relationship with us! Here, too, though it rests on the Mediator, as we know it does, yet Moses brings the people fully in - "go among us; for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin; and take us for thine inheritance." His faith is very beautiful here, and faith knows God and indeed it only.

Hints on the Tabernacle

Exodus 25-34.

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Exodus 25 begins the instructions for the tabernacle. First, they were to bring all the different materials, and then "according to all that I shew thee after the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it." And again, "after the pattern of all that was shewed thee in the mount." These were the "patterns of things in the heavens," or anti-types of things in the heavens. We must not bring in the highest relationships here; that is, connected with what has been said about priesthood; as "Father" is the highest name for us, so here you find all judicial questions settled. Such matters as cleansing, and all that was responsible down here, are dealt with, and so on; but no relationships save Jewish ones. It is this that makes the Psalms, beautiful as they are, mischievous in the use men make of them, because souls get into a false relationship with them. You never see the Father's relationship to the child in the entire body of Psalms. It is referred to as an analogy, but not the relationship itself. There are instructions how to walk in faith in this world, but they never put a person in heaven; the Christian class of relationships could not be, for it was not revealed; but many beautiful expressions of faith, confidence, and piety which apply to us all.

To me it is a remarkable thing that we have here the shadow of good things to come, not the very image of them. There is a most wonderful exhibition of what is divine, and yet it contains in it provision for a connection or relationship with what is fallen. Thus what is an altar for? In heaven you get an altar, and on earth pictured out the heavenly things themselves where Christ is gone; still it secretly kept in redemption, and, by sacrifice upon it, all was provided for, and a certain connection with heaven by means of what is earthly.

The existence of an altar and a laver supposed impurity, yet the third heavens are figured there and the throne of God, but along with that an unrent veil. There was a holiest, but no way into it; so that it all has a certain character of revelation of God, and yet of a hidden God after all. Thus we see in it mere connection with heaven before anybody could enter there, and this comes from foreshewing Christ - the perfect - by what is imperfect.

185 The first thing described (in chapter 25) is the ark, made of shittim wood, and covered all over with pure gold inside and out; and it is said, "thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee," that is the law. Now you could not put law in the Father's house; but you could put it where God was in a relationship with man which regarded him in a judicial manner, as I said. Take the Hebrews, where you have the highest christian expression of all this; and there we have boldness to enter into the holiest, but we are not sitting in heavenly places. No person ever thought of dwelling in the tabernacle; that is another set of ideas. God dwelt there, but nobody else. The moment man dwells there, I must get the Father, and also complete freedom of relationship to Him as such. The moment God revealed Himself as Father, you get the ground on which the relationship was founded, and then comes priesthood, and also adoption, and heirship of the glory. This is what frightened the disciples on the mount of transfiguration (I mean the "excellent glory," that is, the cloud, or the Shechinah); "and they feared as they entered into the cloud," that is, as Moses and Elias entered; it was a new thing altogether to the disciples, a new idea, and a fact before them that produced the fear.

Was not Moses in the cloud before? The cloud came down, and God talked with Moses, but Moses did not enter the cloud; the cloud was more than the holiest. Moses went up, but he never went into the cloud to talk with God, though the cloud covered God from the people. It was the sign of God's presence as when Miriam talked against Moses (Num. 12). But when you have the cloud on the mount, it was pure law, until Moses interceded with God for mercy; so in itself it was accompanied with thunderings and lightnings - not grace at all. Until Moses got the mercy (the second time he went up), he did not go in with God. If Moses went into the tabernacle, that was approaching God; but still it was not like being children in a house, it was approaching a God who will estimate whether you have a right to approach Him or not.

God was here in a certain character, and if man was not fit, he could not go there, for there was moral estimate of what man was. Now the Father has sent the Son; but then it was nothing of the kind, it was purely a question of whether man could approach God. The contrast is brought out in Hebrews, taking Hebrews in the highest way. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus: this is what makes us competent; but still for us God is a consuming fire, estimating everything. The temple was the Lord's house, Jehovah's, and Jehovah was His Father. We were noticing in Corinthians the three names of God in the passage, "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord (Jehovah) Almighty."

186 Christ revealed the Father's name, for He was Son. It was not that man could go to God, but God was revealed to man; it was not sitting in righteousness to see if man could go near, but God was coming out in grace to take man in to Himself. Thus you can see what is so terrible in confounding the Old Testament condition with ours; that was only the shadow of good things to come. Evidently it is a solemn truth, whether we can go to God or not; it is a difference in the starting-point of the whole being. And more still, it is the Father's eternal love that is thinking of me, though I am a sinner, and that means to give me such a blessing.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is more contrast than comparison; you have a veil, but it is rent; priests dying because they could not continue, and One who cannot die; sacrifices that were memorials of sins, and a sacrifice which is such as to be proof that sins are no more remembered. The Epistle is not the old system christianized, so to speak, but another bearing of things altogether.

You have the blood put upon the ark or mercy-seat. The mercy-seat itself is of pure gold. There you see what is absolutely divine. You see something as to man when the law is put in the ark, because that applies to man, and shittim wood too is in the ark; but the covering is divine righteousness absolutely.

Shittim wood, they say, was a kind of acacia, and figurative, in general, of the human side of things, as gold was of the divine. For when you have a covenant in the law, man is brought in; but the covering was of gold only, and this was divine alone.

There is a physical reason in it too, for they could not have carried it else. There was no appearance of wood, all was gold that was seen, but the covering is pure gold altogether. Then you have the cherubim, and the whole a throne: "he sitteth between the cherubim." The cherubim seem to be symbols always of judicial power. The seraphim are only in fact named in Isaiah, and there they say, "Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts., the whole earth is full of his glory." It was judgment looked at in connection with holiness more than with authority and government. In the Revelation the four living ones are both cherubs and seraphs. They have six wings and cry, "holy, holy, holy," having the likeness of a man, calf, lion, and flying eagle. Here the cherubim are connected with the judicial throne.

187 The four faces are the attributes of God in a way. The ox was called a cherub sometimes, though I do not know why. In it is the permanence and stability of judgment; the power of it in a lion; the rapidity of it in the eagle; and the intelligence in a man.

There was another thing in this divine throne - the covenant was there; the terms of the covenant were the law. You have no seraphim here, but it is the throne of judgment just as much. And there is this fact: the cherubim were of gold beaten out of one piece with the mercy-seat. They were divine. And they were together, with their wings stretched out, looking at the covenant, all the attributes of God securing the covenant and judging righteously.

Remarkably enough our rationalists in their researches have found in Nineveh winged things, bulls and lions, and images of cherubim, and so on. It just shews the utter folly of their system, for when Ezekiel has the cherubim, he has these animals sure enough; but they are merely to support the throne. For God is above; they are mere attributes, and God over them.

Here in the tabernacle they were not fully manifested in that way. It is the throne of God, and the cherubim are of one piece with it, look towards one another but downwards fixedly at the covenant, with their wings stretched out to cover the mercy-seat. When Solomon puts his cherubim in the temple, they stood up with the tip of one wing touching one wall then two tips met in the middle of the house, and the other tip of the fourth wing touched the wall on the opposite side, and they looked outwards, because all the attributes of God were going out to man.

The reason the ark is mentioned as carried then into the temple is because the tabernacle was in ruin. Once men carried it into Dagon's house (this being an idol, part man and part fish), and when the ark went in, the man fell down, and the fish only was left in place. This had its meaning. Now Shiloh was all pulled to pieces when Solomon took the ark and set it in the temple. The Philistines had taken it, but God maintained His own glory (all else must go for nothing); and He watched over it step by step wherever they led it about, and finally took it from them.

188 It was a cherub at each end and all gold, simply divine, a sign of God Himself, as it were. "And thou shalt put the mercy-seat above upon the ark, and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee." This is first of all, and chief; but no Father sending the Son here. There is the meeting God in righteousness in a certain way, but it is God dealing with man, responsible man, and setting up His own throne in righteousness.

Then you find the table of shittim wood, overlaid with gold, and upon it the shewbread always. Then the candlestick of pure gold with beaten work and seven lamps for burning oil. These were on the two sides, and in the same place outside the veil.

But the altar of incense is not described yet, because this is for approach and not for display. The description of the vessels is broken in the middle here by the appointing of the priesthood. First the things that are from God coming out, and then, after the priests are appointed, the things which are wanted for man to go in. So, in the holy place, there is a table and a candlestick. The table is "before Jehovah," the number twelve in the loaves on the table, and seven in the lamps (the one being the sign of government in the creature, and the other, of what is divine light in the Spirit); and this is simply divine in its nature. Twelve is government on earth, as constantly one gets it so. Seven is what is spiritual, bad or good, but commonly good. Hence, as to these two numbers, they are both perfection; but one is perfection in a spiritual way, and the other is perfection in a human way. Seven is the highest prime number, absolutely indivisible, nine may be divided though not by two. Whereas twelve is the most divisible of the numbers, divisible by all below its half, except five. Their use (seven or twelve) is a matter of fact, and there is a kind of moral reason why they should be used; twelve apostles, twelve foundations to the city, twelve thrones, twelve patriarchs, twelve tribes, and so on. Thus there is the divine fight on the one side, and the human order according to God, or God's order in man, if you please, on the other side, in the holy place; not in the holiest of all.

189 The church ought to give out the light now that is true in the power of the Spirit.

The golden altar follows, because we are not yet going in; the altar is for going to God, and so the priesthood comes first before you can have the golden altar.

Afterwards come the glory itself and the court of the tabernacle. There are three unities in the tabernacle. It is Christ Himself; then the church, "whose house are we"; and then it is the heavens. He was the tabernacle, and the veil was His flesh; and we are His house and then He went "through the heavens" (Heb. 4: 14). God dwelt in Christ, "the Father dwelleth in me; in the house the church, God's habitation; and in the heavens. All we have had was inside the tabernacle.

The loaves have nothing to do with the church; they are the perfection of administrative order in man. Of course these are all mere images, just like the city, which is a cube. Now a cube is perfection, but finite perfection measurable every way and equal; but you can find no end to a circle, or comer anywhere, to measure from, and which is not finite but infinite rather. Of a cube I come regularly to the end each way. Perhaps Christ answers more to the most holy place, because you get "the veil, that is to say, his flesh." Then we read, "he that built all things is God," and Christ went through all - the court - the holy place, and the most holy place. It is from this earth, up; this earth is the point of departure, for Christ went up from the earth through all the heavens.

Inside was where nobody could go in; there was neither display nor approach. Outside, the incense altar was approach, and the table and the candlestick were display. So until the rent veil nobody went in, "the Holy Ghost thus signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while as the first tabernacle was standing."

In the ark I have God Himself sitting on the throne of judgment; and in it, as Christ, all that God could require from man was absolutely there, and God was there too. There is divine judgment, but it is there put into connection with man's responsibility; that is, God's measure of man's righteousness, if you please, not what it is of course, but what it ought to be. You notice in the Hebrews it is not the temple but the tabernacle that is always referred to. Scripture says we have "boldness to enter into the holiest"; and so we do in spirit. The veil is rent; so that, when we go to worship, we go into God's own presence, we go beyond the veil - inside the veil. Our position is, that the veil was rent from top to bottom, and we go inside where God is. What God is shewing under the law, was that man could not go in; "the Holy Ghost this signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest." Whereas now the Holy Ghost shews that it is, all Hebrews being contrast in that way between what was and what is. The rending of the veil in Christ's death has let us into God's own presence. It did two things, the rending of the veil - it put away all sins for us totally; and also it opened up the way for us to God; so that now, through the work of Christ, we have all opened up for us into God's own presence, and we are without sin when we get there. There are other and higher things, even than this, in the Father and common truth; but all this is necessary for us to go to God.

190 "Moses was faithful in all his house," God's house, for the tabernacle was not Moses', but God's house. The house is all one now in that sense, though Hebrews omits notice of the rending of the veil. Perhaps the omission is on purpose. It supposes a rent veil, though it is not stated in so many words. It would have to be rent for the Jews in the millennium; but it is not rent to them, as I believe. The Jews get all the good of the veil being rent, looked at as Christ's death; but, Christ being then on earth, they have not to look through into heaven to see Him.

The court has its place, it was only where the tabernacle was; and it is not the earth exactly nor is it the heaven; if you take it merely as a figure, it is the created heavens.

The "heavenly places" of Daniel do not correspond, "heavenly places" being taken as a general term both in Daniel and in Ephesians.

When Christ was cast out of the world, He was put upon the brazen altar, so that the court is like the heaven as being out of the earth where man was; but scarcely heaven either, for man could not put Him there.

Then you get the court of the tabernacle made, but not the laver here. The camp is earthly or fleshly religion, and, when Christ's death proves that man cannot be in relationship with God, at least in that way, and therefore the blood goes into heaven so as to take my title there, I must have done with human religiousness; and then having an inside place with God, I must have an outside place from the world. Morally, Christianity is turned into a camp again, and, to carry it fairly out, there must be a sacrifice and priest too; this is just what popery has done, and they have given that old character to what Christianity is; sacrifices on earth, and priests on earth going to God for you because you cannot.

191 But when I get sacrifice carried outside, it is revealed that there cannot be such a thing; and the law is but a shadow in itself, though in it you find certain elements which are very instructive in going to God. But the moment you apply these things to Christianity, every element is in contrast. Christ has gone through the heavens, the veil is rent, and there is positive access to the holiest. All now is just the opposite to what then was. When we have heaven, we have done with a worldly religion and are outside the camp. And this is the very thing that now characterizes an intelligent Christian; he cannot be adapting the world to God, or God to man. Taking the system as such is to set aside the truth of Christianity. We have the altar, but not that of incense, and no laver.

The highest point that Judaism reached was that the priest could go to the veil, but not the people. The priest could have the external display of God amongst men in a priestly way; but there was no going to God Himself. As a rule the veil was on them, but this varies with their spiritual apprehension. Moses might have understood some things. God says of him, "thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name." But he stood all alone, he took the veil off his face when he went in to God; but what characterized Israel was the veil on.

The veil is the Word made flesh - Christ - fine twined linen, the positive purity of the nature; and then all the graces embroidered upon it. You get the same here in the first covering of the tabernacle; it is made of the same thing as the veil; it is Christ's human nature. God had no interest in putting colours there without a meaning. If you compare one scripture with another, you may learn what they mean. It is the same with the heavenly Jerusalem, certain things are clear, but you must be careful; there is no temple in it, for if a temple is glorious about God, it hides God; but there it is God's own glory seen.

192 Then you get the dress of the high priest (more for Israel than for us, and therefore I do not go into it minutely); but there is the beautiful expression of Christ's care for His people, only the immediate reference is to Israel. A coat, a blue robe, an ephod (and in the ephod gold or divine righteousness), and with that, a stone on each shoulder that clasped together the back and front parts of the ephod; and then the breastplate (the breastplate and ephod being essentially the priestly robe). Then we have all the names of the children of Israel, six on one onyx stone and six on the other, on the two shoulders of the priest, and so he carries, as it were, the weight of the people: then in the breastplate again, the twelve names on his heart and the Urim and Thummim were there too, lights and perfections, the judgment of the children of Israel. The Jews' idea of it was that the divine glory lit up the particular letters that gave the answer to an inquiry. In all is a complete picture of the way that Christ cares for His people. He bore the judgment of His people, not here atonement, but the iniquity of their holy things.

This only takes up their lowest condition. It does not testify of Christianity. In a priest, I get one from whom I am separated, for he has to act for me; but when I look at my proper condition as a Christian, I am member of Christ's body, and of His flesh and of His bones. I am also walking on the earth and have failures and difficulties; and these all have their needs, and to them priesthood refers. In Hebrews you never get sins referred to as the subject of priesthood, save on the great day of atonement. The priesthood of Christ is continual help in whatever we need as we walk on here. In Hebrews it is first a question of access to God as such. How can this be? The answer is, I am perfected for ever by the one offering, and have no more conscience of sins, and so we can go in even boldly. I do not know what place priesthood can have now as to that; it is done already; and then, inasmuch as we are perfected in that respect, we have priesthood provided. The frequent common use of priesthood now - the ordinary idea - is a mistake altogether. But when I look at my other character in communion with the Father and Son, it is not that my righteousness is altered; but if I have let in an evil thought, my communion is blasted and then the priesthood is to restore my soul; for I cannot think of God having communion with evil in any way. I remember this question being raised twenty-five years ago.

193 These then are the priestly garments; but Aaron never !vent into the most holy place in them; he should have gone in whenever he liked, or at least it was the Lord's will. Nadab and Abihu faded at once with their strange fire, and then the high priest was prohibited going in. But having got the priest with a mitre also - holiness to Jehovah - he bore the iniquity of their most holy things. I think he wore that mitre even on the great day of atonement when he put off the other garments of glory and beauty. It says he was to bear their names continually before Jehovah.

The words "crowned with glory and honour," in Hebrews 2, are the same as in the Septuagint. (Cf. Exodus 28: 2 of the LXX with Hebrews 2: 7, 9.) There is another thing which is interesting, and which I believe has its truth in Christ; there was a golden bell and a pomegranate alternately on the hem of the robe of blue; it is testimony and fruit; it was that his sound might be "heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that he die not." There was fruit-bearing and testimony, like the early and the latter rain, I should think. It is the two characters of the Holy Ghost's action, testimony and fruit-bearing, the sounding bell and the pomegranate.

Their consecration is seen in chapter 29, and all the sacrifices are together there. Then, the moment we have Aaron consecrated, in chapter 30 you have an altar to burn incense upon.

You may notice too that Aaron is anointed with oil by himself all alone, because he represented Christ. I mean without blood at all; and this is a point of importance. He and his sons were to come together, and they were all washed. I have no washing of this character save the partaking of the divine nature - "which thing is true in Him and in you." But the distinctive point is, when you come to the consecrating: Aaron is first anointed with oil without blood; and then, when the sons are taken, he is brought in with them to identify us with Christ. And blood is put on the tip of the right ear and thumb and toe, giving complete consecration to God in thought, act, and walk: the same as in the case of the leper, only in the leper there is a question of cleansing a sinner. It makes a great difference that Christ was consecrated without blood-shedding; of course He did not want any, whereas we do.

194 The priest being there, we have the altar of incense. The things we have had were the manifestation of God coming out; now we have approach to Him. The burning of the incense is at the golden altar; it is intercession. Incense was to go up regularly, continuously, as the lamps were to be kept burning, constantly in use. This was the time of service to God, and it was renewed. The lamps were dressed for day and for night.

Then the ransom money comes in, and remarkably there is all the people for whom Moses intercedes: they must be identified with this service. If you number them, you seem to make something of God's people. It is not by blood here, but rather the fact of their giving atonement - money; and He did make them of some importance, even by the fact that they had to be ransomed, though man is a poor sinner if he is ransomed. It comes here because the priest is coming to God, and he cannot go to God except for a ransomed people. Christ is Priest or Advocate, not for the world, and not for the elect either, but for other believers, who must get their place those who are given to Him out of the world, and believe in His name.

Then comes another thing, the laver; this is not washing the body to be made a priest, but here the priest washes his hands and feet; it was not the washing of consecration; but, when consecrated, he must be perfectly pure for God, and he must wash his hands and feet. Only in our case it is walk, not work, and so it is feet only for us. He was to wash every time he did any service whatever.

The washing of regeneration is not priestly washing; but after that I come inside as a priest, and get the full place of a priest, then follows priestly washing of hands and feet, a washing for those who are within.

The water is the word in its own purity from God; but the place in which I get it is the point. The sinner must have the new nature in order to come in; but then when he says, I must be with God every day, this wants a washing of hands and feet. Until the priest was consecrated, he could not go to the altar or laver at all. Then what is the water of the first washing in chapter 29? That washing is the washing of water by the word - born of water and of the Spirit - and this is never repeated; whereas every time they served, they washed their hands and feet.

195 Then, as regards the anointing oil, it was not to be poured on man's flesh; a man must be a priest to have it. You cannot give a nature; and the anointing can only be of a nature that is of God. "Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ and hath anointed us is God, who also sealed us," 2 Cor. 1: 22. No human flesh could have that. And no one was to imitate the anointing oil either. On mere human nature you cannot put anointing; you cannot anoint man, looked at as man, nor put the Holy Ghost upon him. As to mere power, He can make a dumb ass speak, but this is not anointing.

So with the perfume, it was that which was to go up to God. If I do a gracious thing, it is acceptable, and these sweet spices give us the graces in Christ, etc., at the altar, His intercession, a sweet savour used in that way.

As you look at all this, of course, it is quite imperfect as regards our condition; but the provision is clear; and it is most interesting to see God coming out, by table and candlestick and brazen altar, and then man going in to God, with laver and altar of incense.

From verse 34 to the end of the chapter is the incense. The incense-altar was the ordinary place. Frankincense was put upon the meat-offering, but it is not this point here.

In the millennium the Jews will have the true sabbath again, and all the sacrifices will be repeated too, and the feasts, save Pentecost - which belongs to us. The sin-offering, peace-offering, burnt-offering, meat-offering, and the trespass-offering too, are all named in Ezekiel for that day.

Next they made a golden calf. Moses was getting all these things for them, and they in his absence make the calf. It is afflicting, but withal exceedingly beautiful, the intercourse of God with Moses, consequent upon the people making the golden calf - how, in the midst of all the ruin, faith, under grace, can have closer intercourse than when there was no ruin. Moses never had so close intercourse with God, as now when the people had made the calf; and it was while the calf was in the camp. And the way in which God meets Moses is beautiful, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." And then Moses grows bolder still, and says, "If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence."

There is another thought: the ground that God gives for destroying the people is precisely what Moses takes for God's going with them, when once grace has come in. In chapter 32: 9, 10, the Lord says "it is a stiff-necked people, now therefore let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them." And then, in chapter 34: 9, Moses says "Let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiff-necked people." So God's reason for consuming me would be my sin; and my reason for asking God to be with me, now that grace has come in, is that sin is in me. What infinite mercy!

196 Another thing note, beside the way that God answers God will not call them His people any more. The people had said, "As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what has become of him," chap. 32: 1. And God says, "This people" (v. 7), "which though broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves." So in verse 11 Moses says, "which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt," and in chapter 33: 1 the Lord says, "The people which thou [Moses] hast brought up out of the land of Egypt," and in chapter 34: 10, God again calls them "thy [Moses'] people."

Hints on the Sacrifices in Leviticus

Leviticus 1-3.

<19014E> 197

Notice in the first place that the tabernacle has been set up. It is out of the tabernacle of the congregation that this instruction is given. It supposes God is there, and it is a question of approach to Him.

There are two classes of sacrifices: those made by fire for a sweet savour; and the sin and trespass offerings (pretty much the same thing), which were not for a sweet savour, though the fat of them was burnt on the altar. The three sacrifices of sweet savour are - the burnt-offering, the meat (or meal) offering, and the peace-offering. "Peace-offering" is a bad name: "sacrifices de prosperite" they are called in French.

As to the offerings, they are here given as from Jehovah in their order; they are for men, but still from the Lord, just as Christ was; whereas, when men came to offer, they came, not with the burnt-offering, but with the sin-offering first. Here the divine statement of them is made, and the sin-offering is last because this is what Christ became when He had offered up Himself. It is first when persons come by them, and the order in a measure shews the character.

We first come in Leviticus 1 to the burnt-offering. "If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd," and so on. Sometimes a bullock, and sometimes a goat, or a sheep, but a "male without blemish," representing Christ in His perfection.

"Of his own voluntary will" should rather be, "for his acceptance." There is one passage made me question it rather, but I believe that is what it should be. In chapter 22 you may make a difference; in verse 19 it means "free-will," but in verse 29 it should be "for his acceptance."

The offerer puts his hand on the head of the victim. "And it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him, and he shall kill the bullock before the Lord." Then the priest was to bring the blood, and deal with that; this is the priest's first act - to bring the blood.

The special character of the burnt-offering is, that it was not for a committed sin; on the contrary, what is to me a most wonderful thing is, that not only the question of our sins is elsewhere met, but in the burnt-offering it is the question of glorifying God in the place of sin itself - Christ "made sin." And He who knew no sin was made sin, and stood in the place of sin (at the cross) before God, so as to glorify God there; "made sin," which, except in a divine way of wisdom, is impossible. But Christ was made sin of His own voluntary will, and yet it was in obedience: these are combined; the two things are together. God "hath made him to be sin." God put Him in the place of sin, and He offered Himself for sin (and He is our passover), freely and entirely for it.

198 This is what we may see in John 18, "if ye seek me, let these go their way." Christ put Himself forward, "offered himself without spot to God"; but at the same time He is "made sin" - it is obedience too. The thing was, to unite this fact of sin being under God's eye, and so to have it there as that God should be perfectly glorified about it. And only in a victim could this be. And there was perfectness in bringing it, for it was the giving up of Himself. Besides the fact of our sins put away there, you get nothing like the atonement. It is all for us all the while; yet Christ is there "made sin," in absolute obedience and self-sacrifice, but making good the righteousness, and love, and majesty, and honour, and truth of God, and everything else that is in God. Now it is by this we come; and therefore it is not only that the sin-offering has been there, but in coming by this I come in all the value of that which has glorified God in the very place where I was; I come to God in all the value of this, and get the acceptance of it before God, like Abel. Nowhere else at all is anything seen like this.

Until the man lays his hand upon the victim, it is not a sacrifice properly. Christ, "through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God"; but now when I lay my hand upon the victim, that is the application of it, more than part of it.

We hardly get the "made sin" in the verses here. A man's bringing a burnt-offering is as good as coming to the Lord and saying, "I have no devotedness to bring; but all is due to the Lord, and I bring it in the person of my sacrifice," which in principle would be Christ. This is our coming by it: but one must come as having undevotedness, and not only everything wanting, but enmity against God - all that is bad. And then I am accepted in all the value of what Christ has done. Christ has been perfect in obedience and devotedness unto death, and He glorifies God, giving Himself up to God altogether, for this is the character offering Himself has, and He is made sin, and dealt with as such, and in this shews His absolute devotedness to God. He is sinless too of course, for He is without blemish. You will get the perfectness of Christ looked at in all His thoughts and will, as attested in the meat-offering; but here more, He is given up as a victim, made sin: there is the blood and atonement here. In the meat-offering you get what Christ was Himself here it is His offering Himself in the place of sin, that is, made sin." If I say "instead of," I must say "sins," here not "instead of," but "made sin." We have sin brought in, which is more than saying we have sinned.

199 Just look round about, and always, and see what has come of God! He created everything good, and what state is it in? It is all corruption and defilement, and, if you could have the devil gay, it is here. Where was God's glory, and all that He had made blessed? and where was His power? It was all utter dishonour done to God. Therefore there was Jehovah's lot on the day of atonement. The whole thing was God's character. Suppose God cut all off: it would have set aside wickedness, but there could be no love in that, though it would have shewn how man had failed. It would have looked like, "I have not made the thing well, and I am obliged to smash it up." But the moment Christ comes in, you get perfect love, complete righteousness against sin, all that God is, looked at as against sin in itself; you get in the cross perfect love to the sinner, God's majesty maintained. "It became him, in bringing many sons into glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." You get the truth of God carried out even against His own Son; that everything God is, the most opposite things, righteousness and love (which would have been so without sin, but) all brought out here in the person of Him who offered Himself in obedience and love; "that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." Every moral element, even that which seemed incompatible, all that God is, was displayed. And this is the place where God has been dishonoured. Thus, where all evil was, everything that was base and degrading, there the opposite was brought out when Christ was made sin.

200 The burnt-offering has more to do, then, with the nature, the sin and trespass-offering with acts, of sin. The one, the burnt-offering, is where the moral nature of God was in question; and the other, the sin-offering, where ordinances were. The burnt-offering has to do with the perfect nature of God. The great thing is that it meets God really, and in the place of sin. You might say, perhaps, it deals with our state rather than nature on our side.

It is the "Where art thou?" not "What hast thou done?" "Where art thou?" and Christ was the forsaken of God; there is grace for us. Thus the burnt-offering goes wider than the state of the world, and this is why I say in the place where sin was. But I am not speaking of Satan to include him at all.

The expression in verse 4, "to make atonement," is the Piel (intensive active) form of the Hebrew verb Kaphar. It is all a question what Kaphar means. What led me to that was, it is the same word which is usually translated "to make atonement for," which means "to cover." If I am putting away sin I cover it, but then I find the Hebrew word which means "upon" (or with), and if you cover upon, you put out of sight. Thus I find this word Kaphar used about the scapegoat, Kaphar with the altar, the incense altar, as well as with the scapegoat. I get into some abstract way of thinking about it, and, if you look in a dictionary, you find no great help.

The scapegoat is an instance of the perfect nonsense of speculation. Some make the scapegoat a demon, and then sent away; some that it was sent away to appease the demon, lest he should do mischief to Israel; and one makes out that, while Azazel was a demon, they sent the sins all back to him.

Well, it is as to sin in the sin and trespass-offering, but here it is sin. It is the same Hebrew form in Leviticus 1: 4; 16: 10, "to make atonement for him," and "with him," in our Bibles.

There is "atonement about," and another case. two or three times of "cover over," and "from."

The entire burnt-offering was wholly burnt to God; it was Jehovah's lot, in a way, on that one point - sin. The skin - as in the case of Adam and Eve - was given to the priest, but the whole carcase went up burnt to God. It was Christ's offering God-ward, so to speak, but as a man, and made sin.

201 The wrath of God against sin was here, yet there came up a sweet savour. Such is the very fact. Instead of His being disobedient unto death, death was there, and sin was there, and He was obedient unto it; it was the perfection of the opposite of sin. Here Christ does God's will perfectly, and that is the mystery. In the very place and condition of sin you find this; when He offers Himself, and says, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me; but that the world may know that I love the Father," that is perfectness on one side; "and as the Father gave me commandment," that is the other side: and, being made sin, He has to drink the cup, and He says, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Is the priest's having the skin the satisfaction of Christ in His own work? Perhaps so. Christ is covered with the glory of it anyway, only He had nothing like nakedness to cover. Abel's offering had this character in its nature. There is no sin-offering until the law, though sins were there. The law brought out the definite transgressions, and therefore the sin-offering then got its place in an intelligent way. Abel had no sin actually named. It was the "where," and not the "what," in his case.

The Epistle to the Romans is the broad fact of the "what" to chapter 5: 11: afterwards the "where" is followed out. What we call the nature is practically identified with the "where"; but in the burnt-offering we look more on God's side, at the fact rather than at the nature that is active. Now, in order to get rid of the nature, I die with Christ: this is another element brought in. For when I look at the condition, I say, there is Christ the victim that died between me and God because of sin.

Then you get details. They washed the parts of the animal, that they should be ostensibly clean, to keep the idea of absolute cleanness.

Being made sin is not the idea of imputation. With imputation I could not have a sweet savour. This sacrifice is not for !emission, but for glorifying God. The end of 2 Corinthians 5 is not remission. That is where I take up the difference between God's righteousness and righteousness under law. Men make Christ's righteousness in life under law to be our righteousness. All that was necessary in Him first. But in my righteousness now I get all the perfection of what Christ is. It is not what He did as a living man, but God's own character was glorified in it, and my positive righteousness is according to what God's nature is. That is why I felt the importance of what was said about it. My objection was that it kept saints back from the infinite acceptance they have in Christ in this way. It was not the mere putting away of sins, as in Romans 3, 4, which is only forgiveness; but the burnt-offering has its own infinite value and character. The result shews it: Christ is now in the glory, and I am accepted in the Beloved.

202 It has been thought that the grades were to enable a poor man to bring an offering, which some have thought shewed the estimate of the offerer. It was not killed before the altar, that is, between the gate and the altar, but northward. It might shew a certain intelligence, at any rate it was not simply the man's coming up as he pleased. One entered the gate at the east of the court, and the north was to the right hand. He must do God's will.

In the meat-offering we get a picture of Christ's person fully tested by the righteousness of God.

Fire is testing judgment, not death at all. If there be only a little dross, fire purges it out: if there be only evil, it is consumed.

In the meat-offering the points are, the perfect humanity, and the Holy Ghost, which was the oil, but employed in different ways. The frankincense is the perfect grace that goes up to God. The burning on the altar is the thing that gives the sufferings of Christ. There are other variations: the oil kneaded in the flour gives Christ born by the Holy Ghost; the anointing with oil is what Christ was after His baptism. There is another character: it was broken to bits, and they were all anointed with oil to shew that every part of Christ was in the power of the Spirit of God.

Its simple existence as a cake was sinless humanity, and by the power of the Holy Ghost.

It is baked, but not baked meal by itself: when it was a meal-offering, "baked in a pan, it shall be of fine flour unleavened, mingled with oil, thou shalt part it in pieces, and pour oil thereon." There it is a kind of cake common among the Hebrews, then "baken in the oven," or "in the frying-pan," that is, in every possible way. When it was offered, it was taken out. Parted in pieces means in every detail, words, works, everything. There were two things that could not be in it, honey and leaven, save in two exceptional cases. But there must always be salt. It is said, both of sin-offering and meat-offering, that they are "most holy."

203 Next they were eaten by the priests; it was a priestly thing, not to be eaten by the priests' daughters, as was allowed in some of the peace-offerings.

Leaven is corruption, or sin; and honey is not allowed either, for it represents the sweetness of nature, which may be a very pleasant thing sometimes, but cannot go into a sacrifice: salt must - "the salt of the covenant of thy God," which is the separative power of holiness. "Every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt." Everybody will get judgment; wicked and good will get fire, but it is only sacrifices offered to God that really have the power which separates from evil, and keeps evil away.

Honey is pleasant and good in its place sometimes. I was thinking of Jonathan. The Lord does refresh us with outward mercies, kind things, the friendship of brethren, but with caution as to the use of them. "Hast thou found honey? Eat as much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it," and too much even here does do so.

The Lord Jesus had no honey, not a bit - He had divine kindness. Honey would have taken Him up to Mary and Martha when Lazarus was sick, if I may use such a figure, but salt kept Him away. There could be no honey in a sacrifice, nor in a meat-offering, "for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire."

The honeycomb in Luke 24, I suppose, was good in its place. It is not meant that honey in itself is bad naturally. The moment He became the cake after the baptism of John, there was no honey. There should be our answer to it, "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." Fire being the perfect testing of God's judgment, we have Christ here, not merely looked at as making atonement, but also as tested by the fire on the cross. This is true of everyone: everyone shall be salted with fire. The fire burns out dross, if there is any to burn. This is the testing of Him who was made sin, but there is no blood-shedding here. It answers to the Lord's death in Luke, and this character is in the garden there. John is the burnt-offering rather, in which He offers Himself. There were some meat-offerings in which leaven was bound to be put. On the day of Pentecost, when the church was offered, brought to God, leaven was put in; and in the offering of the firstfruits - not in the first of the firstfruits, there was leaven. The moment you bring us in, you have it, but not in anything for a sweet savour.

204 As to "green ears" of corn dried by the fire, Christ was a green tree, as a living one, and He says, as it were, If I come to this, what will come to Israel that is dead? Here, took green is full of life, and then dried by fire. So Christ, and He was a sweet savour. "Thou shalt offer for the meat-offering of thy firstfruits green ears of corn, dried by the fire, even corn beaten out of full ears." They were to be full, as Christ was. The rest was most holy, when the memorial and the frankincense had been burnt; this all went up to God. You have both meal-cakes and firstfruits as meat-offerings; and there was always oil upon it, except in the case of meal for a poor person's sin-offering. And also in the offering of anything with leaven there was a sin-offering with it which meets our leaven, so to speak.

There are beautiful details of Christ - what you see in His life: somewhat like a great picture fill of people, where they give you a little outline of the heads of them all, to say who they are. For these sacrifices are very like that.

Then in the peace-offering we have the great facts of atonement for sin, no less than of His death, as well as the bread come down from heaven. It is not the same thought, but the two things; and the result. We have had Christ in perfectness as dying for us, and in the perfectness of His person, and then we come to talk of communion.

The force of the offering is communion, no doubt, because the people eat of it; but the name has nothing to do with that. It is a prosperity-offering, either a thanksgiving, or for vows. The man brought his animal, laid his hand upon its head, killed it at the door of the tabernacle, and the priest took the blood, and sprinkled it upon the altar. The fat went to Jehovah, to be burnt upon the altar for a sweet savour. You cannot separate that from Christ offering Himself as a burnt offering.

The word is merely to make a fire. I do not know of any distinct meaning. It may be mentioned like the unjust judge in the parable: God is not an unjust judge, but the judge is introduced to make the picture complete. In the meat-offering there is all Christ's life before He was offered. A peace-offering could not be offered by itself; it is not to be separated from the burnt-offering (chap. 3: 5). In point of fact the meat-offering was offered with the burnt-offering; they are two aspects of the same Christ. "The priest" does not mean "the high priest." It is said, "the priests, Aaron's sons, shall do" so and so.

205 When we arrive at the law of the peace-offering, a portion is for Jehovah, for the priest that offers it, for the priests in general, and for the company. There is God's joy; Christ's own joy; the priests generally, as such, rejoice, and the company of the faithful.

Fowls were allowed for a burnt-offering, as a perfection of grace, if a man was poor; whereas, for a peace-offering, if he could not bring an animal, he might stay at home, and take it quietly. No matter how poor my thoughts are, I cannot do without a burnt-offering.

These were all the offerings of a sweet savour. The fat and the blood were not to be eaten; the spring of life - the fat was the expression of that; and all that was in Christ was offered to God. "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked." Fat is used there for a certain energy of life, and so elsewhere.

The family ate the peace-offering, so, if a man asked a company to dinner, he had to make a peace-offering of it, and part was offered to Jehovah, and part to the priests, and the company made their feast of the rest. If a man killed an animal in the wilderness, and did not bring it for an offering to the Lord, that soul was to be cut off from his people (Lev. 17: 3, 41: 5; Deut. 12: 21). And you notice, his own hand is to bring the offering made by fire (chap. 7: 30). "The fat with the breast, it shall he bring, that the breast may be waved for a wave-offering before the Lord." "And the right shoulder shall ye give unto the priest for a heave-offering of the sacrifices of your peace-offerings."

First is the offering in itself, and then the directions for all the circumstances connected with it.

In reality, when you come to the peace-offering, it was a festival. All that concerns sin comes first, and then other things afterwards.

Leviticus 4 - 6: 1-7.

There was no forgiveness for sins done with a high hand under the law. It is said distinctly, "if a soul shall sin through ignorance." Paul says mercy was shewn him "because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." So of old, if a man sinned haughtily, as in blasphemy, he was stoned. There is forgiveness for such sins now; but not if done after full knowledge of Christ so as to give Him up. "If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins."

206 Nothing is excluded from forgiveness now except blaspheming the Holy Ghost in apostasy from Christ, that is, denying Him in nature. One may go to Christ as a wretched guilty man ("such were some of you"), and yet be forgiven.

In Israel there was a priest, by whom those who sinned had to approach; but the priest could not come within the veil except on the day of atonement. Suppose the people sinned, they were cut off from God; and if the priest sinned, the people were cut off, because they could only come to God by the priest.

The blood was not carried in for a single person, because this would have said that the whole thing was wrong, which was not the case; it was for the high priest or for all the people.

All is changed as to this now. It is what the apostle means by "the shadow of good things to come, and not the very image": which could not go on when Christ died and went to heaven. The priest, in chapter 4: 2, is supposed to be the high priest. I do not think Aaron's sons would come under the expression in verse 3. They did not represent all the people: only the high priest did so. The "priest that is anointed" always means the high priest. He was not to defile himself for father or mother, or for dead body, and the reason given is, "upon whose head the anointing oil is poured." The high priest was anointed in a totally different way from the others, without blood; but the others had oil and blood mixed put upon them, and then, with Aaron, they were to put it upon them and their clothes, with him, not with them; they are brought in by the bye, as it were. He was first anointed without blood at all, and then they are brought with him and sprinkled with blood, and after that oil was taken with some blood and put on them. But there was no regular anointing for them; so that properly he was the anointed priest, and when they were in their way anointed, it was with him, their garments, and this and that., with him. So it is given in chapter 8: 30: "and Moses took of the anointing oil and of the blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon his sons' garments with him, and sanctified Aaron, and his garments and his sons' garments with him," not with them but with him. It is identifying them all with him; he had the anointing already. And the son is then with the priest that is anointed, which is very natural. This gives the place of the church with Christ. Looked at strictly, the sons of Aaron represent us. The remnant after we go, as regards the world, will be priests; but they are not partakers of the heavenly calling. I have no doubt the epistle to the Hebrews is like the reaching over the wall; in a way it is blessing in provision for a coming time as well as for the present. We do not see the saints, Christians, on the highest ground at all in Hebrews; but Christ is in heaven looked at as there instead of and for them. I believe He preserves Israel at this moment by being inside, for He "died for that nation."

207 There was this peculiarity in the sacrifice for the people as a whole that the blood was brought inside, as the body was burnt outside the camp. The blood was carried in, as far as possible, into what was heavenly; on the great day of atonement it went right in, and Israel are reconciled on the ground of what is heavenly, though they do not get things heavenly; but they are reconciled on the ground of the blood being presented to God in heaven, and the day of atonement has this character in measure. The difference between that and the common person's offering is very important; for, if an individual sinned, the people were still in communion, and it is merely a restoring of the person himself; but if the priest or the congregation sinned, the breach was total, and all the people were upon the same ground as the sinner. Reconciliation in the main must be as regards God, and blood must go in to Him: we are wholly upon this ground.

I do not think you could say, to or of Israel, If we walk in the light as God is in the light. But the atonement for them had been presented to God in the light. The difference in our case is, that we are called into the place where the atonement has been offered. Israel will have to stand on the ground of mere fleshly religion being set aside. They cannot have their own blessing even without the blood having been offered to God, and therefore without their giving up all fleshly religion. Law was religion in flesh, or religion for a people in flesh, and it was to prove totally wanting. No provisional sacrifices would do. The whole system was to demonstrate the failure of such a ground. They were put there with appliances for occasional restoration, but it was evidently all of no use, and this from the very beginning itself. They made a golden calf at once. God went on to shew whether a people could go on, mixing grace with law, and grace as it were to help them out; but they could not. So the sacrifices took that ground of fleshly religion for a time.

208 In the millennium when it comes, the sacrifices will be figures in a measure as they used to be. The people will not go into heavenly places then; but the sacrifices had to go into the figures of the heavenly places, and the blood was carried in to the mercy-seat in the holiest of all and sprinkled there. The camp was fleshly religion, and the veil was there; but the blood must be in the holiest, and the body be burnt outside the camp even for Israel to get a blessing. It must be effectual with God; this is what is wanted. So the apostle reasons for us, that "the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach." We have now got heavenly things, and we must go outside the camp. In the millennium neither have they heavenly things nor will they go outside the camp. The blessing depends on Christ having gone outside the camp originally, and He in virtue of His blood is gone into the heavenlies; but when He comes again, the blessing on earth will be made good. Meanwhile we must go outside the camp and have, too, the privilege of going into the holiest; but if I take this world, I say there is no camp now. There is a professing church, we know, but it is all an untrue thing. Whether for us or for the millennium, Christ must go in either case within the veil; but it is only we who go there now. There will be a veil in Ezekiel's temple in that way, but unrent. Israel will not go within. The difference is evident and great.

In another image Moses went and pitched the tabernacle outside the camp, and those who sought Jehovah came out to that tent of meeting outside; and Moses goes back, Joshua stays outside: that is, the Spirit of Christ graciously goes inside to see what He could do with them, while the heavenly Christ stays outside. It is beautiful in Moses again, where he says, when up in the mountain, 'If you do not forgive the people, blot me out! What will you do with your glory? You brought this people out of Egypt.' Thus he identifies the people with God's glory. When he is with God, he insists on their being spared at any cost, for the reason that he did identify the people with the glory of God. And then he comes down, and, seeing the calf, he says "kill every man his brother, and companion, and neighbour," because to him the people were identified with God's glory. His faith says, "spare them" - his faithfulness says, "kill them," - on the same ground of God's glory.

209 Here, in the offering, it is the great principle of Christ laying the basis of it all. But there is in the mercy-seat and altar this difference (though grace is in both): the blood was put upon the altar for the individual; the altar - the measure of it all - was the place of man's responsibility according to the law; whereas when the blood was carried inside, this was where God sat, it was responsibility before Him, and so, except to give a figure of Christ, the priest never went in at all. Judaism could not bring there. I know it was not so ordained at first; but as soon as the priests failed, then He says even of Aaron the high priest, "Come not at all times unto the holy place within the veil," for really it was all a failed thing, and man could not have to say to God on that ground.

The gold shews righteousness according to God's nature. Righteousness is the girdle of Messiah's loins. So the high priest had a golden girdle, divine righteousness. The brazen altar was God's perfect judgment of the responsibility of man, which made a difference of measure. God requiring of me according to my responsibility is a different thing from requiring in His own character.

At the brazen altar the nature of God is not brought in. Every sin does touch God's nature, but that is not considered under the law. But on the great day of atonement the work had to be done according to God's nature, or they could not have had to say to God at all.

The blood on the great day of atonement answered for the people's sins for the whole year (and now for us for ever); and then it was begun again. The people never went in at all: the blood had to go in (or there could be no reconciliation as a whole) once a year, "the Holy Ghost this signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing." There is never anything about the people going in; only when it was a reconciliation for the whole, the ground must be as Christ laid it, or it would be no reconciliation with God.

210 The sprinkling of the blood of the others - the ruler's and the common person's sin-offering - was upon the brazen altar. But the priest's was on the golden altar; for how could a priest go and offer incense if he had sinned? And if he could not do this, there was no intercourse with God. The people never went beyond the brazen altar at all, where the burnt and peace offerings were offered, the place of ordinary intercourse. They were all individual cases.

On the great day of atonement everything is done. The sins of the people are dealt with; the nature of God is met, before and on the mercy-seat: the defilement of the tabernacle removed (that is, of the heavens itself, and of the altar); and the people's sins are confessed on the head of the scapegoat.

Had there not been sin in the priests, Nadab and Abihu, etc., would have gone in and out as Moses did; but as it was, they were prohibited.

The veil is not rent for the Jew by-and-by, unless it be in the sense of the putting away of sin, but not for him to go in.

God could not bless definitely, without being glorified as to sin: but in the two first sin-offerings in Leviticus 4, the priest did not actually go in, but only where he was accustomed to go, to the altar of incense. But when we come to the real thing done, the blood is upon the mercy-seat, it goes upon the pure gold. The sprinkling of the blood before the veil and sprinkling it upon the horns of the golden altar presents a similar aspect of things. With us the censer belongs inside, but the altar of incense was outside the veil; it is when its use is interrupted, as it were, by sin, that blood has to be put there. It was sprinkled seven times, this being the perfectness which we constantly find in scripture. The altar itself had been defiled by the sin, and therefore it had to be sprinkled. Then "outside the camp" is most important here, and on the day of atonement too; because, if we bring in the nature and character of God, the thing is a reproach to the world and it must go outside. There is plenty of religiousness inside the camp, but we cannot have death in the presence of God, nor bring together before God things that do not suit.

211 Suppose you have a number of worldly people round you, you can ask God to bless them; but you cannot go on with a priestly prayer, less so than you could even with the animals around you. But if the individual sinned, there was failure in his individual responsibility, but no interruption between God and the people. The person had got astray, and it was a question of his responsibility, and one that he could so far estimate, so that there is no taking the body outside the camp. Every man knows that sin cannot do for God. So it was then in a worldly religion, the brazen altar being the estimate of the evil according to man's responsibility. But there it came within the limits of man and of the world. Go and say to a worldly-minded man, You must be partaker of God's holiness; or talk to him about a nature that cannot sin because born of God! He either hates it, or thinks you raving; but he would perfectly understand that he is not to steal, kill, and so on. Such was the case with the brazen altar for the Israelite, the law being only a shadow of good things to come. Now, we must walk in the light as God is in the light; for the veil is rent. It is not now merely that I must have the sins put away, of which I am guilty in the earth, so as to go on with God in ordinary intercourse, but the claims of God on me are according to the light in which He is revealed in Christ. So scripture shews distinctly that, though the Christian has a consciousness of failure, he has, when once purged, no more conscience of sins; as typically in Israel the great day of atonement, when the blood was put on the mercy-seat, was the basis of all that went on through the year. God's character must be met, even to go on with His material government in patience and mercy.

If all the people sinned, all were shut out, and so, if a priest sinned, in effect it was the same; but if one of the common people sinned, all the rest are not put out, and then the altar of incense needs not to be restored.

Thus, wherever the blood was carried in, the bullock had to be carried outside and burnt: but in other cases the priests ate the sin-offering. Christ enters into our sins and sorrows, identifying Himself with them in grace, all spotless as He was Himself.

The moment you get sin, it is dealt with before God. Man has no idea of the effect of the judgment of sin in the divine presence. If a man may take away your character, you might take him away if you could; but if he takes away God's character, nobody cares for that! In the world fleshly religion can take up man's responsibility, and say that he ought to do so and so, and there must be this and that, if he does not. But now ours is priestly intercourse, and such intercourse with God must be according to what God is: we must be in His presence to intercede after His mind.

212 The fat was burnt upon the altar, and the blood was sprinkled there; it was not brought in for the common person, for the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest. The thing God was teaching was, in Israel, the impossibility of having man in His presence. He could not have Israel near Him. There was man's rule (under the law) just and perfect, with certain types of Christ; but God never came out, and man never could go in. In Christianity God has come out in grace to man, and man is gone in to the glory of God: so we see and have it in the person of Christ.

The trespass-offering is in the main identical with the sin-offering, but it is not sin in some positive evil done against any of the commandments of Jehovah, but a thing that natural conscience can take cognizance of Achan's was positive disobedience: there was no atonement at all for that under the law.

The last three sin-offerings having "and it shall be forgiven him," but the first not, lead us to suppose that it is dropped purposely as pointing to Christ, the high priest. As any special application, it would be this, I suppose. In his standing as representing the people, there might be that in it. The difference is plain. The distinction between sin and sins as in Romans may be in the burnt-offering distinguished from the sin-offering to a certain extent; but here nature is hardly dealt with specifically. It is exceptional, if we have anything directly referring to sin in the nature. One of the things at times to be met is that some, like Wesley, define sin as the wilful transgression of a known law, while others have said that a lust is no sin until it comes into an open act. As 1 John 3 teaches, sin is lawlessness.

In the beginning of chapter 5 (v. 1), there is the kind of oath that is different from voluntary swearing: "And if a soul sin and hear the voice of an oath" (that is, administered by the magistrate), "and is a witness, whether he hath seen or known of it, if he do not utter it" (i.e., give his evidence), then he shall bear his iniquity."

213 The Lord Himself said, "Swear not at all" so we should not voluntarily take an oath, that is, of our own choice and will. But the Lord Himself when He stood before the high priest, the moment He was adjured, took the oath and answered when He had been silent before. It is not evil before a magistrate to swear, but good; it comes of evil otherwise. I should deny God in the magistrate if I did not answer when he adjured me. But to take an oath of my own will is to bring in God for nothing at all, that is, profanely. So the sin here in this verse is not uttering, that is, withholding evidence. In Exodus 21: 6 (and twice in chapter 22: 9, and once in chapter 22: 8), "judges" is "elohim" - God, and this because the magistrate is for God: "the powers that be are ordained by God." We are to submit to them.

As for the manner of taking an oath, the king holds up his hand to take the oath: it is the commonest way of taking it. You are bound by that as much as by anything else. Whatever binds is enough. Only I am adjured by God, because the magistrate represents God. There are questions of swearing which present more difficulty; as for instance going into court and swearing to recover a debt for yourself. This is just a case of conscience; but I make no rules for anybody: people are not entitled to do so.

There is a double figure in these chapters, not only one of Christ's sacrifice, but also of failure in the assembly, that is, of the saints now. Our whole position is changed now. We have no more conscience of sins, but we see the way in which the value of what these prefigure is applied as in Numbers 19, where they are passing through the wilderness or world. There the blood of the red heifer was sprinkled seven times before the door of the tabernacle; it was (for us) settled there once for all. But when a man had touched a dead thing, he was not in a fit state to go into the camp and enjoy his place there, he was unclean and the water of purification must be applied to him. The water, the Holy Ghost by the word, was the witness of what Christ has done. This makes all the difference. Christianity asserts for believers the non-imputation of sins. What we see of old was a sacrifice that worked like a priest's absolution now.

214 In verses 2, 3 we see the person unclean without knowing it. Yet he is guilty, but he cannot act as guilty until he knows it. God cannot look at sin. If I have a spot on my back, God cannot have me with that spot on. Some one may help me to get rid of it, but I am unclean with it. In Numbers 15 there is a difference; in verse 27 it is mercy, but in verse 30 the man is to be cut off. What is cutting off? He is put out from God's people altogether. Occasionally God did it; sometimes the people stoned the man themselves. It means death of course.

Leviticus 6: 8 - 8.

In chapter 6: 9, the point is (and a very important one it is) that the fire was to be burning always. As in Isaiah 6 all was from the brazen altar. There is no real prayer or praise, or anything of the kind, save in connection with the sacrifice of Christ; so in Revelation 8. He takes the fire from the brazen altar in verse 5. The altar in verse 3 seems to me to be the altar of incense. Take it as a rule: no fire is used save off the brazen altar.

Continuous burning gives no cessation of the judgment by God according to a holy nature. It is burning all night, and, in a certain sense, for Israel, who are kept by Christ now, kept through His sacrifice which is perpetual in value.

One other point: in the meat offering the frankincense went up to God entirely. The priests ate of the flour, but all the grace goes up to God. It was holy; and when the priests offered a meat-offering, it was all burnt. It is Christ Himself: there He is offerer and offering; and it was for no one save God Himself so to speak.

Israel really took up little of these things. Even the instructions of Deuteronomy are very different. All this is written for us. I doubt very much if any offerings, save the official offerings, were offered in the wilderness at all. Stephen in Acts 7 quotes Amos, and asks, "Have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, which ye made to worship them; and I will carry you away beyond Babylon."

Before the strange fire there was more freedom for access, but it was not made use of.

215 So in the peace-offering; they were iniquities if they went beyond the second or third day, because they were not connected with the sacrifice (chap. 7: 15-18). If the sacrifice were a vow, it might be eaten on the next day as well as the first; if a thanksgiving, it must be eaten the first day. If there be more energy in the worship, you may carry it on longer (as here two days instead of one); but if it is practically separated from the victim burnt on the altar, it is unclean altogether and is rejected. You cannot separate praise or worship from the offering of Christ: without this it becomes a positive abomination. A man may be singing a sweet hymn with a thought of Christ in it; but being disconnected from Christ Himself, it is a mere piece of music and offensive to God. It is possible to make requests that the Holy Ghost gives to be asked, and to find that you are losing the sense of the Person to whom you are speaking. Worship must be in spirit and in truth. It is solemn to give out a hymn. Take Hymn 151: are you speaking truthfully in singing it? 'Each thought of Thee doth constant yield, Unchanging, fresh delight'? Perhaps you may be able to go up to it. Suppose I sing "Oh teach me more of Thy blest ways," this is very different: what are these "blest ways," and am I learning them? Then again take "O Lord, how blest our journey": I may ask, Is this true of myself? I do not say, Is it true? but, Is it true to me?

The waving is presenting before God; and the heaving is a little stronger. It is all owned as Jehovah's - all for the priests' eating, and then they eat it.

The drink-offering is universally the joy of God. It was thorough action between God and the people.

On the Offerings, and the Consecration of the Priesthood

Revised notes on Leviticus 1 - 8.

J. N. Darby.

<19015E> 216

The sacrifices are connected with, and open out to us especially, the ground of our access and the means of our approach to God.

The beginning of this book goes through the different sorts of offerings by virtue of which we have access to God, and then takes up the priesthood, which sustains the soul in approaching.

Chapter 1 speaks of the burnt-offering, the second of the meat-offering, and the third of the peace-offering. Each of these has a distinct character. Chapter 4 treats of positive transgression in things against conscience, and the sin-offering to be offered thereupon. Chapter 5, as far as verse 13, speaks specially of sins or defilements of different characters, rather than transgressions in things which ought not to be done; and from verse 14 of chapter 5 to verse 7 of chapter 6, we read of the trespass-offering, that is, the offering for anything respecting conduct in which wrong was done to God or man. The special value of these offerings is their representation of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and our approach to God through Him. Many of the principles spoken of as regards Jesus Himself are in measure shewn in the believer; again, that which He wrought Himself works effectually in us. One act of Christ fulfilled or consummated them all. He made the atonement, was a perfect sweet savour to God when tried to the utmost; and we have communion with Him, feeding on that which has been given for us. He bore our sins and effaced our guilt.

CHAPTER 1.

In this chapter, verses 1-4, we have directions concerning the burnt-offering. Observe, Jehovah is not speaking from Mount Sinai: there a statement was given of what the law required. Before, however, the Israelites received the instructions from God in the holy Mount, they had broken that covenant; so that when Moses came down, he found them worshipping the golden calf. They had departed from God, and were made naked to their shame before their enemies. Afterwards the tabernacle was set up, where Jehovah would meet the people; and here we get the patterns of things in the heavens, "which patterns were purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices," even with the sacrifice of Jesus. Now the patterns given to us in the tabernacle are for the unfolding of the manner of our coming to God by grace through Jesus Christ. We find the most holy place, where Jehovah met Moses; the holy place, for the priests' daily service; and the court without, where the worshipper first approached, where were the altar of burnt-offering and the laver.

217 The first place of approach to God is the altar of burnt-offering. It may be remarked here that, in the description of the offerings, they are in the order in which they regard God in their proper nature and value, our communion with God being introduced in the third. Then provision for positive transgression is made. In the application or use of them by sinners this last comes first, as it does really with the soul.

When Jehovah spoke to Moses from Sinai, it was to declare His righteous requirements from man on earth. God testified on earth what His righteousness required from man on earth. As to their approach to God in their own righteousness thus prescribed, we see at Sinai itself how all failed. The authority of God was thrown off by making the calf; and thus the voluntary undertaking to do all that Jehovah required (Ex. 19: 8; 24: 3) was broken, and they had failed altogether. How then could man approach to God? The law given had just brought out the evil that was in him. Was God, then, to deal with them, acknowledging them in their wickedness? Was He to give up His character? If not, He must speak from heaven in grace. There was now no possibility of dealing with man upon earth. "They had refused Him who spake on earth." The question then (as this had failed) was, How could man be brought into communion with God in heaven? "If they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven." But full entrance into heaven was not then revealed, the veil was unrent; but the shadow of good things to come was given.

There must be a sacrifice, but where was such to be found as could cleanse man from sin, of which we have here the shadows? There was no such thing to be found in man as one willing and competent. This was not work for a sinner. But the Son of God said, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God; yea, thy law is within my heart," Ps. 40; Heb. 10: 5. "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me." This was the body in which He was to be the obedient One; "Mine ear hast thou opened"; and we see Christ willingly assuming it to do the will of God. We have in Him one fit to be the sacrifice, one who took on Himself the form of a servant, and became obedient to the commands of Jehovah. It was His will to do it, and He was capable of doing it. "Thy law is within my heart." But what was the object in doing this? Not only to keep the law which had been broken, but personally to be a sacrifice. To introduce sinners into God's presence, He must not only keep the law Himself, but become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He might preach righteousness in the congregation, but men hated it; He might work all works of blessing, but they envied Him, they derided Him. All the expressions of righteousness in Him were of no avail alone. He must also become a sacrifice, He must shed His blood. Now the burnt-offering represents Him as perfect in Himself, and offering Himself up to God.

218 In verse 3 it is said, "He shall offer it of his own voluntary will* at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before Jehovah." Now, as regards Christ, the act of offering Himself as a sacrifice is simply His own - "through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot to God." We did not offer Him: He was the offerer and the victim; but when we have the Spirit of Christ, we enter into the value of the act as though we laid our hands upon Him. Jesus offered Himself while on earth without spot unto God, presenting Himself as the burnt-offering. In order that we might approach through Him, He must first be exhibited as giving Himself thus willingly. Thus in the account of the sacrifice we see the victim first brought to the door of the tabernacle and then killed. If we had merely seen the fact of Christ's death, we might have thought there was need of it as regarded Himself; but He is first shewn to us as the willing offering, bringing Himself to the door of the tabernacle, and voluntarily offering Himself to God for us.

{*Christ did so; but the force of the Hebrew words really is "for his acceptance." See John 17: 5-8, and 10: 18.}

219 This was the sacrifice of atonement, not by anything imposed on Him, though according to the will of God, but of His own free will, as the spotless One, with no yoke of sin on His neck. As the righteous One, He walked up, so to speak, to the door of the tabernacle, and there the prince of this world met Him, and his first effort was to hinder His exhibiting this perfect pattern of obedience on earth.

That which was singular in Jesus, and was in Him alone, was His righteousness. There was power, but this others have had also, though received indeed from Him; but simple abstract perfect truth and righteousness, this Christ alone could exhibit; and if Satan could have made the Lord swerve in one tittle from this, there would have been no such thing exhibited on earth. Satan tried in the temptation to make our Lord exhibit power; but He was still the obedient One, and until the word came upon His ear, He would do nothing, for He came then to be the servant, the perfect pattern of obedience in all things. Satan first tempted Him to exercise His power in making the stones bread, then to question the providential care of God, and thirdly, openly to take the world, which was His rightful dominion.

Having failed in his object altogether, Satan departed from Him for a season, but met Him again to hinder His obedience unto death. The prince of this world came to Jesus as the head of religion and power of the world in the Jews and Gentiles. He cannot, however, hinder Him; but the word is still, "That the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." This is what we who believe know of Jesus, that the prince of this world had nothing in Him. He voluntarily submitted to be the sacrifice; and the act was perfect in giving Himself. Still, if for us, it must be in the place of sin, and atonement for it; and what is so wonderful in the sacrifice of Christ is that absolute perfect obedience and self-devotedness to God and His glory, was in the place of sin, when He was made sin for us. There was nothing available to us until He was put to death (v. 5).

It is said that the priests, the sons of Aaron (not the high priest), shall bring the blood and sprinkle it round about the Christ presents Himself on the day of atonement. The priests have the blood in their hands, pointing out the way of participating in what had been done.

220 Let the fire of the Lord consume Jesus (so to speak) all is, and more especially therein, a sweet savour unto God. In us the fire finds things in themselves offensive, but all that was in Jesus is burnt altogether, a sacrifice made by fire for a sweet savour unto God. Noah's sacrifice typified this (Gen. 8: 20, 21), taking of every clean beast and clean fowl, and offering burnt-offerings to Jehovah; and Jehovah smelled a sweet savour, and the heart of God was governed by the offering, instead of by the sin which is covered, so that God said He would not again curse the ground any more. He would look at the sinner in compassion, because to the sweet savour of the offering of Jesus, for it was such as the all-searching eye of God, when He took it all up in the fire, found to be perfect. This was Christ's own work: we could take no part in it; but we find it to be that which puts away sin, glorifying God when He is made it.

"Be ye imitators of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." Who does not know among the saints the power of this love? While the work was done in a man, and as a man, it was done in divine love by Christ, even as He was given of the love of God to do it. This is a wonderful thing, that One should come having a body prepared, acting in perfect obedience, a perfect example of righteousness, giving Himself a willing offering in the fulness of divine love! Thus, for our full acceptance with God, Christ is the burnt-offering. There the sinner meets God in judgment, but there he meets also Christ offering Himself and then made sin, but made sin in the very act in which His, obedience was absolute and perfect, and so an absolute sweet savour in the very place of sin. God was perfectly glorified in Christ's obedience in that place, and, through death and atonement for sin, a perfect sweet savour to God. Bearing our sins comes in afterwards.

Here therefore we find the ground of our free approach to God in the sweet savour of His burnt sacrifice. The court of the congregation represents the place into which Christ was lifted up from the earth; and here it is that the act of Jesus meets the sinner as the means of approach. It is neither in the holy or most holy place, but in view of the earth, though lifted up from it, that a perfect sacrifice has been offered to God, in which Satan could find nothing, but God everything - in which we could have no part or fellowship, save as a consequence in grace. It was a work between Christ and God and while the saint alone reads its value, it was done before our eyes here, though He was lifted up from the earth (Jesus Christ being evidently set forth crucified, giving a testimony to the world, which leaves the world without excuse): our part in it was the sin that put Him to death. And if there be no other way to God but by Jesus Christ thus set forth in death, what is unbelief doing in despising and rejecting Him who now in heaven is the giver of every blessing to them that believe?

221 You may be busy and careful about many things, but there is but one thing that God looks at: Christ, and Christ a sacrifice for sin. Has this love of God in His Son been but an idle tale to your hearts, while you have been eager in the pursuit after the vanity that presents itself here? Is your heart cold to the love of God, as though the place where the cross stood was a blank in the world? The natural heart hates the claim of His love and His holiness; but the cross is the purchase-work of God to redeem the heart from the love of the world. Atonement, and perfect glorifying of God, and infinite acceptance in the sweet savour of Christ's offering of Himself, are found in the burnt-offering.

CHAPTER 2.

The meat-offering was of fine flour mingled with oil, anointed with oil, and frankincense thereon, to be brought to Aaron's sons the priests, who had their portion of it. But the priest was to burn the memorial of it on the altar, to be an offering made by fire for a sweet savour unto the Lord. It is a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire (see v. 1-3). Here then is another offering made by fire. As in the burnt-offering, it stands the full proving of God, and all that comes out of it is a sweet savour unto Him. Now the fruits of righteousness are acceptable unto God, but we are not represented here; where we are spoken of, leaven was put in the offering. If we enter into judgment with God, no man living can stand. Our services are indeed accepted as the fruit of His Spirit in us through Christ.

222 We have in this, not an offering of the nature of Abel's (not atonement, that is) but of Cain's. Though surely very different in character from that, yet it is man in the life of nature offered to God, every natural faculty of man in Christ, and that fully tried by the fire of God. The church never could be thus offered as in itself a sweet savour, because in human nature it is not holy.

We shall see by-and-by that when the church is represented, leaven is commanded to be put into the offering. In this there is none; it is perfect human nature without sin, mingled with oil, that is, born in its origin of the Spirit. Oil was poured upon it; that is, Christ as man was anointed with the Holy Ghost and frankincense put thereon. The fragrance of grace ascends up to God. The remnant was for Aaron's sons. First, Jesus, as a man, is offered to God in His perfectness, and then we feed upon Him. The fragrance of His perfectness ascends while we feed. But this is only for priests, the true saints of God.

The ostensible anointing of Jesus was when the Holy Ghost descended upon Him in the shape of a dove; but we find in the first ten verses of this chapter various other characteristics of the meat-offering to shew the complete perfectness of Christ. "Thou shalt part it in pieces, and pour oil thereon." In Jesus every part of His walk and acts, however minute, was of the Holy Ghost, and in its power.

There was perfect human nature without sin, born of the Holy Ghost, and anointed with the Holy Ghost; and every detail of Christ's path was in the power of the Spirit. It was offered to God; and as to all the frankincense, the sweet savour of grace in Christ, and all His motives were for God alone; but saints as priests feed on all He was. The sweet savour of the frankincense might be enjoyed by the priests, but it was offered to God.

The wafers and the cakes were to be unleavened. In this, as in the sheaf of first-fruits waved before Jehovah (Lev. 23 : 10, 11), we have the definite character of Christ without sin, for in the ears of corn there could be no leaven. But when the church is offered, leaven is to be used (Lev. 23: 17). But the oblation of the first-fruits (see v. 12 of this chapter) burnt shewn the difference in character from the previous offerings, which were all burned, and were to have neither honey nor leaven in them.

223 No effect of the oil could counteract the leaven; it was commanded to be absolutely without leaven. No power of the Holy Ghost in us counteracts the presence of evil so as to set it aside and remove it, so as to make the subject fit to be an offering made by fire of a sweet savour. If there was leaven in its nature, it could not be an offering to Jehovah. Honey is also excluded from what is offered by fire to Jehovah. The feelings of nature may be sweet and rightly enjoyable, as honey on the top of Jonathan's rod, but it cannot be offered in sacrifice to God.

There are many things sweet and pleasant in themselves that can never be presented to God as an offering in a world of sin. Nothing can be offered to Him that is the mere satisfaction of nature; simple natural affection, though right in itself (nay, it is a sin to be without it), is no offering to God. Our Lord's love to His mother was perfect: we see this in His remembrance of her on the cross; but when first He begins, and all through His ministry, He says, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? "

In Leviticus 23: 17 we have that which was typical of the day of Pentecost, on which day the Holy Ghost formed the church. When Christ ascended and presented perfect righteousness to the Father, as man in heaven, then He by the Spirit could work to bring out the result in the church as the firstfruits. Accordingly we find in this chapter 23 that which, as constituted and consecrated by the Holy Ghost, could be offered to God, but not burnt, because the old nature is still there. In Jesus however there is nothing of this; and in the meat-offering, therefore, there is to be no leaven, but oil mingled with fine flour, and oil poured on it; as none also was in the sheaf waved before Jehovah. So it was that Jesus arose, and was waved before Jehovah; and then, fifty days afterwards, parallel with Pentecost, the two wave-loaves, baken with leaven, were brought as the first-fruits to God. Remark, that there is a burnt-offering and a meat-offering offered with the wave-sheaf, but no sin-offering; but in verse 19 you will find a sin-offering accompanying the wave-loaves to meet the leaven in them; for the sin-offering is that which countervails the evil of the church, or it could not be accepted.

We have thus most satisfactory evidence that Jesus was offered without spot to God; and the knowledge of the blessed truth, that there was the absolute absence of sin in Him, both in nature and practice. On this account alone He could be an offering made by fire. There could be no offering presented to God for a sweet savour in which the holiness of God, searching by fire, could discover, by any possibility, anything that was not positively good - it would have hindered its being such an offering to God, All the fulness of the Holy Ghost could not effect this, for we see this on the day of Pentecost there was the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, but nevertheless sin was there.

224 The Holy Ghost, to give us peace, must come with a message of peace, even that there has been that presented in the offering of Christ by which God's grace can act towards us in righteousness. It is not that the act of Jesus turned God's mind towards us, but by virtue of it God can act according to His own mind, righteously and consistently. If God had done an act of grace without the act of Jesus, it would have been grace without righteousness.

It is, then, first proved that there is no righteousness in man, who has both sinned, and broken the law, and rejected Jesus; but in presenting Jesus to God, in the world, the intrinsically righteous One, and fully tried and tested, and at the same time a sacrifice for man's acceptance by the cross, we find Him through whom God can act in grace towards man. In Him we find the ground of our acceptance, and the sure foundation of God's dealings with us. There is amazing blessing in looking at Jesus as the occasion of grace! The soul of the poor sinner can rest in the knowledge that grace reigns through righteousness; and I find myself a continual debtor to grace, because when I am daily offered to God, the value of the sin-offering is always available, without which I could not be presented; and God is thereby glorified and not man, inasmuch as it is only through Jesus that I approach.

In leaven we see the character of sin, not only in the act but in the abstract. It is well to distinguish between sins as the fruit of our evil nature, and sin. The Holy Ghost detects not only sins in the act, but sin in the nature. Thus we are led to the knowledge that we are all alike, all in one condition. The Holy Ghost lays bare that in nature which the law could only notice in its earliest actings. The moment I have a new nature, not only do I detect the acts of the old nature, but "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good doth not dwell but I have this comfort, that hating and judging the evil, I know that it is put away. Not that this should make us careless; no, our privilege is to judge it before it has brought forth the bitter fruits. Have you judged it thus in the nature? If it is there, it is condemned. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." As Jesus was presented in all circumstances like me, except sin, whatever I find in myself, not in Jesus, I know is this condemned thing, sin: but as Jesus was also a sacrifice for sin, it is condemned in grace to me, Jesus having suffered for it, though He had it not. If you cannot say you are without sin in your nature, living in all the spotlessness and purity of Jesus, you are in yourself lost; but recognizing Jesus as the offering for you (though in yourself a poor failing wretched creature), you can be presented to God even as He is, because you are presented in Him who has glorified God in this very place as made sin for us. But, beside this, as a living man on earth all was perfect, and all was tested by the fullest trial of God, passed through the fire, and all was a sweet savour.

225 If you have thus seen Jesus, if you have found Him such, feed upon Him as upon the one object on which your soul can rest as perfect, the pattern in which you can delight to all eternity. This is the way of learning, in a sinful world, what is perfect in God's sight. Take Jesus, and as a thing most holy, offer it to God, delight in it. Study Jesus in the Gospels, in all that He was and did, as presented to us by the Spirit, and then you will learn to have your soul fashioned in its desires according to the riches of His unsearchable grace who offered Himself without spot to God, knowing also that you shall see Him and be made like Him, seeing Him as He is.

Remark carefully the character of Jesus' perfection - no leaven, no honey, the salt of holy separation to God; all the frankincense going up to God. This is His practical example. The presence of the Holy Ghost as to origin and power is an additional element; in the new man, this has its part of truth in us.

The first-fruits were to be offered but not burnt, because leaven was in them; and they could not be in themselves a sweet savour: hence a sin-offering was offered with them (Lev. 23: 17-19). They represent the church. being (as may be seen in Lev. 23) the offering of the day of Pentecost; not the church in the unity of the body, but as formed among Jews on earth on that day. The first of the first-fruits, the corn out of full ears, is Christ risen, offered on the morrow of the sabbath after the Passover; it represents Christ Himself, and hence (Lev. 23) there was no sin-offering. If we look at it in Leviticus 2 it is still Christ. Oil and frankincense are put on it. It is an offering made by fire without leaven. It is Christ looked at as man, tried by divine trial of judgment, but perfect to be offered to God. The expressions are somewhat remarkable - geresh carmel, "corn mature out of full ears"; it may be, produce of the fruitful field, the latter being the known sense of carmel; the meaning of geresh was certain. But the general meaning of the offering was pretty plain: Christ in His manhood, sinless and fully proved, presented to God with oil and frankincense of acceptable odour, the firstfruits - fruits of man to God.

226 CHAPTER 3.

In the first chapter is the description of the burnt-offering representing the Lord's self-dedication and obedience, even unto death, first coming to do the Father's will, and then offering Himself up without spot unto God; and then, having so offered Himself, a victim of propitiation.

In the second we have the meat-offering, which shews the perfection of His nature, in its origin and every result, even tried by the fire of God in death, and the detailed character of that perfectness, the memorial of it being offered before Jehovah, and the rest eaten by the priests, and unleavened meat-offering. Chapter 3 touches on that part of the peace-offering which was offered to God. There is no mention of what was done with the body of the animal; we must refer to chapter 7 for this. The fat and the blood, which represent the life and energy of the offered victim, are said to be the food of the offering made by fire. They may not be eaten, but are presented to Jehovah, and all burnt, by a perpetual statute. The life belongs to God, and in Christ all was offered up to Him, and for His glory.

We have, in the peace-offering, the same character as the two former; still a sacrifice made by fire of a sweet-smelling savour. The peculiar feature in this offering is, that it is that upon which God Himself feeds; it is not merely an offering, but food of the offering. This gives it a peculiar character, and introduced communion. The satisfaction and delight, the food of God, is in the offering of Christ. All He is finds its rest there, is perfectly glorified there; we find our food, our delight, in it too.

227 In chapter 7 we find the remainder of the peace-offering was eaten by the worshipper, excepting the wave-breast and heave-shoulder, which were the priests'. These three things. then, we may observe. The blood is sprinkled, and the fat burned for a sweet savour; the wave-breast was for Aaron and his sons, the heave-shoulder for the offering priest; and the rest for the worshipper to feed on, as an occasion of joy and thanksgiving before Jehovah. This practice of the offerer's partaking of his sacrifice was followed in the heathen sacrifices to which the apostle alludes (1 Cor. 10: 18-21); part was offered to the idol, and with the rest they made a feast, being together partakers of it. Again, when the apostle is giving liberty to the Corinthians to eat what was sold in the shambles, he limits them to that which they ate in ignorance. "If any man say unto you, This is offered in sacrifice to idols, eat not." They sprinkled the blood on the altar, and then ate the sacrifice; and therefore those who knowingly partook of it were held to be partakers of the altar, this being the way of shewing communion, whether it were with an idol, or between a believer and God. And this has in it a blessed meaning. Christ is not only here represented as the perfect burnt-offering wholly given up to God in death for His glory, but also as an offering on which we feed; not only is He God's delight, but He is that of which we can partake with Him. He is the subject-matter of communion. "As I live by the Father, so he that eateth me shall live by me." The communion is between all saints, the worshipper, the priest, and God. Not only is it our privilege to see the sacrifice offered to God opening a way of access to Him (as in the burnt-offering and others), but we find the Lord takes delight in communion with us about it.

The first thing to be observed in the peace-offering is the complete and absolute acceptance of the sacrifice, so that the Lord speaks of it as His food, that in which His holiness could find intrinsic satisfaction. The inwards were presented for a sweet savour (as Jesus); they are tried and examined by fire, and found to be food for God Himself. The fat represents the spontaneous actings of the heart. The richness of an animal is its fat; we judge of its healthy vigorous state by this.

228 It is written, "Our God is a consuming fire." This expression is sometimes wrongly interpreted, as if spoken of God out of Christ. We know nothing of God out of Christ. We may be out of Christ ourselves, and then indeed, as a consuming fire, the very presence of God would be destructive to us. But as known to us also who are in Christ, He is a God intolerant of all evil, of all that which is inconsistent with Himself.

As the slain one, Jesus is that on which we must feed. He says, "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world; whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life," John 6. When we come to the knowledge of Jesus, we feed on Him as thus slain, having, as it were, His blood separated from His body. "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." We feed on Jesus as having given His life; not on His life as life, but on Him as having given His life even unto death; not only as the incarnate One (that is, the bread come down from heaven), but as having given His flesh to be eaten, and His blood to be drunk. And here also is that which not only satisfied the justice of God, but also is esteemed, fed on by Him as His delight, and specially in the work by which He glorified Him in His death.

There, in the work which He did, Jesus was His delight and in this, in the light of His countenance, and as the delight of God, we too have a portion. It is the common food of those assembled as worshippers, to feast on before Jehovah. But if any were unclean who fed on this sacrifice, they should be cut off from the people (Lev. 7: 20). It was only as clean persons they could meet thus with Jehovah. It can be only as those already cleansed and accepted, that we can have this common delight in the Lord Jesus, given as a common object of communion and enjoyment between God and us, and with one another. In this act, our worship is not simply as coming to inquire about our acceptance; but, having already access, it is to rejoice with God about the sacrifice, knowing the fruits of it. It was a thanksgiving-offering; praise was in it. All proceeds upon the conviction of full satisfaction having been previously made.

229 Often our worship has not sufficiently this character in it. We have intercourse frequently with God about our anxieties, our failures, our evil condition; but if this is all, we come very far short of the privileges that belong to us. Our religion should not be altogether a religion of regrets; but rather we are called to joy and rejoice, through the Spirit, in the perfectness of all that Christ has done; not merely joy because wrath has been intercepted, but there is that in Jesus which draws out constant love and delight from the Father, and we too are introduced into the place of communion with the Father about Him. Now, if we are associated in this worship, we are there as being clean, for no unclean person is able to partake of it.

In the peace-offering, the priest who sprinkled the blood had his part. He stood there as Christ, who is the One who sprinkled the blood and joys in the communion flowing from His sacrifice.

We learn, in these sacrifices, God in the respective characters of the Trinity, as well as in the abstract character of His holiness. If we look at God as the Father, we have the joy of His countenance as sons; but as God, we need a priest by whose presence we are encouraged to approach Him. As believing in Jesus, we stand so completely accepted in the immediate love of the Father, that Jesus says, "I say not that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me." At the same time we know that, as still in this body of sin and death, we have continual need of the exercise of the priesthood of Jesus, and this, indeed, in communion, we can never leave out, even the joy of knowing the priest as having sprinkled the blood. In our joy we cannot exclude the priest: communion is a common thing with us. God delights, we delight, and Jesus delights with us. Marvellous thought! The priest returns from the sprinkling of blood, Himself to be a partaker of our secret joy in the holy place (Num. 18 : 8-11). It is most important to see that we have no real delight of which the source and spring is not JESUS. So satisfied is God, and so cleansed are we, that we can come thus to enjoy the communion resulting from what Jesus has done, and as the priest, He feasts with us now in the holy place. Where two or three are gathered together, there is He in the midst of them, as the One who has sprinkled the blood, to feast even now, while we are waiting for that day, when in person He shall be present with us to eat and drink in the Father's kingdom. He said once, "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you, before I suffer." He was not content without this last memorial of His love to them and association with Him. While the expectation was present with Him of the time when He would drink it new in the kingdom of God, He desired them to have continual remembrance of Him, "This do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me."

230 The offering was to be eaten the same day, or at farthest on the second day; it was not allowed to be kept longer. This marks the communion to be necessarily spiritual, and only to be had in communion with the sacrifice of Christ, not in nature. If it be the willing state of the soul itself through grace, this may be kept up a longer time; where it is thanksgiving for actual benefits, there is not the same power in it. It is only in the Spirit that we can have this communion with God. If the flesh comes in, all is spoiled; it must be burned with fire. The worshipper must eat his portion in connection with the burnt-offering, and the priests' portion. If eaten apart from these, having, as it were, from that separation lost the virtue communicated from the others, it becomes an abomination; and the soul that eats must bear his iniquity. Thus we shall continually find that joy in the Lord is apt to degenerate into that which is merely natural. For instance, if Christians in gladness of heart come to seek the Lord in communion, the Spirit is present; they forget all grief; the communion between their souls and God is within the veil, and there is no sorrow there; but if they are not very watchful, their joy degenerates. It overlasts what is spiritual, and becomes joy in the flesh. The real test and power of this is its connection with the sacrifice offered.

In believers, there will be differences in the power of this communion. Those who rest most simply in the sacrifice and blood of Jesus will have the most power of sustaining it. "Ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life," Jude 20, 21. As we walk in the Spirit, we shall have power to continue in this holy fellowship and joy; but the earthly vessels are not competent to bear all the glory. There is always a tendency for the flesh to slip in. We may get full of our joy, and proud through it, or at least lose a sense of our dependence, and this at once opens a door to all the folly of our evil nature. After Paul had been in the third heavens, so that he knew not whether he was in or out of the body, we find he was in danger of being puffed up. What was the remedy? Any thing that mended the flesh? Not at all, but a messenger from Satan to buffet him. There is no mending the flesh; but we know this is not the place or condition in which we shall always be, for He "shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself," Phil. 3 : 21.

231 CHAPTER 4.

The offerings in this chapter differ in character from the preceding, being sacrifices made for actual transgressions. Before, we had the offering of Christ as a sweet savour, and the communion of the believer upon it; but here there is altogether a new revelation. The three former were delivered under one revelation, which is marked by the words, "Jehovah called unto Moses, and spake unto him" (chap. 1: 1), which are repeated at the beginning of this chapter. Accordingly we find, that instead of the Lord Jesus being manifested to us as a sacrifice for a sweet savour unto God, we have Him here typified as bearing our sins in His own body - the sin-offering; Jehovah bruising Him on our account.

The SIN-OFFERINGS were consequent upon positive transgression; the accumulation of guilt was laid upon the head of the victim. We shall find under this class all the forms of transgression provided for. There are four different characters of sin-offerings. In chapter 5 to verse 13, sins are mentioned analogous in nature, but different in circumstance, and a trespass-offering commanded for them. In verse 14 of chapter 5 begins another revelation from God concerning the trespass-offering for anything done against Jehovah; and chapter 6 mentions trespass against a neighbour.

In the chapter before us (the fourth) we have instances of defilements of conscience concerning things which ought not to be done, being against the commandments of Jehovah. The natural conscience shrinks from murder and open sins but there are other things which, although of a different character, nevertheless, if committed, bring on us defilement before Jehovah. There are things of positive requirement about which a soul may be ignorant, but neglect of which brings defilement; and, again, there are things which we know to be wrong, by means of the spiritual perception God has given us. We learn from these details, that trespasses against Jehovah, and wrongs done to our neighbour, though not all of the same importance, yet all require a sin-offering; all recall Christ to us, as taking upon Him our sins, He is our sin and trespass-offering.

232 The first two cases are, "If the priest that is anointed do sin," and "the whole congregation sin": in either case the directions for the offering are the same. Some of the blood must be sprinkled "seven times before the Lord, before the veil of the sanctuary"; - "and the priest shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense before Jehovah in the tabernacle of the congregation." This was done, that there might be no interruption to the general communion, for the whole congregation being identified with the high priest, his worship in the sanctuary at the altar of incense would be interrupted by their collective defilement: and again, the priest being the representative of the whole congregation before Jehovah, their exclusion was involved in his. Their sin is charged upon the bullock that is slain, which (the fat being burnt upon the altar) is burnt without the camp, and this is the ground of their renewed communion with God. Here is shewn to us, not the perfectness of Jesus as presented to God, but Jesus bearing the defilement of our sin; yet we see the fat is still burned on the altar (v. 8), and that has in it the character of the burnt-offering, shewing that, though made sin for us, yet His offering to God therein was intrinsically perfect; but the whole bullock is burnt without the camp, pointing out to us Jesus as cast out and bruised, on account of His having taken upon Him our sin, as in 2 Corinthians 5: 21: "he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." Having presented Himself in perfectness to God, He is then made sin for us, and it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him. Marvellous word! Jesus, the Holy One, who knew no sin., is cast out, and numbered with the transgressors.

If it was merely an individual that sinned, the order of the service could still be carried on, because the communion of the congregation was not thereby destroyed. In this instance, the blood was then only sprinkled on the altar of burnt-offering, because that was the place where God met an individual; for he must be reconciled, that he might have his place in the congregation, to hold communion with God, It is only because Jesus bore our sins individually, that we have communion. But He did it once for all.

233 Of this sacrifice we find the priest is commanded to take a portion (chap, 6: 25, 26); the fat and blood only being presented to the Lord on the altar of burnt-offering. We shall see in this the character of Jesus' work for us, and find the blessedness of it.

In many things we all offend, not only having sin in our nature, but doing things which conscience tells us ought not to be done; and in this state we could have no access to God for communion. These offences render the offender unfit for communion, and while in this state he could not approach God. Observe in this chapter, it is not merely sin, but sins that are mentioned. And here, for a moment, I would speak of the importance of not misquoting (as is often done) the passage, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world"; it is not said sins of the world, for if that were true, God could have nothing to charge it with.

It is indeed true, that the world as a system shall be restored to God: that place over which Satan has now gained such power shall be redeemed, as it is said in Colossians 1: 20, "By him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven." In the hands of the second Adam, the sacrifice is the ground of the restoration of all that was alienated in the first Adam; so that His atonement not only forms a ground upon which every sinner may be addressed, but through it the world shall be restored to blessings. This result, however, is entirely future, as we know from the present dominion of Satan in this evil world; and, in the mean time, many despise and reject the blessing, for whom judgment is reserved; but to the believer present peace comes, though his be not a portion in the result yet.

In the offerings before us, there is not merely this general atonement, but the bearing of sins, the actual transfer of sins to Jesus, the free gift of many offences unto justification of life. As in Isaiah 53 it is said, "He bare the iniquities of many," as well as "made his soul an offering for sin"; and here we not only see Jesus presented as an offering to God, by virtue of which any sinner may be addressed, but the believer also finds that his sins are laid upon Him. And the church, in anticipating the great result, finds that it is a saved body, and is brought into the knowledge of that which the apostle declared (Col. 1: 21), "And you that were sometimes alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled," etc. Thus we get full settled peace, for we know that Jesus has borne not merely some of our sins, but we get at this great general truth, that all our sins are laid upon Him and are blotted out. If we believe that by bearing our sins Jesus has justified us, then we must know that all our sins are gone from the presence of God, as He has said, "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." Jesus has endured the penalty. "He hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling"; and faith is able to look at Jesus as the bearer of all sin for us, and the sin having been charged upon Him, the church is raised out of all the evil it had been in, being by one offering perfected for ever. What He did was, that He bore the bruising due to us.

234 We can look at the work of Jesus in no other light than as thus complete; and we must, therefore, see all the sins of the church laid upon Him, and consequently all put away, and God righteous and just to forgive, because Jesus had already home them. There can be no enfeebling of this - it would be doing it away altogether. If I say they are not completely taken away, then which of them remains, and where are the sins from which I am not justified? When is each sin to be separately atoned for? If it is not simply as a body He presents the church in perfectness of acceptance, what is forgiveness? If we are brought, by our sense of the need of this blood-shedding, to see the value of it, then we not only come to the mercy-seat, but find all our sins have been put away, and that He suffered the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. It is, of course, only by the Spirit we are brought to know and value this, even that Jesus was our substitute, that "He bore our sins in his own body on the tree"; and that having done so, God is righteous to forgive. Nothing can be more plain than that, if Jesus did indeed bear our sins, then every believer is justified from all things.

235 We may look at it in all its breadth and compass; Jesus confessed our sins, bore them, and was bruised on their account. If He has opened your heart to believe in Him as bearing sins at all, then all your sins are put away; you must either deny that He was bearing sins at all, or you are justified. Here is the certainty of peace; and we stand justified from all things, and Jesus looks at us in this character, not at any particular time, but in order that He may present us to God. There is no question of past or future transgression, but He bore our sins. Hold fast this. There is, indeed, the frequent consciousness of faults. While faith says our sins are put away, still in looking at ourselves we see evil; and now we find how graciously the Lord provides for this defilement. The priest that offered the sin-offering was to eat it (6: 26). As the worshipper and the priest ate the peace-offering together, representing Jesus as being identified with the joy of communion; so the priest takes part of the sin-offering, shewing that Jesus is identified with the sin which hinders communion. Only priests ate it in the holy place specially, the priest who offered it was to eat his portion: Jesus is this priest; that on which the sin was confessed the priest ate, and identified himself thus with the defilement.*

Now, in passing through the world we get disqualified by sin for communion; even though we know it not, we cannot take our blindness as the measure of God's holy requirements. The blindness of our consciences is not the blindness of God's eye, as man is apt to think; but the riches of divine mercy has provided a way, in which, although God sees it a, yet He sees us free from it, because He sees the sin all upon Jesus. He bowed His head under the weight, saying, " My sins are too heavy for me to bear." But in His resurrection we see they were actually and effectually put away, having been home in His own body; so that we are justified from all things, perfected for ever. He rose again, God having accepted the work by which we are justified and thus bearing testimony to it. There are things which our consciences tell us ought not to be done; but of the sins of ignorance it is said, "Though he wist it not, he is guilty, he shall bear his iniquity." There is no folly like that of taking the blindness of our hearts as God's estimate of sin; but let evil and defilement be what they may, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, and grace restores communion.

{*Only Jesus did this once for all His sympathy operates in washing our feet with water. See 1 John 2: 1, 2, and John 13.}

236 In Numbers 19 we have a special case of a sin-offering. There is this difference between Leviticus and Numbers. In Leviticus, we have the sacrifices in their great distinguishing characters; in Numbers, we have the particular application in the trials of a walk of faith, meeting the case of individuals falling into evil, or contracting defilement. In Numbers 19 there was a red heifer taken, and burnt as a sin-offering, according to the description in the chapter now before us; the ashes were kept "for a water of separation, a purification for sin." Any man unclean by touching death was sprinkled with it. This shews the power of the sin-offering, as brought by the Spirit to the conscience; it is not a fresh sacrifice, there is no shedding of blood, but merely the ashes sprinkled.

There are but three instances of blood being sprinkled on individuals, which are these: Aaron and his sons on the day of their consecration (Lev. 8: 23, 30); the leper on the day of his cleansing (Lev. 14: 7); and the people on the giving of the covenant from Mount Sinai (Exod. 24: 8). There needed, in fact, but one sprinkling, for, looked at in its whole character, "the worshippers being once purged, have no more conscience of sins"; but for the daily defilements there was the water of separation, the application of a past thing with present power to the conscience, as the case required. The sacrifice of Jesus is an act done long since. But when the believer, once cleansed by faith in His blood, contracts defilement in walking in this world, for this there is no fresh offering, but the sacrifice is brought to his remembrance by the Spirit. It is the blood that cleanses us from sin, and gives us our portion as sons by adoption; but, as regards the conscience in communion, it is the Spirit of God bringing to recollection what Jesus has done, as the ashes of the red heifer, so as to give peace and restore communion. These are the truths brought out in the sin-offering.

Since the whole church is concerned, Jesus is presented unreprovable and unblameable in God's sight, and being sanctified by the offering of His body once for all, and perfected for ever by the same, the worshipper has no more conscience of sins. Thus the believer is introduced at once to the knowledge that all the church's sins were transferred to Jesus, and that in His resurrection the saints are completely justified. Let the sin be of whatever character it may, though you wist it not, yet whatever cannot accord with the holiness of God's sanctuary shall not come into it. His holiness never varies from itself, and the more we know of the value of the blood-shedding of Jesus, the more we shall see the impossibility of communion with God, in sin; but if our conscience condemn us, what have we to do? We have the blessed perception through the Holy Ghost of that of which the ashes are the memorial, even the remembrance of that which has been done by Christ, bringing us again into holy communion.

237 The perception that Jesus has taken the defilement maintains the standard of holiness in spite of our sin. Nothing but Jesus charging the sin upon Himself could do this; and if we do not see the holiness maintained we shall be making excuses for our sin, and thinking we can still have communion with God in it; and our estimate and standard of sin must of necessity be lowered. If my conscience cannot know the sin absolutely put away, I must give up communion, or seek it on some other and lower ground; but seeing Jesus a burnt-offering and a sin-offering, we see Him made sin, and ourselves made the righteousness of God in Him. And we see that He loved us, and gave Himself for us, not for anything in us, but because of the prevalence of His love over all. What blessed thoughts must we have in this knowledge of the perfectness of His love! and what must be the blindness of those who count God to be such an one as themselves, seeing that He has given Jesus!

CHAPTER 6.

There is much that is important in the close of the account of these offerings. In the previous chapters the characters of the sacrifices were brought out. First, the perfectness of the offering of Jesus unto God: and, secondly, as outcast, treated as defiled, by reason of the sin that was laid upon Him. This trespass-offering partakes of the latter character. The Spirit of God is a holy detecter and judge of all that is inconsistent with Himself: nothing of sin can pass unnoticed. The Spirit does not judge according to the natural conscience, but takes a standard according to the holiness of Jesus in the presence of God, so that our minds do not always discern that which He sees requisite to be judged; but whether we discern or not, the Spirit takes account of the evil in us, and if it were not for the sin-offering and trespass-offering, we should be in a worse case than ever; for there is no atonement for sin made by the Spirit - this is no part of His work. The Spirit manifests all righteousness, revealing to us what Jesus taught, but we never read of the Spirit bearing our sins. This is a point of the utmost importance for our rest. The Spirit is the spirit of testimony and holiness. In acceptance and in atonement Jesus alone has any part. Acceptance came in upon what Jesus had done in the flesh - by His offering of His body once for all. "In the body of his flesh through death," etc. The testimony of the Spirit is to unmingled holiness, bearing witness to our sins, shewing us that in us good does not dwell, and also that peace and rest come by what Christ has wrought. The effect of this testimony of holiness would be to destroy peace, if the Spirit did not still reveal the efficacy of the blood-shedding; but while it is His office to exalt the perception of the holiness God requires, He still witnesses to us that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin."

238 When we look at the variety of sin (for in spite of our ignorance we do perceive and know sin as still cleaving to us), never could we have peace but through the testimony of the blood of Christ.

Supposing we have erred in the character of worshippers, ignorantly committing any of those things which are forbidden; here is sin, though we wist it not - the holiness of God is not limited by our conscience.

There are many things which would be sins upon the conscience hindering communion, were it not for the blood of Jesus.

The power and effect of the revelation of Jesus Christ is to bring us to God, to holiness. It is in vain, therefore, to reckon upon grace, if we do not see the place into which it brings us, even into the place of worship, The effect of grace is to bring us upon ground on which nothing inconsistent with worship will be tolerated.

In the chapter before us we have the different characters of sin, which without blood could not be passed by. He will by no means clear the guilty. All that is inconsistent with Jesus within the veil is sin for us, and separates us from Him in communion. In the sixth chapter we see that God's eye notices sin against a neighbour, as well as against Himself, for the command is, "Receive ye One another, as Christ hath also received us to the glory of God." With unhindered liberty we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus., even where all the holiness of God is displayed. The Spirit reveals many things in us inconsistent with this holy place, but we know that Jesus has offered both a sin and a trespass-offering. "He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him"; therefore the revelation of holiness reveals nothing to hinder our entrance into the holiest. Only we are increasingly purified from an the light of that place shews us.

239 If the holiness of God has been revealed, and you have swerved from the requirements of it, may the Spirit of God so reveal to you the offering made once for all, that you may be humbled as to yourself and then go on, resting upon the truth of the completeness of the sacrifice, assuredly knowing "that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin!"

CHAPTER 8.

We have considered in detail the work appointed for Aaron and his sons, as priests to Jehovah; we have now an account of the manner of setting them apart for that office. They are first washed with water, this signifying the sanctification by the word. In this the high priest is identified with his sons; even as Jesus says, "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Thy word is truth"; set apart, as man in glory, as the model of what we ought to be in holiness; and again, "By the words of thy lips have I kept me from the paths of the destroyer." And when speaking of the church the language is, He "gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word."

This being done, the high priest alone is clothed in his robes and anointed; he needed not blood to admit him into the service of God. He was the representative of One whom God could receive and own as "his servant, his elect, in whom his soul delighted." Thus after His baptism we find the Spirit descends as a dove upon Jesus, and a voice comes from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." He needed no offering for Himself, but stood as the anointed of God without shedding of blood. Afterwards Aaron identifies himself with his sons, when sacrifices are brought to be offered for them: thus we see Jesus in one person, as it were, with us, entering the holy place by His own blood, that we might be made His fellows, that we might be qualified to worship with Him. This enabled Him to say, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God." And afterwards we find that blessed association with the saints which made Him say, "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." He is not ashamed to call them brethren.

240 We are thus marvelously introduced into the presence of God and the Father to worship in the holiest. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." But the high priesthood of Jesus is essentially connected with our introduction into the holiest of all and our worship there. The name indeed of Father carries us farther as partakers of the Holy Ghost and life in Christ; we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

The burnt-offering and sin-offering are offered, and also the ram of consecration; all the various aspects of the work of Christ, in the value of which we come to God, are presented to us in connection with the priest's consecration to God.

In the case of the leper's cleansing (Lev. 14) there is an analogy in the application of the blood of the sacrifice: only here it is consecration, there cleansing from sin; and further in the leper's case the application was individual, but here the whole church is presented. Aaron and his sons fin their hands with the offerings, and they are waved for a wave-offering before the Lord.

They are qualified by the sacrifice, and priestly service becomes their privilege. The ear and right hand are sprinkled with blood, the great toe also, that nothing should enter into the mind, no act be performed, nothing should be found in their walk through the world, which should not be according to the precious blood of Jesus.

The church stands thus under the efficacy of the whole work of Christ. All that hindered from entering into the place of worship and service is done away; competency to exercise ministry depends upon our walking in the Spirit; but provision for this has been accomplished once for all, and we cannot escape from this responsibility - a responsibility measured and guarded by the holiness of Christ's blood-shedding - entire death to sin and the world.

241 Let us remember, that whatever is unfit for us in entering the holy place, unfit for us as ministering priests, as worshippers in the sanctuary, must be put away. It is the privileged position of the church to be introduced to all the blessings of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. If we are made anything, we are made priests unto God; as a body we are looked at according to the estimate God has of the sacrifice of His dear Son.

There is no renewal of the consecration; the priests were only to wash their hands and feet, that they might carry no defilement into the sanctuary from day to day; so we have need only to have our feet washed . Let us be careful thus continually to cleanse ourselves from any practical unfitness that may defile us in our intercourse daily with an evil world. Jesus has begun the new song of praise, and puts the same into our mouths, as sprinkled with His blood, anointed with His Spirit, and feeding continually upon Him in the presence Of the living God. Consider how far you have realized this as your standing, and be careful to cast away all that defiles you as a priest set apart for such a service. This is something far beyond walking half in the world and half with God, questioning whether even you do believe or not. Be assured, God would have you brought out of this miserable uncertainty. He would have you identified with the sanctuary, entering into all the fulness of joy that results from intimacy of fellowship and service with Jesus. Kings and priests unto God, not only blood but anointing oil was upon Aaron and his sons, and his sons' garments. All within and without is consecrated. He "loveth us and hath washed us in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and his Father: to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

Hints on the Day of Atonement

Levitcus 16.

<19016E> 242

Aaron appears with a bullock for himself and for his house, and then with an offering for the people. Israel, strictly speaking, were represented by the goats. In the sacrifice for Aaron and his house together are the two parts of a sacrifice. When they are together, it is Christ taking our place. When Aaron is taken alone, there is no sacrifice for him. He shall put on the linen garments, and wash in water, and so put them on. He was to have a bullock for a sin-offering, and a ram for a burnt-offering. The ram was always for consecration, or in case of desecration, which was the opposite of consecration.

The sin-offering is taken as a whole, the greater including the less; but the detail is wanted. The first idea is meeting God in His absolute holiness. It is Christ "made sin," and we the righteousness of God according to that. As there is a danger of stopping short at the scapegoat, so there is the other danger too. Some do not use the scapegoat enough, others use it too much. Some preach more in connection with the necessity to go into the presence of God than of getting oneself the value of the scapegoat. Preaching the scapegoat shews sins put away; preaching the bullock brings us to God.

There is a difference between presenting sins in the light of the law that way, and bowing souls by grace. I never come to God till I get the second part. One hears, "I am here in the world forgiven, and I am very glad of it"; you will sometimes, but not often, hear people say, "I am before God as white as snow in His presence." Too often they take other ground altogether and say, "If I am to be saved, I am; and if I am to be damned, I am," and so evade the real question whether they honestly thought they were lost. If you really felt in your present state that you were going to be damned, you would not take it so quietly. The fact is, it is all dogma, and not conscience. Supposing I put the question and say, "Which are you now, saved or lost?" there is no "if" in that.

It is not substitution when I say to all, "The blood is on the mercy-seat"; I do not say "your sins are put away," because I do not know that they are. And coming to detail, I can not only say, "Come and welcome," but, "God beseeches you to come, for the blood is on the mercy-seat." The scapegoat goes a step farther; for if the man does come, it declares that it is impossible for God ever to tell you about your sins again, for they are all put away. I do preach this as truth generally; for scripture never says Christ has borne the sins of everybody. You have lost certainty the moment you make that assertion.

243 I always say "our sins," which scripture does say, and then they by faith take it for themselves. "Our sins" is strictly for believers. Paul is there (1 Cor. 15) preaching the gospel from his own point, as his experience. The word "our" is on purpose used vaguely there.

The meaning of Azazel is the scapegoat; it is the goat that carries away. There is no limit here.

There is an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and so on. And no man was to be in the tabernacle while the high priest went in with the blood to the mercy-seat. It is done all alone; the people were all looked at as having defiled the place.

First the place is cleansed as to all that referred to God who had been dishonoured. This must be set right first; and Christ has by death perfectly done it. He has "passed through the heaven"; He descended and ascended that He might fill all things. This goes farther, but it refers to the going through.

God dwells in light that no man can approach unto. That is God's nature, it is true; but the heavens are all the things we look at as something under God. It is light inaccessible in itself; neither man nor angel can get there. "Above all heavens" is as in Ezekiel, where we see the cherubim and their surroundings; then the vault which expresses the heavens; and God is at the top of all, though He "humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth."

But here it is a question of defilement, not of guilt; it was unbearable to God; and no man goes in while he is then occupied, nor till he comes out. He first goes in with a censer full of burning coals off the altar; "and he shall put the incense upon the fire before Jehovah, that the cloud of the incense cover the mercy-seat, that he die not." And Christ first goes in, in the grace of His person, which is before all the offerings; that is, when you take Himself before He begins any other part, He goes in with sweet incense. It is all "before the Lord"; and this gives Himself as a person absolutely perfect, the person before the work. But when we take Aaron and his house, we must have the bullock: those who are connected with him need that; and then the blood of the bullock is taken and sprinkled on all the unclean places, he all alone, until he comes out. But after having the incense in the most holy place, he sprinkles with his finger the blood on the mercy-seat and before it. There are two ceremonies, one with the blood of the bullock, and one with the blood of the goat, consecutively; and then, in verse 18, the two are taken together.

244 "That he die not" is always connected with what is absolutely necessary. If it had been possible for a moment that Christ had not been an absolutely sweet savour, then that must have been the result.

"The altar that is before Jehovah," verse 18, seems the brazen altar, for it is described in this way. After the blood is sprinkled on the mercy-seat, then atonement is made for the holy place, and next for the tabernacle of the congregation; then "he shall go out unto the altar that is before Jehovah, and make an atonement for it." On the mercy-seat God Himself was met. In fact that made it a mercy-seat, for it was a throne of judgment but for that. Now it is a throne of government for, instead of a throne of judgment against.

After he has made atonement for the tabernacle of the congregation (which would include, I suppose, what was in it), then he is to go out to "the altar that is before Jehovah." The golden altar was put "before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy-seat that is over the testimony where I will meet with thee." God met Moses for Himself there before the mercy-seat, and He met Moses for the people at the door of the tabernacle, and therefore the blood of the red heifer was sprinkled outside in Numbers 19. But the brazen altar was "before Jehovah"; in Exodus 29: 42 you have the words so used, and in verse 43, "there I will meet with the children of Israel." In Numbers 7: 89 when Moses went into the tabernacle, he heard the voice of one speaking to him from off the mercy-seat. This makes two meeting places clearly. The people had nothing to do with going inside. Moses went in and spoke with God, and put a veil on to come out and speak to the people. Moses went into the holiest of all whenever he liked, but he put his veil off to do so. Individually he went in and had no veil, and came out and put the veil on; but whether the glory on him died away in the wilderness is not said. The object of the Spirit of God was to give this character of the law, which is afterwards contrasted with the gospel; and the veil is upon Israel still; but when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. It was only when Nadab and Abihu sinned that Aaron was prevented from going into the holiest of all; and this chapter is the exceptional time once in the year with blood.

245 In reading verses 6 and 11, "which is for himself" and "make an atonement for himself and for his house," one sees that it is for himself along with his sons, not alone.

In verse 20 "to reconcile" is the same word as "to make atonement for." It is the act of the application of the blood here; it is the same idea as in Colossians, "to reconcile all things unto himself." The word "atonement" is brought clearly out in what is done in this chapter. "Make reconciliation for the sins of the people," in Hebrews 2, should be "make propitiation" for them; but in Romans 5: 10, where the word "atonement" is used, it ought to be reconciliation. " Blotted out" is used of transgressions and means to wipe them out.

Then Aaron was to bring the live goat and lay both his hands upon its head and confess all the transgressions of the people over it, and send it away, by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness, to a land not inhabited. That is the other part of sin-offering, substitution evidently. Just as in the blood on the mercy-seat God was met in His nature and character; so in the scapegoat you have substitution for transgressions. Substitution does not include everything, not the full glorifying of God, I mean, but our sins borne by Christ.

If substitution were for the whole world, it would save the whole world. Propitiation was dealing with God's nature and character. There are two things: blood brought to God in respect of God's character, and a scapegoat for the people's sake. One constantly sees two things in this way, a double figure for a whole. There is the wilderness and Canaan; there is Moses and Aaron, and these two are one Christ. So here, in the first part God's nature is met; in the second, the sins are put away. The first goat is called "Jehovah's lot," the people's sins are confessed over the second (as Christ confesses the sins of His people on His own head as His own, and can call them "mine iniquities "). I see what God is in blood on the mercy-seat; but the moment you have substitution, and individual acts of transgression, you have a scapegoat.

246 "Atonement" occurs but once in the New Testament, and there it should be (Rom. 5: 11) reconciliation; and expiation occurs but once in the Bible (Num. 35 33), and that is in the margin, "no expiation for the land": so we may drop that word. Propitiation is towards God. There is the holy and righteous character of God to be met; and this is propitiation. God is not changed by it; but, being righteous and holy, this is responded to, that His love might go out according to righteousness and holiness, and mercy and righteousness be consistent. Atonement is more when the blood is applied. Blood was sprinkled upon the altar, because sin was there, blood of atonement, It is the actual putting away of sin by the sprinkling of the blood. The idea is, a thing or person is in a state in which they cannot have to say to God, as here "the iniquities of the children of Israel among whom I dwell"; and that condition must be dealt with. You must have the blood where the sin has been, you must have it for God to be in relationship with such. The blood is brought in, and the thing sprinkled, and so the thing is put right. Here reconciliation is the same word.

In the two goats are the two aspects of what Christ did. The twofold view is most interesting; as in Christ the Apostle and High Priest, like Moses and Aaron. Atonement signifies life given and accepted as sacrifice for life forfeited; remission is the deliverance of those who appeal from the sentence of death, and thence it is the forgiveness of the sins that caused their condemnation.

"Atonement" is the greatest blunder in Romans 5 : 11 We are said to be "reconciled" in verse 10. Then verse 11 speaks of "our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation," not the atonement, which has nothing to do with the sins on our side; atonement is for God.

When I think of propitiation, I think more of the person propitiated and what is due to him; reconciliation deals with circumstances too. It has nothing to do with our nature in the Old Testament. We have a nature that always like to break the law; and we learn what that is. When I find I have a nature that cannot be subject, I say, Here is a pretty business; and this all comes out in the New Testament. The remedy is, not merely that Christ has died, and whatever Christ did is mine, but that I am dead with Him (Rom. 6).

247 Atonement is for guilt. When I look in the Old Testament, I see guilt blotted out, and not a nature judged; that is the thing for which the atonement provides, and I do get the blood put upon the mercy-seat where God Himself sits; and when I know what His nature is, I get the fact that here God's nature is met, not my own dealt with as in the cross of Christ. For nature, my nature, is not known under law to be dealt with. So, if David says, "Create in me a clean heart," would he have spoken thus, if he had known that his heart in the flesh could not be made clean? Again, if Naaman was clean altogether, it is a figure for now. But then there was no flesh lusting against the Spirit, nor even the two natures contrary one to the other, as a state existing and explained to the believer. With the new nature, I have now the privilege of knowing that the old is dead. I have the new man and the old; but the old is condemned in death. "God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh"; and I not only die daily, but know that I am crucified with Christ.

The atonement is another thing; in it God's nature is met, and this is the point. I have nothing about man's nature; God's nature has been dishonoured by sin, and He is there sitting with things before Him which He will not stand. This is the fact, and therefore the blood is put under His eye; that is, Christ has done it, and God says, "When I see the blood, I will pass over"; but sin is all considered in the lump, so to speak here. When we find nature and conflict with nature, it is a question of the Holy Ghost. This applies to nature only in the way that it applies to sin at large.

Sending to a land not inhabited means out of sight, remembrance, and everything. "To make an atonement with him" in verse 10 is said of the scapegoat. By the seven times sprinkling constant communion was secured, as well as God's nature met by the blood upon it. God was looked at as a holy God, if not understood.

Then, when Aaron comes back, he lays aside his linen garments, and takes his ordinary ones again: so Christ will come back from heaven in garments of glory and beauty.

248 The absolute defilement of sin is shewn. The touch of the carcase of the sin-offering defiled: so, if a man walked over a grave, he was unclean; or if a man died in a tent, it was unclean: indeed it was very hard to avoid being unclean.

The scripture that made the question, whether Christ was a sin-bearer all His life, quite clear to me was, "he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." He must be proved all His life to know no sin, and then He can be made sin. To bear sins in life makes atonement without blood, but "without shedding of blood is no remission." Why should the Lord be saved from "that hour" if it had been going on all His life? And there is another thing if followed up: it takes a person back and unites him to Christ before He died, which is false. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

The Day of Atonement

Leviticus 16.

<19017E> 249

Provision being made for such defilements of the people as allowed of it, we have the revelation of the general provision for the purification of the sanctuary which was in the midst of a people who defiled it, and for the atonement of the sins of the people themselves. In general, there are two great ideas; first, that the atonement was made, so that the relationship of the people of God was maintained notwithstanding their sins; and then, in the second place, in the difficulties which surrounded the entrance of Aaron into the holy place, there was the testimony (according to the Epistle to the Hebrews itself) that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest during that dispensation. It is important to examine this chapter under these two points of view. It stands alone. No mention is made anywhere else of what took place on that solemn day. The sacrifice of Christ, as redemption, was typified by the passover. It was here a question of drawing near unto God who revealed Himself on His throne, of cleansing defilements, of taking away the sins of those who would draw near, and of purifying their consciences. Now, while presenting to us in figure the means of doing this, it signified indeed that the thing was not done.

As to the general idea of its efficacy, the high priest drew near personally, and filled the most holy place with incense; then he took some blood, which he put on the mercy-seat and before the mercy-seat. Sins were atoned for according to the requirement of the majesty of the throne of God Himself, so that the full satisfaction made to His majesty rendered the throne of justice favourable, grace had free course, and the worshipper found the blood there before him when he drew near, and even as a testimony before the throne. Then the high priest cleansed the tabernacle, the altar, and all that was found there. Thus, in virtue of the sprinkling of His blood, Christ will reconcile all things, having made peace through the blood of His cross. There could be no guiltiness in the tabernacle, but God would cleanse away the defilements, that they might not appear before Him. In the third place, the high priest confessed the sins of the people over the scapegoat, which, sent off unto a land not inhabited, bore all the sins away from God never to be found again. It is here that the idea of substitution is presented most clearly.

250 There are three things: the blood on the mercy-seat, the reconciliation of all things, and the sins confessed and borne by another. This order is found in Colossians 1 - peace made, reconciliation of all things by Christ, and of believers it is said - "You hath he now reconciled in the body of his flesh, through death." It is evident that, though the scapegoat was sent away alive, it was identified as to the efficacy of the work with the death of the other. The idea of the eternal sending away of sins out of remembrance is only added to the thought of death. The glory of God was established and His rights vindicated, on one side, in the putting of the blood on the mercy-seat; and, on the other, there was the substitution of the scapegoat, of the Lord Jesus, in His precious grace, for the guilty persons whose cause He had undertaken; and, the sins of these having been borne, their deliverance was full, entire and final. The first goat was Jehovah's lot - it was a question of His character and His majesty. The other was the lot of the people, which definitively represented the people in their sins.

These two aspects of the death of Jesus must be carefully distinguished in the atoning sacrifice He has accomplished. He has glorified God, and God acts according to the value of that blood towards all. He has borne the sins of His people; and the salvation of His people is complete. And, in a certain sense, the first part is the most important. Sin having come in, the justice of God might, it is true, have got rid of the sinner; but where would then have been His love and His counsels of grace, pardon, and even the maintenance of His glory according to His true nature as love, while righteous and holy too? I am not speaking here of the persons who were to be saved, but of the glory of God Himself. But the perfect death of Jesus - His blood put on the throne of God - has established and brought into evidence all that God is - all His glory, as no creation could have done it: His truth, for if He had passed sentence of death, it is made good in the highest way in Jesus; His majesty, for His Son submits to all for His glory; His justice against sin; His infinite love. God found means therein to accomplish His counsels of grace, in maintaining all the majesty of His justice and of His divine dignity; for what could have glorified them like the death of Jesus?

251 Therefore this devotedness of Jesus, the Son of God, to His glory, this submission, even unto death, that God might be maintained in the full glory of His rights, has given its outlet to the love of God - freedom to its action; wherefore Jesus says, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?" His heart, full of love, was driven back, in its personal manifestation, by the sin of man, who would it not; but through the atonement it could flow forth to the sinner in the accomplishment of God's grace and of His counsels unhindered, and Jesus Himself had, so to speak, rights upon that love - a position we are brought into through grace, and which has none like it. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." We speak with reverence of such things, but it is good to speak of them; for the glory of our God, and of Him whom He hath sent, is found therein established and manifested. There is not one attribute, one trait of the divine character, which has not been manifested in all its perfection, and fully glorified in that which took place between God and Jesus Himself. That we have been saved and redeemed, and that our sins have been atoned for in that same sacrifice, according to the counsels of the grace of God, is, I presume to say it, precious and important as it is for us, the inferior part of that work, if anything whatever may be called inferior where everything is perfect; its object at least - we sinners - is inferior, if the work is equally perfect in every point of view. Having considered a little the grand principles, we may now examine the particular circumstances.

It will have been observed that there were two sacrifices: one for Aaron and his family, the other for the people. Aaron and his sons always represent the church - not in the sense of one body, but as a company of priests. Thus we have even in the day of atonement, the distinction between those who form the church, and the earthly people who form the camp of God on the earth. Believers have their place outside the camp, where their Head has suffered as a sacrifice for sin; but, in consequence, they have their place in the presence of God in the heavens, where their Head has entered. Outside the camp,* here below, answers to a heavenly portion above; they are the two positions of the ever-blessed Christ. If the professing church takes the position of the camp here below, the place of the believer is always outside. It is, indeed, what she has done - she boasts of it; but it is Jewish. Israel must indeed recognize themselves outside at last, in order to be saved and to be brought in again through grace, because the Saviour, whom they despised in a day of blindness, has in grace borne all their sins. We anticipate that position whilst Christ is in heaven. The heart of the remnant of Israel will indeed be brought back, in its desires, to the Lord before that time. They will only enter into the power of the sacrifice when they shall look upon Him whom they pierced, and mourn for Him. Therefore was it prescribed that it should be a day to afflict their souls, and that they should be cut off if they did not.

{*The camp is an earthly religious relationship with God outside the sanctuary, and established on earth with priests between us and God. This the Jews were; they cast Christ out of it, and it is now utterly rejected.}

252 The day of atonement supposes, moreover, according to the state of things found in the wilderness, that the people were in a state of incapacity for the enjoyment of the relations with God fully manifested. God had redeemed them - had spoken to them; but the heart of Israel, of man however favoured, was incapable of it in its natural state. Israel had made the golden calf, and Moses put a veil over his face. Nadab and Abihu had offered strange fire upon the altar of God, - fire which had not been taken from the altar of burnt offering. The way into the holiest is closed; Aaron is forbidden to enter there at all times. When he went in, it was not for communion, but for the cleansing of the defilements of a people among whom God dwelt; and the day of atonement is only introduced with a prohibition of entering at all times into the holy place, and is conspicuous as taking place after the death of the sons of Aaron. He does it with a cloud of incense, lest he die. It was truly a gracious provision in order that the people should not perish on account of their defilements; but the Holy Ghost was signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest.

In what, then, is our position changed under Christianity? The veil is rent, and we enter, as priests, with boldness into the holiest, by a new and living way through the veil - that is to say, the flesh of Christ. We enter it without conscience of sin, because the blow which rent the veil, to shew all the glory and majesty of the throne, and the holiness of Him who sits thereon, has taken away the sins which would have incapacitated us from entering in, or from looking within. We are even stated there in Christ our Head - the Head of His body the church. In the meantime, Israel is outside: the church is seen in the person of Christ, the high priest, and the whole of this dispensation is the day of atonement, during which Israel's high priest is hid within the veil. The veil which hid the import of all these figures is, indeed, done away in Christ, so that we have full liberty by the Spirit, but it is upon their hearts. He maintains there within, it is true, their cause through the blood which He presents; but the testimony of it is not yet presented to them outside, nor their consciences freed by the knowledge that their sins are lost for ever in a land not inhabited, where they will never be found again. Now our position is, properly speaking, inside, in the person of Aaron, the blood being on the mercy-seat. We are not only justified by the scapegoat, as being without - that is done, it is clear, and once for all (for the veil is only on the heart of Israel; it is no longer between us and God); but we have gone in with the high priest, as united to Him. We are not waiting for reconciliation till He comes out. Israel, though the forgiveness be the same, will receive these things when the true Aaron comes out of the tabernacle. This is why that which characterized the sacrifice of Aaron and his sons was the blood put inside on the mercy-seat, and the going in of Aaron in person. But the church is composed of persons who are here below, who have committed sins. Thus seen in the world, they enter, as to their conscience, into the rank of the outside people, as well as Aaron himself, seen not as a typical individual; and the conscience is purified by the certainty that Christ has borne all our sins in His body on the tree. Our position is within, according to the value of the blood of Christ, and the perfect acceptance of His person.

253 It is the same with regard to the expectation of Christ: if I consider myself as a man responsible upon earth, I expect Him for the deliverance of all things, and to put an end to all suffering, and to all the power of evil; and so individually myself, as a servant, I look to receive at His appearing here the testimony of His approval, as a Master, before the whole world. But if I think of my privileges, as a member of His body, I think of my union with Him above, and that I shall come back with Him when He shall come and appear in His glory. It is well we should know how to make this distinction; without this, there will be confusion in our thoughts, and in our use of many passages. The same thing is true in the personal religion of every day. I can consider myself as united to Christ, and seated in Him in heavenly places enjoying all the privileges which He enjoys, as Head of the body, before God His Father. I may also look upon myself as a poor weak being, walking individually upon the earth, having wants, faults, and temptations to overcome; and I see Christ above, whilst I am here below - Christ appearing alone for me before the throne - for me, happy in having, in the presence of God, him who is perfect, but who has gone through the experience of my sorrows, who is no longer in the circumstances in which I find myself, but with the Father for me who am in them. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whilst the union of the church with Christ is more particularly taught in that to the Ephesians.

Hints on the Feasts of Jehovah

J. N. Darby.

<19018E> 255

The feasts of Jehovah are given full in Leviticus 23, and again the chief ones in Deuteronomy 16.

There are two different ways of viewing the seven feasts. We may take the Sabbath day by itself, and then begin again, reckoning the Passover and unleavened bread as two feasts, or we may reckon the Sabbath day first, without separating those two.

The idea of these feasts is the gathering of the people round Jehovah for some cause or other, a "holy convocation."

The first is the Sabbath; and it will be so when the true rest comes: God will have all His people round about Him.

Then follows the Passover, with the unleavened bread, together but still distinct; that is, along with the sacrifice of Christ, you have sin taken away practically. Really, in verse 5, the Passover stands by itself. First there is a certain definite act, and then seasons.

The Sabbath is the grand rest of all the people, but still it comes in as a holy convocation.

Then the Passover is the lamb slain, and its body eaten. After this, next, we come to the first-fruits. It is not said exactly when this was to be: - when the corn was ripe of course - but on the morrow after the Sabbath it was to be waved. This is Christ's resurrection; and here notably is no sin-offering.

Then they were to count fifty days, seven Sabbaths complete, and to offer a new meat-offering unto Jehovah, "two wave loaves baken with leaven"; for now we have, in fact, the church offered to God, but with leaven in the offering, so that it could not be burnt upon the altar for a sweet savour.

The two loaves are an adequate witness, as I take it. The point here is the church; a witness which is presented, an offering to God with leaven, but then along with and because of this, one kid of the goats for a sin-offering. We find no such thing with the first-fruits which represented Christ, but here the leaven is met by the sin-offering. The selfsame day they proclaim a holy convocation.

In verse 22 is a gracious provision: when they reaped their harvest, they were to leave the gleanings for the poor. It is the heavenly calling (but not properly the church), because there are others who are called. This is Daniel's heavenly calling, which does not form properly the loaves of God. There are others, those who are killed by the beast; and if God did not take them up to heaven, where would they be? So the Epistle to the Hebrews applies to Christians, but may run over to others also. These things were to be done in Israel, although we (Christians) get all the good of them.

256 Pentecost happens in the space between the Passover and verse 24. For the blowing of the Trumpets we leap on to the seventh month, and then comes the first day of that holy month as the next appointed time.

First the Trumpets are blown and gather Israel; and then, on the tenth day of the same month, Israel enters into the day of Atonement. Not that we do not enter into it long before, but here it is for them. You have had the beginning of Israel again, so to speak, in the Trumpets and Atonement made, and then follows the feast of Tabernacles, from the fifteenth day of the month, seven days unto Jehovah. The first day is a holy convocation, and the eighth day a holy convocation, that is, an additional day. When the feast of Tabernacles on earth is come, we shall get the heavenly things too. It is a "solemn assembly" when God has a complete thing; that is an expression applied here only to the Tabernacles; it is once used in a peculiar manner of the Passover.

It comes after the harvest and after the vintage, that is, after God's separative judgment, and vengeance judgment or the treading the "winepress of the wrath of God." Then they shall take boughs of goodly trees, and dwell in booths seven days, bearing witness that they had been strangers but now are fully back in the land. That is for Israel to do. We come in between the Passover and the day of Atonement.

Why should the leaven be introduced at Pentecost? Because we are there. There is all the value of Christ and of His sacrifice too; but account of evil in us is taken and provided for by a sin-offering. It is not so where He is typified.

There are only three feasts mentioned in Deuteronomy; because then all the males were to be congregated before God.

The tone and spirit of these things is given in verse 7: "and thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose, and thou shalt turn in the morning and go unto thy tents." And he tells them the way in which they are to do it in detail, here calling it a "solemn assembly." In verse 3 the unleavened bread is called "bread of affliction," holiness in affliction, when you come to it by the sacrifice of Christ; in 1 Corinthians 5 it is called the "unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." It takes the character of self-judgment, and sorrow before God, and therefore, in that state, I have no fellowship with others; so I turn in the morning and go to my tent. You find bitter herbs as well in Exodus 12.

257 It is quite different when you come to Pentecost: "seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee; begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn, and thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto Jehovah thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand." Here I have the Holy Ghost and I am a free offerer and come up with my gift, and "according as Jehovah thy God hath blessed thee" - it is in the measure of my spirituality I can come with this offering; "and thou shalt rejoice before Jehovah thy God, thou and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow that is among you." You must have grace going out to the poor and the needy, and then come with a freewill offering according as God hath blessed you."

The feast of Tabernacles goes farther, after "thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine, thou shalt rejoice in thy feast." Son, daughter, manservant, maidservant, stranger, fatherless, and widow, seven days keep a solemn feast unto Jehovah their God; "because Jehovah thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice." It is not now, rejoice "according to" the measure, but He will bless you in everything, and so you are to rejoice and all with you. In the booths they were to say they had been strangers in the wilderness, but now they have got all God's promises.

We are in Pentecost, not merely on Passover ground; but we come when we have got in a certain sense into the land and "according as Jehovah hath blessed us"; and still in another sense we may say we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ, and so we can "surely rejoice." It is joy all the week long - seven days. It is real rejoicing all the time.

Mark another thing connected with Pentecost which struck me; as long as we are here, "thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and thou shalt observe and do these statutes." In Tabernacles I do not remember that I was a bondman in Egypt; but here I am obliged to be watchful and obey, and remember that I was a thorough slave of sin and of everything else. And you do not here see the Passover character: the holiness is not "bread of affliction" to me, nor am I eating "bitter herbs." All that has its place and must be; I must enter in that way, and so I turn to go to my tent. I am a redeemed person (that is all holy and true), but I go off by myself to my tent. It recalls what I was saying about the difference of relationships - between living in a place, and saying, Thank God, I have got in and am saved. I must keep the Passover, or I cannot keep Tabernacles, nor yet Pentecost; but I do not call holiness "bread of affliction" now.

258 We might turn perhaps to chapter 26 for a little, though it be aside from the course of the Feasts. "And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possessest it and dwellest therein" (there we are, in a certain sense, in spirit), "that thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth which thou shalt bring of thy land, that Jehovah thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose to place his name there, and thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and shalt say unto him, I profess this day unto Jehovah thy God, that I am come unto the country" - here I am in heavenly places - which Jehovah "sware unto our fathers for to give to us. And the priest shall take the basket out of thine hand and set it down before the altar of Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt speak and say before Jehovah thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father" (not I am - it was an old thing that was passed by and could not come back), "and he went down into Egypt, and was evil entreated, and Jehovah brought us forth, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey; and now behold I have brought the firstfruits of the land, which thou, O Jehovah, hast given me. And" - when he has recognized Jehovah, he can go and enjoy all the rest - "thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which Jehovah thy God hath given unto thee."

Then you have the character of holiness in it. "Thou shalt say before Jehovah thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of my house, and also have given them unto the Levite, and unto the stranger, to the fatherless and to the widow, according to all thy commandments, which thou hast commanded me. I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them: I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead." To eat in his mourning was profaning himself. And then follows not "bless me," but "bless thy people Israel, and the land which thou hast given us."

259 I connect this neither with Pentecost nor with Tabernacles for this is alone. It is the first of the first-fruits. It is not connected with the feast of weeks; but until they had offered the first of the first-fruits, they could not have anything according to God. We may say it is just the same spirit as our joy and remembrance at the Lord's table.

On the covering of the Holy Vessels

Numbers 4.

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The character of the thing that was carried had a different effect in the display of its covering, according to the nature of what was covered. If I think of the ark, I shall have a certain character of display; if I think of the table, it will be another; and of the candlestick, another. When Israel set forth, the ark was first covered with the veil, that is, Christ Himself with the veil of His humanity; then came the badgers' skin, and, outside, the cloth of blue. This is the order: Christ's perfect humanity over the ark; then badgers' skins to protect it; and outside that, the cloth of blue. The heavenly man comes out, the special character.

The badgers' skin was inside in this case, because Christ kept His perfection absolutely free of all evil, and so the heavenly came out manifestly. In us it is morally to be realized in the power of the Spirit of God.

There was of course no evil in Christ to come out, but as man here, the perfect One. He uses, for instance, the word to baffle Satan - in that is the badgers' skin - just as I ought to keep Satan off through grace. Thus we need the badgers' skin outside in going through the wilderness.

Then came the table of shewbread, with a cloth of blue on it first, then the dishes, bread, etc., all covered with a scarlet cloth, and badgers' skins outside; the table itself - the gold or the divine part - covered with the blue, the heavenly; then the cloth of scarlet covers the twelve loaves. Scarlet is royalty, and twelve is connected, we were seeing, with administration on earth. The badgers' skins are outside, because it is a display in a human instrument.

The shewbread is the manifestation of the thing in man, but divine righteousness was under it, the gold. The scarlet will meet the result of that - royalty, though not seen yet; or, rather, scarlet seems to be human glory, purple being proper royalty.

Next the candlestick was to be covered entirely with a cloth of blue, then with badgers' skins, and put on a bar. Here there is no scarlet; because it was the manifestation of the Spirit, and there is no royalty or glory of man to come out in this.

261 There is on the golden altar a cloth of blue and badgers' skins outside, in the same way as the candlestick; that is, purely the heavenly character, the result of intercession, with the badgers' skins as protection.

On the brazen altar they spread a purple cloth and badgers' skins. The altar met the claim of earthly righteousness. Christ met our failure on it; but there is nothing heavenly in it. This was to meet us on earth. The purple, royalty, is with the altar.

We have three colours; blue or rather bluish purple tekeleth, which was on the table, the candlestick, and the golden altar; tolaath, scarlet or crimson on the loaves; and argaman, reddish purple on the brazen altar. All relate to the person of Christ or the display of what He is. The first appears to be that which was heavenly or the divine in man. The table shews divine righteousness in character, the base of human order and administration; so the candlestick with its spiritual perfection; and the altar giving us intercession within. All on the journey were thus covered. What we know of them has this character in going through the wilderness. The loaves were covered with scarlet, that is, displayed royalty in perfect administration itself. So over the ark there was first the veil, Christ's human nature, then guarded on the earth in spotlessness, untainted, by the badgers' skin, and the result was the heavenly or divine in man manifested here. The reddish purple answers to the brazen altar of sacrifice, and points to the more heavenly royalty, the One exalted as the consequence of self-sacrifice to God. It is lordship glory or reign, but not so much displayed from heaven, and displaying it as brought there in answer to suffering. It was more as conferred on man than displayed in him, though it win be displayed. The transfiguration displayed it, not the lowly Saviour.

The Feasts

Leviticus 23.

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I apprehend that these feasts must be taken to apply entirely to that which is earthly. Other knowledge may enable us to carry our eyes onward to the results of what is here taught, which have their place in the heavenlies; but as addressed to the Jews, they cannot historically, I conceive, be taken beyond that which took place on earth. But this is of infinite value and importance to us, because (whatever the results may be, the heavenly and glorious results) still many of the most important subjects and resting-places of faith were accomplished on the earth historically. The Lord was offered up a sacrifice on earth. The Holy Ghost descended on the disciples on earth. The church, though its glory may not be on earth, has been formed in suffering on earth. And the church itself looks for the deliverance of the creature from the bondage of corruption. And the value and character of what has been done on earth, of which the church is partaker, is here delineated in detail.

There are seven feasts: - the Sabbath; the Passover that of Unleavened Bread; the Feast of Weeks, or of firstfruits; of Trumpets; of Atonement; and of Tabernacles.

But the first was distinct in character. Before all the history of the transactions which brought in the rest, or preceded it, the great truth, that there was a rest that remained, was made prominent and conspicuous. It was the primary and characterizing truth. Between the three former and the three latter of the six remaining feasts, there is a large gap, a characteristic gap, so that the full course of the year to the seventh month goes on, before the trumpet is blown for the first of the latter three. This interval had no feast; and one only remark is made as to it, which may be noticed by-and-by.

A similar arrangement we find in the seven parables, in Matthew 13, the prophetic history of the kingdom of heaven, as this is of the earthly dealings in grace with Israel (in many things, we know, by adopting grace with us also): this, the history of what prepared the rest, preceded by the statement of the rest, God's rest, in type; that, of the effects and character of the work, preceded by the generic statement of the workman, and the manner of the reception and result of his labours in principle.

263 The rest of God is that which distinguishes man from the brute, and from being as a brute with hopes and labour ending only here in that which perishes, to say even the best of it. The promise is left us, says the apostle to the Hebrews, of entering into God's rest. This is the portion of blessing and communion in which God, in the delight of His works of creation or redemption, refreshed Himself; and into which He introduces us in the riches of His grace, and by His work, into fellowship of delight and joy with Him, whether of heavenly communion or of earthly blessing. The rest of God is the great end and beginning of thought and desire into which the renewed creature is brought in fellowship now of hope. Here God and the creature are brought into unity or community of happiness, the creature (even we, by the Spirit) being capacitated for this communion. The creation also has blessing and rest. Faith, and patience, and conflict, are now involved in it, and hence the complex character of the believer's mind; for one is sure, is certain, and is his; the other present, and he toiling in it.

The Sabbath then, even the seventh day, was the first great characteristic and repeated feast: the seventh day, because the rest was at the close of labour, and rest not known in the flesh, and under the law, until the end of labour; and the rest of the world and of the earth, creation - rest, was after all the toil and labour that sin had introduced into it had ended and was passed away. This seventh day was God's creation-rest, and it remained when labour and toil came in to man, the pledge and type (as in the flesh, and having earthly things) of the rest that remained to the world and him.

But the saints have nothing in the world; they are crucified to it. To them resurrection is the beginning, and, withal, the substance and end of their hope and life. The first day of the week, in which Jesus rose from the dead, is the living witness to them in joyful service (and remembrance of that through which it was purchased) of the rest that remained to them, which they have now in spirit, and go forth from that to toil yet awhile in the world in which they are conversant. It is not to them creation and earthly rest, but redemption, resurrection, and the hope of heavenly rest, and therefore enjoyed, not on the day of God's rest in creation, but of Jesus (beginning of blessing and glory as head of the church, "the firstborn from the dead") in resurrection, in which He rested, as to work to be done in redemption - rested save as to everlasting blessing and service to His saints, in which they have joy and communion with Him as their Priest - the leader of their praises, in which, as in living strength now in spirit, then in body also, they rest not. Thus in this double type the whole millennial rest is taken in, heavenly or resurrection, and earthly or rest for the flesh; of this, however (save in the great general principle), the earthly rest, creation-rest, is only told of here. Of this the law maintained the type, though it proved that man could not attain the rest under it; and therefore when the Lord was accused of breaking the sabbath, He replied, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," shewing the divine intervention (of the Father and the Son) in grace accomplishing that comfort which the law could not. do; in which man, in a word, impotently failed;. and therefore God, in sovereignty and in redemption-glory, as Father and Son, had now manifested Himself as having set Himself to work - to do - nor rested; for He was in grace where wretched man found no rest. Hitherto (for yet man was not delivered) they worked.

264 But to turn to the other feasts. The first three (the feast of weeks has its own distinct character) are leading feasts, in which all the males were to gather at the place where Jehovah set His name. But we must take their order from the text. They are divided into ordinances by the expression, "And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying." The first paragraph, or ordinance, closes at the 8th verse, connecting in one continuous train the Sabbath and the Passover, and feast of Unleavened Bread, though distinguished by the 4th verse as beginning the six yearly feasts historically, yet morally in constitution the rest connected and identified with it. For it is by the Passover, and simply so, that the rest is obtained: there may be other conducive workings, but by this the rest is obtained. And this is true also of the church in principle, as well as of the earthly rest; "the Father . . . has made us fit" for the inheritance with the saints in light, says the scripture (Col. 1: 12). And this is a very important principle.

The Passover of God is the simple single ground of rest and security; upon the blessed value of this the children of God can feed within, the security of the blood being upon their door-posts. That meets the destroying angel, and he goes, and can go, no farther. Within all is peace. judgment may be around, and conflict and trial before, but the church rests in the security which faith has afforded or enjoys in the Paschal Lamb, eaten within the blood-stricken doors. This is not the work of the Spirit of God, save as revealing it in and to us; the work of the Spirit detects sin, leads into conflict, animates into those exercises which ever bring to light the evil, short-comings, and failure of our own hearts, but is never the ground and warrant of peace. It may be the means, on being charged by the enemy, of proving that the peace we have is not a false one, but is never the proper ground and warrant of peace; for it is ever connected with imperfection; and perfectness somewhere must be the ground of a perfect peace with God. "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." "He has made peace by the blood of his cross." Nothing can be mixed with this, nothing in us comes up to the measure and expression of holiness which that blood affords, or therefore can make peace as it does. It is the very vindication of perfect holiness against all sin, and therefore the perfect peace of the believer against all sin; for the thing which alone adequately measures it puts it away, cleanses from all sin those that are walking in the light. "But Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." And we have thus definitely the antitype of the Lamb that was slain. It is, moreover, in this character that Christ at present holds the throne, as regards His work and its worthiness, as it is written (Heb. 1: 3; Phil. 2: 9, 10; Rev. 5: 9.)

265 The secondary feast connected with this was the Unleavened Bread. This was consequent upon the other. As received by the blood, we feed on and apprehend the unleavened perfectness of Christ. It is His intrinsic character as known by faith. There was no "leaven of malice and wickedness" in Him, and in the spirit of His holiness in our new nature we hold communion with, delight in, and feast upon, Him. The spotless sacrifice and unleavened perfectness of Christ, with which we have communion, are the things then presented by this feast - the sure ground of rest, the rest which remaineth to the people of God: this of Christ as in the world; we know Him such here.

At verse 9 a new ordinance begins, which continues to verse 23 - the connection of Christ as risen and presented before Jehovah in resurrection, and the church (that is, properly, the Jewish remnant) connected with Him (the Gentile adoption being another thing, though abundantly shewn in scripture, there being neither Jew nor Gentile in the full result), but here confined to resurrection.

266 On the morrow after the sabbath the unbroken sheaf of first-fruits was waved before Jehovah. On the first day of the week the Lord Jesus, not having seen corruption, rose from the dead, became the first-fruits of them that slept. Thus, as well as of the passover, we have in this case the literal and authenticated fulfilment of the type given. On the same day a lamb for a burnt-offering and a meat-offering was offered to Jehovah. I must shortly digress here with regard to the offering, the use of which will appear also in the subsequent part of the ordinance we are now treating of. It will be seen (v. 19) that with the first-fruits of the feast of weeks, a sin-offering also was offered, and a peace-offering, but not with the sheaf of first-fruits, typical of Christ's resurrection, on which the church and Jews rest for acceptance, as it is written (v. 11), "to be accepted for you."

The offerings recorded in the book of Leviticus (into the details of which, with the Lord's permission, we may enter on some other opportunity), were these: - The burnt-offering, the meat-offering, the peace-offering, the sin-offering, and the trespass-offering, and in this order. The first two present Christ offering Himself spotless and perfect to God; the next, the communion of the worshipper in it, and with God by it; the two latter the necessity of the worshipper, as a sinner before God, borne for him by the victim vicariously substituted for him, and treated consequently as himself under and responsible for the sin thus taken upon it. These are very distinct things in their character, and all true of the death and offering of Jesus.

The burnt-offering was the complete surrender of life., on which all hung, and this not by virtue of imputed transgression, but His own offering of Himself; not an imposed necessity but of His own voluntary will, as in John 10: "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." Now the whole life of Jesus was on this principle; His death was the full accomplishment and exhibition of it - proved all the rest, "He gave himself for us." Of this, that is, His giving Himself, describing Him especially as the Son of God, the Gospel of John is the especial witness; I speak merely as refers to this subject. There is, besides the quoted passages, no garden of Gethsemane, but, "Arise, let us go hence." "I am he," and "they went backward, and fell to the ground." "If ye seek me, let these go their way; that the saying might be fulfilled which He spake, Of them which thou hast given me I have lost none;" even of them who all forsook Him and fled. There was no "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" not merely as in Luke 23: 46, "he expired," having said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"; but having said, "It is finished," He bowed His head and "delivered up his spirit."

267 Here then we have the burnt sacrifice offered to the very utmost of His own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. It was always true in principle, His meat was "to do the will of him that sent him"; but it was wrought to the full effort when the blessed Master and Lord, the free Lord of all, gave up His spirit to the Father. This sacrifice was an offering made by fire, a sweet savour to Jehovah. This was not said of the sin-offering, as such. The fat of the sin-offering, to connect it with the burnt-offering in principle, for both were one in Christ, was burnt on* the altar, and this was of a sweet savour; but the offering in its differential character was not an offering made by fire, nor of a sweet savour to Jehovah. This the meat-offering was, however, as well as the burnt-offering - one being, it appears to me, the complete offering of the life, the other of all the natural faculties of the Lord as man, which, being perfect as His will, He was in them all an offering made by fire, a sweet savour to Jehovah. The peace-offering was, as far as the fat burnt upon the altar, an offering made by fire, a sweet savour to Jehovah; then the offerers feasted on the flesh, and being the communion of the worshippers, evil was mixed in them, and they were to offer leavened bread therewith. On the sin-offering, sins were coalesced; it was burnt without the camp as a vile thing, not an offering made by fire - no sweet savour. It was the vicarious substitute for offences, bearing them on its head and in its body, made sin for the sinner, vile, and treated as such.

{*Except in the case of the red heifer, which was altogether characteristically a sin-offering.}

268 With the offering, therefore, of the sheaf of first-fruits there was no sin-offering, no peace-offering, but only accompanying this presenting of Christ to God, waved before Him as risen uncorrupted, the witness of the perfectness of that self-sacrifice in which Jesus had offered Himself living and dying to God - His own perfect offering of Himself. - As to leaven, there could be no question of it; the seed sown, and the first risen sheaf, were alike by their nature free from any portion or partaking in it. With this the church is connected, on this it is built; indeed, all hope, I say, upon the resurrection. Sin and death have entered; resurrection is the only way out of it. One alone could provide a spotless sacrifice which should bring others out of it. Resurrection was the witness, the power of the church's acceptance; for its sins, which Jesus, as representing it, had borne in His own body on the tree,, were gone, discharged. He rose free from them all in every sense. "He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification": therefore we have peace. Resurrection was also the spring and source and character of its life, as well as the power in which Jesus exercised all the functions in which He secured "the sure mercies of David" to the Jew, and glory, by a continuous priesthood, for the church - the sinner called by grace. The church is quickened together with Him, being forgiven all trespasses.

But connected with this, in the communicating energy by which it and all resulting* from it is enjoyed, is the gift of the Holy Ghost, answering to the gift of the law after the redemption from Egypt. Accordingly, on the morrow after the seventh sabbath, after the former offering of first-fruits (called hence the day of Pentecost), the associate feast was introduced, a new meat-offering was to be offered, the feast of first-fruits. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals, they shall be of fine flour, they shall be baken with leaven, they are the first-fruits unto Jehovah." These, it is to be remarked, were to be baken with leaven. The force of this in such case may be seen (1 Cor. 5: 8). The leaven mixed with the cakes of first-fruits is spoken of also in the direction as to the meat-offering (Lev. 2). "No meat-offering which ye shall bring unto Jehovah shall be made with leaven, for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of Jehovah made by fire." As for the oblation of the first-fruits, "Ye shall offer them unto Jehovah, but they shall not be burnt on the altar for a sweet savour."

{*I say all resulting from it, because, though not brought out in the type as not entering into the heavenlies, in fact (and we know it) the ascension of Christ was necessary to the conference of the gift to the church, letting in the Gentiles, constituting the ground of its knowledge of righteousness (John 16: 10), the character of its life (Col 1: 27; Phil. 3: 20), and the place of its fellowship (Eph. 2: 6, and indeed the whole of the epistle). And I say "necessary," both from its revelation of the mystery, as stated in the passages, and from the Lord's word in John 20: 17, rejecting the acknowledgment of Him in worship by the Jew, as seen in resurrection, until the accomplishment of His glory in ascension - the heavens receiving Him till the times of the restitution of all things; and therefore Peter, in preaching upon the gift of the Holy Ghost here typified, says, "He being by the right hand of God exalted, has shed forth this which ye see and hear." But these feasts, being in themselves expressions of what took effect upon earth as being to the Jews, though Gentiles might be brought in, do not enter thus within the veil, though the waving before Jehovah expresses the presenting to Him in a general sense. This was necessary for all.}

269 Now, of this feast subsidiary to the resurrection-sheaf we have also the fulfilment historically afforded in scripture: the history of "the day of Pentecost fully come" is too well known to need the proof of its application. By this the church was first formally gathered; and though the operations of the Spirit were continued in gathering even till now, still they partook of the same character. "Of his own will begat he them with the word of truth, that they might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures."

As then we had Christ sacrificed as the passover, and raised and waved as the sheaf of first-fruits uncorrupted to God, and the burnt sacrifice and meat-offering in which was no leaven offered therewith, so we have here, consequent thereon and connected therewith, the quickening gathering operation of the Holy Ghost, but the cake which it made, the first-fruits of the creature, mixed with leaven. There was still in the work which it produced other besides itself: leaven was there; consequently, though offered to Jehovah, it could not be burnt on the altar for a sweet savour. Here, then, we have the essential difference between the church and Christ: the one in all its parts perfect, and in His offering a sweet savour made by fire, unleavened beauty and perfectness, and fit and able to be presented to God in the holiness of His judgment; the other, under the operation of the Spirit, offered indeed to Jehovah, but let it be ever so blessed, leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness still there, and incapable of being presented as a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto Jehovah.

270 Such, then, is the character of the church still, as presented in itself to God. The fruits of the Spirit in it may be most pleasant to the Lord, and are so, and of a sweet savour; the flesh may be subdued and kept down, and these blessed fruits, against which there is no law, most pleasant to God as the offspring in us of the seed of His grace, glorifying Him the rather as produced in such a soil, but as presented in itself to God still such. But for this there was also characteristic provision: in verses 19, 20, We find a sin-offering offered, waved with the leavened cakes; and as the offering of Christ was in its own purity, and could be a sweet savour, so this was accepted through that which accompanied it - the sin-offering, which met, as it were, and supplied the defect of them, was waved. There was also a peace-offering, because there the joy and communion into which the church was brought by the Spirit.

The whole of this dispensation rests under the character of this feast; the sheaf of first-fruit, with its suited offerings of perfectness, and the leavened cake consequent upon it, with its called-for offering of sin-bearing, and resulting offering of communion, still characterized by accompanying leaven (Lev. 7: 13). The work of Christ for rest, and the gathering and state of the church met by the sin-offering, are brought into clear and distinct light; nor does this dispensation pass beyond these things.

Next we find allusion to the harvest, but it is not actually treated of. It embraced heavenly things; the wheat, in that Christ was rejected, risen, and glorified, was to be gathered into His barn. It passed beyond earthly things, for He had. The whole condition and circumstances of the church, though under the energy of God's Spirit brought out on earth, did not belong to them; it was a leavened cake still. The harvest was properly associated with the waved sheaf - with resurrection; it is passed by, because the risen church would be associated with Christ in heavenly glory. But there is allusion to it; no feast nor part of a feast, but a fact connected with it. The harvest did not, and in God's purpose was not meant to clear the field. The corners were unreaped, the gleanings ungathered. There was left in the field by the harvest still that which, though not gathered into the barn, was wheat; and of this only is such a thing spoken. We have nothing to do with tares here.

271 Hereupon we return to the course of earthly things. Long months had passed since the purpose of God had begun to work; and long months ere the full time came round, after the unnoticed period of heavenly things, for returning to purposes properly earthly,* the first-fruits characterizing the whole period, and only noticing as to the harvest that it did not clear the field.

{*I apprehend therefore, that strictly speaking it is simply Jewish, though other scriptures shew us the introduction of the Gentiles into the blessing and circumstances connected therewith.}

Verse 23 of the chapter introduces, as accompanying the ushering in of the seventh month, a holy convocation, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a day of joy and holiday. Jehovah was called to mind in it. Such is the character of this feast - it was a memorial. When the moon began afresh to receive its new light from the sun, yet feeble and heretofore waxed dim; when the other thought has passed away, Jehovah's memorial takes effect. The trumpets were blown at other times, for a memorial to be remembered before Jehovah. Now it was the feast of remembrance - the trumpets characterized the very object of the feast; only it was upon the reappearance of the moon, not the Sun of righteousness. It had hitherto eclipsed the moon, yet now from it this, renewed, should receive its light; gradually had it waned to be hidden in his splendour, now emerging from it, risen in his light reflected - forgotten in it, to man's judgment, at least. The trumpet is blown in the new moon, on the solemn feast-day (Ps. 81: 3; Isa. 51). For if a woman should forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb, yet if to man forgotten, "she was graven on the palms of his hands, who fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of his understanding." "If he had spoken against them, he earnestly remembered them still." "His servants" were now to "think upon her stones." But the summons was public and loud, though in the new moon; it demanded the attention of the isles - yea, all the inhabitants of the world, and dwellers upon earth, when he blew a trumpet The circumstances and interpretation of that chapter, Isaiah 18, I do not enter into; but it marks the connection of the period.

272 The great public summons being now given brings on the day of atonement for Israel (that is, their coming in personal humiliation under it), and this was separative in its character. It was a day for them to afflict their souls, ceasing irrespectively from all worldly employment - "Ye shall do no work." Whatever soul was not afflicted was to be cut off, and so it will be: we find it in Joel 2; we find their character in Zephaniah 3: 12; we find the affliction itself in Zechariah 12. Their acknowledgment in terms of the value of that which made peace for the mourners is in Isaiah 53.*

{*Applicable, I need not say, in its value to the church, but spoken in terms by the remnant of the Jews in the latter day.}

These two are yet to come - ordinances for Israel, whose antitypical accomplishment is yet to be looked for, after the lapse of the period allotted in specific character to the church, gathered by the Spirit as a waved cake of first-fruits with leaven. The day of blowing of trumpets, and the day of atonement, of humbling and afflicting their souls to Israel, was followed in the perfected time of twice seven days, by the great solemn assembly of the feast of Tabernacles, at which all the children of Israel were to appear, "the great congregation." As to this, there are some remarkable circumstances. This alone (save the feast of Passover once in Deuteronomy 16: 8, with, I believe, a similar purpose) is called a solemn assembly, as far as I am aware, or day of restraint. It was the great final feast of the year. It was at this feast that Solomon's temple was dedicated, when "the king turned his face and blessed the whole congregation of Israel"; when the blessed Jehovah God of Israel had with his hands fulfilled that which He had spoken with His mouth to his father David, and the glory of Jehovah had filled the house of God. It was at this feast that the children of Israel found themselves assembled under Nehemiah, on their restoration from Babylon to their own land, after the captivity. It was at this feast that the brethren of Jesus proposed that He should shew Himself to the world; but His time was not yet come, though their time was always ready; and He went not up (then) unto the feast. It was the final assembly of the whole congregation of Israel.

273 There was, however, another remarkable circumstance in the feast of Tabernacles - there was an eighth day, or, as we should say, a first day of the week, which was not the case with the other feasts. This is noticed, after the regular history of the feasts which we have been tracing, in verse 39; again, and in connection with another feature, that it was after the gathering in the fruit of the land. All born Israelites, moreover, we are told in this second notice of it, were to dwell in booths, in witness that they had been made to dwell as pilgrims in booths under Jehovah shadow, as it were in a houseless, homeless wilderness. It was the feast of ingathering.

Now, this eighth day, as we observed, is the first day of the week - the resurrection day; the whole seven days they were to rejoice before Jehovah: such was their portion in their rest, but the eighth day was the solemn assembly, "the great day of the feast." This surely marks the connection and introduction, the extraordinary connection of the resurrection church, with the rest that remained to the people of God. Our Lord's reference to this "great day of the feast" marks and confirms - indeed, establishes this. Upon the last day, that great day of the feast, at which, though typically present, He declared He would not shew Himself then to the world, He cried and said, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, and out of his belly shall flow, as the scripture hath said, rivers of living water. This spake he of the Spirit which they that believed on him should receive."

In the first place there is the admission of the Gentiles here. "If any man thirst"; and there is the gift of the Holy Ghost, the witness of heavenly things, whence flowed the refreshing streams of divine knowledge and grace, concerning that which was verified in the ascension where Jesus was glorified, of which it was the witness as coming from it. This is doubtless in allusion to the rock in the wilderness, on their coming out of which into the land they were to keep the feast of the Tabernacles. Jesus was not yet manifest to the world, nor would He be till He came in glory. In the meanwhile His thirsting saints would be in the wilderness, "in a barren and dry land, where no water was," waiting to see the glory which would give them rest - that first day of the new and everlasting week, when Jesus should appear.

But then as to each, out of his belly would be rivers of living water; his own soul, through the Holy Ghost dwelling in him, would be the channel of boundless refreshment; each one that once thirsted would be the source of refreshment to others. It was not merely he was born of the Spirit; it was not merely that it dwelt in him, as a well springing up in him unto everlasting life; but it should be from his soul as rivers flowing forth of spiritual heavenly things, all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. "Out of his belly," because it was not merely as to the believer a conferred gift, the lowest way in which it would be present - for Jesus might still say, "I never knew you," - but from the planting and reforming the affections of his soul, capacitating them, through the energy of the Spirit, for the communicative possession and enjoyment, as well as statement, of all these heavenly joys, which should be accomplished when, in the great eighth day of the feast, Jesus, long hidden and doing things secretly, should shew Himself to the world.

274 This then embraces what we are accustomed to call the Gentile church - the glorified church; of which the indwelling Spirit, in its blessing of all power in the individual soul, had been marked by the Lord as the sign in the wilderness; not merely a rock out of which for all, but out of his belly who believed, should flow rivers of living water. Thus the force of the eighth day is made very distinctly apparent.

The feast of the ingathering properly embraced Israel - the people of God, restored out of the wilderness to the place of God's rest, to rejoice there, gathered back out of all lands. But it involves with it another scene, dimly marked and given room for, in which indeed Israel and the world too had resulting blessing, but which flowed (as the eye of the believer filled with the Spirit is opened to see) from higher sources, though it might refresh the gladdened plains below - exhaustless boundless sources of heaven-caught supplies. When to the desires, thus quickened and thus exalted, Jehovah should pour forth His fulness; and Jehovah should "hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel." God would sow her unto Him in the earth, and have mercy on her that had not obtained mercy, and say to them on whom Lo-ammi had been written, "Thou art my people"; and they shall say, "Thou art my God"; a time when the mountains, catching the full rain of blessings from above, shall but distribute them by the valleys which Jehovah has formed; and the wide scene beneath shall be refreshed by goodness and blessing, which its own far distant lowness would have never reached or drawn.

275 Blessed shall be that day, a full unhindered united time of joy, when all long severed, never properly one in glory (knit only in the misery which he, who had defiled the heavens, and deceived and ruined man upon the earth, had brought in), brought into one fulness in order, and united and suited blessing, in connection with a far higher, even the highest infinite fulness through Him who, being Lord from heaven, descended into the lower parts of the earth, that He might fill all things (gathered together in one, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in Him; in whom we have received an inheritance), shall be in Him to the praise of His glory, shall minister in perfect unison of various reflective glory to the perfectness of His love whose all the glory is! And the blood of the Lamb, through which it has been accomplished, shall be seen in all its glory, in all its value. They shall declare its excellency in marvelling thankfulness for ever. It has cleansed and redeemed us for communion with the Highest, and purged the defiled inheritance - the now accomplished rest of God in love and peace.

The Pleasant Land despised

Numbers 13, 14.

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Beloved, do our hearts indeed say

"We are on our way to God"?

Do we believe that, with the innumerable throng of the redeemed, we shall soon sing the everlasting anthem of praise to the Lamb? It is astonishing the simplicity of heart there is when we believe that "we are on our way to God." Whenever the soul has really got hold of this, believing in God, knowing His love, that He has brought us out of Egypt, and that we are on our way to Canaan, there is a spring of heart that surmounts everything. There may be a great many things by the way to exercise our hearts and thoughts; but if this feeling predominates, they only come in by the way. If my mind be fixed on present circumstances and present difficulties, and on God's helping me in them, there will not at all be the same spring of joy. For then I make God to be simply the servant of my necessities. The heart rests and centres there, and God sinks down into a mere help in time of trouble. It is quite true that "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble" (Ps. 46: 1); but to bring Him down to be only this changes the whole aspect of things. Himself, as our portion, is infallibly ours. If our hearts are fixed on being with Jesus in His rest and glory, on being in the "Father's house," our own present difficulties have the character of difficulties by the way; we can then rise over trouble, however felt. And our thoughts about God are not merely that He will help us in the circumstances in which we are - our hearts being fixed on Him, we live in the freedom that arises from the constant certainty that all that is Christ's is ours. It is important for us to have our minds fixed on the hope of glory which is set before us.

One form which unbelief takes is the not having this hope fresh on the mind. Supposing I had to live twenty years, the next thing to my heart ought to be the glory. In the children of Israel unbelief took many forms; one character of it was that "they despised the pleasant land," chap. 14: 31; Ps. 106 : 24. Now very often there is in our hearts practically, though not wilfully, the despising of the pleasant land. I am not speaking of any doubtfulness as to the land being ours. If there were something that a friend had given me as a great treasure, and I was sure of its being mine, and yet I looked at it but seldom and cared to think of it but seldom, this would be a proof (not of uncertainty respecting its being mine, but) that I despised the thing, that I had no real value for it. This is very often the way we treat the heavenly glory that belongs to us. We do not question the truth of the promises; but, when our souls are not dwelling upon and delighting in the glory that is set before us, there is a "despising of the pleasant land." It is too much the case with the saints. And no occupation with present things - with present duties even - can make up for the loss of peace and comfort there is to the soul from not dwelling on the things which God has laid up in store for them that love Him (1 Cor. 2: 9) as its own things. Instead of God's being the strength and fulness of our present joy in the midst of present tribulation, as it is said, "We joy in God" (Rom. 5: 11), we only make Him a help in time of trouble. There is weakness and infirmity instead of rejoicing in God. The heart being brought down here and kept down, it brings down God after it (so gracious is He, that He will even come down), instead of rising above present circumstances up to God.

277 Of course this character of unbelief will not be manifested in the hearts of the saints as it was in the children of Israel, but, in measure, it is the same thing.

The "spies" (Num. 13, 14) had been sent by Moses, at the command of Jehovah, to search out the land of Canaan, "which," Jehovah said, "I give unto the children of Israel," and to bring of the fruit thereof. The Spirit of God, personally dwelling in present witness in us, takes of the glory of the Lord Jesus, of the things of the land of promise (that true Canaan, of which faith says, My land), and thus shews us of our portion.

"So they went up, and searched the land, from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob. . . . And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs. The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days. And they went and came to Moses, and to Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and brought back word unto them, and unto all the congregation, and shewed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it," v. 23-27. There was no gainsaying the report of the spies, these grapes told of the goodness of the land. It was a land that produced such fruit. So, when the Holy Ghost brings the earnest to us of our joy and glory, who would gainsay? who does not feel that it is worth anything by the way to get there - the earnest is so sweet?

278 "Nevertheless," said the spies, "the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great, and, moreover, we saw the children of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains," etc. When the people heard that there were difficulties, there began to be restlessness and uneasiness amongst them.

"And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well, able to overcome it," v. 30. He was strong in faith.

"But the men that went up with him, said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched, unto the children of Israel, saying, The land through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight," v. 31-33. That is, they get hold of the thought of the people in unbelief: and venture to deny all that they had previously said, when they see that their report was not received. The first thing they told Moses was the simple truth, that it was a very good land; but when they see this unbelief at work in the minds of the people, their judgment respecting it is quite different, and they say It is a very bad land. The whole sense of the goodness of Jehovah in giving them the land is gone, and consequently they break down in despair when looking at the difficulties by the way. There is not merely distrust about their overcoming these enemies; they lose the sense of the goodness of the land, and then they have no encouragement in their difficulties. Their state becomes weakness. just so with the Christian; if I lose the joy of the glory, the difficulties I meet with by the way are insurmountable, for my heart does not know what it has to contend for.

279 This and more will be seen coming out in chapter 14. And all the congregation lifted up their voices, and cried, and the people wept that night," etc. When, in the first freshness of their setting out, their sin had manifested itself (bad as it was), they did not lay the blame upon God; they said, "This Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt," Ex. 33. But the moment this unbelief gets hold of their hearts, the desert becomes thoroughly and insupportably painful to them, and they say, "Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in the wilderness! and wherefore hath Jehovah brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make us a captain, and let us return into Egypt," v. 1-4. See what a miserably wicked state of unbelief they had got into, so as to attribute to Jehovah Himself their trials and difficulties. This is a snare to which even Christians are exposed. We are conscious that it is the Lord that has brought us up out of bondage, and hence when trials come upon us our hearts are apt to say. This comes of my being a Christian, - the Lord has brought me into these difficulties. Now, had Canaan been on the hearts of the children of Israel, they would have said, Thank God that we are thus far on our way to Canaan. Let the difficulties be what they might, if they had felt, By the word of Jehovah we have been brought here, there would have been thanksgiving and not murmuring. But they stopped at the point where they were, instead of looking at it as but a step on the way to the glorious land before them. There was the pretence of thoughtfulness for others - their wives and children, though in reality it was only selfishness.

Verses 6-9. Joshua and Caleb speak of the exceeding goodness of the land, and add, "If Jehovah delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against Jehovah, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and Jehovah is with us: fear them not." Their confidence is in Him.

280 "But all the congregation bade stone them with stones." The moment that was spoken which should have cheered the people, it brought out positive hostility.

Verses 13-19. The intercession of Moses comes in, based on the testimony Jehovah had given of Himself. (Compare Ex. 34: 6, 7.) The principle of it is this, the perfect identification of Jehovah with His people. He presses on Jehovah that His own glory is bound up with the preservation and blessing of His people, is inseparable from them.

Two things result. Jehovah acts according to the faith of Moses, as He ever does according to the faith that is in us (v. 20); but He sends the children of Israel into the desert to remain there until all the men that came up out of Egypt fell,

There is another thing also to notice. When the children of Israel will not go up in faith into the promised land, Jehovah sends them a long way round the desert. Two things accompany this: one as the result of it, the other pure grace. If they have to march round the desert, Jehovah cannot leave them alone; He must go round with them, guiding them by His pillar of fire and of cloud all the way. His grace abounds over sin. Secondly, Caleb and Joshua must go the long way round too. They had not gone with the people in their evil; but as to the pain and trial of the march which the unbelief of the others had caused, they are obliged to go along with the people, and to bear a part of it. This is what we must make up our minds to. If the church has failed, we must make up our minds to accompany it in its course of sorrow, though not in its course of sin. As far as Caleb and Joshua were concerned, there was the exercise of grace, and patience, and love. It was blessed to them, for God was faithful in keeping them, whilst the rest fell in the wilderness. Caleb is able to say, at the end of the forty years, that he is as strong for war as at the beginning, "both to go out, and to come in," Josh. 14. But the faithful, though they had the consciousness that God was with them, were obliged to accompany the unfaithful in their course of sorrow, arising from the position into which they had brought themselves,

This is our place. In the spirit of love, of patience, and of humiliation, we have always to take the place of those who have sinned. See Daniel. Though himself personally righteous Daniel confesses the people's sin as his own, saying, "O Lord . . . we have sinned, and have committed iniquity . . . to us belongeth confusion of face," etc. (Dan. 9). The sin and evil of those who have sinned should be confessed by the remnant; who, though not partakers of the sin, must yet be partakers of the consequences of it, suffering in all the affliction with true sympathy and fellowship.

281 In applying this practically to ourselves, what was it that led to the very need of their having Jehovah with them on the march? The soul not being set on (their not having their affections occupied with) the blessings of the promised land. And that which we have to seek is that our souls may "abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." The Holy Ghost dwelling in us becomes the earnest of those better things in our hearts; and reveals to us that it is Jehovah's land, the land which He has given us, that He is bringing us into. If we are able to say, This is the fruit of the land which Jehovah has given us, - if our hearts affections are dwelling on the land, all the strength of the Anakim is as nothing. No matter, then, as to preventing us from getting there, what may be the trial and difficulty by the way. But the moment we lose the consciousness of what is ours, the moment we forget that Jehovah has given us the land, difficulties and trials occupy our mind, and become too great for us; we fall under the power of them. This results from our losing sight of what belongs to us in hope. We cannot have our hearts fixed on Canaan without being conscious that Jehovah's strength is with us.

If I rest in circumstances I am apt to blame the Lord for bringing me there. Nobody ever thought of the blessedness of being with Jesus in the glory, and of being like Him there, no one ever entered in spirit really there without being conscious that it was Jehovah's strength that would bring him there. Then all in the way is a mere circumstance.

What I desire for you and for myself, beloved, is that we may avoid "despising the pleasant land." And do not let us say that we are not "despising" it if we are not thinking often about it. If we are not thinking of Jesus where He is, and of being with Him there, we are "despising the pleasant land." May we "hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end."

We must not suppose that the scriptures do not supply to the new man the details of the glory that belongs to us. But they are details known only to faith. It is only just so far as we are in present communion with the Lord that we shall understand and enjoy them. Memory will not do. There is no possibility of exercising memory about the objects of hope. We must be filled with the Spirit. That which will fill up our joy is Christ Himself, who fills all things. We find a fund of detail about the glory when we know, by the power of the Holy Ghost, what Christ is for us - Christ glorified. just as the poor robber (taught of the Holy Ghost) could state the whole life of Christ, though he had never known Him before as if he had been His intimate friend, saying to his companion, "This man has done nothing amiss," so the soul, when taught by the Holy Ghost, has Jesus as the object of its affections, and knows and realizes it. The mind then becomes occupied with the object of its hope in glory, and the individual is able to say, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." All the circumstances which happen to us only come in by the way, Instead of having the thoughts down here in the trouble, bringing God down into it, we are lifted clean out of it into glory. This sets us on our "high places," when, otherwise, there would be the feeling in the heart, "Why hath Jehovah brought us into this land to fall by the sword," etc. The Holy Ghost delights to take of the things of Christ and shew them to us (John 16: 13-15).

282 The Lord give us, in realizing the fulness of Jesus, to have our souls in the sweet savour of divine delight in Him, dwelling by faith in the promised land, that we may know what our hope is, as well as what is the ground of our hope. And ever let us remember that it is not by any effort of memory but by the power of communion in the Holy Ghost that we can have the present consciousness and enjoyment of those things "which God hath prepared for them that love him."

Numbers 15 - Notes of a Lecture

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This chapter comes in in a very peculiar manner.

The children of Israel had despised the pleasant land they had quarrelled with the manna, the food given to them by God (chap. 11); they had slighted the promises of God concerning the good land, though an earnest was brought to them by the spies (chaps. 13, 14); and in chapter 16 we find them in open rebellion and apostasy, failing away in the gainsaying of Korah. This was not merely failure, which brought on chastisement, but open rebellion, and God cut them off in their sins. It is between these two things this fifteenth chapter comes in.

The Book of Numbers is the putting God's people in their place and the order of their journeys. They had departed from the mount of Jehovah a three days' journey (chap. 10: 33). This was the first time of their starting, and then we find Jehovah goes out of His place in grace. The people ought to have been round about, taking care of Jehovah, but "the ark of the covenant of Jehovah went before them." Moses wished Hobab to be to them instead of eyes"; but God says, I will be as eyes to you and "the ark of the covenant of Jehovah went before them in the three days' journey, to search out a resting-place for them." In this we see the actings of extraordinary grace. "It came to pass when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered, and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when it rested he said, Return, O Jehovah, unto the many thousands of Israel."

The next step, as we see in chapter 11, is the working of unbelief. While God is going before them the people complain; and then come out all the various forms and progress of unbelief. In chapter 14 we see they had to wander in the wilderness forty years. Chapter 15 gives what they were to do in the land; and chapter 16 the open rebellion and apostasy closing in the forms of unbelief. But before this apostate character is developed, chapter 15 comes in, full of loveliness. Rebellion had arisen to a great height, for not only had they despised the pleasant land, but the spies had brought up an evil report of the land. Caleb and Joshua proved their faithfulness in remonstrating with the people, telling them that Jehovah could bring them in, when this awful rebellion broke out, and "all the congregation bade stone them with stones." Then, consequently, "the glory of Jehovah appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel." God interfered immediately, and tells Moses, "I will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they." Then Moses interferes, and here we see the devotedness of his character coming out in intercession. And then God says, "I have pardoned according to thy word," but yet I will chastise them; and to the people He says, "as ye have spoken in my ears, so will I do to you," You shall get the thing your wretched flesh desired, for you shall die in this wilderness (chap. 14: 28, 29).

284 But in the midst of all this comes in chapter 15, in which we learn that God goes on in His purpose as calmly and quietly as if there never had been the despising of the land. For, in the second verse, He says, "When ye be come into the land of your habitations, which I give unto you." His purpose is as settled as if there had been no rebellion at all. He speaks in the calmness of His own purpose. After telling them of chastisement, He says, Ye shall come into the land; it is settled with Me; I go on in the steadfastness of My own counsels. "I am Jehovah your God." It is blessed to see, not that Jehovah will not chastise in the way of government, for He says, "As truly as I live, as ye have spoken in mine ears so will I do to you." But that He never relinquishes His purpose, though He deals with the heart according to its unbelief. We see this in verse 45. The Amalekites and Canaanites discomfited them to Hormah (and Hormah means destruction); but then the heart can always return to the steadfastness of His purpose, which remains in its very nature the same. We see joy shining out in this chapter; a provision for grace and warning. He tells them what to do in the land. "When ye be come into the land of your habitations, Which I give unto you, and will make an offering by fire unto Jehovah, a burnt-offering, or a sacrifice in performing a vow, or in a freewill-offering, or in your solemn feasts, to make a sweet savour unto Jehovah, of the herd, or of the flock: then shall he that offereth his offering unto Jehovah bring a meat-offering of a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of oil. And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink-offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt-offering or sacrifice, for one lamb. Or for a ram, thou shalt prepare for a meat offering two tenths deals of flour mingled with the third part of an hin of oil. And for a drink offering thou shalt offer the third part of an hin of wine for a sweet savour into Jehovah. And when thou preparest a bullock for a burnt-offering, or for a sacrifice in performing a vow, or peace-offerings unto Jehovah: then shall he bring with a bullock a meat-offering of three tenths deals of flour mingled with half an hin of oil. And thou shalt bring for a drink-offering half a hin of wine, for an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Jehovah." 'Your rebellions would have sinned away the land, but I have given it you. It is not a sin-offering you are to bring but a burnt-offering. You are accepted, and are going to worship Me there.'

285 Christ is represented by the burnt-offering - the voluntary offering up of His life to God as a sweet savour. "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." When divine love comes down here, it always returns up in the character of self-sacrifice. God acts in love; Christ walked in love; and divine love acting in man offers itself a sweet savour unto God.

Then they were to bring oil and wine. The oil shewing the joy and gladness, and wine the fellowship in communion. When you have got rest in God, and worship comes out, it must be in joy and gladness of heart and fellowship with God. And He would have us return to Him thus. But we shall not be able to be "followers of God" unless we dwell in this comfort and joy of His thoughts about us.

And further, observe God's actings and givings. "According to the number that ye shall prepare, so shall ye do to every one according to their number. All that are born of the country shall do these things after this manner, in offering an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Jehovah. And if a stranger sojourn with you, or whosoever be among you in your generations, and will offer an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto Jehovah; as ye do, so he shall do. One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you." See how "the branches run over the wall," in God's heart running out, as in verse 14, to the stranger. Christ said He was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but when the poor Gentile woman appealed to the nature of God as a giver, He could not deny her, because He could not deny what He was. Here God is saying, I cannot have a person in my land, and not a worshipper, not enjoying God. All must be happy there. If any person is in the land of God, he must know the mind and temper of the God of the land. There is one law for all. God will be Himself, and make Himself known. While this is the case in the land, there would be offering connected with evil and failure, as in verse 22. God says, There may be failure, therefore I will make provision for sin in grace. And here comes in the sin-offering - that when man fails, God may still maintain and keep him in the place of blessing.

286 Verse 30. The soul that sinneth presumptuously (the case of one who has no life in him), he shall be cut off - " his iniquity shall be upon him." The presumptuous sinner under the law was to be treated with the rigour of the law. No mercy; but "stone him with stones without the camp." Being brought into this condition provision is made for keeping them mindful of where they were brought. Upon the fringes was to be "a riband of blue," signifying a heavenly character (v. 38). The fringes of the garments reached to the earth, and might come in contact with defilement. God's precepts and directions alone can keep us walking after Him. Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone." The precepts of the gospel are like fringes to our garments, attached to those things where sin can touch us. And in this way man does not live by bread alone, "but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; living every instant so as not to be touched by Satan. The "riband of blue," the heavenly mind that calls the precepts and words of the Lord to remembrance. If I were spiritual, and walking in fellowship with God, I should not need precepts; but, in my folly and fleshliness, I need God's precepts to keep my soul mindful of Him. Satan said, "Command that these stones be made bread." There was no harm in satisfying hunger; but Jesus came to do the will of His Father; and this would have been doing His own will. If we walk in a godly manner in the details of life, in the character of " blue," that is, heavenly, we shall remember the words of our Lord, and not do our own wills. All this is the provision of grace in the land. It is sweet to find at the close of all this failure, God returning to bless - giving out His own thoughts of peace, and not of evil, as nothing can weaken or enfeeble the blessedness of God's thoughts concerning us: and therefore closes it by saying, "I am Jehovah your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am Jehovah your God."

Law and Priestly Grace

Numbers 17, 20.

J. N. Darby.

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Putting these two chapters together, we see the grace of God in priestly government, to bring His redeemed through the wilderness, and also the contrast between law and priestly grace.

This grace is drawn out by Israel's sin; but grace does not, of course, allow sin. Law could not bring the people into the land. Law must have kept the whole nation out, except Joshua and Caleb, who followed the Lord fully. We see its actings in chapter 16, in the judgment that fell on Korah and his company. If when redeemed, we were put under the law, we should be no better off than before. Still, God cannot allow sin. Neither could He give the people up; for had He not redeemed them? as Moses pleaded with Him (Num. 14: 13-16), "And Moses said unto Jehovah, Then the Egyptians shall hear it (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them), and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land . . . saying, Because Jehovah was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness." He cannot give them up; He cannot allow sin; and therefore He brings in priestly grace to meet the difficulty. To take away their murmurings, He does not use the rod of Moses, but that of Aaron. The rod of Moses could only judge them for their sin, and thus take away their murmurings by judgment. But Aaron's does it by priestly grace.

God makes it very manifest by whom He will act. Aaron's rod is chosen out of the twelve, and the remarkable sign of its blossoming and yielding fruit, shewed that priesthood was connected with life-giving power, as well as with intercession. Both are needed to uphold them, and to raise them when failing. "The second Adam was made a quickening spirit." This is the care and authority by which we are led through the wilderness. God will allow no other, and no other would do. The priesthood of Christ alone can carry us through. It is the rod of authority too: for "Christ is a son over his own house." But we see that unbelief cannot avail itself of this (chap. 17: 12, 13). "And the children of Israel spake unto Moses, saying, Behold, we die, we perish, we all perish. Whosoever cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of Jehovah shall die: shall we be consumed with dying?" God had shewn them that there was this grace, and they ought to have trusted in it, especially as they had seen the power in Aaron's remaining in among the congregation, and staying the plague. They had ground for full assurance; but unbelief prevailed. They were insensible to the value of the priesthood, and their conscience was still under law. For they did not know God, though at the very moment He was acting for them in priestly grace.

289 The circumstances of chapter 20 put them to the test: the outward power, too, that had brought them out of Egypt was passing away from their minds. Miriam, the expression of it, had died. When apparent power decays, faith is put to the test. Afterwards Moses passed away too. Unbelief does not get the refreshment that faith does. There is no water. They were in a terrible state of mind - wishing they had shared the judgment that had fallen on their brethren - for there was no confidence in Jehovah. Yet they called themselves the congregation of Jehovah. They had the pride, but not the comfort, of it. Moses and Aaron fell on their faces. There seemed no remedy. But Jehovah appeared. He was the only remedy. And He makes Aaron's rod the means of the application of that remedy. It had already been appointed before the occasion for its exercise occurred. There was real need, and God never denies this. He never says it is not real need; but He will have us go to Christ to meet the need. It was not to be Moses's rod, for then it must be judgment. Nor was the rock to be smitten again. That water could be had now without smiting the rock was the result of its having been smitten before by the rod of judgment,

So it is with us. Everything comes to us through Christ's having been on the cross; and we do not need the cross again, but the priestly work. It was now, "speak ye unto the rock before their eyes, and it shall give forth his water." Speak the word only, and the water shall flow. All things are ours; we draw nigh now, not for acceptance, but to have our need supplied. In verses 9, 10, we see that Moses was vexed, and speaks unadvisedly. He could not rise to the height of God's grace; and that was why he could not enter the land. He was in a better mind the first time Israel murmured. Then he said, "It is not against us ye murmur, but against Jehovah"; now he says, "Must we fetch you water out of this rock?" setting up Aaron and himself, and using Jehovah's authority to do it. He smites the rock too. There would really have been more glory to Moses if he had spoken instead of smiting, but he did not see this.

290 God called Aaron's rod "the rod." The other was set aside. They were never under that rod again. It is Christ for us, or nothing. Any other principle must have dealt with them as with Korah. It is only a word now, and every blessing flows. To smite the rock again would be the same as saying, because we fail Christ must die again. It is denying grace to say that anything is needed now except intercession. To "sanctify him" would be to give Him credit for all that He is, as He has revealed Himself. To "sanctify him in our hearts" is to attach to Him all that He is. But Moses did not do this. He did not count upon God's grace, which was all that was needed. But does God stop His grace because of this? Does He stop the outflowing of the water to quench their thirst? No, He does not. If Moses failed to sanctify Him before the people, He will only the more sanctify Himself before them. He comes in Himself when the one who should act fails. Just as when the disciples, who ought to have been able to cast the evil spirit out of the child, failed in doing so, Jesus, coming down from the mount of transfiguration, said, "Bring him to me." It was wrong that they could not cast him out, but His own personal interference was gained through it. He gives the people the water they need, in spite of Moses's unbelief and their murmuring. He will act according to the rod of His appointing, if Moses does not.

Thus Christ never fails in carrying on that which as Priest He has undertaken. Israel should have walked under the power and comfort of that rod. They saw the blossoms and the fruit, and should have counted on it. If there is anything we want, and we doubt of getting it, because we say we do not deserve it, that is putting ourselves under the law. It is forgetting that there is "the rod"; and that it is, "speak the word only." God takes away the murmurings by grace. He deals with all our evil, as His children, in grace. Look at Peter's case. Was it because he repented that Jesus prayed for him that his faith should not fail? We know it was not. And was it because Peter wept that the Lord turned and looked upon him? It was afterwards that he wept. When we do wrong, priestly grace acts for us, and obtains for us grace to see, and confess, and put it away. Christ probes the heart Of Peter, but does not leave him in the evil. This is the privilege of His children. Grace sends the gospel to the world. Grace gives priesthood to the church. It all originates in God. If I sin, it is not I who go to the Priest, but He goes to God for me. It is not said, If a man repents, but if he sins, "we have an advocate with the Father." When, through the action of priestly grace, a sense of my sin is given me, I go to God for strength against it. It is He who obtains that for me which brings me back to God. All this is the fruit of His unsolicited grace. It was God who appointed the rod. He is the God of grace, in spite of all our evil; and when we see it we are confounded. Carrying us through the wilderness is as much grace as redemption and forgiveness. Even when Israel strove with God, He was "sanctified in them." It is very sad to have "Meribah" (chiding, or strife) written on any part of our history - sad as to us - but He makes it an opportunity for His grace. They get just what they want, though Moses is shut out from Canaan. He would make them know the extent of His grace. Another time grace might act in a different way - in chastening, perhaps, if needed; but this taught them what the character and extent of the grace was. just the same grace that spoke in Isaiah 43: 22: "Thou hast been weary of me." "I have not wearied thee, but thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities." What language for God to use! yet He goes on: "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my own sake." Nothing can make us more ashamed of our unbelief than this astonishing grace. And all because of Christ. Nothing makes us hate sin like this.

The Red Heifer

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In Numbers 19 we learn the excessive jealousy of the Lord about sin, not in the sense of guilt but defilement. This He measures by His sanctuary. We have to do with it, and nothing unclean can be allowed. We are clean every whit, but the feet-washing is needed. We belong to the sanctuary and yet are in the world, though not of it; we need to have a just estimate of both. If we but touch evil, a remedy is required. Still it is not the question of justification, but of communion. Sin hinders that - hinders my coming boldly into the holiest. How was this met? The blood of the unblemished heifer, representing Christ who knew no sin and could not be brought under its power, was sprinkled before the tabernacle seven times, that is, before the place of communion, not of atonement. The sin-offering was burnt without the camp. But the blood of the red heifer was sprinkled seven times where we meet God in intercourse. This marks the full efficacy of Christ's blood when I meet God. The body was reduced to ashes, as Christ was judged and condemned for what I am apt to be careless about; but God is not careless, and would make me sensible of sin. Christ had to suffer for it, and it is gone; but the sight of His suffering shews me the dreadfulness of it,

God has an eye that discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart; He would have us discern them too, and without this there can be no communion. But we do not get back into communion as quickly as we get out of it. Seven days elapsed in the type before there was full restoration. The Spirit takes and applies the ashes (that is, the remembrance of Christ's agony, and what occasioned it), and makes us feel practical horror of sin.

When I look at my sin with horror, even in the sense of the grace which has met it, it is a right feeling, but not communion: it is a holy judgment of sin in the presence of grace. Hence, there was a second sprinkling - not on the third day, but the seventh, and then there is communion with God. We see that perfect grace alone maintains the sense of perfect holiness. The result, in the end, is that we increase in the knowledge of God, both as to holiness and love. We must have been out of communion before we sinned, or we should not have yielded. How came I to fall? Because of the carelessness which left me out of God's presence, and exposed me to the evil without and within.

The Faithfulness of God seen in His ways with Balaam

Numbers 22.

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It was the object of the enemy to hinder God's people from the enjoyment of the land God had promised to bring them into. It was not now a question of getting out of Egypt. They were brought out, and nearly at the end of the way. Could they be prevented entering into the land? If it depended on what they were, of course they could be; and Satan, the accuser of the brethren, could hinder our getting to heaven because of our sins, if it were on the ground of our worthiness that we must go there. Israel had been stiff-necked and rebellious all the way along, though God had been bringing them water out of the rock for their thirst, and manna from heaven for their food; and now the solemn question has to be settled, whether they are to be prevented entering on account of it, It is the power of the enemy here exerted, not his wiles; they come after, in the history of Balaam. But this was the point, whether, by force or by wiles, the enemy could keep Israel out of Canaan, We shall see how God announces His thoughts about the people; and then the enemy was utterly powerless when He took up the question.

Moab is in the place of this world's power - at his ease from his youth - settled on his lees - not emptied from vessel to vessel (Jer. 48: 11). Besides being in the place of the world, the prophet is called with the reward of divination in his hand to act for Moab. Balak had civil authority, but he was conscious that he needed in this case a superior power to help him. The "powers that be are ordained of God." Therefore there is really no need of this kind of power to gain men's minds when all is right. But Balak, having no sense of God's authority and power, seeks it from another. The Israelites are pitched just on the border of the land when this attempt is made to prevent their entering. This is very practical for us, because many, knowing redemption, and feeling their inconsistencies and failures, begin to doubt whether after all they can reach heaven. It is right to judge ourselves for what is evil in us, but the heart owes it to Christ to trust in the mercy of God to the end.

294 When the people had crossed the Red Sea, they sung in the confidence of the power of God to bring them right through, "Thou hast guided us by thy strength to thy holy habitation." Moab and all their enemies were nothing to them then; for they were conscious of the power of God for them, though the wilderness was all before them, They knew they had got safely out of Egypt, and they took all the rest for granted; but they did not know themselves. Therefore God led them forty years in the wilderness, to humble and to prove them, and to know what was in their heart (Deut. 8). In the next chapter we see it was also to shew what the goodness of God to them in all this discipline was.

The people are now at the edge of the land near Jericho. Is the promise as available now that they were at Jordan as at the Red Sea? This was the question as regarded the people as a whole, not individually; and it is all a type of spiritual things to us. Faith takes us thoroughly beyond circumstances. It does not close the eye, running blindfolded to heaven, but taking God's judgment about sin, it knows God's grace also about salvation, and can see that the trials in the way are for the purpose of humbling us, proving us, and doing us good in our latter end. Faith never slights God's judgment about our sin, but trusts in God's grace in spite of it. God will never accuse, though He will chasten His people; nor will He let Satan do it.

Moab really had no need to be afraid, for Israel had strict injunctions not to touch them. Israel would even buy their water of them as they passed through their land. But Moab had no faith in what God said. Satan, with all his cunning, cannot tell what the simplest faith knows - the power of God's grace to save to the end. Moab is just a sample of the entire and total ignorance of God's thoughts in the world. It is well to remember this. They would see this mysterious influence, and yet they are not wholly ignorant of it, but opposed to it. What had God said to Abram? "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee." And now Balak goes about to take the very means of getting God's curse upon himself. Such is the utter blindness of the flesh; it always takes the road to turn God's judgment on itself. There was not only sin in Balak, and plenty of that too, but he had entirely closed his eye against all God's thoughts. It is a terrible thing to be out of the way of God's light, and that is the case with the poor world. If the outward moral restraints are removed in the haunts of men, when their passions are let loose, what utter degradation and misery we see! And where there is not this outward wretchedness, how sad to see a person walking through this world without God! Respectable he may be, and well thought of by his fellow-creatures; but how can he get through death and judgment without God? It is dreadful to think of the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their hearts. If God judges according to our works, what is to be done with them? God says, "There is none righteous, no not one." "All the world are become guilty before God." Men go on their own way, and think they will get through well at the end. Men of the world are just doing what Balak did. They are looking for blessing where God has sent the curse, and the curse where God has sent the blessing. There is as much sense about God's ways in an ass as in a man walking without Him.

295 There are two things in Balaam's mind. One is, that he is afraid of God Himself. So the world are frightened at what they see wrought amongst God's people, whilst they cannot perceive the motives that are at work and they have no power to control them. There is no power in a parent to prevent the conversion of his child all in a moment. The world cannot control God's work. See how God takes Balaam up; but has he any time to go to God? (v. 20, etc.).

God is always for His people in His own heart, Israel were entirely ignorant of what was going on, but God was not. He has taken up the cause of His people, because of the love in His own heart; and therefore, though He warns them and chastens them, yet He will not let Satan have anything to do with them. It is a sign of Balak being a very wicked man, that he tried to get God's word to Balaam reversed.

In Zechariah 3 we have the same thing. Satan there tries to get God's sentence pronounced against the high priest. What could Joshua say for himself? But God says, "I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee." He does not say I do not mind the filthy garments, but He comes in of His own love and grace as regards Israel. I have clothed thee with change of raiment. God had said to Balaam, "Thou shalt not go." Thou shalt not curse this people. That ought to have silenced him. He ought to have said, There is an end of it, if God says No. But he was as perverse as he could be.

296 What a terrible plague the people of God are to the world! They are, in one sense, a pest to it, if walking faithfully. If they are killed, they only multiply the more; there is no getting rid of them, nor doing anything with them. There are principles and motives and ways in the children of God that the world cannot get rid of. Balaam says to Balak, "If thou wouldest give me thine house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord." How pious he is become now! If he might have gone, he would. But though he cannot do what he would for Balak, he still keeps up his credit as a prophet of the Lord. just as if he had the secret of the Lord, he says, "I will know what God the Lord will say unto me more," v. 19. There has been the money offered, but Balaam speaks as if he was connected with God. This is the way men often act. They claim a connection with God, but disclaim connection with God's people. But this will not do. It is in connection with His people that the cross comes in, and that is the test for a man.

Now God lets Balaam go, and he is delighted at it; but God chose him to go now. And his way was as perverse as ever. God intended him to go, that he might pronounce a blessing upon His people, instead of a curse. Morally, as regarded himself, Balaam's was the most wicked act in going; and yet God brings out all His purposes through it. He is nothing more than a rod in God's hand. He goes, and the Lord by an angel meets him. He rebukes man's ways and man's wisdom, by putting more sense into the mouth of the brute beast than man has; for though he has a mind, he uses it against God, which a brute beast cannot do. Man, in one sense, is more blind than Satan, because Satan believes and trembles. God could reveal Himself to a beast's eye as well as to a man's, when He pleased. The effect of this on Balaam was that, in his passion, he would have killed the ass (v. 29), if he could. When the Lord opens his eyes to see his madness and blindness all the way he has been going, he feels he has sinned, and that God has stopped him (v. 34); but it was from mere terror that he thus speaks, and he goes on without seeing that instead of cursing the people, he was to bless them, etc. (v. 39). Balaam goes to the idols of Balak to sacrifice. He liked the name of religion; but his heart was not with God at all, it was set on money and honour in this world. What a picture of the impotency of sin!

297 Mark from this history the way God takes to deal with His people. Man thinks to thwart God's people of the blessing He has for them, and Satan tries to defeat God in His purposes of love. But in going their own way, He suffers men to do the very things that are for the accomplishment of these purposes. This we see in the crucifixion of Christ. The Jews said, "not on the feast day," etc.; but Christ, our Passover, was to be sacrificed for us. It was at that very season when the feast was to be kept, and yet they meant nothing less. What a comfort it is to know that God thinks of us, and arranges all for us, though we fail to think of Him! There is not a day, not a moment, but God is thinking of us, and He is above all the plottings of Satan. He will take care of His people. Do they want food? He sends them manna. Guidance? there is the pillar going before them. Do they come to Jordan? there is the ark there. Have they enemies in the land? there is Joshua to overcome for them. He deals with them in the way of discipline when they need it, as He did with Jacob. He humbled him, but gave him the blessing in the end. What a thought this ought to give us of the love of God, when we thus see His activity in goodness to us all the way through! What comfort to know He is for us, out of the spring and principle of His own love! He brings His grace and righteousness together in the putting away of sin on the cross. We can never really know God till we know He is love. God so loved the world that He sent His Son. The world did not ask God to send, and they did not ask Christ to come, but God loved them, and He sent Him. What a comfort, I say again, to know God is for us, seeing all the enemies - our own hearts, the world, and Satan! Faith gets through all, by looking at what God is.

Numbers 23

We have seen how God laid hold of Balaam by exposing his wickedness. Having got him in His own hand, He forces him to have to do with Himself about His own people. It is a remarkable fact that Israel does not appear at all in this scene. It was God and Balaam. So when God beholds His people, He does not allow any check against them, because they are His. If God was walking amongst His people, He took account of all their perverseness; see Deut. 9: 24, which speaks of them as at this very time rebelling against the Lord in the plains of Moab. God's judgment of us as saints in our walk is the same thing; and our sins against Him, after we are saints, should grieve us even more than those we felt as sinners. When God judges amongst His people as to their walk, He calls everything to account, for He can "by no means clear the guilty." Never does He, in the riches of His grace, bear with or allow sin, as people say. He can cover it in atonement; He can put it away in the cross, instead of imputing it; but never can He bear with it, and so give up any requirements of His holiness.

298 However, the whole question now was between God and His enemy, and it took place up at the top of the hill, the people knowing nothing at all about it. What could Balaam do with God about the people? Nothing; and when he found he could not avail with God against them, he afterwards seduces them into sin, and God has to chasten them.

But now, in having to do with God about His people, it is only the occasion of God's making a new revelation of His grace. God could not curse His people, or defy Israel; and so Balaam has to say after him. God has His own thoughts about them, and although He can allow no inconsistency in His people, He will bring to pass His own purposes. "And God met Balaam: and he said unto him, I have prepared seven altars, and I have offered upon every altar a bullock and a ram. And Jehovah put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus thou shalt speak. And he returned unto him, and, lo, he stood by his burnt sacrifice, he, and all the princes of Moab. And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel. How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy whom Jehovah hath not defied? For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his."

It is of the last importance for us to see how distinct is God's judgment concerning us as in our standing in Christ, and as to our walk as saints in the world. The judgment we form of ourselves is never the same as God's. The Holy Spirit, who leads us to judge ourselves, takes account of all the evil which is contrary to God's holiness. In judging myself I ought to be able to see in myself all the evil, and to be ready to say, when I detect myself, This is not charity, that is not holiness. I have to judge my own heart according to what I am; but God's judgment of me is according to what He sees me in Christ. If I did not know this to be God's judgment of me, I should never have courage to judge myself. How could I ever look at the evil within, if I knew God was going to impute to me all the evil, and would condemn me for it? All the difference between experience and faith is this. The testimony of the Holy Ghost in Hebrews 10, as to what God says of us, has to be laid hold of by faith their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

299 Balaam has no faith in God, so he goes to a high place to see what He will say to - him. Peradventure the Lord will meet him. In the next chapter we find he did not do this. Here he takes the character of being very religious, as we see. With God on the hill, not Israel in the camp, he sees them. The people, as to fact, were going on with their foolishness, or their piety (there were Joshuas and Calebs, no doubt); but that is not taken account of: God takes all this interest in them out of the springs of His own heart. "The people shall dwell alone, and shah not be reckoned among the nations."

God is as absolute in taking them for Himself as in taking them out of the world. So we are "bought with a price," and are therefore not our own. Taken out of condemnation, sin, and misery, we are brought into blessing' and now we are not to be like those who are in the world. We are redeemed from the world, and the result of this principle is, that we do not belong to ourselves at all. What we do belong to ourselves in is in the first Adam. But God has taken us out of this world, that we should belong to Himself. He brought His people out of Egypt to be made His own habitation (Ex. 15-18). God dwells on earth now in us as His habitation. We shall dwell in heaven by-and-by. We are a heavenly people, and the life of a person consistent with God's dwelling in him is looked for.

It is Satan's unwearied effort to bring a curse against us just because we are redeemed, as it was with God's enemy, in the history of His people, to curse them. We have to resist him stedfast in the faith. His accusations are made to God, and God answers for us. Faith takes up the answer of God, as in Zechariah 3. It is of the greatest importance for our peace, and our holiness too, for us to understand this. What could Joshua say to the filthy garments about which he was charged? and ought we to have our filthy garments? Surely not; he has nothing to say, but God answers for him: This is a brand I have plucked out of the fire, and you want to put it in again. Then He says to the angel, "Take away the filthy garments," etc., and then God speaks to Joshua, and tells him that He has done it. "Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee," etc. Thus He makes the poor sinner to know the perfectness of His work, and the love in His heart that has wrought on his behalf. He does not say, I will do it, but "I have caused," etc.

300 Verse 19. Balaam is obliged to bear witness to the character of God. "God is not a man that he should lie, neither the Son of man that he should repent," etc. He is not only a God of truth, but He does not alter it. He says, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." This speaks the unrepentingness of God. The truth that He tells is truth, eternal truth, and it is now in the mouth of the enemy. "I cannot reverse it." Not, I will not, but I cannot.

The great need we have, as individual saints in the wilderness, is to see the evil that is in ourselves practically, and judge it perfectly. Then we shall never be judged for it, God cannot allow sin in us. His way of putting it away is the opposite of making allowance for it; but it is the non-imputation of it.

Verse 23. "Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, . . . according to this time it shall be said, what hath God wrought? " If a soul only sees what he has wrought, he stays away from God; but if he sees what God has wrought, he is happy with Him. You can never know how to pronounce judgment upon yourself, without getting into His presence. It must be all uncertainty until you know what God says, You will have Jesus on one side, and hopes on the other - light on one hand, and clouds on the other. It is in knowing our position in the last Adam, as risen before God, that we have peace, and joy, and confidence.

301 Numbers 24.

The attempt of the enemy did not cause God to reiterate the same blessing merely, but drew out His activity, as it were, to bring out all the riches of His blessings. He carries out His own purposes according to His own will and thoughts. We have seen, firstly, how God claimed them as His own people; secondly, that they were completely justified by God. "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel." God met Balaam, and he found there was no possibility of succeeding against God. Instead, therefore, of going, as at other times, to seek for enchantments, he turns his face to the wilderness.

Verse 2. "Balaam lifted up his eyes, and saw Israel abiding in their tents," etc. We do not see a picture of the saints here in heavenly glory, for it was not Israel as brought into the final blessing of God in the land, that they are regarded here, but Israel in the wilderness. Thus we get through Balaam the knowledge of God's thoughts about His people here below (v. 3-5). Directly I look at that which is born of God, I find an entirely new order of things. We are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. The Christian is justified in Christ, and, besides that, he is born of the Spirit. Balaam looks upon the people with God's eye. The Spirit of God fills his mind, and he sees what God's thoughts are about His people. Faith enables us to see with God's eyes instead of our own. "How goodly are thy tents," etc. "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, . . . and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" - not it cannot, but "he cannot." "He," the whole man is of God.

Balaam "saw Israel abiding in their tents." It was the wilderness. It is not now the justification of His people, but their beauty and loveliness in God's sight, as in the Spirit. They are not only accepted judicially, but they walk in the Spirit. Of Abel it is said, "he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts," etc. He was accepted in person first, and then his gifts are well pleasing to God. So Enoch was not only justified, but he had the present enjoyment of favour. "Before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God." He was, as it were, walking in the joy of the Father's smile.

Verse 5. "How goodly are thy tents," etc. This illustrates the aspect of the church of God now, through the Spirit (Eph. 2: 22). It is more than man was in paradise. There was then no dwelling nor tabernacle of God. By-and-by His tabernacle will be with men. But as being in the standing of the church, we are taken, as it were, into God's paradise now. We are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. If the church is divided and scattered, it is held in God's hand. "The wolf, coming, catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep"; but again it is said, "none shall pluck (or catch, it is the same word) them out of my hand."'

302 We are God's dwelling, and that is a different thing from God's regenerating us merely. The fact of being regenerate does not reveal things to our soul; but God does reveal things to us by His Spirit which dwelleth in us.

The manifested beauty of spiritual life in an individual, or in the church, is another thing, and depends, of course, on the faithfulness of walk; but the maintenance of spiritual life is entirely on God's part, and never fails.

"As the valleys are they spread forth." This is the refreshing power of the gospel. "How goodly are thy tents," They are in favour with all the people; and the secret of the loveliness of the aspect was, that they were watered by the river of God - as gardens by the river's side,"

It is impossible but that Christ must meet the need of faith, let the general unbelief be what it may, Often, it is true, though most humbling, that the individual faith shines the brightest when the general unbelief is the darkest. In Paul's case it was so; he went on in spite of all difficulties, when "all were seeking their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." Faith looks not only at the blessing there is in God, but at the blessing where He has given it - with His people. The people are identified with God on high, therefore they are blessed, and God cannot allow evil in them,

Faith recognizes the place where blessing is, and drinks it in. "As the trees of lign-aloes which Jehovah hath planted," etc., and then they become the source of blessing to others when so filled. "He shall pour the water out of his buckets," v. 22. The bride herself says to her Lord, "Come," and says to those who are athirst also, let them "take the water of life freely."

I have not got CHRIST yet, but I have got the living water, and therefore I can say, Come and drink, We are not in glory yet, and we are not with the world; but we have the Spirit, and it is said, "He that believeth, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

303 Having Christ, we have sap from the tree of life, and there can be no limit in the result. There is no stint, though little power indeed to use it. "His seed shall be in many waters," signifying the extent of the blessing.

Then, besides this, there is strength. "His king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted." Israel will have a king in Zion, but we are in a closer connection with the Bridegroom as His bride. We shall be displayed in the kingdom by-and-by. Mark the difference, how it is said, "How goodly are thy tents," etc., but thy "king shall," etc. The people had not a king yet. Their visible blessing in power had not come yet. Their elevation was to be a future thing in the land.

With us it is not the kingdom we are looking for as our hope; indeed, in a certain sense, we are now in the kingdom. It is for us "the kingdom and patience"; for Christ is rejected and gone. We are being called to share His rejection, and afterwards His glory. "We shall reign with him." He is a King, and we are kings. He is a Priest, and we are priests. If we suffer with Him, we shall be also glorified together. He is our Head, and in all things He is to have the preeminence. There is to be power connected with those who have the kingdom. There is not only such a thing as blessing, but it is connected with the people of God.

Deuteronomy 8: 3

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No one is led into the place of weeping without getting some joy. Israel were already God's people: He leads them into the wilderness to humble them; He makes them hunger that He may give them manna; He leads them into trial that He may give them something better. Some would say, If in the midst of the leeks, onions, and flesh-pots of Egypt God had given them the manna, they would have rejected all other things because the manna was better; but it is not so. While the flesh is surrounded by that which suits it, it is fed thereby, and will reject the better things. Day by day, hour by hour, God is leading us to that condition of hunger that He may give us something better, something not discernible by the natural mind, but satisfying. When I have tasted the manna, there is a reality about it; it is not faith any longer. If I am hungry in the wilderness and am fed and braced up by the food, do I not know it? Can power come into my veins and I not know it? It might be a matter of faith that we are to have the manna to-morrow; but it was a matter of feeling and reality that they had eaten it today. As we eat and are strengthened, let us say, I know that man doth not live by bread alone. We feed on Jesus the living bread, the gift of the Father, and we may say that we are miraculously fed from heaven every day by supernatural food, that we might know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by 'every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'

What think you of possessing in measure now all that we shall possess in the day of the Lord? Then pain of body and pain of heart would all appear very light, and we could say with the apostle, after enumerating things that would make some people mad, "these light afflictions, which are but for a moment." Why do not we thus speak? It is the right of all who have the Spirit. Outside the sanctuary, until the Lord comes, there will be troubled hearts and diseased souls, but it must not surprise us; it is all alike an opportunity for the display of God's grace which spreads itself abroad to meet the misery. Every want that pressed on the Lord Jesus always gave an occasion in His soul to the cry of faith.

Joshua 1 - 13.

J. N. Darby.

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Joshua 1. The first thought is to cross the Jordan.

Verses 3, 4. The principles come in afterwards, namely, all the extent of the promises of God; but realization by the fact that one takes possession of them. There is a connection between the moral state of man down here, and the glory of man above.

Verses 7, 8. Herein is the strength - all my power is with thee, Joshua; but there must be obedience.

Verse 9. Again, another principle; the starting-point is that we have the authority of God to walk with Christ. Then there is energy, It is the certitude of God's will.

The "single eye" does not mean only that we have an eye, but that there is nothing in the eye to prevent our seeing.

Verses 12-18. If the testimony is sufficiently powerful to go forward, all is in movement among God's people. Those who seek their rest without the conflict in the heavenly places must equally go to the war.

Joshua 2: 8-11. One sees here that dread seizes upon God's enemies, as soon as there is a testimony of the Spirit.

Verse 11. One character of Rahab's faith is, that she identified herself with the people of God before their victories, The faith of Abraham was in God absolutely, whilst the faith of Rahab identified itself with the people of God.

Joshua 3. The great principles having been laid down, it is now a question of crossing the Jordan.

The Red Sea is death in redemption (Rom. 5; Ex. 14, 15); Jordan is the application of death to the individual - spiritual death with Christ. Redemption brings into the wilderness; but when one is dead and risen (in spirit), one enters into the heavenly places (in spirit). For us, death is life. Jordan is not the sign of natural death, because afterwards they meet with fighting. It is death practically, death in us spiritually.

Paul (2 Cor. 4) goes farther. He was dying for others. But, indeed, had he not been dead as to himself, he could not have suffered thus for others.

In the Epistle to the Galatians there are three things - death to the law; death to the flesh; death to the world.

Verse 4. It is a new way. One may have religion; but when it is a question of dying, it is quite a new thing. In the flesh, a man may try to do works; but in the presence of God the flesh is destroyed. If we have passed through death, the power of Satan is annulled.

306 Verse 13. Although it is only with respect to Canaan, God takes possession as "Lord of all the earth." It is His title for the millennium.

Joshua 4. Then Joshua calls to mind the word of the Lord, and takes out of the midst of Jordan twelve stones, to put them in the place where they were to pass the night.

Verse 9. They also set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan. There is this double effect, that having passed through death, we find in heaven the trophies of death, which is overcome, and the Lamb who was slain. Passing through death oneself, one values the death of Jesus. But one must be spiritual and heavenly for that.

To sum up, then, we have - the memorial, the trophy of Jordan, and the Jordan. Having passed over, they set up the camp in Gilgal.

Joshua 5. But here we have all the Canaanites afraid. In the resurrection of Jesus, Satan was shaken to the very foundations of his empire. Then, in Christ risen, we find ourselves in Gilgal.

Verses 2-8. There is first of all this - that the true circumcision does not take place until one is in the heavenly places. This we see every day. It is the application of the heavenly things to the flesh.

Verse 9. "This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt." If I have got hold of the thought of the church, and I see it worldly, it is indeed a reproach.

Verse 10. "And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal." One must be in heaven in order to endure the circumcision it is not being circumcised in order to get to heaven.

Verses 11, 12. They enjoy all their privileges before giving one single battle. The passover they celebrate in the presence of their enemies. As to the sense of it, it is somewhat more than the passover in Egypt. They have now the old corn of the land. Now we have the heavenly Christ; for as to the manna, it is Christ in the wilderness. Here it is the old corn of the land - the enjoyment of Christ in heaven; then the manna ceased. As walking through the world, we have Christ to sustain us in our weakness day by day (the manna). We also have Christ for our joy and the enjoyment of the heavenly things.

307 Verses 13-15. Having given all that, now God says, You must fight.

Verse 13. In the affairs of this life I can say of a man, even of a Christian, How much I like that man's character! but when it is a question of heaven and of warfare, I say,

"Art thou for us or for our adversaries?"

Verse 15. Again there is this warning: "Loose thy shoe from off thy foot." I bear all the charges of thy battles; but as for thee thy business is to walk in holiness. The Lord insists upon the holiness of the camp. God in His church will have holiness that there may be blessing, as He would have it for redemption (Exod. 3). "Loose thy shoes." The shoe may have contracted defilement, but it is no longer on the foot.

Joshua 6. Faith and obedience; but in the eyes of men, it is in a way which appears ridiculous that Jericho falls. The curse is pronounced on the enemies of God.

Joshua 7. Achan, by the accursed thing, defiles the whole camp. The effect of the blessing becomes for Joshua the occasion of leaving the place of dependence. He forgot to loose his shoe before the captain of the host of the Lord. He gives himself up to a vain confidence. If, in the conflict in the heavenly places, one is not with God, one only falls in a more terrible manner. It was more serious to be beaten in Canaan than in the wilderness.

Verse 2. It was prudent according to man to send spies, but it is not so very good thus to go out for exploring the land.

Verses 6-9. The heart of Joshua melts also like that of the people.

Verses 10-12. It is not a question of talking about the Canaanites: Israel had sinned.

It is necessary to be decided, when it is a question of purifying oneself from the accursed thing.

Joshua 8. What we see here is that it is quite an affair to take this small city. In this manner of proceeding there was a double motive: first, to put an end to the discouragement; secondly, to make all the people feel what the question was.

Verse 18. Nevertheless, when the accursed thing is removed; and though the whole army is there, Joshua (the Spirit of Christ) stretches out his spear, and the ambush (which could not see it) enters into the city. It was the proof that God was still with them that they had more trouble; but at the same time the principle was recovered - the presence of God. It is beautiful to see how the faults committed at Ai and at Jericho were entirely repaired by the goodness of the Lord.

308 Verses 30-35. Although the land is not altogether conquered, Joshua treats it as being the land of Jehovah. Read Deuteronomy 21-23. Having once entered into the real position, we may consider everything as ours. Joshua shews this in two ways. First, he commands the dead body to be taken down (v. 29): otherwise the land would have been defiled, and that could not suit the inheritance of Jehovah. Second, having taken possession, Joshua builds an altar, and owns all the consequences in blessings and curses. It was placing the enjoyment of the law under the responsibility of the people to obey Jehovah.

The altar was on mount Ebal. The meaning of it is in truth this: thou shalt worship if thou canst, for the sign of relationship was connected with responsibility.

In Deuteronomy one sees the thing in its details.

Deuteronomy 26. The people acknowledge that the land was given in grace. They offer to Jehovah. It was the proper state of a Jew.

Deuteronomy 27 is another principle - the complete curse resulting from their having taken this inheritance on the ground of the law. From Gerizim there is no blessing pronounced.

Deuteronomy 28 is the blessings and the curses with respect to God's government. We have the things as facts in the history of Israel.

Deuteronomy 29 is only saying that, according to these words, God had made a covenant with Israel.

Deuteronomy 30. The consequence is indeed set forth; but then God adds, If thou shalt obey and return unto the Lord thy God with all thine heart, after all these things have come upon thee, I will bring thee back. This is the secret thing (Deut. 29: 29). When they were driven out of Canaan they could not attain to righteousness by the law,

Joshua 9. The effect of this victory and of these blessings is to stir up the rest of the Canaanites against them. Here they are now leagued together. Here again there is a snare: namely, that when one has resisted a confederacy, one is tempted also to form a confederacy. This is in one sense the place which the Gibeonites took here. As Joshua had been deceived by the sin, he is so now by their artifice, and in a rather gross way. It was a question of being an Israelite and nothing but an Israelite. The Gibeonites only bring fresh attacks upon Joshua and upon Israel.

309 The camp was always in Gilgal.

Verse 14. The men of Israel judged, alas! by their provisions: "The men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord." (See v. 6, 7).

Joshua 10. Joshua goes up from Gilgal and comes back to Gilgal. This is an important thing to notice.

Joshua 11. Here we have another principle. Hazor was the capital; and it is the only city that Joshua burns. That which is the seat of strength and energy according to the world cannot become the centre of power according to the Spirit.

Joshua 12. In one sense Joshua had conquered all: but when it is a question of taking possession, there is scarcely anything. In the time of Paul the church had before its eyes all the promises; then, when Paul is dead, one again sees Canaanites appearing.

Joshua 13. Finally, Joshua only put two tribes and a half in possession. Something similar has taken place with respect to the church.

Joshua 1

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In the Book of Joshua we read the history of the taking possession of the land of Canaan, so far as that was carried out; as in the Book of Numbers we follow the same people in their toilsome journey through the wilderness: a journey more toilsome through their own unbelief, but in which a faithful and compassionate God accompanied them all the way, and led them, though by a path of chastening, when they would not go up at once by the path of faith. Their clothes waxed not old, nor did their feet swell, those forty years.

Both these parts of their history, remark, were after their redemption out of Egypt.

I would trace just now the principles on which the path and service of faith, as represented by the history of Joshua, can be securely and successfully trod.

Let my reader remark - what perhaps he has never noticed - that the conflicts which are recorded in the Book of Joshua are not only after redemption out of Egypt but after crossing the Jordan. Now Jordan is generally taken for a figure of death, and Canaan of heaven; and I do not doubt justly. But how comes it that all is fighting after it, and that the man who appears to Joshua comes as captain of Jehovah's host? War characterizes Israel's state after entering into Canaan; their journey but through the wilderness. This remarkable feature in the history of those events, which "happened unto them for ensamples [types], and are written for our admonition on whom the ends of the world are [to] come," calls us to enquire what the connection of these events is, and how the passage through death and entrance into heaven leads to a state of conflict and war.

The New Testament makes very plain what is the solution of this apparent difficulty. It teaches not only that Christ is dead and risen again for us, but that we have, in God's sight as united to Him by the Spirit, died and risen with Him. "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God," Col. 3: 3. He hath quickened us together with Christ, and raised us up together, Eph. 2. Thus the Christian himself is viewed as having himself passed through death and being risen again, because Christ who is his life has. "If ye be dead with Christ," says Paul (Col. 2). "If ye then be risen with Christ," Col. 3. In this sense we are viewed as having passed through Jordan. We have died, and are risen, and are entered into the heavenly places. Hence we have our conflicts there; for the Canaanite and the Perizzite are yet in the land. So Paul says, "We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, with powers, with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." He is here referring to Joshua and Israel, who had to contend with flesh and blood - we with spiritual enemies. Thus the Christian is looked at as having died and risen in Christ, and called upon to possess the land - to realize the blessings given by the power of the Holy Ghost, whether apprehending and enjoying the unsearchable riches of Christ, or rescuing from the power of Satan those who are led captive by him.

311 Before I turn to the practical principles I have referred to, let me draw my reader's attention to the effect of having thus passed the Jordan.

First, there is, and thus only, the death of the flesh, entire death to the world. Israel was not circumcised in the wilderness: Israel was now circumcised, and the reproach of Egypt rolled away. To this, as the place of self-judgment, Israel returned after all their victories. But there was another point: they ate of the old corn of the land, and the manna ceased. The manna is Christ as come down and humbled - Christ for the need of the wilderness. The old corn belongs to the heavenly land - Christ in His heavenly glory. This is all ours before any combat - before a wall has fallen or an enemy is conquered. We possess all the heavenly blessing by a divine title. Then, "the man with the drawn sword" - Christ in spirit - comes to lead us to conflict, but to victory if we walk under His leading.

This leads us to the principles on which victory is to be obtained in the conflict in which we are engaged. All is promised from the river Euphrates to the great sea. But then comes the question of taking possession. We must actively take possession of it to enjoy it. "Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you." Nothing can be simpler. You have only to take possession. But this you must do. So with us. Large possessions are before us. All the unsearchable riches of Christ are ours. But there must be the diligent occupation of the heart with these things in order to possess them. Let the reader be assured that there is a large and rich field before him, all that God has given him in Christ to delight in; and he has received the divine nature (for I speak of saints) to delight in these things.

312 But here conflict comes in, because these spiritual enemies would hinder us from realizing, in a pure and undistracted heart, what Jesus calls our own things; as the things of this world he calls another's. But these conflicts, though useful for exercise and the experience of God's faithfulness, are no hindrance to our taking possession; but, while testing our own state, only shew how God is with us. Were the failing of the walls of Jericho and the victories of Joshua a hindrance No.

Holiness and looking to God, in a word, separation of heart to God, are required when the captain of Jehovah's host came up to meet Joshua. He was to take his shoes off as much as Moses before God in "the bush." The Lord in our midst for conflicts is as holy in nature as the Lord in redemption. Hence, as is known, when there was an Achan in the camp God would not go out with them. But, when there is uprightness of heart, the word is this: "There shall not a man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life." What a comfort and strength is this! No difficulty in anything. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" I cannot think of, or meet with, a difficulty which for a moment stops my course. I have to be careful for nothing, and, making my requests known to God, in the midst of conflict, God's peace keeps my heart. And this never fails. "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee." Not only God does not forsake us, but He does not fail us in the strength, grace, wisdom, needed so as to give firmness and power. In nothing does He fail us. He is always with us, and with us for, and in, the conflict. The Lord will make war with Amalek; but it is in Israel, but God's war. Thus divine strength and power with us, in faithful goodness, is the first and blessed groundwork for our hearts in the conflict.

It leads to another principle: confiding faith, courage. Be strong and of good courage." God calls us to confidence and strength of heart in His strength, for we shall succeed in the work He has given us. This too is blessing. Take courage, for you shall do the work. Why not, if the work be His and He be with us?

But this has a special bearing worthy of all note. You shall divide the land - "only be thou strong and very courageous no drawing back, no being terrified, shrinking before the power of the enemy. "In nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God." Satan is there, but if there we have a free courage, God is there, witness of ruin to Satan's instruments, of sure salvation to those who have God with them. There is no question (if we are grasshoppers, and our enemies giants, and the walls up to heaven), if God be there. Of what consequence was the height of a wall, if it fell at the blast of a ram's horn? What matter that the sea is rough, if Christ is there to make us walk on it? What good its being smooth, if He be not?

313 Now mark what courage is shewn in, "Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do all that my servant Moses commanded thee!" We need courage to obey. It seems folly. The world is against us. There seems no sense, often, in the prescriptions of the word of God. Our own fleshly ease is interested in not being so particular. The path is different from all the world. It supposes a living God, who acts and notices all things, to whom we belong and whose will is everything to us. Of this the world knows nothing, To do God's will and simply obey His word requires courage in the face of the world, courage with our own hearts. To this we are called. "Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do all that Jehovah has commanded us." It is the courage of faith which looks to God. This is the way of prospering in the conflict. God's strength is employed in helping us in the path of God's will, not out of it. Then no matter where we go, what the difficulties, how long the journey seems, He makes our way prosperous: Whithersoever thou goest."

This leads to another and natural consequence, but one of great importance, because it not only informs us of the will of God, but keeps us in His presence, and familiar with the ideas, thoughts, ways, hopes, the whole manner of our God. "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do all that is written therein, for thus shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success." Compare Psalm 1. This meditation on God's word, of course, makes us know His will. But it does a great deal more. It gives the habitual delight of the heart to be in what God reveals, in what He delights in. We acquire His (that is, the true but divine) way of thinking of things; not the side of the vain show of this world. Our own hearts are formed by and in this divine and blessed apprehension of things. Oh what a light it is, and how does the vanity of this world appear what it is! "Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth." "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." Besides, the soul is kept subject to God in meditating on His word: an immense point morally. Nor is this all. It secures the communications of His grace. "I have called you friends, for whatsoever I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Owning the word of God is owning God in this world as He has spoken. But I must pass on.

314 The next ground Jehovah gives is, "Have not I commanded thee?" Nothing gives greater confidence than this. "We ought to obey God," says Peter. If I am even going right, but do not surely know that I am doing God's will, the least difficulty casts all into doubt, and all my courage is destroyed. When I know that I am doing God's will, difficulties are no matter, I meet them on the road. But for obedience to God's will, God's power is there; and the heart, knowing that it is doing God's will, has no distrust. Uprightness would fear if it might be self, but uprightness fears nothing, hesitates in nothing, when it knows it is doing God's will. It can appeal to any one if that ought not to be done. "Have not I commanded thee; be strong and of a good courage." And then we have therewith the positive assurance, "Jehovah thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

A further principle is brought out in the case of the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh. It is given to us in these divine wars to combat for others. This is an immense privilege. I have to combat to possess more and more of the unsearchable riches of Christ, to realize more of His life and of the knowledge of Him, to have the vineyards as well as the oliveyards of Canaan, and the old corn of the land; in a word, to possess what is given me in Christ. But it is given to us to combat in every way for God's people also. Paul (2 Cor. 1: 11) was dependent on the poor praying saints, it might be on some poor bed - ridden widow, for the gifts by which he carried on his active warfare in the Lord's field. He himself was labouring unceasingly, both in prayer and the ministry of the word, to put God's people in possession of their privileges. This is an immense privilege. Not only are we saved, blessed, made partakers of glory, joy in God; but God is pleased to make us partners, co-workers under Him in His own divine privilege of love and blessing. This is grace indeed! Surely we must know it, as its objects, to witness it; but God's love in us flows forth in love to make it known to others.

315 Note another thing. If we are doing God's will and work we may reckon on Him for all that is dear to us, and in which we are interested. We could not keep it without God were present. He can keep it without us if we are doing His will and service in love. The two and a half tribes could leave their little ones and all that they had behind, to go armed to the war to help their brethren. No doubt, no fear, no hesitation! Such is the path of faith. It counts on God in the path of obedience to His known will. He has divine wisdom for every step, and divine power. Both are in Christ. We cannot know wisdom perfectly, nor see the end or the bearing of many things; but He who gave us the word did, and we are guided in the word according to that perfect knowledge.

Christ as our Food

Joshua 5.

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Would say a word as to the way in which Christ may be considered as our food. He may be looked at as the food of the Christian in three ways.

Firstly, as a redeemed sinner; secondly, in connection with sitting in heavenly places in Christ; and thirdly, as a pilgrim and stranger down here. But this last is merely accessory and not the proper portion of the Christian. The Lord said to Israel that He had come down to deliver them from Egypt and bring them into the land of Canaan. He did not say a word about the wilderness when He came to deliver them from Egypt, because His interference for them there was in the power of redemption and for the accomplishment of His promises. However, there was the wilderness as well as redemption from Egypt and the entrance into Canaan; and Christ answers as our food to these three things. Two of them are permanent; for we are nourished by Christ in two ways permanently, that is, in redemption and glory. The third way is as the manna which we have all along the road. It is in these three ways that Christ meets His people and nourishes them all the way. Two of them remain, as we have seen, but the third ceases when the circumstances it was to meet have passed away. They did eat the passover and the manna until they got into the land, then the manna ceased; but they continued to eat of the passover.

Now there are two ways in which it is proper for us ever to be feeding on Christ. First, as the passover, for they ate the paschal lamb when the wilderness had ceased and Egypt had been long left behind. When in Egypt the blood was on the lintel and the door-posts, and the Israelite ate of the lamb inside the house. The thought they had while they were eating it was, that God was going through the land as an avenging judge; and the effect of the blood on the doorposts was to keep God out, which was a great thing to do, for if brought into God's presence as a judge, woe be to him in whom sin is found.

The state of the one that now eats of Christ is just according as he estimates the value of the cross, through fear of what sin actually merits. When we have got into the effect of the blood of the paschal lamb, we have got into Canaan, and enjoy the peace of the land as a delivered people, having crossed the Jordan - not only the Red Sea. That is, we have passed through death and resurrection; not as knowing Christ dead and risen for us merely, as presented in the Red Sea, but as being dead with Him and entered into heavenly places with Him, as in Jordan. Then the character of God is known as their God, that is, the accomplisher of all that which He purposed towards them. It is not keeping God out now, but it is enjoying His love; not looking at God as in the cross pouring out wrath in judgment against sin. In Jesus on the cross there was perfect justice and perfect love. What devotedness to the Father, and what tender love to us! And this is the way the saint who is in peace feeds on the cross. It is not feeding on it as knowing that he is safe; for Israel's keeping the passover after they got into Canaan was very different from their keeping it when judgment was passing over. In Canaan they were in peace, and they were able to glorify God in this way, in the remembrance of their redemption from Egypt.

317 In this type we see presented, not the sinner that feels he is safe, but the saint that can glorify God in his affections; his heart confidently flowing out to Him, and feeding on Christ as the old corn of the land - the last Adam, the Lord from heaven. We see Christ now by faith at the right hand of God as the glorified man, not merely as Son of God, but as Son of man; as Stephen, when the heavens were opened to him, beheld Jesus at the right hand of God. We also see Him up there. We do not see Him as He is represented in the Revelation, seated on a white horse, coming forth out of heaven. He will indeed come forth and receive us up where He is, and we shall be like Him and be for ever with Him. But we shall feed on Him as the old corn of the land when we are there, and this is our proper portion now: manna is not our portion, though it is our provision by the way.

Joshua sees Jehovah as the Captain of Jehovah's host, and Israel feeds in the land before they fight. And our portion is to sit down in it before we fight, because God has given it to us, They do not eat the manna in Canaan, because it is for the wilderness. The manna is not Christ in the heavens! it is Christ down here. It is not our portion; our portion is the old corn of the land. That is, the whole thing, according to God's counsels, is redemption and glory. But all our life is exercise down here, or sin (excepting that God does give us moments of joy), because, while here, there is nothing but what acts on the flesh, or gives occasion for service to God. We may fail, and then Christ comes and feeds us with manna, that is, His sympathy with us down here, and shews how His grace is applied to all the circumstances of our daily life: and that is a happy thing. For most of our time, the far greater part of our life, we are occupied in these things, necessary and lawful things no doubt, but not occupied with heavenly joy in Christ. And these things are apt to turn away the heart from the Lord and hinder our joy. But if we would have our appetites feed on Him as the old corn of the land, we must have the habit of feeding on Him as the manna.

318 For instance, something may make me impatient during the day, well then, Christ is my patience, and thus He is the manna to sustain me in patience. He is the source of grace; not merely the example which I am to copy. He is more than this, for I am to draw strength from Him, to feed upon Him daily: for we need Him, and it is impossible to enjoy Him as the paschal lamb unless we are also feeding on Him as the manna.

We know that God delights in Christ and He gives us a capacity to enjoy Him too. To have such affections is the highest possible privilege, but to enjoy Him, we must feed on Him every day. It is to know Christ come down to bring the needed grace and turn the dangerous circumstances with which we are surrounded to the occasion of our feeding on Himself as the manna to sustain us and strengthen us in our trial.

Joshua 5

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We must remember that all these things which are written "happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come." This expression, "ends of the world," has its importance as also this, "once in the end of the world," etc. (Heb. 9: 26). It is what we are in as Christians, consequent on the end of all the dealings and ways of God with man as to teaching or testing him. Now man as man has been fully tried, and God has set up another man. He is more than man too but still another man, and it is in grace too, surely, for sinners, that we may find a better paradise than that which has been lost. The Lord Jesus Christ could say, when He came to the end, "now is the judgment of this world." We find men tried in every way from innocence to the cross of Christ, and the Son Himself is cast out of the vineyard and slain. John the Baptist came after the law and the prophets and preached repentance (Matt. 11), but they would not repent. When he mourned, they did not lament; and when the Lord came and piped, they would not dance. In that same chapter He says, "Come unto me." Now man must come to Christ as ruined, according to His own invitation.

Man may be decently alienated from God, or indecently, but it is all the same. "The carnal mind is enmity." We must come to the Second man, to Christ. God did not set up the Second, whilst He could recognize the first. He cannot own both; and to acknowledge man in the flesh now is to set aside the fact that God has set up another. What I would now set forth is the full deliverance we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. I need not say this is not deliverance as to our body, but blessed liberty of spirit while we are waiting for the deliverance of body. We are not only forgiven, but are brought into liberty of association with God in holiness.

This deliverance is shadowed in Israel's history by figures, Egypt, the wilderness, Jordan, Canaan. We are all aware that the general idea is that Jordan means death and Canaan heaven. But directly we enter Canaan, we get conflict. This is not the heavenly places as a place of rest evidently. That which characterizes Canaan is conflict, and we get a figure of what we find brought out in Ephesians 6 - the wrestling, not with flesh, and blood, but with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, for which we need to have on the whole armour of God. But if we are to have conflict there, we must first be there. What I would speak of then is the way we get into the heavenly places. Remember Christ is there. We find in the history of Israel the way a soul progresses to the heavenly places, It is when they get into Canaan, and not in the wilderness, that the reproach of Egypt was rolled away. They kept the passover as circumcised, they ate the old corn of the land, and the manna ceased.

320 And this is the way the soul gets into deliverance "from this present evil world," and is introduced into the heavenly places. They were slaves in Egypt, making bricks without straw; but God comes down to deliver them, and He talks only of Canaan and not of the wilderness. But first He appears in the character of a judge. He must pass them through the judgment. They were as great sinners as the Egyptians (perhaps greater, for they had a greater knowledge of God), but still, wherever the blood was, there was shelter - perfect security. It was only because the blood was on their houses that God passed over. It was not a question of communion, but the blood keeping God out as a judge.

So with the believer now. It is a blessed fact that, wherever the blood is relied on, God cannot see a single sin. God would have to deny the efficacy of that blood if He did not pass over. What screened them was not their seeing the blood but God seeing it. Many souls are saying, I do not know whether I have accepted it aright. But what gives peace is knowing that God has accepted it. They think they must look into their hearts to see if they have accepted it aright: but a simple soul would not think of such a thing, but would only be too happy to rest in God's value of Christ's blood. There may be many a work to give right affections. It is quite true that we ought to find the blood each day more precious, but that is not questioning my acceptance. It is a question of growing affections; but what gives peace is not growing affections, but the fact that God has accepted the blood, and He must deny the efficacy of the blood of Christ if He did not receive me. The effect of it was to arrest His hand in judgment. Not only has my sin been pardoned, but God has been glorified at the cross of Christ. That gives full value to the blood.

If God judged sin only, then He is righteous, but there is no love. If He had said of men, "They are poor wretched things and cannot help it, so I will pardon all," there might be love shewn, but there would be no righteousness. It would not be holy love. But when we come to the cross, we have perfect righteousness and perfect love. God's truth and majesty are fully brought out there, because He, the "captain of our salvation," was there made "perfect through suffering." He has suffered, and now the Son of man is glorified and God is glorified in Him. He has run the race and is now set down at the right hand of God.

321 "God hath highly exalted him." In virtue of the cross man is glorified. Stephen sees the Son of man in heaven: that is the wonderful thing. Stephen did not say "I see the glory": this was natural in heaven; but "I see the Son of man at the right hand of God" in the heavens - man in heaven. He is there not only as Son of God but as man. He gets His place in the glory of God. We get this wonderful truth because He has finished the work God gave Him to do. None but He could sit there. God has been glorified by what man has wrought, He was divine of course, or He could not have done it. This becomes the basis of everything - man having a place in the glory of God, not at His right hand - that is the place of pre-eminence for Christ alone. Now that He is there, He has sent down the Holy Ghost to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Of righteousness both to the believer and to the unbeliever: to the unbeliever because he rejects Christ; to the believer because he is associated with Him. He convinces the world, not as individuals, but all in a lump. When the world cast out Christ, the Father says, "I will have Him," and now He is set down as the result of His finished work. He receives it now from His Father as man. The angels desire to look into this, All God's moral attributes have been glorified in man in the person of Christ. It is the foundation not only of the putting away our sin, but of the glory of God in righteousness and truth.

When we have passed through the veil and entered within the holiest in the consciousness of our souls, what value do we not see in the blood! And now we apprehend what the cross is! Now I contemplate the cross for the affections of my soul. I meditate and think of the cross, then I get growth. When we are at home with God, there can be growth. It is not there I find peace. For peace is had by learning that righteousness has accepted the blood which love gave. Now love gives it to me, but righteousness is exalted in giving it. Israel go to the Red Sea, and here they are brought to a standstill. They found they were hemmed in on every side, and now they are "sore afraid." So often when a person is delivered from judgment in one sense, he meets somehow with death and finds Satan pursuing. Many a soul gets peace and comfort whilst looking at the cross: but is afraid when it thinks of judgment. "I am a poor sinner delighting in the cross: it just suits me." Does judgment suit you? When they came to the Red Sea, it was not judgment, but God a positive Deliverer. They had known God as a judge in Egypt, and the blood had screened them. Now they learn Him at the Red Sea as a Deliverer. They never see the "salvation of God "till they get to the Red Sea, and they pass out of Egypt. They are not only sheltered from judgment but brought into a new place.

322 The blood screens us from judgment on account of our sins, and by that same cross and resurrection we are brought to God. Christ dead and risen is what we have in Romans; and the result is we are brought to God as our Father. Death and resurrection take me clean out of the place I was in. If I say "I am a guilty sinner," He says, "You are justified." If I say "defiled," He says "You are cleansed." If I have offended, then I am forgiven. He has met every question that could perplex the soul.

The new place of man is as perfectly redeemed and brought to God. Not only are his sins put away, but he is delivered, brought out into the wilderness. When God speaks of deliverance, He does not say a word of the wilderness. I am brought out into a new place altogether, not yet the heavenly places, but I have "redemption through his blood." So we find two conditions of the Israelites - in the wilderness, and in Canaan. And there are two distinct parts in the life of a Christian. First, what we find in Hebrews and Galatians, the place of deliverance from the present evil world (Gal. 1: 4), that is the wilderness; and, secondly, I am in Canaan, the heavenly places, as shewn in Ephesians and Colossians. The wilderness is what the world is to the Christian. What has a dead and risen man to do with the world? Now death and judgment are behind me, but I have not left conflict behind.

323 The blessed Lord went into death, and bore the judgment. If I am associated with Him, it is all behind Him. If I have a part in Christ, I have a part in the deliverance (see Ps. 22). As soon as "heard from the horns of the unicorn" He says, "I will declare," etc. The first thing the Lord does in resurrection is to declare the Father's name to His brethren. He brings them out into the same place He is in. In John 20 He says to Mary Magdalene, "Go to my brethren and then He leads their praises as the firstborn among many brethren: "In the midst of the church will I praise thee." He brings them to His God and their God, His Father and their Father. He had been all alone in His suffering and wrath. Now all is settled, and now He says, "In the midst of the congregation." He associates us with the praises - "Not ashamed to call them brethren." He never said "My brethren," nor "peace" until after He was risen. He had said, "Fear not," and anticipatively He had said, "My peace I give unto you"; that is, you shall have it. But peace was not then made, and it is not till He has made peace by the blood of His cross that He comes and "preaches peace to them that are afar off and to them that are nigh." He passed into the new place as man and says, Now you are here with me. Now we are associated with Christ, as Israel sings, "Thou hast led forth thy people which thou hast redeemed; thou hast guided them in thy strength into thy holy habitation." We have the promise of glory too: "Thou shalt bring them in," Ex. 15 : 13-17.

The wilderness is the path of a Christian in which he learns himself. It is the place of a soul who is really at rest before God. There may have been experience before of slavery, etc.; but they were the experiences of a soul in which God has acted, but which is not yet delivered. It is where a soul is who knows he is redeemed. If I only know the blood, I am still in Egypt; but if I have passed through the Red Sea, I know God as a Deliverer; I am not in the flesh but in the Spirit (Rom. 8). The prodigal son had experiences before he returned home, but they were the experiences of one who had not yet met the father. There was a work in the man. He found he was perishing. He had repented and set out; but there still remained the question, What will he say to me when I meet him? Will he set me on his right hand or left? He had his speech already made up and had fixed the place he was to take in the house, that of a servant, but he had not yet met his father. He learns what his place was in the house by what the father was to him when he met him, and he says nothing about the place of a servant. He is brought in as a son. He did not, could not, say, "Make me as one of thy hired servants," for his father was on his neck. It was not what he was for God, but what God was for him. He puts the best robe on him, not a robe. He met him in his sins, but does not bring him in in his sins. God met him in rags, but in Christ he is brought in.

324 If I have got through the Red Sea, God is a deliverer and not a judge in virtue of the full blessed work of Christ. I am not in the flesh. It is not merely that your sins are forgiven, but you are in the Second man, in Christ, before God. The first practical effect is, I am brought into the wilderness. A person has a great deal to learn after he is redeemed. I am out of the flesh and have my place in and with Christ but the learning of the flesh in me is a humbling process. And thou shalt remember all the way Jehovah thy God led thee these forty years to humble thee, to prove thee," etc. "Thy raiment waxed not old, neither did thy foot swell these forty years," Deut. 8. God was thinking about their very clothes and their feet, but He gave them all the discipline and correction needed to shew them themselves. And when through their unbelief they refuse to enter the land of Canaan, being unwilling to go up and fight the Amorites, He in His grace turns round in unfailing love and patience and dwells with them all the forty years of their wilderness journeyings.

What characterizes the Christian is the presence of the Holy Ghost, God dwelling in him in virtue of redemption. He does not dwell in innocence; He never dwelt in Eden. The dwelling of God with man was always consequent on redemption, whether in the cloud with Israel or in the church by the Holy Ghost. He had walked with Adam in the garden, dined with Abraham, so to speak, but He never dwelt with them. But directly He gets a people redeemed, He dwells with them and talks of holiness. He adapts Himself to their circumstances. When they were in bondage in Egypt, He comes to them as deliverer; when they are in the wilderness dwelling in tents, He pitches His tent amongst them and leads them through. When they arrive at Canaan, He meets them sword in hand as their captain to lead them in conflict; and when at length they are all settled down, He builds a beautiful house and dwells in their midst. So with His people now. He dwells with us by the Holy Ghost: first in them as individuals ("Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost"); secondly, in the church collectively ("In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit"). It is not merely they are born of God, but they have the blood on them, and there the Holy Ghost dwells. "After ye have believed," etc. He spake of "the Spirit which they that believed on him should receive." "He that stablisheth us is God." He quickens unbelievers and dwells in believers. The presence of the Holy Ghost is what forms the distinctive character of the Christian and of the church. The leper was washed, sprinkled, and anointed - the blood placed upon his ear, his hand, and his foot; and then the oil upon the blood. It was most holy: nothing must pass into the ear, or be done by the hand that would defile, neither must they do anything that would defile the feet in walk. The anointing - that is, the presence of the Holy Spirit in us - is the seal of the value of the blood. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost," Rom. 5. The Holy Spirit is the earnest, not of the love of God (for we have this), but of the inheritance for which we wait.

325 In the wilderness God is humbling, proving us, and making all work together for good. Circumcision is not practicable in the wilderness. Israel come to Jordan and cross it. Here we have a figure, not of Christ dying for me, but of my dying and rising with Him. It is not simply that Christ died for us, but I am crucified with Christ. I reckon myself dead and have received Christ as my life; I am dead, risen, and seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; I am gone out of the wilderness altogether. We were dead down there in sins, and Christ came down and died for sins; and now we are quickened, raised up, and seated in Christ. This is the new place altogether; and it is the doctrine taught in Ephesians. I am no longer looked at as alive in the flesh at all; I have got into heavenly places; and the moment I have got there, all is mine - "All spiritual blessings in the heavenly places"; but then it is only as I set my foot on my blessing, that I make it practically my own. And then I find that there is another foot there: the enemy is in possession; so that I have need of the whole armour of God. The place we have to pass through is the world as a wilderness; but, as to my position, I am in the heavenly places, and I must walk accordingly. If I am living in the world as a man in the flesh, I meet my neighbours and I may find them kind and obliging; but directly I begin to talk of heavenly things, I find them opposed.

326 I have got then to shew forth Christ in living relationships. If it is true that I am in Christ, it is true also that Christ is in me. "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The standard is not a man running on towards heaven, but it is shewing out the Christ that is in me. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body " - this and nothing else. "Death worketh in us, life in you." I hold that Paul is dead. It was Christ acting through Paul. If we fail, that is wilderness work. If Christ is in me, I must never let a bit of anything but Christ be seen. Now you have Christ in you, this is positive power and nothing else. Now look to it that this be seen and nothing else. Joshua says, "Set your foot on." It is yours. I have got into Canaan and conflict comes directly. I am sitting in heavenly places in Christ. It is all mine, and now I am seeking to get hold of the things that I have a right to. "As captain of Jehovah's host am I now come." We get testing in the wilderness, conflict in Canaan. When I am in Canaan, I have spiritual intelligence and activity in that which belongs to me. "Heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ" - how much have we each realized of the spiritual blessings which are ours?

In the stones taken out of Jordan we find that the believer takes with him the character of death. The ark went down. We died to sin. The world and Satan's power is all gone. We belonged to death once: now death belongs to us. Now I am bound to say, "Reckon yourself dead." We are never told to die to sin, but that we "are dead." The first thing is, we have passed through Jordan dry, and that is our title to reckon ourselves dead. Circumcision is the practical application of this. "Mortify therefore your members which are on the earth," etc. (Col. 3). If I see a man impatient, I do not deny he is dead, but I say you want a little of Gilgal. If I see a man looking at nonsense in the town, I say, I do not deny you are dead, but you want to be circumcised. This is the practical application of the death of Christ to our souls, actually realizing it. Most strikingly in Joshua we get Ai taken, then conquest after conquest; but we find Gilgal, the place of circumcision, to be always the place to which the camp returned after their victories. No matter what success you have, you must go back to Gilgal. The Book of Joshua is the history of successful energy; the Book of Judges, of failure, with God coming in and removing it from time to time.

327 Gilgal, the place of self-judgment, is the place of practical divine power. We find even victories dangerous unless we return to the judgment of the flesh. After preaching the gospel (the most blessed work that can be), we must go back to Gilgal. Israel began well at Jericho: what were the high walls to faith? The higher the walls, the worse the ruin when they come down. But instead of returning to Gilgal, they get self-confident and send up a few to take Ai. But there we get failure. They have to return to Gilgal and judge the flesh. In Judges the angel of Jehovah goes up from Gilgal to meet them at Bochim, that is, from the place of power to the place of tears. They had left the place of power for the place of sorrow. They sacrifice there, but it is in tears.

After the passage of the Jordan, the first thing we saw was the setting up of the twelve stones; secondly, circumcision; and then, thirdly, we get the passover. They can now look back at the foundation of everything in redemption. They keep it now, not as guilty and protected by it - this they had been in Egypt - but as celebrating the truth that the death of the blessed Son of God is the foundation of all blessing. The Lord's Supper is nothing less than celebrating that which is the foundation of God's giving us everything. The more we look at it, we find the cross holding a place that nothing else has, except Him who died on it. "As is the heavenly," etc. "As he is, so are we," etc. The cross is even a deeper thing than the glory. The glory has been obtained by it, but the cross is where the moral nature of God, His holiness, and His love, have been glorified. Here we see the circumcised believer in Canaan feeding upon the lamb, the remembrance of the death of Christ. The fourth thing seen is that they feed on the "old corn of the land," and the manna ceases. The old corn is a type of the heavenly Christ. The manna suited the wilderness - Christ come down from heaven. In the midst of all the circumstances down here He meets us on the journey, and we feed upon Him. It is the same Christ - only in another character - that we see in the old corn of the land. We have a humbled and a glorified Christ for the food of our souls: not only His life down here, but what we find in 2 Corinthians 3, "We all with open (unveiled) face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory." It is the fruit of the land - a humbled Christ who is now in the Canaan to which we belong. They had not yet taken a city, but they sit down at the table which God has spread for them in the presence of their enemies. All is mine before a single victory. I sit down in the presence of my enemies. He has spread a table for me. God's delight is my delight. Before I draw my sword in conflict, I sit down and know that everything is mine.

328 Lastly, we have the man with the drawn sword come to take His place as Captain of Jehovah's host. In heavenly things it is all conflict. Mark the word here. It is a question of "Art thou for us or for our adversaries?" There is no middle place; but a complete split. If you are for the world, you are against Christ. The moment it becomes a question of Christ, it must be either for or against. The world has crucified Christ, and He has said, "He that is not for me is against me"; and "He that is not against us is on our part." I know that the meaning of these two statements has been questioned, and thought difficult to reconcile, but it is very simple. If we are for Christ, we must be against the world; and if we are not against Him, the opposition of the world to Him is so strong that it will not have us. "Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light," and there can be no uniting of the two. You never see the world accept faithfulness to Christ. The human heart is enmity to Christ. Satan's great object is to get Christians to suit their Christianity to the world. You will never get the world to take God as its portion. "As captain of Jehovah's host am I now come." Of course, it was the Lord Himself. We have the same words here as at the burning bush to Moses, "Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy." In the spiritual conflict we have to carry on, holiness is as much a question as redemption; and when we come to have conflict, we must be as holy as we shall be when we are with Him. Thank God, redemption has done this. You will have the Lord with you. The One who carries on the warfare is the Holy One who has redeemed us, and the Lord's own strength is with us. How far have we the testimony? Can we say, "I am dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God? "

329 Is your thought and purpose to be at Gilgal or at Bochim? Is it your thought to go on in the knowledge of perfect redemption? to have everything of the flesh judged? and to have the Lord's strength with you for successful conflict?

"Prove all things." By what standard? My own comprehension, or God's revealed word? "Hold fast that which is good."

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The call of the Christian is a marvellous thing. I do not speak only of glory; but in saying so I think also of being called to be like Him, to partake of His nature; and I become spiritually like Him. Therefore the apostle says (Eph. 5: 25) that Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word, to the end of presenting it to Himself glorious. The word does not render the church glorious, it sanctifies the church, but communion with Christ in glory is what glorifies. It is in virtue of the power of what He is that we share His glory.

In Ephesians 4, 5, we see that we are conformed to what we know. Here is the reasoning of the apostle: you have known what God is in pardon, in love, and in glory; if you have laid hold of that, it is well, but you ought to reproduce it in your conduct. What is spiritually received in the heart does reproduce itself. Therefore it is said, Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. God loved you when you were only His enemies. I do not now speak of our perfection in Christ, for it is already accomplished; but it is a question of our realizing on earth that which we know. John says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life." As much as I enjoy, so much I reproduce. When I realize what Christ is, it is the joy of my soul. Without doubt that will judge the flesh; for when Christ enters, all that is contrary to Him is manifested. We are going to see a little how Christ nourishes, and how one is sustained by Him in ordinary life, so that the power of Christ could not be enfeebled even in the midst of all the worryings which tend to distract us. If we cannot pass through them, occupying ourselves with the Lord, then, when we would come back to Him, the heart is cold. His love is weakened in us if we have not that which we used for going through all circumstances with Him.

330 We may distinguish three characters in the Christian. Firstly, he is a sinner redeemed. We see in him an object of grace in redemption. There are in him two opposites brought close, God and the sinner. Never has been, never will be, seen such a manifestation with an angel. Secondly, he has part with Christ in glory. Later on we shall see the other character; he has Christ as the manna for the passage through the wilderness. It is therefore of a passing nature, as the two other characters are everlasting.

When God visited His people in Egypt, He did not speak to them of the desert they had to cross, but of Canaan. So, in drawing us out of the world for communion with Jesus, God speaks to us of heaven; He has glory in view for us. But we are apt to stop and consider our circumstances in the wilderness, but when the Spirit acts, one sees only the end.

Paul did not live in the things that are seen, because they pass away, and are null in this sense; but he abode in the things eternal. Consequently the first requisite for enabling us thus to regard the world as null is to know that we are not of it. God found us in sin, entirely estranged from Him; and the question is how to place us in heaven. As He took Christ from the tomb, and set Him at His right hand in heaven, by the same power He has taken us out of our sins to place us in heaven, all the rest being blotted out.

In the chapter before us we find two things: the passover and the old corn of the land. All other things are left aside. It is a question of being in heaven for leaving the manna. This is a great deal to say; it supposes not only shelter from the judgment of God, but a place in heaven. Even when Israel were no longer in Egypt, they did not want the old corn of the land whilst they were in the wilderness. Pharaoh was no longer there. Israel was delivered from the bondage of Egypt, nevertheless they did not eat the old corn of the land. It is just the same for the Christian who has not learnt the salvation he has in Christ. He is no longer under condemnation, but he cannot glorify God. He is sheltered from judgment, but he does not know the efficacy of Christ's work for glory.

331 All effort therefore must be entirely done with, and, like Israel outside Egypt and the power of Satan, we must know God as a Saviour without fear any more. A Christian is one who can say, All is done by Christ for my salvation; He has plucked me for ever from the power of Satan: as Israel could have said, We shall know Pharaoh no more; he is at the bottom of the sea.

Satan was conquered when Jesus drank of the cup which His Father gave Him to drink. The deliverance is complete for us, for God has shewn our Saviour, and as the apostle Paul says, If God is for us, who can be against us? It matters little then that Satan and the wilderness are still there. I leave all aside, because I know God is for me. But there is another which I ought to know. The Jordan remains, which is a different thing. Christ is dead and risen for me: such is what the Red Sea tells me; but the Jordan declares that I am dead and risen with Christ. It is the knowledge and the enjoyment of my union with Him. When we have this, we begin to eat the old corn of the land. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ. Being thus introduced into Canaan, we begin to have warfare with the enemies who are there, but we eat the corn of the land. And there is Gilgal, and circumcision, which means that, when we have the consciousness of being thus in the heavenlies in Christ, we judge all according to the standard of heaven. If I am there, I say of such or such a thing I see in the world, This is not of heaven, and I leave it; there I must abide, and must judge the flesh in the presence of God.

Returning to the manner of being nourished with Christ, we see that, when the old corn of the land was eaten, the manna ceased; that is, we enjoy redemption in quite a new way. The principle of the difference lies here. At the beginning I thought of my sins and of Christ; this is the door by which we must enter. We must be humbled, and enter by Christ. But afterwards, knowing that God loves us as He loves Christ, and that His favour rests on us, and knowing all the bearing of redemption accomplished by Jesus, I begin to estimate the love of Jesus as God estimates it' to have the same thoughts as He in this respect. Then I see Christ in quite another way than before; I am nourished with Him in a way entirely new. It is no longer a mere question of being sheltered only, but I am united to Christ Himself. I contemplate all the perfection of the Lamb who is there; and when I think of the abasement He submitted to on the cross, how He abased Himself to make good the character of God, in order that God might be just without giving up love, and that He might act according to love without giving up righteousness, then I adore Christ. The Son of man has been glorified, because God has been glorified in Him, He has been content to be compromised in order that God might be glorified. He has renounced all, yet had an absolute confidence in His Father. "But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." He goes to the end, and drinks the cup, that the Father might be glorified and we saved. Now I nourish myself with all this; not only am I sheltered, but I adore. What occupies him who is in his sins is to be sheltered; but he who feeds on Christ, while adoring Him, rejoices while contemplating Him, that he is seated in Christ in heavenly places.

332 The more spiritual we are, the more we know what the glory is that Christ would share with us. That which He was through all eternity, and all He has won by His obedience is given us, and we shall be like Him.

Is not Christ seen in heaven an object of affection to me? Am I glad to see Him there? He wishes that our affections should find nourishment in seeing Him in glory. "If ye loved me," said He to the disciples, "ye would rejoice because I go to my Father." And when I think that Jesus has been banished and rejected by the world, I am happy to see Him in heaven. He is the old corn of the land, for He is of the heavenly country. He is also the food that suits us. The Christian is heavenly, and ought to occupy and nourish Himself on Him who is there as the Lamb.

When I say that we ought to abide in Canaan, it is in Canaan where the warfare is that I speak of There are continual conflicts in the heavenly places represented by Canaan, but it is clear that in heaven by-and-by there will be perfect repose. As a sinner, the believer was of Egypt; as a Christian he is of Canaan; but he is crossing the wilderness, and sometimes his spirit is still in Egypt, because he gets weary of the wilderness, and the heart then turns back. The world should be for him, as for Jesus, only a dry land, where no water is (Ps. 63). Here below we have nothing but a desert, where are fiery serpents; but it must be crossed and passed through with God. If our affections are capable of being nourished with Christ, we shall be able to endure everything. I say to myself, Why is it that I am not there? I know however, that Christ is my Saviour. Oh! it is when one does not feed on Christ as the old corn of the land that one does not abide in communion with Him. The manna is for the wilderness, but the old corn of the land is for Canaan.

333 The other character which I have named is Christ as manna for the people in marching through the desert. Jesus speaks of it when He says to the Jews, "My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven," which the manna set forth.

If the Christian neglects to feed on Christ in this sense, he has no strength to put on Christ here below in his walk. If he walks ill, if there are falls, he cannot at Gilgal (for we must come there after all) feed on Christ as the old corn of the land, that is, feast in communion with Him, the heavenly rest. In this case one must be humbled, and settle accounts with Christ, which is an immense difference in the moral state of the soul. If Christ went up the mountain, then came the transfiguration; it was for Him the old corn of the land; He fed, as it were, on the glory; but if He went down, He found at the foot the power of Satan. In all the circumstances of the desert, however, Jesus lived on account of the Father. We too should live on account of Jesus. It is where we meet with the enemy's power that Jesus is our food as manna. Jesus could always say, "As the living Father sent me, and I live on account of the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live on account of me." As Christ Himself crossed the wilderness, and walked there by faith, we are called to do the same. In all circumstances He prayed; if difficulties increased, He prayed more earnestly. He was there as man, and passed through everything with the Father's help.

The Christian feeds on a Christ who has been tried and humbled, and ought to be himself as Christ, crossing the world with all the grace necessary, in order that one should own his Master in Him. If he walks with Christ, every sort of goodness, mildness, of long-suffering, will be seen in him. For Jesus, the effect of temptation was to bring out grace. If I am with Him, and people insult me, I endure; I shall not cease to be meek, because I feed on Him who is such. It is not that my Christian character obliges me to be in these things, but I have all needful for going through them, and I forget them because I am not of this world, but of elsewhere. If I walk with Christ in me, if I eat manna in the desert, I feed also on the old corn of the land in Canaan. Every day one may do both. The manna is wanted, and daily diligence (for the manna spoilt). They had need of manna to go to Canaan.

334 But to glorify God, and reproduce the character of Jesus, in all positions of husband, wife, master, servant, one must feed on Christ, the old corn of the land. Another circumstance may be pointed out. Israel wanted the old corn of the land in the plain of Jericho before the victory was won; then Christ presents Himself as captain of Jehovah's host (v. 13). "Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? "said Joshua. It must be for or against when it is a question of Christ. I may, as man, have relations with others in certain things, but every man I meet is "for" or "against," when the question is of following Christ in heaven. If it is some one more spiritual than I that I meet, he is for me; if it is some one less spiritual, he is against me, for I might be drawn into evil by him.

If we would enjoy the heavenly joy, we must feed on Jesus as the manna come down from heaven, which is all we want for all the circumstances where we are found. Then we shall enjoy Him and the glory as our everlasting portion.

Sketch of Joshua

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The Red Sea closes Egypt; but by faith I am already in Canaan, not in Egypt at all, having been brought out. I am not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in me. I have died out of flesh. The world is not Egypt to me now, but a place of exercise as the wilderness. Moses pleads for God's going with Israel the reason given for His destroying them. How could we get on through the world if God did not go with us?

It had been all grace up to Sinai; after it came the law. The world was Egypt, but is now a wilderness; but the Book of Joshua shews the other. side of Canaan, the type of heavenly places. Numbers opens out the journey through the wilderness.

The world through which I am passing is the desert to me, with Christ as my manna, and the rock whence water flows; and I am passing through as a pilgrim and a stranger. Our enemies, Satan and all, have been destroyed for faith. The Christian is always in that sense a riddle. He has Christ as his life, but not wholly yet as Saviour (Phil. 3: 20); he has, and he has not, salvation; he is waiting for redemption, not as regards the forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1: 7), but as to the body (Rom. 8: 23). So in his service all is enigmatic to unbelief; "by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well-known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things," 2 Cor. 6.

By faith, and in the Spirit, I have this place in Christ who is in heaven; for, in point of fact, we are poor feeble creatures, who have this treasure in earthen vessels. The fulness of Christ as a man dwells in me, and Christ is my life. It is not mere theory or mysticism, but we who believe are united to Christ by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and this is intended to promote self-judgment, neither darkness on the one hand, nor self-satisfaction on the other, but a constant judging of ourselves by Christ our Lord.

Joshua 1.

Verse 3. We have the principle: Jehovah was giving the land to the children of Israel. Now there is in it another element - it has to be realized. It is all yours, but you must realize it. It is for us enjoying the heavenly land in the Holy Ghost.

336 Verse 5. Another great element is God's presence with us. We must have the courage of faith, and count on Him.

Verse 7. But the courage of faith must be the courage to obey God's word, "that thou must prosper whithersoever thou goest."

Verse 8. Hence the word must form the path. There is the diligence requisite that takes the word, and meditates on it, to know the mind and will of God.

Verse 9. There is submission to His authority. "Have not I commanded thee? "It is a great secret of blessing, before one sets about anything, to know that God commands one. Difficulties! If I have the certainty of His will, why mind them? If He puts them in the way, one takes the step, spite of all, looking to Him. The hill and the mud may be in the road where I am to walk: if I did not know I was in the right road, they might make me think that I had gone wrong. All the principles of the christian combat follow. Obedience is the great thing here, and along with it one should be strong and of good courage.

Joshua 2.

Verses 9-11. Faith learns that, after all, the terror of God has fallen on the enemies. It should not be so with us: "In nothing terrified by your adversaries; which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God." If one finds the mighty power of Satan coming against us, why be in the least frightened? Is not the Lord stronger than he? If God is with me, who against?

Rahab is a believer in the midst of all this people; she shews us the character of faith. So James points to her faith no less than Abraham's. She was identifying herself with the people of God because she was sure that He was with them, as Abraham had given up everything to God. James takes both as proofs and samples of faith: the one counting on God; the other seeing what His people are to Him. For His sake one was willing to kill his son, the other to betray her country. They were the two strongest possible instances of practical faith - bad works, if they had not been of faith, which made them most excellent. So the motive that governed Moses was his identifying Jehovah's glory with His people; not that He is glorious merely. "The Egyptians will hear of it." The same principle that makes him execute judgment in killing the idolaters below, makes him plead their cause with Jehovah above.

337 Joshua 3.

Verse 4. The crossing of the Jordan is the grand point here. The ark was to be there, and "there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: Come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore." It was going down into death there where Jordan had flowed. This was what the Lord says to Peter: "Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards." Jesus must first go into this scene of death: afterwards we can follow Him into heavenly places. There is no water at all, once the ark is there: the river fails, and the ark remains, till they are all gone over to the other side. So has Christ utterly broken the power of death, in resurrection of course finally destroyed it. The moment Christ had gone through all, there is free entrance for the believer into heaven, first in spirit, by-and-by actually. It is not now deliverance from Egypt, but coming into Canaan; in passing over Jordan, as before through the Red Sea. Death for the believer is now that he has done with life, sins, suffering, trial, temptation, the world; for he goes to be with Christ, though he waits for a glorified body, till He comes to raise them that sleep. I did belong to death; now death belongs to me. "All things are yours . . . life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Otherwise how could one talk, for example, of judgment being mine, or righteousness, etc.? Now I can; for judgment cannot reach me, because Christ has home my sins.

Verses 15-17. Here it is not the wilderness, but the second part of Christian life, heavenly places, into which we get by association with Christ. It is not merely His dying for us, but our dying with Him. It is all done: the Jordan, as we see, is quite dry. Scripture does not say that we have to die. We have to go over Jordan, not as a river, but as a dry path, into Canaan. We are quickened together with Christ, being forgiven all trespasses; we are raised together and seated in Him in heavenly places. The dry bed of the river shews how completely the power of death is gone.

338 In verse 13 the title of Jehovah is "Lord of all the earth," His character in connection with Israel.

Joshua 4.

A memorial of twelve stones is set up in Jordan, and as many are taken out of it and set up on dry ground in Canaan. It is the witness that through death I get into heaven, and I look back constantly at Christ's death. The ark went down into Jordan and stayed till the people crossed over. I am out of death; and yet my privilege is to look back at Christ's death in everything. This makes all the gain to us. He has turned all to the greatest blessing. I get the old man judged, and gone to faith. Is not this much for the soul? What was the judgment of God is the very ground of all blessing - first, as to Christ Himself, and then as to my being in it with Christ. As to my place, I have done with the old creation. The fact that blessing is by death, the death of the Son of God, tells a great deal that nothing else can. Till I take death as the end of everything here, of all that Adam was, what part have I with God? In the present day they are trying to reform and improve Adam by schools, societies, etc. The Christian, alas! joins with the infidel in mending up the old thing. It is casting contempt on the death of Christ; a totally different thing from my doing good as a Christian, because this is the spirit of Christ. In Israel God wrought the experiment before all eyes of doing everything possible to reclaim man, if it could be; but it could not be, as He of course knew from the beginning. Man is irremediable, but God can save one, or any, out of that state. Yet all was tried first. "I have one Son." The cross was the final moral judgment of man.

The stones were set in the midst of Jordan, because still we go back, and see the people of God in Christ's death. Jordan overflowed all its banks then; the power of death and Satan was never seen as in the cross of Christ.

Joshua 5.

Verses 1-9. Gilgal, as the scene of Israel's circumcision, is the next step; it means rolling. There they submitted to that sign of the covenant, and rolled away the reproach of Egypt. They had never been circumcised in the wilderness. One may be delivered from Egypt; but there is no such thing as being crucified to the world in merely belonging to the wilderness, though we have to go through it, and overcome it. But in getting into heavenly places, one has done with it and is circumcised.

339 Verses 10-12. Israel had not got a bit of the land yet, though they had crossed the Jordan and encamped in Gilgal, But they now keep the Passover, and eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after, and the manna ceased. A risen Christ is needed to feed the soul (2 Cor. 5).

Verses 13-15. And now another point: the Captain of Jehovah's host appears with drawn sword, See to what they are brought by crossing the Jordan. First they are circumcised, they apply it to their condition; they are no longer in the flesh as to their own estimate or experience. Having died with Christ, I am not in the flesh, having put off the old man, and put on the new. In going now through the world I have to manifest the life of Christ. If Satan comes to tempt me, I am entitled to say that I am dead. When I get into Canaan, everything is for me or against me, Supposing I have even an amiable nature, it is a snare; in walking through this world, as, for instance, in the young rich ruler. But before God all are pronounced out of the way altogether. Affection is lovely as a creature thing; but one sees the same in a dog, save that man boasts of it, and the dog does not! There is nothing moral in that, Which is best - an amiable man pleased with himself, or a cross man crying to God to give him grace? Amiability will not do at all - you must have Christ, and you will be cross because you are denying that which you were priding yourself upon. When we get into heavenly things, the question is, "Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?"

The circumcision here is the application (so to speak) of Jordan; for until you get into heavenly places you never can judge yourself - you judge sins. If I began so, I should be hopeless, because I could not get rid of it till I am dead with Christ. This is Jordan. The flesh is never anything but thoroughly bad. I must have death with Christ before I can have circumcision, or mortifying it. Pleasures? 'I am dead' puts an end to all question of these things. The moment one gets the truth of being heavenly, one sees the inconsistency of all that. We are never in scripture called to die to sin; Christ died, and in that He died, He died unto sin once. Of course He had no sin; but for this reason God could make Him to be sin for us in grace, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. As for me, I have sin, and therefore cannot die to it; but He did; and I, being dead with Him as a believer, am called to reckon myself dead unto sin, and alive unto God in Him. So much for death first.

340 That getting into heavenly places in Christ is exactly what brings me into conflict with Satan. In the wilderness one is apt to be impatient, and exercises and dealings come from God; but, passed into Canaan in spirit, I am competent and called to fight the enemy. Circumcision means that I disown and mortify the flesh, I will have nothing to do with it and put it off. It is the practical realization of what I have in title in Christ (Col. 2: 11), being a figure of having put off the old man, not that one has to put him off. Having Christ as my life, Christ dead and risen, I can say that this is not I, but sin in the flesh; but then I am bound, if it be so, that sin never acts; I am inexcusable if I allow it to appear. As it is, then, I need the circumcision or mortification of it. "Mortify, therefore, your members which are on the earth." This supposes power in Christ; for it means, not that I am to die, but to put to death. I am to act in power, to kill or put to death what is working in myself; I am to spare nothing in me that is contrary to God, but use power to put these things down. Not being called to die to sin makes it very plain. See the realization of it in the apostle (in 2 Cor. 4) - "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," the daily making it good. I get my place in holy liberty when I can say that I died with Christ, and am crucified with Him; but being also risen with Him, and having in Him the power of life in resurrection, I can take the place of being circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, as the condition of soul inwardly henceforth; and now I must be always carrying out the true meaning of the cross. If the flesh attempts to crop up, I can say, I do not own you, being dead and risen with Christ.

Then I eat the passover and recall the remembrance of this blessed work which did bring me out of Egypt. Christ is thenceforward eaten as the corn of the land; a heavenly Christian, I live on the fruits of Canaan, the heavenly things that God has revealed to us. The manna means Christ come down to us in this world. In heaven it will be precious to eat the hidden manna; but it is not the food for us as entering Canaan. Manna is not His heavenly side, but Christ for us down here, as we pass through the wilderness; as the old corn is Christ risen and in heavenly places.

341 So the Holy Ghost has an analogous place. He is the earnest of the inheritance (Rom. 8), shewing us all the joys of the future, and of heaven; but He helps our infirmity also and groans in us, conscious of all the trials and difficulties of the way. Both are true of course of the Christian.

It is beautiful to see the way Jehovah suits Himself to His people. When they were in Egypt, they wanted a Redeemer; and the word is, "Stand still, and see the salvation of Jehovah." When in the wilderness, they were staying awhile, or journeying; and Jehovah comes and lives in a tent in their midst, or goes at their head. In Canaan He appears as Captain of Jehovah's host with a drawn sword, because it was a question of their fighting. When they were settled in peace in the land, and He has built the king a house, He has a great palace built for Him, a temple of Jehovah.

We are not like Israel fighting against flesh and blood, but against the world-rulers of this darkness, spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. Our translators in Ephesians 6 say, "high places"; they were afraid to represent evil spirits in heavenly places as they changed thrones into "seats" in Revelation for the twenty-four elders or glorified saints. They judged scripture presumptuously, instead of learning from it in simplicity.

We have the whole position now: the principles on which we are to walk in chapter 1; the Jordan, or death and resurrection with Christ for heaven, in chapters 3, 4; the application of it in chapter 5.

Joshua 6.

Then in chapter 6 follows the warfare or conflict. The first thing shewn for conflict is the absolutely divine power that is needed and given. They are commanded to march round Jericho, ark and all; and the walls at last at the given moment - the very thing that alarmed them before - are made to tumble down without a blow; but this is only on the seventh turn on the seventh day of their compassing the city. Then it is accursed, and must be all destroyed. Self must not be mixed up with it; it is Jehovah's power, and Israel must have no connection with it, save in submissive obedience to His word, and no spoil for their own use could be taken out of it. Israel must appropriate nothing. Jehovah would have them in no way mixed up with the great city of the world devoted to destruction. Those on the contrary must be destroyed who touch its treasures. They are Satan's goods.

342 Joshua 7.

But the goods were touched, and Israel got all beaten directly after at Ai. It is simple but instructive. God acts on the sin that was there, though hidden. Israel had not consulted God but went forward on human principles. Discipline follows.

Verse 3. "Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai, and make not all the people labour thither; for they are but few." Such was the counsel of the scouts to Joshua. It was only a little city. Soon they learnt that it is not by might or wisdom, and that God refuses to fight for Israel with sin unjudged. And Joshua mourns and cries to Jehovah.

Verses 11-15. "Israel hath sinned," is the answer, "and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify the people, and say, Sanctify yourselves against to-morrow: for thus saith Jehovah God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel: thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. In the morning therefore ye shall be brought according to your tribes: and it shall be, that the tribe which Jehovah taketh shall come according to the families thereof; and the family which Jehovah shall take shall come by households; and the household which Jehovah shall take shall come man by man. And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of Jehovah, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel." Achan is taken and confesses; the evil is put away.

343 Joshua 8.

But Joshua has to make all the people go up, and a vast deal of trouble is taken before the city is captured. Jehovah will have sin to be felt in its terrible consequences to the entire people, though from one man only.

The people did not see Joshua's spear as is ordinarily supposed. It was a sign of Jehovah's to Joshua here, as Moses' uplifted hands were in Exodus 17.

Verse 26. For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. The people now do get the cattle and the spoil, though Ai is burnt, and made a heap for ever, and its king hanged.

Joshua 9.

Then we see peace made with Gibeon without consulting Jehovah; and the rulers as faulty now, as the people before. They make alliance with the power of the world, they did not ask Jehovah; else they had been kept from such a false position. They received them, as the church has done to the world. The Gibeonites proposed to join them in doing good and putting down the bad. Was it not a great comfort, in the face of so many enemies, to find some friends to help them? The consequence was that, for their oath's sake, Israel was obliged to leave Gibeon standing; and misery was entailed on Israel centuries afterwards. A famine befell them in David's time because Saul slew the Gibeonites.

Joshua 10.

Yet God interposed for Israel more conspicuously than ever immediately afterwards where Gibeon's alliance drew on it a combined attack of five kings of the Amorites. "And there was no day like that before it or after it, that Jehovah hearkened unto the voice of a man: for Jehovah fought for Israel," v. 14. And many other kings did Joshua smite utterly as the Jehovah God of Israel commanded, returning regularly to Gilgal to encamp, the place of circumcision, that no flesh should glory but he that glorieth should glory only in Jehovah.

344 Joshua 11.

There is another element in the history of Joshua. Hazor, the capital of all those kingdoms, cannot when taken be God's capital. He will not have the chief seat of this world's power for the metropolis of His kingdom. It is the only city of the many that conspired at this epoch which was burnt (v. 13). How different the spirit of Popery! It was glad to get the world's capital for its own. But it is the city of confusion; Rome is Babylon thus viewed. The church of God is heavenly, and we Christians must have heavenly things. How people delude themselves!

Joshua 12.

Jehovah would have His people know their conquests. Hence the detail.

Joshua 13.

When Israel did not carry out the commands of Jehovah as to the Canaanites, these were left as thorns in their sides.

Joshua 14.

Fidelity as the fruit of faith with its abiding strength is precious in Jehovah's eyes, as we see by Caleb.

Joshua 15.

But Judah was not Christ, and the stoutest of Judah's children failed to drive out the Jebusites who dwelt there, till a brighter day - the day of the Beloved.

Joshua 16, 17.

Joseph's children, though not destined to royalty like Judah, get their birthright as far as it could be then.

Joshua 18, 19.

The tabernacle of God is set up at Shiloh, though seven tribes had not yet received their inheritance; and Joshua seeks to rouse them to make good the promised land, casting lots for Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan.

Joshua 20.

Provision is made in the cities of refuge that Jehovah's land should not be defiled by blood, whether by Israelite or by the stranger sojourning in their midst.

345 Joshua 21.

The Levites have their cities defined, though they have no inheritance in the land like their brethren, Jehovah being their inheritance.

Joshua 22.

The altar of the Reubenites on the other side of Jordan gave occasion to the rest for suspicion of the two tribes and a half there; but for the time they held to the name of Jehovah.

Joshua 23.

Joshua in his old age warns Israel that the word is as sure in its warnings for the rebellious as in its promises to the obedient.

Joshua 24.

The people have their history rehearsed from the idolatry of their fathers on the other side of the river in old time, till Jehovah put them in Canaan, and pledge themselves to serve Him; and Joshua departs with the evident consciousness of the precarious tenure that turned on Israel's obedience, however fair appearance might be for a little season.

Gideon - God's Mighty Man of Valour

J. N. Darby.

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The history of Gideon is of much practical importance. It is the history of one of those revivals in Judges, so peculiarly applicable to the present circumstances and need of the church.

Every now and again (as we learn in the previous chapters of this book, which will be seen at once to be occupied throughout with the, failure of Israel, when placed in the land into which Joshua had brought them in blessing) Israel had been sold into the hands of their enemies. Groaning under the consequences of their sin, they had cried unto Jehovah; and Jehovah ever faithful, had raised up some one, as a deliverer out of the hands of those that spoiled them. He was grieved with the afflictions of His people. He judged their sin and evil, yet at the same time pitied and saved. But then the persons by whom He wrought were always in themselves insignificant. We do not find revivals beginning from the head. Very generally, when there has been anything of a recovery from the doctrines and traditions of men, it has taken place through the instrumentality of some obscure individual raised up in the energy of the Spirit.

Such a "saviour" was Gideon.

"The children of Israel (we read) did evil in the sight of Jehovah, and Jehovah delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years," chap. 6: 1.

The Midianites knew not that it was Jehovah who had delivered Israel into their hands, yet in reality, they were but the rod with which it pleased Him to punish His people. As with the Assyrian (Isa. 10): "O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in thine hand is mine indignation," etc. When He has done with His rod, He can break it or burn it. "Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood." Satan himself is very often the rod used by God for the discipline of His children.

"And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel." Nothing could have prevailed against them, had they been faithful to Jehovah. "And because of the Midianites, the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong-holds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them; and they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came up as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their cattle were without number; and they entered into the land to destroy it. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites," v. 2-6.

347 They were in a sad condition. "And the children of Israel cried unto Jehovah."

This is always the first symptom of anything like a revival. When the people of God, instead of saying that they are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing, feel how really poor and miserable, and blind and naked they are, and that they can only receive that which God is pleased to give, He is about to interfere and raise them up.

The sin of the church has brought it into desolation. Yet little real cry has gone up to the Lord; and wherefore? We are not aware of how far we have departed from our original standing. We have got so much of the world's dignity, and influence, and riches! These things, though they hide us not from God or from Satan, are hiding from ourselves our real poverty. Did we but know our destitution, did we but cry unto the Lord, He, "when he saw that there was none shut up or left," would deliver and raise up. Whether as to Israel, or an individual, or the church, the lesson needed to be learnt is the same, that of its impoverishment and destitution. No matter how poor we are, if sensible of our poverty; for there is all fulness in Christ.

"And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto Jehovah because of the Midianites, that Jehovah sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith Jehovah God of Israel, I brought you out of Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage, and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them forth before you, and gave you their land: and I said unto you, I am Jehovah your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell; but ye have not obeyed my voice," v. 7-10.

348 He first of all shews them their sin, as He did when they could not take Ai. There the secret of their impoverishment is found out. 'You are crying unto me now (He, in effect says), because you feel your impoverishment; but the real cause of your impoverishment is this - you have sinned against me.' They had none to blame but themselves. So with the churches in the Apocalypse; and therefore, the word to them is "Repent."

God had been faithful to Israel, but Israel had not been faithful to God. This was the point of the prophet's testimony. He ever vindicates His own conduct, "If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself," Were we walking as He would have us, neither the world, nor the flesh, nor the devil, could prevail against us. Whenever we find ourselves under the power of our enemies, we must be sure to charge the fault on ourselves, and not on God. Does Joshua lie on his face because the people have turned their backs before the men of Ai, Jehovah says to him, "Get thee up; wherefore liest thou on thy face? Israel hath sinned." Joshua ought to have known that sin in Israel, not any changeableness in God, was the cause of their being smitten. Jehovah would not be amongst them any more, until they had put away the accursed thing. Could He go out to bless iniquity? Nothing can weaken our hands but sin; "greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world."

Whether in the restoration of an individual soul, or of a body of saints, God will have it acknowledged that there is no failure in Him, but that we have suffered because of our own sin and folly.

Having testified of their sin, Jehovah next raises up for them the instrument of their deliverance. "And there came an angel of Jehovah, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abi-ezrite; and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress to hide it from the Midianites," v. 11.

Not anything could have been more abject than the condition of Gideon as described here: - stealthily threshing wheat (for fear of the Midianites), to feed his family! But here is one whom the Spirit of God delights to make mention of; whose name, unrecorded of man, is thought worthy to be recorded by Him (Heb. 11: 32-34). The Spirit of God writes to magnify the grace of God, not to exalt man. He would have us bear in mind such little incidents as that noticed here, in the history of the soldiers of faith, in order that we may see by what weak and insignificant instruments God works. His mightiest victories have ever been won by such, and not by those who had resources in themselves.

349 "And the angel of Jehovah appeared unto him, and said unto him, Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour," v. 12.

What a remarkable salutation! Stealthily threshing wheat to hide it from the enemy looked not like valour. To the human eye, there was everything that betrayed depression of spirit. But God's "mighty men "have ever been such as were arrant cowards in themselves, men distrustful of their own strength and wisdom in coping with the enemy - "out of weakness made strong." None are "mighty men of valour," but those to whom it has been said, "Jehovah is with thee," When God calls a person by a name, He makes that person what the name imports. But He takes the most abject man of an abject tribe, to make him His "mighty man of valour." "Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called," 1 Cor. 1: 26-29. God works not ordinarily by such: the credit would then be given to our wisdom, our influence, and the like, and it is written, "No flesh shall glory in his presence." He takes "the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.:: Is Timothy exhorted to "fight the good fight of faith? it is as one "strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." To every Christian it may be said, as Paul writes to those at Corinth, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong"; but again, we are told to be "strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might."

"And Gideon said unto him, Oh, my Lord, if Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not Jehovah bring us up from Egypt? but now Jehovah hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites," v. 13.

His heart has been touched, and prepared of the Lord for the work to which he is called. He has a deep sense of the condition of Israel upon his soul, though he is without the power to help them; and he has been comparing that condition with the title and power of Jehovah. This is the way of faith. It is not for us to be comparing ourselves among ourselves, we should compare our condition with the title and will of Jehovah to bless. Is not something of this sort the language of many a saint now? - Can it be possible that the Holy Ghost is in the church, whilst, at the same time, the church is so worldly, so divided? is it at all like what it was in the apostle's days? The answer of the Lord to the cry of Israel discloses the secret of our condition. We have sinned. We have not obeyed His voice. And, if awakened to the sense of what we have lost, ofttimes, there has not been the acknowledgment of our sin in departing from God, and it has, therefore, only led to fretfulness and impatience or to wrong pretensions. Gideon sees the Lord's hand to be upon His people, and that because of sin. But he identifies himself with the people. He might have said, 'Israel has sinned,' or 'Satan has driven us here'; and then, there would have been no hope. He cannot understand Jehovah's presence, without making His people happy; and he at once loses sight of himself in his interest in, and thoughts about, the people of God as God's people, and says, " If Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us? . . . now Jehovah hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites."

350 "And Jehovah looked upon Gideon, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel out of the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?" v. 14.

Jehovah looked upon him. That is the first thing. The man who is really strong and mighty is he who has thus got into the secret of Israel's impoverishment. Jehovah has looked upon him. Jehovah has identified Himself with him, and shewn His heart to be towards him. There is no limit to his might. But does Gideon feel himself to be a strong man? No! never before had he so known his own weakness and insignificance; never had he so felt the poverty of his father's house as now. "And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house," v. 15.

Thus it is always with the soldiers of faith. They have never so felt their own weakness as they feel it when called to be God's mighty men of valour. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts." People often say, 'I want to feel that I am strong.' What we need is to feel that we are weak; this brings in Omnipotence. We shall have a life of feeling by-and-by in the glory; now we are called upon to lead a life of faith. What saint but knows from the experience of the deceitfulness of his own heart, that, had we power in ourselves instead of in Christ, we should be something. This is what God does not intend.

351 "Wherewith shall I save Israel?" His threshing instrument would have been a poor thing indeed to look to, as that "wherewith" to go against the host of Midian. Never, we repeat, had he felt the poverty of his father's house as now. When God is about to use a man, He makes that man feel in himself most consciously nothing. If He delivers by Gideon's hand, He must have the glory, not Gideon; His must be the strength, not Gideon's. It is always as it should be when we drop down into our nothingness. Strong in the Lord, we are weakest in ourselves. Can we not, almost invariably, trace our failures to self-confidence? When a believer thinks that he is going to do a feat, his failure often becomes ridiculous. God must abase that which is proud and lifted up.

"And Jehovah said unto him, Surely I will be with thee." As with David in another fight of faith, there was no sword in the hand of Gideon, not anything "wherewith" to go against the Midianites. But what matter of that? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" He goes not forth unarmed. "Surely I will be with thee [and as a consequence of that], thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man."

Here, then, is the mighty man of valour, and here is his armour.

Gideon asks a sign: -

"And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me. Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring forth my present, and set it before thee."

There is feebleness here doubtless; he ought to have had simple confidence, and not have needed a sign; still all he really cares for is having Jehovah with him.

"And He said, I will tarry until thou come again."

"And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it. And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so. Then the angel of Jehovah departed out of his sight.

352 "And when Gideon perceived that lie was an angel of Jehovah, Gideon said, Alas, O Lord Jehovah, for because I have seen an angel of Jehovah face to face."

Another mark of feebleness (we do not see this fear in Abraham, under similar circumstances): but Jehovah will give Gideon confidence to stand before Him.

"And Jehovah said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die," v. 17-23.

Is there not most important instruction for ourselves in all this? Faith has that to present to God which He can accept. Whatever our own failure, still Jesus is the same, the value of His work is unchanged. There has been of late an awakening to a good deal of busy activity in service; but God never says to a soul, "Peace be unto thee, fear not," because of service. We are in danger of putting service in the place of the burnt-offering. Where this is done, tile soul gets weighed down, not being able to find satisfaction in the service, instead of going on in happy liberty of spirit.

Gideon's heart reassured, he builds an altar there unto Jehovah, and calls it JEHOVAH-SHALOM (v. 24).

And now he is prepared for service. He has been under God's tutorage. He has learned where his strength is (he no longer says, "wherewith shall I save Israel?") and Jehovah has given him confidence to stand before Him. But where does He set him to work? - with the Midianites? No, not in the least. He has to begin Jehovah's work at home, with that which is nearest to himself.

"And it came to pass the same night, that Jehovah said unto him, Take thy father's youngest bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it; and build an altar unto Jehovah thy God upon the top of the rock in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down," v. 25, 26.

There judgment commences. We must "cease to do evil," before we "learn to do well." The Lord comes to us as "the God of peace"; still it is, 'Down with the idols in your father's house.' We may have been restless in service; but in the midst of much doing, how little have we done this, or ever practically attempted to set up God's altar "in the ordered place." Man's will has not been invaded. It is of the essence of wilfulness to say, 'I have a right to worship God how I like.' Obedience to God is the saint's rule and liberty. Not all the powers in the world have a title to interfere with this. And moreover, if God says, 'Pull down the altar of Baal,' He will give strength to do it.

353 How does Gideon act? His conduct is that of simple faith and obedience.

"Then Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as Jehovah had said unto him: and so it was, because he feared his father's household and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day, that he did it by night," v. 27.

He acts unhesitatingly. And what is the consequence? Immediate opposition.

"When the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold the altar of Baal was cut down, and the grove was cut down that was by it (the grove might add beauty to the altar of Baal, but God's altar must be set up in its native simplicity), and the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was built. And they said one to another, Who hath done this? And when they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing. Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son, that he may die because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove that was by it," v. 28-30.

The action of faith always excites the flesh. Israel knew not where their strength was, they thought it in Baal. Gideon had learned it to be in God. These are sifting times. In the Lord's day everything was apparently in beautiful order; but because He was setting aside men's traditions, all were against Him. So now. How many suppose the strength of Christians to consist in the things they see around them! The soul taught of God knows it is only in Jehovah Jesus.

"And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar. Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbaal, saying, Let Baal plead against him, because he hath thrown down his altar," v. 31, 32.

354 It was of no use to argue the case, except to shew the people the folly of pleading for Baal. If the things set aside were Baal's, and if Baal was a god, surely he would arise and take their part. It was of no use to debate. And do not let us suppose that all the arguments of all the good men in the world can make that which is evil, good. It is melancholy indeed to see the arguments that are devised by the wit of men in vindication of evil.* The bounden duty of the saint is to separate from evil, however sanctioned by antiquity or anything else.

{*It is a most fearful instance of the want of a sound mind, when we find so much perverse ingenuity, so many subtleties, so many analogies drawn, in order to lull the awakened conscience into contentedness with evil.}

The name "Jerubbaal" was no defence. On the contrary, it brought up the question whether there was power in Satan now that faith was in exercise.

When mixed up with the world, Satan has no occasion to disturb us. Let him be alarmed, and up come Midianites, Amalekites, etc. "Then all the Midianites, and the Amalekites, and the children of the cast were gathered together, and went over and pitched in the valley of Jezreel," v. 33.

Here is Gideon with his own people against him, and the enemies of Israel gathered together and pitching in Jezreel. But he has peace with God, and Jehovah is (so to speak) bound to appear on his side. How does he act? The Spirit of Jehovah comes upon him, and he blows the trumpet, and Abiezer is gathered after him (v. 34). Had Gideon been serving Baal, he could not have blown the trumpet thus. But Baal is down, and the altar of God is set up in the ordered place. He sends messengers throughout all Manasseh, who also are gathered unto him, and to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali; and these all are gathered around the man, who is least in his father's house, the poorest of the tribe of Manasseh, but to whom Jehovah has said, "Go in this thy might."

There seems still to have been a measure of distrust in Gideon's mind (v. 36-40). He asks a fresh and double sign that Jehovah will save by his hand, as he had said, proving by the fleece both wet and dry. Jehovah grants his desire; and he is sent forth, with the confirmed assurance of his divine call and mission, to "turn to flight the armies of the aliens."

355 Again let us remark, faithfulness begins not with the Midianites, it begins at home. This is a great principle (whether as to an individual soul, or as to the church of God). Gideon must attack the evil inside his father's house, and in the midst of Israel, before he is used of Jehovah to save Israel out of the hands of the Midianites.

The moment there is a thorough sense of grace, the word is, Go in this thy might."

He is set up as captain of a large army; and now he stands forth to confront the enemies of Israel, and of Jehovah.

"Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them by the hill of Morah, in the valley," chap. 7: 1.

This is God's way of acting. He never honours us when we are thinking that we are anything. Great blessing has often been preceded by our deep humbling, by humbling even sometimes in the eyes of others. We were brought low, and the Lord lifted us up.

But Gideon has a still further lesson to learn (one painfully our own). He has known the acceptance of his offering. The youngest of an idolatrous household, he has built an altar to Jehovah, and begun to destroy idolatry. But he has yet to be taught that there is not a bit more courage or prowess really in the men that had gathered after him than in himself

"And Jehovah said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to deliver the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me saying, Mine own hand hath saved me," v. 2.

At once he has to get rid of a great number of them.

This is done first of all by means of an ancient ordinance of Moses. Jehovah tells him, "Now, therefore, go to proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and faint-hearted, let him return, and depart early from mount Gilead." (Compare Deut. 20: 8.) God's great design in His dealings was to teach Israel to trust in Himself. He wants to find in His people a true heart. A true heart makes a strong hand. Having confidence in the Captain of our salvation and not in ourselves, we faint not at the sight of our enemies, but reckon, with true-hearted Caleb, that "we are well able to overcome them."

356 "And there returned of the people twenty-and-two thousand. And there remained ten thousand," v. 3,

Do we not know what this means? We know that the Lord Jesus sent forth the proclamation. - 'Let those who will follow me count the cost.' "Foxes have holes [told He one, who had said unto Him, 'Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest'], and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" - and then there was fearfulness and faint-heartedness. When there was nothing but Christ, and everything else was against them, many turned back, and walked no more with Him. Confidence in the flesh must be renounced; God will not use the flesh.

The present is an age when people are coveting to know a little about everything. Were God to employ the learning of learned men, the influence of men of rank, and the like, the church would say, 'We have saved ourselves.' Those who have had what are called "the advantages of a good education," find that He says, 'Set your learning, your wisdom, your influence aside: I cannot save by these.' The use to be made of these things is to say of them with Paul, "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." Often are these much coveted things found hindrances in the way of those who possess them, and the great thing to be done in conflict is to keep them under. God will not allow human learning, influence, moral character, or aught else, to come in as any item in our deliverance. He is very jealous of all man's substitutes for, and imitations of, the power of the Holy Ghost. In stripping ourselves of such things, we may seem to others to be throwing away our influence and our usefulness; but what is usefulness? what is "doing good"? The doing of God's will. And God is faith's sufficiency. To all appearance Gideon was weakening his own hands; at the first proclamation, twenty-two thousand left him; but in reality, instead of losing strength, he was gainer by their departure. These fearful and faint-hearted ones would have discouraged the rest had they remained amongst them - "Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brother's heart faint, as well as his heart." The flesh is very bold in word, but when it comes to the point of trial, with Peter, it curses, and swears that it knows not Jesus. There is a great deal of "philosophy and vain deceit "going about now. "Beware lest any man spoil you," says the apostle. Were all the trappings of the flesh laid aside, we should discern how little real spiritual energy there is amongst us. Do you ask, 'What shall I study?' Study well these four words: "the flesh profiteth nothing."

357 "And Jehovah said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there; and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go," v. 4.

There is such a thing as the trial of our faith; and, whilst we very often should be quite unable to test one another, God knows the best way of doing this as to each.

"So he brought down the people unto the water: and Jehovah said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And Jehovah said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place. So the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and he sent all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained those three hundred men. And the host of Midian was beneath him in the valley," v. 5-8

God's ways are strange to sense: the infidel scoffs at them. These people were really not afraid (as those who departed before) to go to the battle; they were all of them soldiers girded for war - the test was this, whether, in that thirsty day they would lap the water, putting the hand to the mouth, or bow down and drink at their ease. The three hundred chosen ones (those by whom Jehovah was about to work) had not time for halting, their hearts being in the work, and they merely took a draught as they went on their way.

The apostle speaks of being "entangled with the affairs of this life "(2 Tim. 2 : 4); all that we can safely take, would we "please him who has chosen us to be soldiers," is just a draught by the way. There is a very great difference between being in the circumstances of this life, and being entangled with them. When tested by Jehovah, those who bowed down were not fit for His use, any more than (though they were not) the faint-hearted. They must go to their homes.

358 Glory is (for all who believe) God's answer to the work of Christ; grace is followed by glory Whom he justified, them he also glorified." Instead of its being this, the devil seeks to put it before the soul on the ground of our devotedness and zeal. At the same time, beloved, would not you and I that our place should have been with "the three hundred"? Shall we let slip the opportunity of confessing Jesus, because we are saved? In the experience of almost every believer there is a being brought down to the water - some turning-point, when he either goes onward in devotedness to the Lord, or otherwise sinks down into a mere common-place christian. Not one of us is too obscure to be tried whether he will seek God's honour, or present things, first.

Gideon (instructed that the battle is Jehovah's, and that he must get rid of all encumbrances) is next shewn his enemies.

"And it came to pass the same night, that Jehovah said unto him, Arise get thee down unto the host, for I have delivered it into thine hand," v. 9.

It is a blessed thing to be shewn our enemies and told with Gideon, that Jehovah has delivered them into our hands. Our old man is "crucified" (Rom. 6: 6), the world "overcome," and its prince "judged," John 16: 33, 11. If we are walking by faith, as risen with Christ, Satan, the world, and the flesh are under our feet.

And mark further, how graciously Jehovah anticipates the need of His servant, in adding: -

"But if thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah thy servant down to the host; and thou shalt hear what they say; and afterward shall thine hands be strengthened to go down unto the host," v. 10, 11.

Not anything could be more alarming than to see the fearful odds that are against the people of faith - the world, the flesh, and the unceasing hostility of Satan! Who would not be faint-hearted, if we saw but this? God is pleased to let Gideon hear what is in the Midianites' hearts. So too is He pleased to let us know, very often, what is in the hearts of our enemies. "Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? "lets out the secret. And as to the men of the world, there is not one in a hundred of them but that has the fullest conviction that Christians are right; yet, because they have numbers on their side, they try to persuade themselves to the contrary. Almost everything he hears bids the intelligent Christian, 'Be strong.'

359 Let us follow Gideon.

"Then went he down with Phurah his servant unto the outside of the armed men that were in the host. And the Midianites, and the Amalekites, and all the children of the east, lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea-side for multitude. And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold I dreamed a dream, and lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; for into his hand hath God delivered Midian, and all the host," v. 12-14.

Divine encouragement is never to the puffing up of the flesh. Anything of pride and self-importance must have been sorely wounded. When God will shew His favoured servant the things that are coming to pass, and that he shall smite the Midianites as one man, He makes him feel, that (in himself) he is but as a "cake of barley bread."

And is there not instruction for ourselves in this? Were Christians stripped of their worldliness, more really like the cake of barley bread "(the most homely thing possible), the world would stand more in fear of them. We have clothed ourselves with its trappings and desired its respectability, so that it thinks we are obliged to go to it for help. There is an unhealthy kind of zeal, often found amongst us, which makes a person ask himself, How shall I give a testimony? Rather let each saint seek to shew forth "the mind that was in Christ Jesus." A man, always anxious to prove himself an honest man, we should begin to suspect; and if a person is always very anxious to prove that he is a Christian, it is doubtful whether he yet knows much of the mind of Christ. Let us quietly subside into simple God-fearing God-acknowledging Christianity, and though outwardly, as a cake of barley bread, the world would feel about us, as the Midianite speaks of Gideon to his fellow.

360 "And it was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof, that he worshipped."

Before he goes to battle, he worships in the full confidence of victory. The worship of faith is always the worship of confidence. Were we more really, in our own eyes, the "cake of barley bread," there would be more abounding praise.

He worshipped: - "and returned into the host of Israel, and said, Arise; for Jehovah hath delivered into your* hand the host of the Midianites," v. 15.

{*Here again there is the setting aside of self. He does not say, "into my hand," but "into your hand." Jehovah had said, "into thine hand "(v. 9), and the Medianite "into his hand "(v. 14).}

What is this "host of Israel"? Three hundred men! The Midianites are "as grasshoppers for multitude," Jehovah's "host," but a handful of men! It is most important to see the dignity attached to the three hundred. God (as we have before remarked in the history of this mighty man of valour) reckons not according to what we are in ourselves but according to that which He makes us.

And had He actually delivered the Midianites into the hand of Israel? No. Neither as yet is Satan actually under our feet, though faith counts him to be. Had Gideon said, 'I will not believe before I get the spoil,' that would have been unbelief.

And now comes the conflict.

"And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers. And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise: and behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be, that as I do, so shall ye do. When I blow with a trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of all the camp, and say, The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon," v. 16-18.

The weapons of their warfare were the most foolish things imaginable, trumpets, pitchers, and lamps in the pitchers! Faith's weapons must be mighty through God alone.

"So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside of the camp, in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers that were in their hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal; and they cried, The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon! And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran and cried and fled. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and Jehovah set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abel-meholah, unto Tabbath. And the men of Israel gathered themselves together out of Naphtali, and out of Asher, and out of all Manasseh, and pursued after the Midianites," v. 19-23.

361 These things shall yet be acted over again. Now the weapons wherewith we have to fight are testimony by word of mouth and our own insignificance. Our power is in giving testimony to Jesus, and never getting out of the place of being but "earthen vessels." We must remember that the vessel only contains the light, let us not pretend that it is the light. The excellency of the power must be of God and not of us.

And Gideon sent messengers throughout all mount Ephraim, saying, Come down against the Midianites."

Impotent in ourselves for blessing (and having found this out), but having proved the blessedness of simple dependence upon God, we can, with Gideon, call upon others to have fellowship with us (v. 24, 25). But let us not be setting up ourselves. Everything depends upon the presence of the Holy Ghost, ungrieved, unhindered. Let this be told, and let us hide ourselves.

The men of Ephraim are seen at the close of chapter 7 slaying Oreb and Zeeb. (They are allowed to come in for blessing in result.) Now they turn and chide with Gideon for not having called them at the first.

"And the men of Ephraim said unto him, Why hast thou served us thus, that thou calledst us not, when thou wentest to fight with the Midianites? and they did chide with him sharply," chap. 8: 1.

This is just what the half-hearted Christian does. He is very angry at not being associated with those who are wholehearted. But whose is the fault? Whenever there is any energy of the Spirit of God working in the church, the language of the men of Ephraim is the language of such; 'Why not have taken us with you?' Faith's answer is very simple, 'Because then we must have gone on your ground; what we have to do is to go wherever the Lord leads: we cannot stop to make compacts and agreements.' No one Christian has a right to stop on his way for another; he must go forward himself in individual faithfulness. The effort to drag others along with us is in reality but a device of Satan to keep ourselves back. Note Jehovah's word to Jeremiah, "Let them return unto thee; but return not thou to them," Jer. 15: 19. Are any desirous of going forward, let them not stop to carry along with them "the men of Ephraim." Far better is it to go on with but few to follow, than to get numbers with us who are only half-hearted.

362 "And Gideon said, What have I done now in comparison of you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer? God hath delivered into your hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb: and what was I able to do in comparison of you? "v. 2, 3.

Let us mark this. Where the power of God is most working, there is always the deepest grace, and the consciousness that all that we are, we are by the grace of God. What a manifestation have we here of the mind that was in Christ! How graciously did the Lord speak of His poor, failing, faithless disciples; "Ye are they," said He, that have continued with me in my temptations," Luke 22: 28, Gideon esteems others better than himself. Not any thing so hinders blessing (individual or collective) as a feeling of superiority to others. The exercised soul will judge itself, whilst it sees that which is done by another in the light of grace. Gideon casts himself and his three hundred in the shade and brings into prominence the victory of the men of Ephraim. If honest in self-judgment, have we not at times detected in ourselves something of an inclination to overlook grace in other saints because they "followed not with us? "Grace is able to fasten on that in a brother that is pleasing to God, and seeks to bring it out, passing over in so doing, very much there may be, along with it of failure. Jesus knew, and perfectly, the weakness and failure of His disciples, though He addressed them as He did. It is a blessing when we can sink ourselves, that others may come into prominence. "Let your light," it is said, "so shine before men, that they may see your good works [not, you], and glorify (not you, but) your Father which is in heaven." If any chide with us, let us seek grace to go down, and take the lowest place, and give them credit. - "Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that." See Prov. 15: 1, "A soft answer turneth away wrath."

363 "And Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the three hundred men that were with him, faint yet pursuing them," v. 4.

What three little words could be more blessedly descriptive of the Christian, than these? - not, 'faint and sitting down,' not, 'faint and giving-up,' - but 'faint, yet pursuing.' We have to do with Him who "giveth power to the faint," Isa. 40: 29. "To them that have no might he increaseth strength." It is a blessed use to make of our faintness and weariness, that of drawing out of the fulness of the supply of grace and strength in Christ. It is said, "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might"; but to whom? To the one who has no strength in himself, who would give up his course if strength were not supplied to him. One victory achieved, the conflict goes on afresh. Do we find ourselves fainting in spirit? Still let us go on, for our God giveth strength to the weak. We like not this trial of faith. It is very painful doubtless to feel day after day our own weakness. We want to feel that the battle is over; but let us remember that now is our time of war. We are called on to fight "as good soldiers of Jesus Christ," and that in a daily round of conflicts. Today there has been sufficient grace and sufficient evil, and to-morrow there will be sufficient grace and sufficient evil. What we need is to live day by day on God. He is faithful, and will supply strength according to the occasion and need. The church will not be at rest till the Lord comes. But weakness ought to be no hindrance to our going forward - "faint, yet pursuing." It is a sad thing to be a spiritual sluggard, for a saint, like a door on its hinges, never to get off himself. The moment a person has learnt to renounce himself, he goes forward. Were felt weakness a reason for standing still, who so weak as Gideon?

The next thing taught us in this history is that the world is neither able nor willing to supply refreshment to the man of faith. The world never gives, it may concede something to us, if we concede something to it, but it never gives. That which is required by it is, generally, the sacrifice of faithfulness.

"And he said unto the men of Succoth, Give, I pray you, loaves of bread unto the people that follow me: for they be faint, and I am pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian. And the princes of Succoth said, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thine army? "v. 5, 6.

364 If you profess to the world that you are "following after resurrection glory, "pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus "(Phil. 3), you will not meet with anything at its hands but some such taunt as this.

"And Gideon said, Therefore, when Jehovah hath delivered Zebah and Zalmunna into mine hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers. And he went up thence to Penuel, and spake unto them likewise: and the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Succoth had answered him. And he spake also unto the men of Penuel, saying, When I come again in peace, I will break down this tower," v. 7, 9.

In the confidence of victory Gideon was going forward (though consciously faint), and these princes of Succoth and the men of Penuel would not come to the help of Jehovah against the mighty. To them it seemed a foolish thing to be fighting with three hundred men against such enemies. So we seem to be very fools when we speak of certain glory. We must make up our minds to this. There are no resources to be had from the world, to help us on in the conflict in which we are engaged. 'You say you are kings and priests unto God, that you are to have glory,' is the taunt of unbelief, 'but you cannot shew us anything for it: when we see you in the glory, we will believe."

We have not one thing to shew, not anything of which the natural man can take notice. Our wisdom is foolishness. We must go on feeling our weakness, confident of victory. By-and-by the tables will be turned. The taunts and reproaches of the world will bring down judgment on their own heads. One special thing that the Lord is coming to judge is, we are told, "all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him," Jude 15. There is not any present ridicule of His saints that will not be regarded as against Himself in that day.

"Now Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor, and their hosts with them, about fifteen thousand men, all that were left of all the hosts of the children of the east: for there fen an hundred and twenty thousand men that drew sword," v. 10.

365 "And Gideon went up by the way of them that dwelt in tents on the east of Nobah and Jogbehah, and smote the host: for the host was secure. And when Zebah and Zalmunna fled, he pursued after them, and took the two kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, and discomfited all the host," v. 11, 12.

"And Gideon, the son of Joash, returned from battle before the sun was up, and caught a young man of the men of Succoth, and enquired of him: and he described unto him the princes of Succoth, and the elders thereof, even threescore and seventeen men. And he came unto the men of Succoth, and said, Behold Zebah and Zalmunna, with whom ye did upbraid me saying, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thy men that are weary? And he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briers, and with them he taught the men of Succoth. And he beat down the tower of Penuel, and slew the men of the city," v. 13-17.

"Then said he unto Zebah and Zalmunna, What manner of men were they whom ye slew at Tabor? And they answered, As thou art, so were they; each one resembled the children of a king. And he said, They were my brethren, even the sons of my mother: as Jehovah liveth, if ye had saved them alive, I would not slay you. And he said unto Jether his first-born, Up, and slay them. But the youth drew not his sword; for he feared, because he was yet a youth. Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, Rise thou, and fall upon us: for as the man is, so is his strength. And Gideon arose, and slew Zebah and Zalmunna, and took away the ornaments that were on their camels' necks," v. 18-21.

"Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou and thy son, and thy son's son also; for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: Jehovah shall rule over you," v. 22, 23.

The Lord Jesus would not be made king by the people (John 6: 15). He came in His Father's name (they would not receive Him thus) and He would not be received in His own name. It is a very different thing being received in our own names, from our being in the name of the Lord. Gideon retires; he will not take the place of rule that belongs only to Jehovah. He knows that if the people's minds are fixed on Gideon, nothing but weakness and dishonour can result; but that if Jehovah be acknowledged and leaned on, there will be strength and blessing. Do we not find this principle running all through the New Testament?

366 Paul hides himself. Though having had such revelations from the Lord, though possessing such a compass of knowledge, yet the moment he sees the spirit coming in of setting up Paul, he says, "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase." So again, "Therefore let no man glory in men: for all things are yours; whether Paul. or Apollos, or Cephas," etc. (1 Cor. 3). Had he put himself forward, Christ would not have been seen. And this principle, true of Gideon, true of Paul, is true of every saint acting in faith.

One special mark of growth in grace is evidenced in our magnifying the name of the Lord Jesus, even though it be in the vilifying of our own names before the saints, and before the world, in our taking all blame to ourselves, and our giving all praise to the Lord. "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."

Had the history of Gideon closed here, what a beautiful picture would it have presented!

There is none perfect but the Lord. He is the true Gideon, the true Samson, the true David. At the close of the chapter we see declension after revival - speedy declension, and that proceeding from Gideon himself.

"And Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey (for they had golden earrings because they were Ishmaelites"): -

He wanted some monument to signalize his victory. These earrings were the spoils of triumph confessedly from Jehovah.

"And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was a thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold, besides ornaments, and collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and besides the chains that were about their camels' necks. And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it, which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house," v. 24-27.

367 Man seeks something whereby to perpetuate present blessing. This has ever been one way of his perverseness. 'What security have you that it will last?' he asks, and faith answers, 'None whatever, but the presence of the Holy Ghost.' If we attempt to secure it by other means like Gideon, we make an ephod. We seek to perpetuate blessing, to secure it to others, but in a very short time keep up the form (having lost the power), and worship that instead of God, just as Gideon's ephod had divine honours paid to it. What is it to have a set of principles (however scriptural) without the power of the Spirit? The only thing to give perpetuity of blessing is the presence of the Holy Ghost. God has wrought in the way of revival, and men whose hearts bounded with love to God and to their fellow-men have said, "Oh, we will perpetuate the blessing," and nothing but evil has come of it. We cannot secure the truth of God by arrangements of our own. Such arrangements may spring from a feeling of piety, but they evidence a want of dependence upon God. There was the energy of the Spirit working in Gideon, but he it was who prepared the way for Israel's re-apostasy.

The restoration lasted not longer than there was individual energy of faith.

"Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more: and the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon. And Jerubbaal, the son of Joash, went and dwelt in his own house . . . . And Gideon, the son of Joash, died in a good old age, and was buried in the sepulchre of Joash his father, in Ophrah of the Abi-ezrites."

"And it came to pass as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel turned again, and went a whoring after Baalim, and made Baal-berith their god. And the children of Israel remembered not Jehovah their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every side: neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, namely Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel," v. 28-35.

Of what use was the ephod now? It had entirely failed of effecting that, which doubtless Gideon designed it should effect. And have not the well-designed efforts of men of God, who have sought to provide for the pure truth, repeatedly ended in the same way? The great thing we have to look to is (not the holding in prominence this or that particular doctrine, but) the ungrieved presence of the Holy Ghost. Let us remember that He is the Holy Spirit, repressive ever of the flesh. If I have set up something, that something becomes an object to me instead of the Lord. His glory must be the prominent thing. How speedy was the departure of the church from God at the first even in Paul's days! "All sought their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's," Phil. 2: 21.

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Thoughts on Ruth

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As in judges we have the dark side of man's misuse of the favour of God to His people under Joshua, so this brief book lets us see a bright picture, yet most true, of His work in view of Messiah. Ruth, a lowly Moabitish stranger, led by gracious and godly affections in faith, seeks shelter under the wings of Jehovah, finds grace in His sight, and is herself exalted to be a direct link in the line of the Lord's progenitors after the flesh. It is the type of the remnant (after Lo-Ammi was sentenced and executed on Israel) received back in grace in the last days, preparatorily to the kingdom, when the Kinsman-Redeemer espouses their cause. The names are of evident significance. Elimelech (my God the King) being dead, Naomi (my delight) typifying the Jewish nation, is a widow and loses her children, and calls herself Mara (bitterness). But a remnant, without title to promise, is received in pure mercy, identifying itself with the desolation of Israel, and is finally blessed with the richest grace and honour on the earth. The nearest of kin refuses to redeem the inheritance; the law could not restore Israel to it, nor raise up the name of the dead. Boaz (in him is strength) typifying Christ risen does it in grace.

Thoughts on 1 Samuel

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The first Book of Samuel commences with the promise of the king.

1 Samuel 2: 10. The people had walked badly, and God presents Christ when all else failed down here. That which man was not able to accomplish, God perfectly accomplished in Christ, but always going far beyond. In Adam, rule; in Noah, the sword; in Sinai, the law; in Aaron, the priesthood (already before Eli). Prophecy does not imply responsibility, because it is a question of the power and of the sovereignty of God in grace; in Israel, royalty; and finally, the church.

Verse 18. In a certain sense, Samuel has as it were taken the place of the priesthood. The priesthood was the means by which man drew nigh to God '; but when the priesthood had failed, God can work in sovereignty, and that is what He is doing here; He gives Samuel, or prophecy, by means of which God draws nigh to man, in His sovereign grace.

Verse 32. God forsakes His own dwelling-place, and in the land which God gave to Israel for their good, the enemies would take possession of it. It is not a question, however, in this verse of the tabernacle of the congregation; it is the tabernacle, in the general sense, to signify habitation, or dwelling-place.

Verse 35. It is no longer a question for the priesthood to walk before God, but before His anointed one, royalty being introduced. The king forms the link between God and the people, and the priesthood takes the second place.

1 Samuel 3. Having determined to judge the house of Eli, God reveals it by the mouth of Samuel. Sincerity is worth nothing, if there is not also light and faithfulness. Nevertheless, there was piety with Eli, for when he learns the death of his sons, this affects him little, but the taking of the ark causes his death.

1 Samuel 4. Samuel is prophet.

Judgment is executed. For the present moment, that which takes the place of the ark in Israel is the Philistine. God takes care Himself of His glory, when His people can no longer take care of it. Yet it was a sad capture for the Philistines. They carry the emblem of power into the very midst of their idolatry. When the ark is taken, in the main all is over with Israel. All their history from Sinai closes here. That is why the ark was never brought back to the tabernacle, but placed in Sion, which commences an entirely new order of things.

370 Read Psalm 78: -

Verse 59. God in great wrath rejects all.

Verse 65. He awakes in David.

Verse 67. As to Joseph, who has the double portion of the inheritance according to nature, God refuses him.

Verse 68. All is now on the ground of election according to grace.

1 Samuel 6. Good sense in the priests. They sent back the ark with the thought that the God of the ark was more powerful than the affection of the cows for their calves. God could overrule nature; otherwise that which had happened to them was mere chance. When David brought back the ark, he had not the good sense of the priests of the Philistines.

Verse 19. Much the same happens to the people of God when they are not faithful. When one has lost God, one laments after Him; then, when He is there, they forsake Him.

1 Samuel 7. The sovereignty of God in grace acting by prophecy - Samuel, the centre of all this system.

371 1 Samuel 8. Although God had already interposed in grace several times, they reject Him as king; they will have Him no longer.

1 Samuel 9. Saul, wretched man! He ignored the man by whom God had done so many things, and God who had wrought them.

1 Samuel 10. Nevertheless he is anointed.* What was the state of Israel at this moment? Very sad. Still there remained the God of Bethel, who had promised to Jacob never to forsake him. If Saul had been honest, he would have said, This is what we want.

{*Up to Eli all depended on the priesthood; but royalty having come in, all depended on the king. If the king fails, the people go to Babylon; under the priesthood all the people were given up to the Philistines, as was the ark. The king is sovereign, he organizes the priests; he is responsible. Instead of having recourse to the priesthood in order to know the will of God, royalty was with prophecy, which was the sovereign gift and the sovereign power of God, when everything had failed. Before royalty it was the priest who was the anointed one.}

Then Saul is recognized by Israel.

The hill of God is the seat of the sovereignty and power of God in grace, where the Philistines (Satan's power) were. We see nevertheless a company of prophets (the Spirit acts in power in spite of the Philistines), a small remnant who praised the God of Bethel, so that if there had been ever so little faith, Saul could have known the thoughts of God, and, being His anointed to be the leader and deliverer of the people (1 Samuel 9: 16), he might well have driven away the Philistines who were in the land of God. There are the signs; but we must listen to the word. Whatever may be the signs that we may have, one must await the direction in order to act. The Philistines are always the enemies in the land; the others are outside; these are in the land of God. The worst enemies of the church are those who are within.

Verse 8. Saul remains two years before going down to Gilgal.

1 Samuel 11. It was all well to deal with the Ammonites; but the Philistines were then the true test: Saul was feeble as to these.

1 Samuel 12. Samuel retires, leaving the people in the position they had chosen under the king, responsible before the Lord, but not without his own intercessions.

1 Samuel 13. The iniquity penetrates very deep. Although the people had their king, there were no arms in the land.

Saul is put to the test. He causes the trumpet to be sounded, not in order that God should hear in Israel the elect of God, but the Hebrews - a heathen name. He seems not to have had one single thought of God. If the Philistines have any strength, it is also needful that the Hebrews should listen. It was nation against nation - no intelligence, no link with God. Gilgal ought to have recalled something to Saul's mind, but he has neither faith nor intelligence. Saul may here represent some one who desires good, but it is only the flesh. He nevertheless follows the word of God outwardly, but he proves at the same time that he has never depended upon God for one single instant, and that the flesh cannot sustain itself in the path of faith. If he had known the need he had of God, he would have waited, whatever might have come. The faith of Jonathan begins, and the flesh cannot follow. When faith begins all flesh is routed.

1 Samuel 14. Jonathan did not look for the honey, but God gave him some to refresh his heart in the midst of the energy of his faith.

Verse 47. Saul was troubling everything. There is relief, and not deliverance, for soon we find the Philistines and Goliath. He did not destroy the enemies, but He plucked Israel out of their hands. God had not yet anointed David, for He does not work until the people have entirely failed.

372 1 Samuel 15. Saul is here a second Achan. God has in His heart what Amalek did. He will destroy him. Saul ought to have understood that, but he is not identified with the feelings of God. He avails himself of the power which God gives him to rob God.

1 Samuel 17. When David was alone, it was a trial; but he was infinitely worse in Saul's court, surrounded by unbelief After having been in the court, he could again mind the sheep. Self-denial of David! It is needful, that after having worked with God, he should still wait on God for the reward. In order for faith to be something, it must go through every difficulty - family difficulties, etc. The "uncircumcised" - man who has not God - Goliath had committed himself by challenging God's army. This was the strength of David.

Verse 58. Faith has no pretensions; it returns to its own insignificance, because, after all, faith is nothing save what it draws from God.

1 Samuel 18. Jonathan recalls to my mind the remnant of Israel. He loves David with all his heart; but he had not followed him. Chapter 23: 16-18 tells us what Jonathan was. Abigail represents much more the faith of the church. In the tribulation of Jesus the remnant does not take part with Him, whereas Abigail follows him everywhere. Although he is rejected, she calls him Lord, whilst Saul is to her only a man. She has intelligence. She judges Nabal, although the judgment was not yet executed. She becomes the wife of David in the desert; thus it is with the church. When David was with Achish, he was in a sad state - a servant of God, who said he had done evil to the people of God, in order to be well with the world!

They said of David, the Lord is with him. They expected much from him, but nothing came. One must follow for a long time the path of faith.

Verse 14. Here is the intelligence of David: when it is a question of enemies David is always ready.

1 Samuel 19: 20-22. Saul loses all conscience. The thought that David was with Samuel ought to have stopped him - Samuel by whom he had been anointed. God put all things in his way to stop him, but he was hardened. In prophesying himself, he ought to have understood that the power which caused him to act at this moment, and which rested on David, was greater than himself; but he despises these signs, as he had despised the first. The career of David then became very painful, because it was a question of not killing Saul, of doing nothing.

373 1 Samuel 21. The sword of Goliath - the power of death. David carried it with him, but certainly did not shew it to Achish.

1 Samuel 22. Here he is in his place. All was there - royalty, prophecy, and priesthood. Saul, after having despised prophecy, turns against the priesthood. Yet David is not discouraged; he will protect Abiathar.

1 Samuel 23. One of the characteristics in David is always to consult God.

1 Samuel 24. For the present David was doing nothing. It is difficult to do nothing when one feels that God is with us. David has much more regard for Saul than Saul had for himself. Excellent spirit!

1 Samuel 25. Prophecy, properly so called, disappears. Nabal (Israel) is set aside, he who rejected David; and Abigail becomes the wife of the despised one, while he is in the wilderness. It is not properly the church, but she is on the principle of the church. Abigail goes to meet David before the death of Nabal: thus it is with the church before the nation is judged. The faith of this woman is very remarkable.

Jesus, after all, was taking care of the sheep, although He was not owned.

Verse 26. Abigail, as it were, sentences her husband to death. She sees in Saul a man, and in David the anointed and the servant of Jehovah.

1 Samuel 26. God again gives to David the opportunity of killing Saul, and that which David says to him this time is much more severe. David never surrenders himself to Saul. He is a hero. He never lets go his object, and his persevering faith is a beautiful thing. Verses 10, 11. He has a profound respect for all that belongs to God.

1 Samuel 27. His faith here fails completely. He seeks the favour of God's enemies in boasting of having done evil to His people.

1 Samuel 29. Poor David! God permitted all this to shew that in bringing him to the throne all was grace. He is set aside for a certain time, like Saul.

374 1 Samuel 30. David burns through the fire which he himself has kindled. But he always lays hold of God's actings.

1 Samuel 31. The Philistines are in full possession of all, in order to be completely beaten. What grace that God prevented David from going with Achish! If he had put his hand on Saul, he could not have uttered the lamentation which he composed on the subject of his death.

The progress of evil in Saul deserves attention. After disobedience, after jealousy and hatred against David, he despises the prophet in the very circumstances which ought to have reminded him of his authority, then the priesthood, and lastly, he is totally forsaken, and seeks for help in the power of Satan. It is well also to notice that when he falls Israel is deprived of everything. David was among the Philistines - Samuel was dead - the priesthood was judged, and even Abiathar was far off. There remained nothing, the state of Israel was complete desolation. Mark well that (David, by his unbelief, having been obliged to hide himself among the Philistines) all depended on God in pure grace. Mark also that, when David leaves Saul, which is the beginning of his typical history, in contrast with Saul, he takes with him the shewbread and the sword of Goliath. When once he is in his normal position, we have with David that which Saul had despised - the prophet, the priest - David himself being king. This history is perhaps the most sad in the scriptures. It is the history of that which had the position of faith, without the faith which would have had the reality. All he does turns to judgment. On the contrary, in the same measure as that, Saul rejects all that is of God. It is found again with David. Thus the prophet, the priest, only is suffering; but the wisdom of God there.

Jonathan: a word on Working with God

1 Samuel 14.

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In the doings of Jonathan, we get energy of faith in the midst of sad confusion in Israel.

The people of God had sought in a carnal way to establish themselves against their enemies. A people of no faith to lean immediately upon God, they had asked for themselves a king; and whilst testifying to His own rejection by them, God had instructed Samuel to hearken unto their voice in all that they said, and make them a king (chap. 8). "Give us a king, to judge us like all the nations," their cry, as again (even after the prophet had warned them as to consequences, in accordance with the divine testimony), "Nay, but we will have a king over us; that we may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles"; the carnal desire is met, and Saul set up to war against Israel's enemies.

Such is the state of things in the midst of which we find Jonathan. And though he enters not into the full mind of God, he is able to act in the energy of faith,

It is hard for faith to endure the afflictions of God's people, and the dishonour done in it to God Himself. Jonathan endures it not. He has faith in the God of Israel, and he makes up his mind to attack the Philistines. He calls to his armour-bearer, and says, "Come let us go over unto the Philistines' garrison, that is on the other side," v. 1. The sin of the people of God may have subjected them to the power of the "uncircumcised," but this cannot subject the rights of God. Such is faith's reasoning. And nothing is more simple. The moment there is separation unto God, a standing with Him, there is zeal for God and strength in His service. But he confers not with flesh and blood, "he told not his father." There was no faith in Saul; and had he consulted him, Saul would most probably only have discouraged - with faith he would have gone himself. He would either have stopped or hampered him; when he does act, it is only to trouble. Faith has to act on its own responsibility. One way in which we very constantly fail is in asking counsel of those who have not the faith or the light we ourselves have; we thus sink down to their level.

376 All that could give authority, or accredit it, in the eyes of the people religiously too, was with Saul. The king, the priest, the ark were all there. But Jonathan waits not for the people. He has none but his armour-bearer with him; and so much the better for him, for he is not troubled with the unbelief of others. Where there is a single eye, there is ever confidence in acting and not hesitation. The flesh may be confident, but its confidence is in self, and therefore only folly. Faith makes nothing of circumstances, because it makes God all. It is not that difficulties in themselves are lessened, but that God fills the eye.

The Philistines' position is a strong one amidst precipitous rocks: what could human energy avail? Jonathan has to climb up upon his hands and feet (v. 13). The oppressors too are there in great numbers, and well armed. But faith with a single sword counts God sufficient. "Come," is the unhesitating word, "let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that Jehovah will work for us," v. 6. The uncircumcised "have no strength when looked at thus they have not the God of Jacob for their help: their hope is not in Jehovah. Little matter as to the condition of His people, if He be with them: "there is no restraint to Jehovah to save by many or by few." The enemy may be as the sand on the sea shore for multitude: that is nothing - and faith knows it. He can give strength to one sword to subdue a host.

Jonathan seeks not other help. Happy in his companion, a man of a kindred spirit (his answer bearing him the witness "Do all that is in thine heart; turn thee, behold I am with thee according to thy heart," v. 7), he at once discovers himself to the Philistines (v. 8).

We have already remarked on the strong simple confidence of Jonathan in Jehovah's power. Another thing that characterises his faith is the consciousness of the impossibility of the link between God and His people being broken. Sad as the condition of that people is - the Philistines in power in their midst, pillaging a defenceless land; no means of resistance left to them, not a sword or a spear (except with Saul and with Jonathan) found in Israel (chap. 13 : 19, 22); the very king they have in their midst, one they have sinned in setting up - this touches not His faithfulness. The Philistines are delivered into the hand of Israel* (not into his own) in the judgment of the man of faith (v. 12). In isolating itself with God, faith identifies itself with His people. It loses sight of self, passes over their desolations, and recognizes all that is theirs in God. Jonathan is as Jehovah's hand. And see what boldness! Though Israel be not able to sharpen a mattock, in the name of the God of hosts, Jehovah, God of Israel, he goes straight on his way.

{*Saul's summons of the people (chap. 13: 3) is by their national name of "Hebrews," the name a Philistine would have called them by.}

377 But then, whilst he goes forward thus, conferring not with flesh and blood, there is nothing of boastfulness, no acting in fleshly haste and excitement. His expectation is from God. He can discover himself plainly to the garrison of the Philistines, telling them as it were, "Here am I, an Israelite"; but he will wait and see; - if they say, 'Tarry until we come to you,' he will stand in his place, and will not go up to them. But if they say, 'Come up unto us,' he will go up; Jehovah hath delivered them into their hand. There is to be the sign (v. 9, 10). In other words he will wait for them to come to him, or he will go and throw himself into the midst of their camp, just as Jehovah may bid. He will not make difficulties for himself; but he will not turn away from difficulties which meet him in the path. His is the real dependence of faith.

Having done this, the very haughtiness and scorn of the hostile power instruct him as to what to do. "Behold," say the men of the garrison one to another, "the Hebrews come forth out of the holes where they had hid themselves"; and then indolently and with fleshly confidence taunt these true Israelites, "Come up, and we will shew you a thing!" v. 12. It is the sign for Jonathan; "Jehovah hath delivered them into the hand of Israel."

In the energy of faith he goes forward and climbs the rock, his armour-bearer following. The Philistines fall before him; it is comparatively easy work for the armour-bearer to slay after him. The power that inspires Jonathan acts for him. Jehovah is really there; He uses Jonathan as an instrument, He puts honour upon the arm faith has strengthened, but He manifests Himself. The terror of God falls upon the enemies of Israel (v. 13, 15).

378 But what of Saul? He has been left tarrying under a pomegranate-tree in Migron, whilst God is triumphing over the Philistines through Jonathan (v. 2). "And the watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked, and behold the multitude melted away, and they went on beating down one another. Then said Saul unto the people that were with him, Number now, and see who is gone from us," v. 16, 17. All that is regular as to form is with Israel, but not faith. "And when they had numbered, behold, Jonathan and his armour-bearer were not there." That is all they know about it.

"And Saul said unto Ahiah, Bring hither the ark of God," v. 18. Here again there is form - the form of honouring Jehovah in seeking His guidance. It seems all right, yet it is but the form. (God, if we may so speak, has left with Jonathan.) Saul will have the ark brought; but while he talks with the priest, the tumult of defeat in the host of the Philistines still going on and increasing, he bids him stop; "Withdraw," he says, "thine hand," v. 19. There is no simplicity of dependence upon God, but the uncertainty and bewilderment of unbelief.

He joins the battle (v. 20). But it is not as entering into the spirit of the thing, - he has no sense of that on which Jonathan had counted, the secret of Jonathan's strength: "there is no restraint with Jehovah to work by many or by few." He calls the people around himself, and adjures them saying, "Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies," v. 24. "So none of the people tasted any food." There is great apparent energy, it is true, but it is not of the Spirit of God; so that when he gets into the tide of victory, he is in reality only a troubler, distressing Israel and hindering the pursuit. It is a carnal and selfish zeal. We may get into the path of faith, but we shall find there that nothing but faith can walk in it; let the flesh mix itself up in the work of faith, it is only for weakness.

The people come to a wood, there is honey upon the ground, yet no man puts his hand to his mouth, for they fear the oath (v. 25, 26). Jonathan has not heard that oath; wherefore he puts the end of the rod that was in his hand, and dips it in an honeycomb, and puts his hand to his mouth and his eyes are enlightened (v. 27). And when made acquainted with the curse, and seeing the people faint around him, he at once exclaims, "My father hath troubled the land: see, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey. How much more if haply the people had eaten freely to-day of the spoil of their enemies which they had found; for had there not been now a much greater slaughter amongst the Philistines?" v. 28-30.

379 Happy Jonathan! Faith is so occupied with its work, and has so the sense of God's love and grace, that it has full liberty, and whatsoever God presents in the way it can thankfully avail itself of, taking it and going on; whilst the carnal zeal of that which is but an imitation of faith, and which never works with God, makes a duty of refusing it. Had Jonathan not been occupied heart and soul in Jehovah's work, he might have stopped to think about the honey; as it is, he merely takes it for refreshment and passes on. Through the energy of faith he is carried clean out of the knowledge of the oath (v. 27). Out of the reach of this unbelief, he can avail himself of the kindness of his God with joy and thanksgiving, and pursue his course refreshed and encouraged, whilst the people (who had not the faith to go with him) are under the curse and cannot. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Saul has put both himself and the people under this miserable restraint (if the flesh puts itself under bondage, it must keep its oath), and in result they are led into sin; for they are so hungry, that when the time of the oath is expired, they fly (v. 32) on the cattle taken as spoil, and slay them, and eat the flesh with the blood thereof, thus violating a direct command of God (Deut. 12: 22, 23).

The effect of all this is that of making faith guilty for acting in liberty. Such is ever the way of the flesh in its mixing itself up with faith.

At a moment of manifest outward blessing Saul must build an altar, and make much of Jehovah's name, just as previously he had professed to seek counsel at the ark. He builds his altar (v. 36). But let us mark the emphatic comment of the Holy Ghost, "this was the first altar that he built unto Jehovah." Then, through the priest, he consults God as to pursuing the Philistines; - "but he answered him not that day," v. 37. On this he seeks, by an appeal to the "God of Israel," to discover the hidden and hindering sin (v. 36-41). Jehovah indeed acts, yet it is only to manifest the folly of the king; the "perfect lot" is given and Jonathan is taken (v. 42).

"Then Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what thou hast done. And Jonathan told him and said, I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I must die. And Saul answered, God do so and more also: thou shalt surely die, Jonathan," v. 43, 44.

380 The people do not allow this. They interfere and say, "Shall Jonathan die, who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid: as Jehovah liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground: for he hath wrought with God this day." That is self-evident. "So the people rescued Jonathan that he died not," v. 45.

He had "wrought with God." His was the simple happy path of unhesitating faith which counts on God, on His faithful connection with His people, and walks in the blessed liberty of taking the refreshment He may give by the way - liberty for refreshment, not for licentiousness; while the flesh is making its solemn resolutions not to touch, nor to taste, nor to handle, and then, the occasion serving, it sets aside the authority of God. Faith of this sort confers not with flesh and blood; it acts from God, and it acts for God.

All the religious actings, all the forms of piety, are with Saul. He has the ark and the priest. He makes the vow to abstain from food; manifests zeal for ordinances; prevents the people eating flesh with the blood; builds his altar when others have got the blessing, and takes the credit to himself. He can be religious, when he has comfort and blessing; but there is no reference to God in faith, so as to go through difficulties with God. There is energy, but it is energy in the flesh; deliberation when God is acting; and action, when he does act, in haste and bewilderment.

The Lord preserve His people from the guidance and help of unbelief in the work of faith, blessed in the simplicity which acts with Him.

Thoughts on 2 Samuel

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As the first book gave us Israel tired of their original relationship with God, and the trial of the king of their choice, ending in the destruction of himself and his house, the second contains the establishment of David as the king, according to God, though failing far more in ease and exaltation than under the oppression and persecution of Saul.

2 Samuel 1. The generosity of David is here apparent, his horror at the Amalekite, who hoped to profit by Saul's death, and his genuine grief over the fallen king of Israel, with his loved Jonathan.

2 Samuel 2, 3. David asks of Jehovah, and is guided by Him; but war goes on humblingly between the men of Judah, round David, and the rest of Israel, round Ishbosheth, who had no real claim to the throne. It was the more sorrowful a conflict, because, personally, the chief in command for Ishbosheth (Abner) was a better man, by David's own confession, than Joab, his own second in command. After all too it was Abner's pique which closed the strife, not Joab's prowess or skill; and David has to mourn over Abner, treacherously slain, and to spread Joab's iniquity before Jehovah.

2 Samuel 4 shews us David true-hearted in the matter of Ishbosheth's death inflicting what was meet on the murderers.

2 Samuel 5. The kingdom over all Israel now turning to David, who had reigned seven years and a half in Hebron, as after thirty-three years in Jerusalem, over all Israel and Judah. Zion is taken by the energy of Joab, who becomes commander-in-chief. David is honoured of the Gentiles, has sons and daughters born of his numerous wives and concubines, and defeats the Philistines who assail him.

2 Samuel 6. David seeks to have the ark brought back, but thought not of what was due to the holiness and the word of Jehovah, who smote Uzzah for his rashness. But the evident blessing which rested on the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, where the ark rested, touches the king's heart, who now conducts it meetly, and with triumph and with humility too, the more conspicuous because the empty pride of Saul's daughter, Michal, childless till death.

2 Samuel 7. David desires to build for Jehovah, but learns that it is reserved for his son, the man of peace, as he had been of war. God, who had called him in His sovereignty, must do all to establish David's house (as well as to bring Israel into rest) when His Son, the Son of God withal, should build the house, and the throne be established for ever. What an outpouring of David's heart follows!

382 2 Samuel 8. The Philistines are subdued, the Moabites, Ammonites, and the Syrians; so are Zobah, Amalek, and Edom, and all the administration is in order.

2 Samuel 9. The kindness of God shines in David's dealings with Mephibosheth, Jonathan's lame son.

2 Samuel 10. Those who despise the king are punished condignly.

2 Samuel 11. The king's sin in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

2 Samuel 12. His conviction by the prophet's parable, and Jehovah's dealings, the death of the first child by Bathsheba, the birth of Solomon, and capture of Rabbah.

2 Samuel 13-19. The sword departs not from David's house; Tamar's dishonour; Ammon's murder; Absalom's flight, return, and conspiracy; David's departure; Shimei's cursing; Ahithophel's counsel defeated by Hushai; Absalom's death, and David's mourning; but he returns, all Judah and half Israel conducting him back.

2 Samuel 20. Sheba's rebellion is put down and the king is fully restored, and all ends in peace.

2 Samuel 21. But God in His righteous government will not pass by wrongs against His name, and judgment comes in David's day for Saul's forgetfulness of the oath in the matter of the Gibeonites, who are avenged on the descendants of Saul. Even then David, far from resenting Rizpah's feeling for that unhappy house, himself pays the last honours to the memory of Saul and Jonathan; God is entreated for the land; the Philistine champions fall.

2 Samuel 22. David's song.

2 Samuel 23. David's last words, with the names of his mighty men, and the record of their exploits.

2 Samuel 24. God's wrath in consequence of David's numbering of the people, and His grace in bringing in blessing at the point where the plague was stayed - Jerusalem and its sanctuary.

383 Appendix.

2 Kings 2: 2. Bethel (Genesis 28, especially verse 15) where God promises to preserve Jacob, type of Israel, wherever he went, to bring him back, and not to leave him until the promises were fulfilled which he had made before. This name, Bethel, plays a great part in the word of God, as recalling the eternal care of God for His people. Here Elijah is type of the man Christ, who enters into the midst of the people, and identifies Himself with them, starting from the principles proclaimed at Bethel.

Verse 4. Jericho recalls the most complete curse. It was where Christ goes after His identification with the people.

Verse 6. Jordan is death.

Verse 8. The power of death, which falls at the touch of the power of Christ.

Verse 9. After the victory Christ can distribute gifts.

Verse 10. If one can see Him far beyond death, He can give everything.

Verse 14 and following. Elisha is the character of Christ after His resurrection.

Verse 22. He returns to Jericho, and destroys the effects of the curse, and brings in blessing instead of it.

Verse 23. He returns to Bethel - full realization of the promises made to Israel; but He exercises judgment.

Verse 25. Then he goes to Carmel, the garden of God - millennial rest. Then one finds Elisha exercising the power of the age to come. The miracles are for the profit of the people of God.

The Gospel according to Matthew

J. N. Darby.

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{The first part of these notes was originally given as an exposition of Matthew 13, and was so published, translated from the French. But, as even here the exposition gives a general sketch of the preceding chapters, and as I am enabled to add a version of the notes on the chapters which follow, I have ventured so to modify the title as to suit the paper as a whole. The early part dwells only on chapter 13. - Ed.}

{file section 24001-9f, see 24010-6f for remainder}

Matthew 13

It is seldom that a chapter of the word is so isolated that we can give the exposition of it without taking account of the connection with what precedes and what follows. There are some which contain a single subject developed enough for us to be able to consider it separately. Sometimes, even a single verse presents some feature of the precious Saviour which may supply matter for meditation during many blessed hours But to unfold the ideas which are presented in a chapter, it is always necessary to consider it in relation to those things with which, according to the intention of the Spirit, it is connected. This is what I shall endeavour to do with regard to the chapter before us.

This Gospel may be called the gospel of the kingdom. That is, it relates the history and discourses of Christ, specially with a view to the establishment of the kingdom of heaven. This thirteenth chapter reveals to us the mysteries of the kingdom.

Let us consider the position in which the revelation of the kingdom was found when the Lord pronounced it; in other words, what were its relations to the Jewish people at that time. With this object, let us review a little the contents of this Gospel.

In the first chapter we find, after the plan of Genesis, Numbers and Chronicles, the genealogy of the royal family, and the two great stems with which the promises were bound up, and from which Christ descended: David and Abraham. The promises were made to the seed of each. The miraculous conception of Jesus, according to the predictions of scripture, is then related.

Next, in the second chapter, we are told of this royal birth (a subject of alarm to Herod, who was in the enjoyment of the Jewish royalty), as well as of testimony and joy to the ends of the earth; the flight of Jesus into Egypt and His return; and in all these circumstances the fulfilment of the prophecies is established.

2 In the following chapter (Matthew 3) the approach of the kingdom of heaven is announced. The prophet warns the people of the wrath to come, from which it was necessary to flee; of the axe which was laid to the root of the trees; then he announces that God was seeking fruits, and that it would be useless to boast of being a child of Abraham, if one produced none. Jesus subjects Himself to the condition of the Jews and receives at the same time the testimony that He is the Son of God. His subjection and humiliation, and the testimony thereupon rendered, and rendered to Himself respecting the glory of His person, are here profoundly instructive.

In Matthew 4, Jesus, thus identified in humiliation with the Jews, and owned as the Son of God by the Father, undergoes the temptation of the enemy who must be conquered and bound, as the strong man, if one would spoil his goods; a temptation suited to the circumstances in which the Messiah stood. Satan seeks to turn the Lord aside from the path of obedience, by urging Him to make use of His glory, or to take it according to His will, and as being Himself in subjection to Satan; by His natural wants, as hunger; by His privileges, that is to say, the promises which had been made to Him (His Jewish privileges or those of Messiah, according to Psalm 91); and by glory in the world, a glory indeed which He will really possess as the gift of God hereafter, even "all the kingdoms of the world"; and all this by prevailing upon Him to deviate from the path of obedience on which He had entered. But in vain. Then Jesus begins, after John is put in prison, to preach the approach of the kingdom, His abode in the place described in Isaiah 9 giving place to the foretold difference between the last afflictions of the Jews and all those which preceded the manifestation of the light of Messiah.* He preaches the gospel of the kingdom and confirms His doctrine, and gives testimony to the glorious truth of His presence, by miracles of goodness which announced the visitation of the God of Israel.

{*When Satan cannot prevail to withdraw the believer from the path of obedience, he begins to act upon his adversaries, and to excite them to opposition and persecution. Jesus retreats before this rejection thus began, and hence becomes the centre of light and blessing, in the midst of the distress of Israel, according to the passage quoted.}

3 Having thus attracted the attention of the multitudes, He unfolds the principles of the kingdom and the effect of the testimony which was to be rendered to Him (Matthew 5-7) Observe, there is no question here about redemption. There is the spirituality of many parts of the law, or rather the application made by Jesus of His ordinances to the heart as well as to acts, and the introduction of the name of the Father as the motive, principle and rule of conduct. Israel is here, as it were, on the way, in danger of being given up to the judge if he agrees not with his adversary. It is the light of heaven which shines on the conduct of men, by means of Him who came from heaven.

In Matthew 8, before the historical dealings with Israel, we have an introductory display of the power come in and its effects. It was Jehovah cleansing the leper or leprosy in Israel, and sending the cleansed one to the priests. It was, since it was Jehovah, that which reached in power over the limits of Israel and shewed that, while Gentiles would come in from east and west, the children of the kingdom would be thrust out. Next He was come down in gracious participation in all their sorrows and infirmities; but hence withal, having no place amongst men; but in the midst of the tossings and heavings through which those who were content to identify themselves with this rejected One for His own sake must pass, they were secure by that very fact in all, in the same boat with Him who was there in divine power and counsels, however low He might be come. This was the place of the remnant. As to the others, they would turn Him away; but Israel, left to the power of Satan, would rush as unclean headlong to destruction. Such is the whole history of the coming of Messiah, Jehovah, Jesus. Note here, we have not the demoniac sent back to tell of the power which had healed him. For it is the ministry of the Lord which is pointed out, and its course, reception and effect. Hence this is the connection of these events in order to present the history of the Lord's presenting Himself. It is in a certain sense complete in itself.

In Matthew 9 He continues to labour personally in the ministry of the kingdom. Acknowledged as the Son of David by the blind men, and received by the multitudes with admiration, He is accused by the jealousy of the Pharisees of casting out devils by the prince of the devils; but the time of grace towards this poor people was not yet over. When Jesus sees the multitudes, He has compassion upon them; they were as sheep without a shepherd.

4 In Matthew 10, as the Lord of the vineyard, He sends His disciples to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," to declare to them that the kingdom was at hand; a prefiguration (so to speak) of the transmission of this ministry to His disciples, when He should have been Himself rejected. But there is no question of any but Israel. They were not to go into the way of the Gentiles. Nevertheless, on account of this general mission, the Lord, in His directions and encouragements, expresses Himself in a manner which might serve them as a guide in all circumstances wherein they might be found, whether in their actual mission, or during His absence from the earth: still, He regards their mission simply as a mission to Israel, whether then, or even at the last times. They were not to have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man should have come. The capture of Jerusalem has deferred that event until God resumes His labours towards Israel.

The Lord, resuming His labours of love, recounts, on the occasion of the arrival of the disciples of John, all the history of that work among the Jews (Matthew 11). John Baptist, himself, takes the place of a disciple instead of that of a prophet, and the Lord bears testimony to him, instead of receiving testimony from him. The kingdom of heaven, instead of being established in power, being rejected, is invaded by violence only, in defiance of difficulties and the opposition of men; for the Jews, whether one had lamented or piped to them, had not responded to the testimony of God. The rejection of Jesus, a rejection which He accepts with entire submission, is explained by this: only the Father could know the Son, and only the Son could reveal the Father. The Messiah disappears, so to speak, in His glory too pure for man to receive. But grace only springs up in greater abundance, and all things having been delivered to the Son, it is no longer a question about the Messiah of the Jews. He invites all those who are "weary and heavy laden" to come to Him. It is a chapter of the highest interest.

Hereupon in Matthew 12 the Lord breaks with the Jews decidedly. He is Lord of the sabbath given as a sign of the covenant with them, the Lord in grace, but still Lord. The Pharisees seek to kill Him. He hides Himself, and the light of the Gentiles begins to dawn in the testimony of God. Acknowledged anew by an astonished people as the Son of David, the Pharisees put the seal to their iniquity and their condemnation, in again attributing His works to the power of the prince of the devils. Thereupon Jesus pronounces their judgment: the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is not pardoned. The sign asked for by the perverse generation is refused them: there shall no other sign be given them than the sign of the prophet Jonas. Even the people of Nineveh and the queen of the South shall condemn them, and at last the unclean spirit that had gone out of the people shall return into them with other more wicked spirits, and its last state shall be worse than the first.* Such will be the end of the generation that rejected the Saviour. Thereupon He renounces the ties of nature which connected Him, as the Messiah after the flesh, with this people, and acknowledges no other relationship than obedience to His Father.

{*I believe this will be verified in the idolatry of the Jews under Antichrist, in the last days.}

5 This rapid sketch of the contents of these twelve chapters of the precious revelation of God will shew us the importance of the position of chapter 13, at which we are now arrived, and which is to occupy us more particularly. It is based on the rejection of the Son of man, the Messiah, by the self-righteousness of Israel; and, in fact, on the judgment passed on the latter in consequence of this rejection of the Heir of the promises.

Wherefore, addressing Himself the same day to the multitudes, Jesus appears as no more seeking fruit. It was no longer a question of His vine or His fig-tree. He sows - He is a sower. He finds nothing: He brings with Him that which by His grace may spring and produce fruit. He fully distinguishes His disciples; to them it is given to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, which is not granted to the multitudes whose heart is made fat. He speaks to them in parables - a precious light for the remnant led of God; darkness to the people led of their own blindness.

Here, then, the Lord takes the place of a sower, and the word falls, here and there, on every kind of ground. But, having taken this character, it is no longer a question about the Jews merely (there one would have sought fruit), but, in principle, about every hearer of the word. However, we have not here the unity of the church, the body of Christ, in heaven, but His work on earth; and then, after that, the forms which the kingdom and the judgment connected with it, on the earth, should take. I would not say that the consequences of that would not go further, but herein is contained the subject of this chapter. It was sowing time, because there was nothing. Every individual that heard bore fruit according to the nature of the ground where the seed fell. For here we have, not the secrets of the efficacy of the grace of God, but the responsibility of man, and the outward effects that would follow in consequence of the work wrought in this world. Thus the word was "the word of the kingdom," - the testimony borne to the rights of Christ by the grace of God - the proclamation of the establishment of the authority of God on the earth - in grace it might be, but still requiring the subjection of man. The kingdom thus proclaimed had a moral character, because it was the kingdom of God, having precious promises and a security which was beyond all price. But it was, at the same time, the kingdom of the heavens whose authority was to be established over the earth, the government of God here below, and His work in respect of this government; and not the church united to Christ in heaven.

6 Still, in this first parable the Lord does not present a similitude of the kingdom of the heavens, although the word was "the word of the kingdom," because here the question is not about the effects and results of the seed generally, under the government of God, but about the fact of the sowing and the individual result, according to the ground where the seed fell. As far as the work of the sower was concerned, it was an affair of individuals. The result would be a whole, which would indeed require a work of separation, but which was nevertheless meanwhile a whole. The work did not adopt the Jewish corporality as its- ground; it did not acknowledge the ancient vineyard. A sower sowed, and each grain, so to speak, had such or such an effect in the heart where it fell. Herein there was an important point in the work, or in the preaching of the kingdom; individuality and individual responsibility.* This was a principle, moreover, always true, but which the work itself brought out, - which was at the root of the work, because God and man were fully manifested. It was not merely a question about the government of a people; but the first principle, the basis of Christianity, was to be that each one should bear his own burden. Grace unites those who have received this seed with good effect, for the life is common and the Spirit is one. Still, each one receives for himself, and cannot withdraw himself from his own responsibility in that respect; a responsibility which has reference, not only to his moral conduct as a man, but to the reception of the testimony which the activity of the love of God comes to scatter, like seed among men, upon the heart. The principle of individual responsibility was ever true for the purpose of eternal judgment, and must be so if God is judge! He will judge every man; nevertheless, it was not the principle on which the Jewish system was based here below; but, after the rejection of the Messiah by this people, this principle was brought out, and connected itself with the only thing which remained as a ground of relationship between God and man; namely, the testimony of His love and the revelation of His claims upon the heart.

{*It is a principle which Popery completely destroys, by putting the church and the acknowledgment of its authority before the reception of the word under individual responsibility, while still, in the end, it leaves to every man his own burden. It is the church making war against God, and not the fruit of the blessing to which man is called.}

7 I forbear to enter deeply into the meaning of this first parable, not because it is unimportant (far from it), but only because I think it must have been so often dwelt upon, both in public and in private, in the presence of the readers of these pages, that it is hardly necessary. The only thing that I will repeat here is, that what we have presented is not a doctrinal explanation of the origin of good, but the actual work, and its actual result under the responsibility of man - the facts of the new dispensation, and not the counsels of God.

That which distinguishes the good ground, as far as the reception of the word is concerned, is a man's understanding the word. In the contrary case, strictly speaking, he does not understand it: in the two other cases, there is the appearance of it, but no fruit: here one regards nothing but fruit.

Thus far, we have only "the word of the kingdom." In the six following parables we have similitudes of the kingdom itself, or the forms which the kingdom takes after the rejection of the king on the earth, and in consequence of the word being sown. It is easy to distinguish them into two parts; namely, the three first and the three last with the explanation of one of the first. The former are addressed to the multitudes; the latter, to the disciples apart. The former, it seems to me, present to us the exterior of the kingdom in the world, its state such as the world views it, without absolutely pronouncing the judgment of God thereupon. They are historical, as we have already seen. The latter give us the thoughts and intentions of God in the kingdom which exists here, and the result of this external whole. The efficacy of grace is never touched upon in this chapter; it is a history and not an explanation of doctrine.*

{*In the three first, it is the actual result of the seed in the world. In the three last, it is the powerful motive which governed the heart of him who was led by this motive according to the secret of God.}

8 It will be remarked that we find here, as in many other places, when the Spirit would present to us some general view of the thoughts of God, the perfect number of seven, divided, as is generally the case, into four and three - four parables addressed to the multitudes, and three to the disciples.

I have said that the three first parables present to us the exterior, the aspect of the kingdom towards the world; but that does not prevent a spiritual man discerning the principles which are there at work, nor his judging them according to the mind of God; on the contrary, it is what we ought constantly to do, in order to walk rightly according to the wisdom of God.

However, I shall chiefly concern myself with the explanation of that which occurs in the parable itself. The first idea which is presented to us of the kingdom thus described in these mysteries, is a work done in a field by its owner; but all that he does now is to sow the good seed there. The work which he has wrought may fail in its general result, in the field, although the seed cannot be changed; and this is what comes to pass.

While men sleep, the enemy of Him who sows the good seed and to whom the field belongs, comes to sow tares; and the field, or the beauty of the harvest, is spoilt. The owner of the field leaves those two things to bear their proper fruits. He to whom the field belonged had done His work; the enemy had done his, while men slept; then he also went his way: the effect was a sad mixture in the world, of which men might accuse the owner of the field; but the thing being manifested by its effects (for it had been done in secret) the servants discover it when it becomes public. The master explains to the servants who come to Him and receive their instruction from Him, that it is the work of the enemy, and that the harvest, as far as the world is concerned, will be spoiled. At the time of the harvest He will apply a remedy, that is to say, at the time of the judgment, which will make a distinction in the field between the good and the bad. It was not the servants' business to destroy the tares. They were not the executioners of the world's judgment, and the time itself was not yet come.

9 The kingdom only being established by sowing here below during the absence of the king, and not in power, and consequently by judgment, the confusion resulting therefrom would be the sad character of the kingdom, until it should be established in power, and the judgment should put an end to the disorder produced by Satan.

Compare here the manner in which the Lord presents His ways with the account of the seed in Mark 4: 26. The kingdom of God is as if a man, after having cast seed into the ground, should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow, he knows not how; for the earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear; and when the corn is ripe, immediately they put in the sickle, because the harvest is ready. During the time of the mixture, and while the corn is not yet ripe, no judgment takes place; if it did, it might root out of the world the unripe corn.

An attempt has been made to confound all this with church discipline; but the subject is different. The question is not about the church or discipline, but about the kingdom and about judgment to be exercised on the evil which Satan has introduced among the good corn.*

{*My object is not controversy, but exposition of the parables i nevertheless, I must here add a word on the value of an interpretation often put upon this parable. That there is a mixture of Christians with the world is a matter of fact.

Many take advantage of this parable to justify themselves, or at least to say that we cannot root up the tares or exercise discipline. In the world-church this may be all very true; but, in the first place, if any one would reason thus to prove that the world-church system is good (for its existence is allowed as a matter of fact), such an one professes as a Christian to be willing to bring down the church on earth, in principle, to the level to which Satan has reduced it in fact; which is enough to convince me that one who has the glory of Christ at heart will not lend himself for a moment to such an idea. Again, when I find the whole is bad, I do not begin by rooting out the tares from this evil system; that is what they would do who stay there and would try to purify it. I do not quit the field; I cannot do it, for "the field is the world"; but the evil which I did I cease to do. I am still corn in the tare-field, I have not touched the tares; I have only as a Christian corrected my individual walk in some respects, and am thus separated by the fact itself from those who persist in the evil. If I can unite myself in peace with others to find the presence of Jesus according to His promise, so much the better; it is a great blessing. But I do not enter upon that question. My object is only to expound the parable, avoiding what is a mere sophism.

10 As for discipline, properly so called, that is always exercised on corn, and that not with a view to rooting it up, but curing it and even restoring it here below, if possible. The incestuous man was given up to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord. In fact, he was restored on earth, because he repented. It is not my intention to pursue this subject, but to expound the parables. I have only referred to it for the purpose of saying, that the two subjects have not one idea in common. We may here observe also how the Lord regards the kingdom and everything in it as a whole, from the beginning to the end of it.

In fine, that which we have revealed is, that the effect of Satan's work where Christ had sown the children of the kingdom, that is, this state of things on the earth, must remain till the harvest. The tares are not simply unconverted men; they are persons whom Satan has brought in, under the form of Christianity, to spoil God's harvest in the earth - in the place where Christianity was established. It was not the church in heaven, it was not churches gathered in certain localities; these ideas are not found here. They are the children of the kingdom, regarded as plants of God in this world, but who are found in the place where Satan had power to sow his own seed. The effect, apparently not to the honour of the owner, is explained for those who learn from Him. The judgment will explain it to such as will not be taught.

As regards the judgment, the parable states that there is a time of harvest, and not the harvest merely. At that time the tares are first gathered and bound in bundles for the purpose of being burnt the corn is laid up in the granary.*

{*The rapture of the church belongs to this age, to the harvest, to the end, but to this age, as to its time. It seems it will appear in another age.}

11 Generally speaking, the judgment or the harvest, such as it is presented in the parable itself, does not go beyond that which is manifested in this world. The tares are gathered for the purpose of being burnt: that is all; this is what is proper to the earth. The only thing which goes beyond what is external here below is the fact that the wheat is gathered into barns. It is a negative fact - the wheat no longer belongs to the field: that which takes place in the barn does not appear. God interposes by means of the reapers to bind the tares in bundles (not heathen or unconverted men as such, but the wicked ones of Christendom, at least of the place where the good seed was sown) and He quite removes His own people from the scene. The natural state of the tares is destroyed, but it is not removed from the field. This then is the result in this world, the field which belongs to Christ, the sowing which He has performed.

The second parable presents to us the kingdom during this period. Of the small grain of seed, such as it was at the beginning, there is formed a great power in the earth, so that men seek its protection, sheltering themselves under its branches. For the explanation of this symbol, compare Ezekiel 17: 23, also 31; Daniel 4: 10, 12, 14.

The third presents it to us, not in its outward, secular power, but as a principle or doctrine which spreads and completely pervades that which is submitted to its influence. It is not here the heart, or the world, but the kingdom established in this world. The idea of the doctrine of Christ, in other words, His name, must spread.

A certain definite sphere is submitted to its influence, and entirely filled with the profession of the name of Christ. I see here that the particular subject in hand is the existence within certain limits of the external profession of the doctrine or the name of Christ. These parables, as it seems to me, have no reference to spiritual good, neither is it the purpose of them to present the dark side of that which has come to pass. They are, as we have said, historical. A spiritual perception, perhaps cultivated and improved by other passages of scripture, may enable me to see that a secular power, like Nebuchadnezzar or the Assyrian, is not a good thing, when the question is about what Christ has established and about my spiritual standing; but here the matter is presented to us as an historical fact; the kingdom was to receive such a character.

12 The word leaven, in general, does not suggest the idea of good to one who is familiar with the scriptures; but the purpose of the parable is to state the fact of the general existence of the external profession of the name of Christ, leaving it to the spiritual discernment of the child of God to judge of that which so exists.

We now come to the explanations given to the disciples, and to the parables which were for their ears only. Here the seed is not properly the word; it is the children of the kingdom brought into the world by Christ, who have their life - their moral existence - from Him. We sow the word; but here the great fact is, that the Son of man brings His own into the world; it is a work which He begins. The vineyard being rejected, He does not look for that in the world which was not found in Israel. He introduces, but in the world, His own, because it was all over for the time, at least with Israel. When He has done that, Satan does the same; active in evil, on the ground where good has been done.

Israel, the people of God, is become wicked, and, led by the prince of this world, they reject their Saviour, their Messiah. God being thereupon active in good in the world, Satan assumes an attitude of active hostility. To spoil the effect here below, is all he can do. But the judgment takes effect upon it: the harvest is the end of the age, the reapers are the angels; for the question here is about the government of this world by God. As to the expression "this age," we are accustomed to apply it to the church; but it is not here a question of the church, but of the introduction of the kingdom of heaven, Messiah being rejected by the Jews. What was the age in which the Lord was found with His disciples? Was it the church, or the dispensation of the church? By no means. It was a certain age of this world, which was to end by the reception of the Messiah, and the re-establishment of the law as a rule by the government of this Messiah. The people of Israel having rejected Him, this age becomes purely and simply this present evil world (age), from which Christ delivers us, but in the course of which God has set up His kingdom, in the way we have just spoken of.

The final close of the age is suspended while these acts are in progress, but at last its end arrives. Then the Son of man (for here the world is concerned, not merely the Jews and their Messiah) will purge His kingdom of all things that offend, and of them that commit iniquity, and they shall be cast into the furnace of fire. That will be the judgment of everything that is opposed to the glory of Christ, when He will execute it. But here He appears as the Head of the providential government of God, not as the Bridegroom coming to seek His bride, nor as the King coming to reign in Israel, or over the Gentiles in immediate relationship with them. It is the Son of man, supreme Head of the government of God, who sends the angels of His power to purge His kingdom, long defiled by the presence of the children of the wicked one, of everything that offends.* It is an act of His own power, acting as from on high; it is not the servants who will execute it. He sends His own messengers to gather the tares and cast them into the fire. He does not Himself enter into the earthly kingdom already established. He acts as from on high by His messengers, and the righteous are not established and blessed in the marred kingdom, but they shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.**

{*The first act here regards the wicked, the tares. In the case of the net, the first step was to separate the good. Because, in the case of the tares, it is the exterior of the government in the world, the present result; in the latter parables, the motives and the spiritual discernment; although the judgment arrives at last afterwards.}

{**The righteous shining as the sun shews us how these parables apply at the same time to Christ and to believers. He gives up His earthly glory, despises the shame, and endures the cross, in view of the joy that was set before Him; but this necessarily involves the church seen in glory according to the counsels of God: - the righteous will shine. We see our own glory in the sun to which we shall be like. In the two cases there is the glory. "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given them," so that He, while yet looking forward to it for Himself, gives up all His Jewish and even personal glory, in a certain sense, as of right, to bring the church in there; in a word, He gives it up for the church. We, seeing that glory as ours, see it in Christ; and so in the application of the parable, we may say, Jesus has done it for the church as His treasure - we do it for Christ as our treasure. The counsel of God is, that we should be together in that glory.}

13 This, then, is the result of the kingdom having been defiled by means of the work of the enemy; the judgment is the answer to the absence of all judgment in the kingdom, in the interval between the sowing time and the harvest. It is neither the joy of the church nor the establishment of the throne of judgment over the earth, but the purification of the kingdom, the general idea of government from on high. The servants had thought of re-establishing here below, by rooting the wicked out of the world, the order of things which existed then at the commencement, that the field here below might be in accordance with the intention of Him who had sown; or, in other words, that the field that He had sown should be a just representation of His labour and His thoughts; but this was not what was to take place there - this was no longer possible.

14 It is a matter of further revelation, that then the righteous (and it seems to me that the term is not necessarily limited to those who had lived after the seed of the kingdom had been sown) will shine as the sun in the kingdom of the Father. This then is the reason why there was no question in the meanwhile of purifying the field here below. God had better counsels in store for us. It is a revelation which belongs to the disciples. The rest was the public government of God, intelligible, or what ought to have been intelligible, to a Jew.

The succeeding parables present to us rather the secrets of the kingdom - that which only concerns the initiated, the disciples. It was no longer that which was merely external for the multitudes which surrounded Him. In what was said to the multitudes, everything took place in the world, that is to say, in the field, with the exception of the one fact that the good seed would be taken from it and hid in the barn. All belonged, properly speaking, to this age, unless we may except the existence of the barn. But in the explanation of this first parable, the Lord goes beyond what He had said, passes the limit, so to speak, and shews us the terrible result of the judgment of the tares in the weeping and gnashing of teeth: then He raises the curtain on the other side also, and the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. But this throws an entirely new light on the principle of the kingdom. It is a motive to action wherever this revelation is understood, and wherever we act according to the understanding of this purpose of God.

It is no longer a question how to establish clearly the relations between the old system and the forms which it took after the rejection of Christ, or on account of the barren state of the vineyard; but how to comprehend the effect of the counsels of God, which went much farther. There was something there to influence the heart. We have before had the effects here below of the sowing: the fact of the mixture, and the separation, and the form which in consequence of that the kingdom took in the world; here we have the revelation to the disciples of the effect outside the world, and consequently the motive which directed him who had understanding in the kingdom (it was this that characterised the kingdom in this respect); lastly, the discernment which knew how to act, even in the circumstances of this confused state of the kingdom, and not only the fact of this confusion in the world. That explains the order of the parables. In the two cases, the historical part for the multitude gives the sowing and the divine judgment at the end (this is all that the mind of the multitude takes notice of); and after that, the great historical facts, the tree and the leaven.

15 But here we have the motive which governs and influences the man who has the mind of Christ - in the first place, Christ Himself and us by His Spirit - in regard to that which has been revealed within the veil; then the separation made with discernment when the net is full. It is not a case of sowing seed, which issues in a mingled crop left in its natural state till the time of God's acting. It is an activity, the result of understanding and motive, based on the discovery of a hidden thing, or on the perception and search of a loveliness that is appreciated, and which is worth the giving up of all; or on the need of having separated, and so united together, those who constituted the sole object of all the toil, and who previously had been mingled in the net with that which was worth nothing to the fishers.

The one part presents the exterior, on which God will certainly act at last, but which is left as a picture in its complete character before the eyes of the world: a great tree, a leaven which leavens the whole mass. The other, the intelligence and activity of the Spirit of Christ, which gives up everything, and perceives good things to seize upon them in giving up all else.

Now, the first principle, the general principle of the two first of these three parables, based, as I have said, on the revelation of the glory of the righteous, made in the explanation of the first of the three former, is the energy which renounces everything on account of the discovery of that which becomes of inestimable value to the soul. This would not have been the character of the kingdom, if it had been established among the Jews; there were principles and a conduct which would have suited it. Its authority would have been exercised for the maintenance of good and justice, and great happiness would have been the fruit of its establishment. But the kingdom, once rejected by those who were the children of it, was no longer of this world, and it became necessary for one to give up everything that he possessed, according to the discovery made of the glory, which thereupon belonged to the faithful in the kingdom of their Father. This glory causes a renunciation of everything in order to possess it, according to the counsels of God, of which He has made a discovery in the revelation of this treasure - the church, properly so-called. Christ Himself did so, and even in two different ways.

16 He gave up everything, He emptied Himself to accomplish this work and buy the church. But again, of how great value to Himself and for God must the church, thus brought to glory before Him, have been, that He should quit the glory of His Father, His bosom, to have and to bring back His church with Him! In effect, it was because it was infinitely precious to the Father, and because He wished to have it before Him holy and without blame, that the Son, according to His love for the Father, gave Himself for it, the Father having entrusted to Him this work, and the church itself, that He might bring it to Him; for if the Father loves the Son, and has delivered all things to Him, so also the Son has given His life, that the world may know that He loves the Father, and that as the Father has given Him commandment, so He does. For He came to do His Father's will.

Still, as royal Heir of the kingdom, lawful and perfect Head, according to God, of the Jews, the people of God, and heirs of the promises according to the flesh, it was necessary for Him to give up all that, even this peculiar height of exaltation. He could weep over Jerusalem, whose children He would so often have gathered. He could understand the value of whatever was glorious in that situation. He could feel all the force of those words: "thou hast lifted me up and cast me down," Ps. 102. Nevertheless, for the joy of possessing the church, this fair and precious creation of the Father in grace and light, this jewel of the light of God, this expression of the thoughts of the Father in grace, witness during the ages to come of the grace which it has received (and that because it is the reflection of it) - for the joy, I say, which followed upon the discovery of this treasure which was not of the world, but of God, in the light, He gave up all He possessed among the Jews; He looked upon all else as nothing.

17 Answering perfectly to the thought of God His Father, in regard of that which was the glorious object of the love of God, a creation not external to Himself as Creator, but formed to be before Him, according to His nature which He had communicated to it as far as was possible, Christ - who had emptied Himself indeed, but who answered not the less on that account but so much the more to the whole thought of the Father, gave up everything to fulfil the will of the Father and to possess Himself of this treasure. So the kingdom takes this character. It is in Christ that we see it, even this reflection of the nature of the Father, for He is not only by grace (a creative and communicative grace) but essentially the reflection and the image of the glory of the invisible God. He is morally the manifestation of it in all things, and beyond that, inasmuch as all the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. Thus we also, for the sake of Christ glorified before the Father, for this glory which we shall have with Him, when we shall be like Him, seeing Him as He is, but which henceforth we see in Him - we also renounce everything now. (Compare Phil. 3: 7, 8.) Still it is Christ who has given us the example of it, by devotedness to His Father; Paul was only a weak imitator of Him who inspired him, and had supplied him with the perfect model of that devotedness.

But then Christ, however He might renounce His earthly glory and rights could not yet possess the church all pure and glorious as being His peculiar property, separate to Himself. He must take it in the world; but that does not hinder Him, He places it there and buys the whole field. But the treasure is His object, and is sufficient to engage Him to take the whole field; for the subject here is not the beneficent government which shall be established over the world, when the judgments which will have purified it will have been executed, but of something which He takes for the sake of the treasure which is hid there. Elsewhere, in the prophets we see all the blessings which will flow from His reign (the church, the new Jerusalem, being glorified, so that the nations will walk in its light), blessings which will be the effect of the public administration of the kingdom of the Son of man. But here we have the mysteries of this kingdom presented to a spiritual understanding.

But, first of all, let us notice here: Where these revelations of the secrets of the kingdom take place; Where this joy which is motive sufficient to cause Him who possesses it to give up all, which causes Him to feel that all is loss in comparison with this glory; Where this discernment which can so perceive the beauty of the pearl of great price, as to enable us to understand that we gain everything in giving up everything; - this discernment, whereby the spiritual understanding, which can judge all things, perceives that to keep anything else is only to hinder the possession of that which this divine intelligence tastes and appreciates, and which decides thus in the full knowledge of the case. The choice is made, the nature which seeks pearls has found the pearl which suits it. Where is the place, I say, that these revelations, which excite and satisfy this divine nature, take place? It is "in the house" they were made known to the disciples who followed Jesus, who were attached to Him. They followed Him already, they followed Him in separation; in separation they received that from which belonged to Him, as being Himself in separation from the world. The multitude does not receive them.

18 Let us come to the application, or rather to the explanation, followed by the parable of the treasure hid in the field. We have here the secret thought of God. The subject is not properly that external character of the kingdom, but the inward thought of Him who is acting there. Christ Himself has taken to Himself a field, but for one who understands His thought - is the field His object in taking it now? No; it is the treasure in it. There is that which fills His heart, and which was the motive to that which He did. God gave Him power over all men, that He might give eternal life to all those whom the Father had given to Him. I would not be understood by that to say that all men are the field, but only to shew how there could be two thoughts in the counsels of God.

In the kingdom of heaven a field has been purchased. In appearance perhaps, the field is the object which the purchaser had in view. Christ has the right of possession over this field; His authority should be acknowledged there, because He has purchased it; but the joy of His heart, His object in all that, is the treasure (the church) which is hid there. That which was purchased by Christ and which belongs visibly to Him, there where His name is eternally acknowledged in the times of the mysteries of the kingdom, that which is His right, and which the understanding of man might recognise as the purchase which He made, that which is as a field which a man bought, is not what He has at heart, for He thinks of the treasure which is hidden there. It is the form which the kingdom has taken.

19 He cannot yet possess the church, all pure, removed to heaven to reign with Him. In the meanwhile, it is in the world; and the kingdom takes the character of a whole which, in appearance and by right, is a lordship, a possession which belongs to Christ, but of which the secret and the real object is only known to those who have the mind of Christ. He has taken the field for the sake of the treasure,* but it is the treasure quite pure as it is known to Himself that He has at heart. The ministry of Peter did not yet distinguish the two, although he and all the saints after him made part of the purchased treasure. Peter had the keys of the kingdom. Paul was converted by the doctrine of the union of Christ and the church attached to Him in glory; he did not know Christ after the flesh.

{*Although the great principle of giving up all for Christ is a true one (and we have already spoken of it), we cannot apply the details of this parable to the history of an individual soul. A soul is never called on to buy anything to have the treasure; but to seek to have nothing except it. In fact, in the history of souls, something similar often occurs; that is to say, one embraces Christianity, true Christianity, with a joy which seizes all in an indiscriminate manner, so to speak. The soul possesses in effect the true treasure, but has not yet at all discerned the whole beauty of this exquisite pearl. The joy then becomes in appearance more subdued, but the spiritual perception of the thoughts of God is far more real and deep.}

This is what His disciples must understand, when they see that which is as a possession that has accrued to Christ, that which belongs to Him. His disciples would understand what was the real object of His heart, and would clearly distinguish between the field and the treasure which it contained, although the treasure or the church being for the time hid in the field, the administration of the government of God must take this outward form.*

{*All this does not by any means affect the question of the conduct or the duty of a saint in these circumstances. The parable only presents the thoughts of God in regard to facts. This was the form which the kingdom would take, or rather a figure which represents it. The purchased field is quite an abstract thought; we are always in danger of confounding it with the actual state of things, while the parable only presents to us the principle. I have endeavoured to avoid this snare, but am not sure that I have succeeded. In principle, Christ has bought the world, and the church is in it. His authority only extends to a very small part of the world; and one part, formerly subject to His authority, has now even revolted from it; but the parable does not at all touch upon these facts. It only presents the principle, that is to say, that there is a treasure hidden, which was not even bought but found, and something external was bought for the love of this treasure, thus hidden there, necessarily, and as a matter of fact; whether the treasure exists as an individual whole, or in several pieces, is not the question here. The purchaser takes the whole, such as it is, for the sake of the treasure. The delight which He finds in the beauty of it (the church) is the subject of this parable. Here it is the fact of the field purchased as a whole, that He might possess the treasure that was dear to Him. Neither is it a question of the establishment of the authority of Christ in blessing in this world, nor of His joy in the deliverance of the creation itself. That will take place in the world to come, when there will no longer be a question about the mysteries of the kingdom. This mystery of God will be finished; the natural results of the reign of the Saviour will be manifested, also the beauty of the church will be manifested on high; and its glory will shine everywhere.}

20 Moreover, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant-man seeking goodly pearls. Here we see the Lord judging, according to His perfect intelligence, the moral beauty of that which He would have for Himself at any price. It is not here merely the joy of possessing a treasure, but of discriminating and valuing the treasure which He sought and which He was able to prize and distinguish from every other. Thus the Spirit of Christ in its actual operation only rests definitely upon the church, and that not in the joy of possessing it only, nor of that of accomplishing salvation in the redemption of it, but in the accomplishment of all the thoughts of God, of all that moral beauty which can have its source in the heart and reproduce itself for Him in that church which He gave to Christ. The epistle to the Ephesians in particular presents to us this thought: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without blame before Him in love. This is its reproducing itself in grace. And what is the calling according to which we ought to walk? It is that we are "the habitation of God by the Spirit." He has given us a place which is to the praise of the glory of His grace.

The more we examine this epistle, and the more we comprehend the thought of God which appears there, the more we shall perceive the pearl which is of great price in the esteem of the merchantman who alone is capable of estimating it. The repetition of the emphatic word Himself, His own will, etc., which occurs in the Greek, gives additional force to this remark.* What thoughts, then, ought we to have, my brethren, of such a calling of the church, and of the church itself, thus before God, such as He can have before Himself, and find satisfaction therein, and find again His own thoughts in it, that it may be the delight of Him who is Himself the only source of that which can be suitable to Him, and that it may be fit to be ever before Him! But, in order to receive it, in order to give it to Christ, it was necessary that He should make it such. What a thought for us! In order that we might enjoy it, He gave us the Spirit itself, and of His own Spirit. Compare Ephesians 3: 16-21; see also 1 John 4: 13. In this latter passage, the subject is an individual - his state, and the practical proof resulting from it. But there is yet another idea for us to bring out, and which causes this to explain the state of the kingdom; it is, that Christ stripped Himself of everything, in order to possess this treasure. Where is His glory, His kingdom, His judgment, His power?

{*I give these expressions here according to their force in the Greek: "According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without blame before himself, in love, having predestinated us to the adoption to himself by Jesus Christ, . . . to the praise of the glory of His own grace." Again, verse 8, "Having made known to us the mystery of His own will, according to his own good pleasure which he purposed in himself," and, verse 11, the "counsels of his own will."}

21 The kingdom has not one of these characters; but we, disciples, we know Christ, who, though He was rich, became poor for us, that we by His poverty might be made rich. He is hid in God. The epistle to the Ephesians speaks of these counsels of God in regard to us, of these counsels so precious for us. Here we have the same idea, but the idea of the kingdom lost in that of grace. Christ loves the treasure, He prizes the pearl. He is Himself not merely the reflection, but the perfect expression of what the Father was. He knows how to present to Himself the church, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. The pearl is in His thought before He finds it as the object of His love. But then He is presented here as a man who finds, not as God who creates and who is the source of the beauty of the object found, as His thoughts are the prototype of it, of the beauty which suits the finder and the Creator.

22 Although the church is of God in its existence and its beauty, we must also take account of that which Christ has done, according to the counsels of God, according to the fulness of His desire, and the delight which He takes in these counsels. He gives Himself up to that, and strips Himself of everything, in order to possess the church, such as it is according to the thought of God; and, to the disciple who has understanding, this is the character which the kingdom takes. It is Christ's treasure in this world, in the field which He buys; it is the pearl quite pure, out of whatever shell it may have come, which answers to all that His heart seeks.

Hitherto we have the spiritual intelligence, in order to the understanding of the principle which characterises the kingdom in the thought of Christ, upon which, in consequence, the believer acts, according to the measure of his intelligence. But there is, besides, an actual separation of the elements which are mingled within it. In effect, the net has gathered all kinds of persons out of the sea of peoples. When the net is full, those who have drawn it, the fishermen, sit on the shore; they gather the good into vessels, and throw aside the bad. Here let us pause a moment, because important principles present themselves to our thoughts. The fishermen are occupied about the good: they put them into vessels. As for the bad, they only reject them, and put them aside: there is the effect of the understanding of the fisherman. What is his object? with what does he concern himself? With the good fish. To have them according to his desire and purpose, he must in passing, reject the others, but it is only that he may have the good. Except in this respect, he has nothing to do with the bad - they are not his concern; they are only an encumbrance to him: the net was not cast for them. He gathers the good into vessels. Neither is their ultimate destination his concern: his business is to catch them, and gather them into vessels apart. In this his capacity, his diligence, and the success of his toils, appear. Without these, he could not do it. All this is addressed exclusively to a spiritual mind, without which we cannot understand these instructions. But there is one work, the effects of which will be of necessity intelligible; and as in the exposition of the parable of the tares, we have the additional fact of the glory of the righteous in another sphere - a fact which represented in a good light the seeming negligence that had taken place in the government of the kingdom; so in the explanation of the net, we have a fact which is not in the parable, namely, the judgment of the wicked.

23 The angels will come forth at the end of the age, and will separate the wicked from among the righteous (they do not here concern themselves with the righteous, as the fishermen did), and they will cast them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is quite clear that this is a procedure quite different from what is related in the parable, and which goes beyond the contents of it. The subject is not the net merely, it is a general and definite separation of the wicked from among the righteous at that time. The fishermen were only concerned with the contents of their net, and with the good found in it. The angels, at the end of the age, separate the wicked; it is a general work; and in this world, where they are mingled, it is not the angels that have to do with the net.

The two things, we should remark well, take place in this world. There is nothing about separating the good and bad in heaven. Neither is there anything here about the great white throne, but about the end of this age. The good which are found in the net will be separated and put in vessels by those who have drawn the net to shore, according to their discernment of the good and bad; then the angels will take the bad in this world, and separate them from the righteous who will be found there, and will cast the former into the furnace of fire. This was not the affair of the fishermen. But the two events take place in the world; at the end of the age. The angels have nothing to do with the good, but to leave them; while the fishermen occupy themselves with the good, to dispose of them, in rejecting and leaving the bad.

The disciples here are supposed to understand all these things; the Lord looks upon them in this light; they are wise, the understanding ones of Daniel. Wherefore, says He, every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like a householder, who brings out of his treasure things new and old. We see by these words the character of the instructions which the Lord has just given; there is no question about the church as the church. It is true the disciples became part of it afterwards, but He does not look upon them in that character. What we have here is the application of lessons on the kingdom of heaven to knowledge acquired as by scribes in the Old Testament. There is nothing about the mystery hidden and afterwards revealed by the Holy Ghost to the apostles and prophets; but we have light thrown by the kingdom and its mysteries on the promises and the government of God, which a scribe would have found in the law and the prophets. These were new things, but they were connected with the old things; they did not set them aside. If Paul had known Christ after the flesh, he did not know Him so any more. In his case, the subject was things altogether heavenly, even Christ Himself. He notices, it is true, in some digressions, in the way of argument, that which relates to the old things; but as far as his direct ministry is concerned, he knows them no more.

24 Having completed what I had to say on this chapter, I pause. Others may probably add much to what I have communicated. In every passage of the word there is always the germ of that which is infinite. I only bring forward a general explanation, but I have no doubt of its being of God, certainly mingled with imperfection, but still of God. Another time, if God will, I may send a continuation of the summary of this gospel.

Appendix

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Some think there is an historical order in the parables, an order which I proceed to state without making any comment upon it, as a thought upon which every brother will form an opinion according to the light which he possesses. First, the general fact of the sowing of the word, begun by Jesus Himself; then, as we have seen, the beginning of the mysteries of the kingdom: the Son of man sows the good seed, the enemy does his own work there. The first effect: the hierarchical or ecclesiastico-secular power in the world. The second effect: nominal Christianity, a leaven which only corrupts the whole lump. Then comes the discovery that it is the treasure hid in this field which is precious; those who have spiritual understanding distinguish this treasure, although it is hidden in the field. This would be the Augustinian and Protestant doctrine of an invisible church. But, beyond that, there is the perception of the beauty and purity which become this treasure, and they are sought by those who are led by the Spirit of Christ. Lastly, there is the practical separation of the good fish put into vessels by those who are concerned with that work.

25 This then is the idea; each Christian, I repeat, will judge of it, according to his measure of spiritual understanding. However it may be, there is yet something to be said on the subject of the great tree and the leaven, in reference to what may be discovered in them by a spiritual mind. The difference between that which is described in these parables, and what is said in the three last, is very remarkable. Here there is no trace of spiritual affection, nor of a taste for divine things, nor of distinction between good and evil. The love of the Spirit is completely missing, and is even lost. I say lost, because at the beginning the servants distinguished between the good seed and the tares, and that perfectly well, and were astonished to find tares in a field where their master had been sowing, although it did not belong to them to execute the judgment on the tares. They were employed near the master, attending to the good condition of the field which belonged to him, but the field could only be cleansed by judgment. Didst Thou not sow good seed in Thy field? (that was their question): from whence then hath it tares? Afterwards, a spiritual understanding perceives that the field is only a secondary object, fully admitting that it was bought; it seeks for the pure and precious pearl, and also separates the good fish and puts them into vessels.

But here it is not that; it is a picture of a dark worldly and outward effect. The attachment to the interests of Christ fails; it is an external matter, a common condition, where nothing appears but what the world can see. We do not say that there are not children of God hidden in this system, or such as have been separated from it; but the Spirit of God takes no account of them in these parables, nor of any spirituality which perceives them, or which distinguishes between that which is agreeable to Christ in His kingdom and the contrary: the result of the work exactly corresponds with the world. We could not (according to these parables) distinguish them: it is "a great tree," a symbol, throughout scripture, of human power and pride, the objects of God's judgment.

It is only when Christ will establish His own kingdom in power, that this kingdom will become a great tree in the earth, according to the counsels of God in righteousness. (See Ezekiel 17: 22-24.) Meanwhile the event takes place, but as we have seen, with a total absence of spiritual discernment, which contrasts with what precedes and what follows. Also observe, with respect to the leaven: this is not external and earthly power; it is the universal diffusion of a doctrine within certain limits. Here we must remark that it is not the Son of man who sows the good seed, that idea is lost: it is the state of the kingdom which will bear a resemblance to the effect of a woman's deed who acts thus. Thus there is not any distinction made here between the sowing of the Son of man, and the work of the enemy. If there is good seed, it is quite lost sight of. The parable of the good seed and the tares proves to us that this distinction had been made by the servants of Christ, but all appearance of it is lost; we cannot say that all is good, for the tares must grow till the harvest. All spiritual discernment is therefore completely excluded from this state of things; all true testimony to the work of God is lost; for one cannot say that all is good, that would be the testimony according to the heart of God. All distinction between the good and evil is destroyed; it is one lump, so that this testimony to the difference of good and evil is also lost; and thus evil under the name of Christ is that which presents itself as a uniform mass.

26 I would not here say that the Holy Spirit designed to present this idea to the multitude. I have already said that these parables speak of what is outward, of the external aspect of the kingdom; but he who studies the word judges according to the mind of Christ of that which is presented thus to the world. There is that which distinguishes the true Christian - the spiritual man discerns all things. He does not think that the lump will be changed, for the spiritual man distinguishes and loves what is good; but the state of the mass does not govern him: he knows for himself that everywhere else the great tree is the symbol of exalted man. Ought man to be exalted before the manifestation of Christ? He knows that leaven everywhere else is the symbol of that which is bad. Has not the history of Christendom supplied that which fully corresponds to such a symbol? If it is so, it is that which according to the Lord characterises the state of the kingdom. In that case, what ought the Christian to do? Ought he to be contented with bearing such a testimony as being Christ's?

Note.

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It is most important for us to remember, that all that, which is the power of death in the unbeliever, is the hindrance and blight of the fruit-bearing power of the believer's life, to which the energies afforded us in the divine Persons apply themselves. This is brought out into full light, with its specific remedy, in the graciousness of God in this parable. There is the case of the fowls of the air, the stony ground, the sowing among thorns, and in the good ground, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. The first of these we know is the power of Satan - the power of death. There is no life in the soul. When the word of it is sown in the unbroken heart, the devil takes it away as soon as it is sown; he holds it in unremoved death. The word is the power of life. "Of his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." It is indeed the lie of the devil, by which he brought in death and holds men in it, in which he is a murderer; so on the other hand, by the truth of God are we made alive.

But there is One (Himself indeed the WORD), who is specifically the quickening power, even the Son of God. "The last Adam is the quickening Spirit." He then who vindicates from this state of death, and makes alive, is the Son of God. The Son of man sows the seed, but it is the Son of God who quickens; "for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." It is the special distinctive character of His sonship, that He quickens with divine power, as indeed none else could. Compare John 5: 21, 24, 26. This is most explicit, and no one acquainted with scripture can have failed to recognise this power of life in the Son of God, as distinctly representing His power and character. He declares Himself, "I am the resurrection and the life"; and this by His word, "Lazarus, come forth." The results of this we shall not follow; but we have the Son of God, by the word, destroying the works of the devil in the state and power of death. This is the first case of the parable. That which is in Him is the opposite power, which overcomes the evil case mentioned; and a man brings forth thirty-fold, for being really alive he must increase and bring forth fruit.

But there is another case put, not so apparently desperate, but equally destructive - the receiving the word into shallow ground. There was no root. It was received superficially; it speedily "sprang up, because it had no deepness of earth"; it had no searching process of power in which it entered into the conscience and quickened the inner man. It rested in the natural affections and understanding which are after all the flesh; it is received merely by the natural feelings, and therefore immediately acts, and with joy, since it reaches not the conscience; and the same natural feelings were of course as speedily acted on by trouble and persecution, and "immediately they are offended." Compare Mark 4. This, then, is all merely the flesh, and comes to nothing. To this we know how uniformly the Spirit is opposed. "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other." "They that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; and they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit." "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds," etc. It needs not to multiply passages of scripture to shew the opposition of these two.

28 But, we must observe that we have here in the Spirit the antagonist power which overcomes the flesh, and assuming a man to be alive, still does so. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit"; hence we know that this case is still the natural man, and that the things of the Spirit are what he has never received, though affections or intellect may have been moved or delighted with the marvellous plan of redemption. But the same point holds good in a believer; that is, we find when men do not walk in the Spirit, of course they are profitless and low in their estate. It is in mortifying the flesh by the Spirit, that the fruits of the Spirit find comparatively free growth - it produces sixty-fold. This, then, is the contrast here - the flesh and the Spirit; and we find in it, that the fairest form of the flesh, the apparently joyful reception of the word of the kingdom, whether it be in affection or intellect, comes to nothing; whatever it be occupied on, it is but "the desires of the flesh and of the mind."

The third case, compared with other scriptures, is equally clear I think. The hindering power is declared directly, "the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things." Compare Mark 4; Luke 8. Now, the world and the love of it we continually find opposed to the Father. "All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world." "Love not the world, neither the things of the world; if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." The hatred of the world to the Son, shewed that it was not of the Father; and the children were not of this world any more than the Father, as allied to Him, even as Christ the Son was not of the world.

29 Every one familiarly and spiritually acquainted with the Gospel of John must have noticed the opposition between the world and the sonship of Christ; one being associated with the Father, and the other directly opposed to the glory of the Father, in the great question of that sonship in which alone it was known. Our Lord thus concludes the whole presenting of His work and His people to the Father: "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me." The whole chapter illustrates the question. Now we shall hence well understand the opposition between the two, and how He "who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil world," closes that statement by saying: "and I have declared unto them thy name and I will declare it, that the love," etc. But, in the believer, even when not only quickened, but in the Spirit exercising himself to mortify the deeds of the body, who recognises at once the evil of the flesh (though we are little aware how subtly and widely its beguiling and deceiving influence is spread, how fair a form inbred selfishness may assume), and in whom, in an ordinary sense, the flesh is habitually in a measure mortified; how often do we find the world holding a prevailing power and recognised title over the judgment or habit, and the fruitfulness, comparatively speaking, utterly marred!

"Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples." Let us then recognise, on the sole basis of scripture (excluding the consideration of the circumstances in which the lie of this world has power over our mind), that the world is a positive hinderer of fruitfulness, the much fruit in which the Father is glorified; and for this plain reason, that our sonship, our inheritance, the kingdom is not recognised. The devil, as he acts on us by the flesh, "the lust of the flesh," "good for food," or "of the eyes," and the like, is the god and prince of this world; and the Spirit in them that are quickened, where not dimmed and darkened by the spirit of this world, is not only the power of the difference of the carnal and spiritual nature, but bears witness that we are sons and heirs. Thus at liberty, we cry by it, Abba, Father; and the fruits are an hundredfold, where we are free from the system in which we are fettered. The energy of the kingdom is there, the Saviour of the kingdom is there, the stamp of the Father of glory, and hence, in deadness to the world, power over it. The whole stamp of nature is different; we are not of the world as Christ is not of the world. Accordingly, as we find the Lord the true vine, so we find the Father the husbandman, purging the branches, that they may bring forth more fruit. We may be isolated indeed, but isolated sons, upon whom the glory of the Father shines in hope and the power of inward association; the sons of God, though in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. In a word, the children of God (the God who hath called us to "His own kingdom and glory," the living God) is our distinguishing title; and, as the Jews were affianced to Jehovah, we are called to be "perfect as our Father which is in heaven is perfect."

30 I cannot pursue this subject farther here, though I may touch on it, with the Lord's permission, at a future time. As regards the explanation of the parable, I would say a very few words more. The inseparableness of the evils, as well as of the gracious agents of covenant remedy, is not in question; the devil, the world, and the flesh, are too intimately associated to need explanation of our distinct consideration of them; and I believe more intimately than people are commonly aware of. Of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, I need not speak; but while we have spoken of them in operation as to profit, we must not forget their unity in every act, whether of creation, or anything else: they invariably act in one, and as invariably, as far as I see, in the same order, that is, by the Son, through the energy of the Spirit.

Another remark is necessary. Although we have looked at the love of the world, as hindering the full characteristic fruitfulness of the children of God, and the knowledge and love of the Father as the contrasted character, we must remember that this knowledge in principle is the portion of every believer. "I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father"; nor could we otherwise put all believers under this responsibility. But I believe it will be found that the measure of the fruitfulness of the life that is in them much depends on their exercise in the truths here noticed and dwelt on; and that the character of their fruitfulness also much depends on their fuller and deeper apprehension of the one or the other; and that the apprehension of the Father in the full development of the sonship glory attaches quite a new character on the whole course of the Christian's life. This is our proper calling; and, while we must watch against the neglect of distinct reference to the Son (as administering the power of the kingdom against the "wicked one"), to the Spirit (as overcoming or detecting the workings and deceitful power of the flesh), to the Father (in contrast with the love of the world), a defective apprehension of the principle of heavenly glory will somewhere or other break down the efficiency of our christian service. The fulness of all was in our Lord; the fulness of all help in them is our practical responsibility; the enjoyment of fellowship with them our privilege. Ill-proportioned Christianity, I believe, continually springs from the power of Satan, through neglect of, or hindering the special power of one or another of the Persons, while indulgence of any of the evils is apt to throw us into the hands of Satan; and here is the wisdom of ministering to sick souls, for the source of the evil may be one, its manifestation may be another. How blessed to be able to refer to covenant assurance of a threefold Almighty help for the several difficulties one evil may bring! A believer will be healthful and strong against the enemy in proportion as he has just reference to all.

31 I do not say that a believer's progress is, from knowing the Son, to the Spirit and the Father - far from it; but I believe the manifestation of the power and glory of their work will gradually unfold itself, even as the quickening by the Son will make the believer discern well the operations of the Spirit against the flesh, and both of these find their full development in the manifestation of the Father's glory, in the consciousness (if he grow healthfully) that His kingdom is not of this world. In some cases of unusual energy of divine life, we see by God's calling, all these apprehensions promptly developed, and the man consequently abundantly exercised, and his service great, corresponding to the knowledge received of the Son in the kingdom, as in the apostles Peter and Paul; but I must not outstep the practical part of the subject.

I am quite conscious, indeed particularly so, of the imperfection of these remarks; but I feel the importance of the subject deeply, and the basis of the view has been given: they are open to the correction or fuller application of those more versed in divine life. The wondrous and blessed grace of a developed covenant, the bright witness of the Son, and of the Father, and of glory: the grace in which they minister to the necessities of those who have no help in themselves, while they are the growingly understood and adored objects alike of communion and worship, separating from all that is not of themselves. I feel too, that in speaking thus, I am treading on holy ground, but ground which our God in His mercy has opened to us, and on which we are set to walk; freed from every fear, unless of not justly estimating it, by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; cleansed from all that could offend Them, by His blood, and acquainted with the boundless love which has brought these by it, while never reaching it, never able to be filled with it, knowing that it has reached even to us and filled us into its own fulness.

32 Let us also remember, that the indulgence in one of these seemingly remote evils brings in the power of the others; for God is not there. Thus Solomon's indulgence of the world brought in the indulgence of the flesh, and the consequence was the direct power of Satan in the idolatrous worship of his wives. We might mention similar instances; but I close for the present.

Only one thing it is important to remark. It is not either by speculation or knowledge these things are obtained, though they may be ministered. "We are sanctified unto obedience." The spirit of obedience is the great secret of all the present and practical blessings of the believer; for the Spirit is not grieved, and so becomes the minister of the grace and knowledge both of the Father and of the Son; and the poorest simplest believer, walking thus, enjoys the blessings of the pledged faithfulness both of the Father, and the Lord, and the Spirit, to the blessed purposes of love in which we stand, and of divine glory.

We have only spoken of the parables which are found in this chapter. There remain still some verses which close it: they contain the judgment formed about the Lord by the unbelief of the Jews. He was in His own country; His works were not denied; but the Jews stumble against the stone of offence. He is the prophet without honour in His own country and in His own house. He is the son of the carpenter. In a word, He is judged even in Israel, according to the flesh.

Matthew 14

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But this carnal and blinded judgment of the people was not the whole of their history. The passions of the false king push him on to destroy the testimony of God, and Jesus withdraws. He shews, nevertheless, by acts marked in the Psalms, the presence of Jehovah who healed them, and all His compassion and His tenderness toward His people (Psalm 103: 3; 132: 15); but, having borne this testimony, He sends His disciples alone in the ship, He Himself dismisses the multitude and goes up towards God - the present position of Christ: having fully borne this testimony to the multitude in Israel, He separated His disciples from them and went on high to pray. His disciples are found alone in the midst of the tempest; the Lord rejoins them, and all again becomes calm.* It is ever here, it seems to me, the disciples viewed as Jews, though in principle Christians of all times, ought to have identified themselves with Him, and to take this position. A remnant of those who expect Him (among the Jews) would also go out to Him in the midst of this tempest of peoples, before He enters into the tossed boat of the heirs of the promises, and the Lord agrees to it; but their steps totter because of the trouble: the Lord sustains them, and, calm being restored by His presence, all those who are in the ship recognise Him as the Son of God. Thus will it be with Israel. In Peter, we have the remnant which goes before them; and in those who leave not the ship, we have the type of all those who remain in the ordinary course of Judaism until Christ is there Himself.

{*In chapter 8: 23-27, where the state of the church rather is marked, Jesus goes into the ship with His disciples. Apparently He pays no attention to the danger; but their unbelief makes them afraid, as if Jesus, who had identified Himself with them, could perish, and with Him all the counsels of God.}

Matthew 15

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Having given this sketch of the position of the Jews, as the result of their rejection, as before had been given one of the kingdom of heaven, the Lord pronounces His moral judgment upon the religious forms and pretensions of the most religious among the people. It was only outside and hypocrisy, a walk already condemned by Isaiah: their worship was vain, their doctrines were but the commandments of man. God wished for realities.

34 Thence He passes to a more general thesis. Out of the heart of man (and the Jew was but a man, as to his heart, before God) proceed evil thoughts. Such is a man alas! whether Jew or Gentile; but let him be of the cursed race of the Canaanites, and from among the cities whose repentance would have been as a miracle, he who, owning his misery, should rest by faith upon the super-abounding mercy of God, would be heard according to his wish, for God is there, and He is love. Here it is not precisely the church. The rights of Israel, at least of its lost sheep, are owned; but this cannot hinder the grace and nature of God; far different from the selfishness and the ennui of the disciples, which attaches no value to the privileges of God's people. The Lord avows His special mission; but He cannot deny what God is, when faith penetrates to that point. Having thus shewn (all the while recognising Israel) that the poor Gentile is to be delivered, He returns to Israel, healing the people and refreshing them with bread. He feeds the poor of the flock.

Matthew 16

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These views of the kingdom and of the ways of God toward Israel having been given; the uselessness of a religion of forms by ordinances, however privileged, having been declared; the principles of man's heart, and the impossibility of closing the heart of God having been shewn; the Spirit of God enters, in this chapter, upon another ground. The existing generation is abandoned; there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. It was not so difficult to discern the times. Thereupon the Lord, amidst the uncertainty of the masses, on the answer of the faith of Simon Peter, reveals what is to succeed this generation, namely, the church, never named before.

Here it is not Christ who sows, but the faith of another, faith given to Peter, which discerns in Jesus the Son of the living God. The Jews had only the sign of a risen Saviour; the generation was then rejected, and nothing built upon the first mission of Jesus (the Messiah should " be cut off and shall have nothing");* but the Son of the living God - here is a power and a strength which the energy of the prince of this world could not overturn, against which evidently the gates of hades should not prevail; for in His resurrection, on the contrary, they should be broken by Christ. The resurrection of the Son of God, according to the power of life which was in Him, the foundation and measure of the life and security of the church, was sheltered, and the church by it, from all the attacks of him who had the power of death. In vain the tomb shrouded itself in darkness, out of the midst of which came forth the life more powerful than ever. Simon makes this confession by the revelation of the Father, and it is upon that the church is founded. Indeed Peter is the only one who adds this word "living" to the expression "Son of God." Nathaniel just owns Him as the Son of God and King of Israel; but Peter has the secret of the immovable security of the church of God. It will be found in his epistles that this idea of "living," associated with the resurrection of Christ, forms their basis and ruling thought.

{*The true translation of Daniel 9: 26.}

35 Moreover, not only the church, more powerful than death, like its divine Founder, should be based on the confession of Peter; but the administration of the kingdom here below should be entrusted to him. Not he, but Christ builds the church upon the foundations which the Father Himself had laid in the revelation of His life in the Son; but the keys of the kingdom are entrusted to Peter. This administration was to begin among the Jews, and Peter was specially their apostle.

Here the Lord forbids them to announce Him as the Christ - that is no more the question, and from this time He speaks to them of His rejection and death; but the heart of Peter, favoured as he was, answered in no wise (for he was still in the flesh, not having received the Spirit) to this revelation which had been made to him. He opposes himself to the cross, and the Lord treats him as being identified with Satan and doing his work. Such is the flesh; whatever may be the revelations enjoyed by him who is not yet set free. On this occasion the Lord presents the cross as the portion of all those who followed Him, but He supports them in difficulty by the revelation of His coming in glory, and there were even some there who should see before their death the Son of man coming in His kingdom.

The church is built upon this confession of Jesus, the Son of the living God, manifested in resurrection; this supposes the death and cross of Christ; but one is sustained in cleaving to the good of the soul, even though life should be lost; for the Son of man will come in the glory of His Father.

36 Here we may remark that in verse 21, it is Jerusalem, the scribes, the chief priests who alone are presented as culpable. It is not the question yet of the Gentiles; but their very guilt puts Jesus in the position, not of Messiah only, but of Son of God in power, and of Son of man, coming in the glory of His Father with His angels, with a view to judging all men.

Matthew 17

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The immediate answer to this revelation which the Saviour makes of His glory as Son of man, is, in the three first Gospels, the transfiguration, compared by Peter himself to the power and coming of our Lord Jesus (2 Peter 1: 16-18); the future glory of the Son of man, such as it will be manifested to the faithful remnant of the people, is revealed to the astonished eyes of the poor disciples. The risen and the changed are in the same glory as the Saviour, they are with Him, and hold converse with Him; the law and the prophets give way to the glorified Son of God, who alone is to be heard.

From this moment Jesus speaks only of suffering this faithless and perverse generation, but He is unwearied in doing them good. He shews to His disciples the part that men (not the Jews only) would have in His death. The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men! The point for the disciples is the power of faith; nevertheless it was needful to live near to God in withdrawment from all that belonged to the flesh, in order to conquer and cast out the power of the

At the end of the chapter, the Lord takes advantage of His rights as Son, to identify His disciples with Him in this same privilege; but still, not to offend, He submits to His position as a subject Jew, which Peter was forward to attribute to Him. In this beautiful passage He shews His divinity in the two-fold respect of knowledge of the thoughts, and of power over creation; but at the same time He identifies Himself with Peter (who had made of Him a Jew like any other), saying "lest we"; and if a fish is made to bring the money needed for Him, it is for His poor disciple as well as for Him - "for Me and thee." He places them with Him in the position of sons, and places Himself with them in theirs, though He was the God of all knowledge, whom every creature, save man, was eager to obey. He puts Himself on the same footing with them, where love and humility were happy in grace towards the poor, the poorest of all Himself!

Matthew 18

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It is upon this basis of the humiliation of the Saviour, a principle which is linked with grace and is its perfect manifestation, that all which follows here is founded. Jesus would have His disciples to take this place, and identifying themselves with what is least, as He had done Himself, to act also in grace; for He was come (a position infinitely more glorious than that of the Messiah, whence the Jews repulsed Him, because He spoke the truth) to seek and to save that which was lost. And such was the case with all men, children as well as others; for the Lord applies here to a little child the principles of Luke 15; but if they were lost, it was not the Father's will that they should perish. Even so in the church (for it is founded upon the rejection of the Messiah) His own ought to act in grace towards a brother, come what will.

Here is the rule, his brother must be gained; self-humiliation raises us to this elevation, and permits us to act in grace toward all. But this grace, pursued even to the end by the care of the congregation, and rejected by him who was the object of it, would place him (whether Jew or Gentile) in the position of a publican and a pagan. On the one hand, grace becomes the principle of action; on the other, the church, established and acting on the principle of grace, becomes the enclosure with reference to which one should speak of the without and the within of a publican and a pagan; for all that the disciples should bind on earth would be bound in heaven. Such is the marvellous effect of the rejection of the Messiah and the position of those identified with Him in this rejection; for now, where two or three are gathered in His name, Jesus is found in their midst. There has He put His name for a blessing. See Exod. 20: 24; Deut. 12: 5, 11, etc. Thus the effects of His rejection on the power of this accomplished work before the Father are unrolled (though this was as in a shadow) before His eyes.

In answer to Peter, who asks how far this walking in grace ought to be carried, the Lord shews that, as it was a principle essential to the nature which acted in grace, there was no limit; it would be a limit to the privilege of man and to the nature of God. In the kingdom of heaven, mercy triumphs over judgment.

38 The Lord gives, notwithstanding, not only a principle, but a similitude of the kingdom, which applies, it seems to me, historically. The Jews being guilty of ten thousand talents by the crucifixion of the Son of God, God acts in grace by the preaching of the gospel to the nation, in virtue of the intercession of Jesus, to which answers the preaching of Peter on the testimony of the Holy Ghost (Acts 3); but they refuse the grace to the Gentiles, much less guilty toward them than they themselves were toward God, and the wrath came upon them to the uttermost. Luke 23: 34; Acts 3: 17; 1 Thess. 2: 16.

Matthew 19

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The Lord pursues the principles on which the relationships of the people with God subsist. He does not weaken those that existed: on the contrary, He confirms them; but He advances now and leaves the people under the consequences of the violation of the covenant under which they were found, and without the enjoyment of the new blessings into which He introduced those who accompanied Him in His rejection.

In answer to the Pharisees, who tempted Him by questions of their schools, where the fear of God was not - He traces things higher up than the law. He speaks as the Son of man. He confirms, in all their extent, the ties that God had formed; the ordinance of Moses did but suffer the hardness of their heart. The law just recognised the relationships which preceded it; what was more than those relationships was only for a time.

The second principle He enunciates is the humility, the teachableness, and the confidence of a little child: such is the principle whereby one enters the kingdom.

Thirdly, all goodness in man is denied; God alone is good. (See the position that Christ takes at the beginning of Psalm 16. He has said to God, Thou art My Lord; My goodness extendeth not to Thee, but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all My delight.) Then the Lord, repeating and taking up the word of the young man, confirms the law as a condition of life, and says to him: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." There was the principle of the law, and it is also what the young man had done outwardly.

39 On his answer to that effect, the Lord goes farther: Give up thy heart then - I myself am the touchstone for that - and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: other hopes are open through My rejection. The young man went away sorrowful. The only answer to this difficulty insurmountable for sinful man, the only key which opened the door of the kingdom of God, was, "With God all things are possible."

The chapter is remarkable in this respect, that is to say, for the manner in which Jesus confirms for the Jews that which was fundamental in the law, "These things do, and thou shalt live." He maintains the everlasting righteousness of God as regards the ties of nature: He founds all this upon that which preceded even the law, and (since the relations on which the law was based preceded the law) He appeals from it to what was of God at the beginning. He also goes beyond the law for him who observed it in his ordinary relationship, and presents Himself as the true touchstone for the heart - Him, the rejected One, who was not of the world. What is the only means of arriving at it? The answer is: "With God all things are possible." He recognises all that God had put in Judaism; but he ceases to be a Jew: the young man could not live on such a footing.

These words of Jesus excite in the spirit of Peter this question: What shall we have therefore - we who have forsaken all and followed thee? The answer, founded on the glory already revealed on the mount of transfiguration, is, that when the Son of man shall return in His glory, in the regeneration, the twelve shall be in their place on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

This answer leaves all aside, until the restoration of Israel, and places again the disciples in connection with this principle, omitting what, in the interval, was for the church; but it is also wholly outside the legal relationships of the people with God. If the law were accomplished, life would be the result. Those who followed Christ, when the Jews under the law rejected Him, should judge Israel in the day of the glory of the Son of man. They had followed the Lord in His rejection by Israel; they should participate in His glory when He should be the glorious Head of His people and of the entire world. Moreover, whoever had acted faithfully in this relation and taken Christ for his portion should receive an hundredfold here below, and besides life everlasting. Nevertheless one can judge nothing beforehand as to the relative degree of glory of individuals by their present position.

The Gospel according to Matthew

J. N. Darby.

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{The first part of these notes was originally given as an exposition of Matthew 13, and was so published, translated from the French. But, as even here the exposition gives a general sketch of the preceding chapters, and as I am enabled to add a version of the notes on the chapters which follow, I have ventured so to modify the title as to suit the paper as a whole. The early part dwells only on chapter 13. - Ed.]}

{file section 24010-6, see 24001-9f for remainder}}

Matthew 20

The kingdom was established by the sovereignty of grace, and if God called the labourers at the eleventh hour, He could reward them as He pleased. Thus the last should be first, and the first last. On one side, then, there was the encouragement of the reward of labours and sacrifices; but, on the other, if one lost sight of the principle of grace, with a view to demanding this reward as of right, and so that others should not have it, then here is the answer: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" Cheered by the prospect of an unbounded reward, we are wholly upon the principle of grace.

Having thus set forth the motives of labour in the kingdom of heaven, after having explained the transition, from obedience to the law (in order to have life) to christian devotedness, the Lord puts clearly before the eyes of His disciples the path here below which conducts to glory. The Son of man should be rejected, delivered to the Gentiles, and crucified; but here still the Lord shews His profound and entire submission to His Father. His disciples shall drink, it is true, of His cup (it is His answer to those who asked of Him the first places), but as to their reward, He left it with His Father; He pretends not to assign it to others. An entire dependence on His Father - such was the position of Christ. He had not even, so to speak, the patronage of His kingdom.

This desire of the two disciples was in itself only a manifestation of the spirit of the flesh; the Gentiles so acted. Jesus speaks of the Gentiles, for He recognises the remnant of Israel in His disciples, a remnant which, apparently, lost its place in following Him. It is in glory that their relation with Israel should be manifested; but let him who would be great among them be a servant. It is what the Son of man had done; He was come to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.

41 Since the transfiguration, the Lord acts according to principles which go beyond the law, while recognising its force according to what God had said of it - principles which assert a rejected Messiah, and shew where it is necessary to come, that is, to accompany Him without the camp. It was the Son of man ministering and giving His life as a ransom, and not the Messiah crowned with the glory of Israel: they are chapters of transition.* The church is not there. They are the relationships of the Son of man, rejected by the Jews and taking another place, but assuring, to those who followed Him, their true position in glory in the age to come, when the Jews shall be restored; but, referring to the Father, being subject, and having only to suffer Himself. It was the Father who should glorify them; then those who followed Him now should act anew on the Jews, and that from the bosom of glory.

{*The transition from the position of Messiah to that of the Son of man is very striking in this Gospel, and this last title has always in view the future glory of Christ, though He was the Son of man in humiliation already. The province of His rule, and all the thought which is bound up with it, are of a far larger extent than that which is bound up with the title of Messiah. We have seen the church founded on the confession of the Son of God, because there is found the life whereby it lives and the principle of its relations with the Father; but, as Son of man, Christ is the heir of man, and that according to the counsels of God as regards man, and not only according to the extent of the dominion of Adam. It is quite another idea and another position from heir of David, whatever may have been His glory in this character. (See Psalm 8.)}

At the close of the chapter, the Holy Ghost resumes the thread of history: Christ presents Himself for the last time to the people, as such; and, owned as Messiah, the Son of David, He acts in power, in favour of those who owned Him, namely, two blind men; and in

Matthew 21

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a public testimony is borne to Him, as the Son of David; then comes the judgment of all the people in His presence. In the gospel according to John, the testimony is borne to the glory of Jesus as Son of God, by the resurrection of Lazarus; to His glory as Son of David, by His entrance into Jerusalem, which is also recounted here; and to His glory as Son of man, by the arrival of the Greeks, who ask to see Him, which gave Him room to announce His death. But here, in this gospel, which is occupied with the Messiah and His relations with the Jews - relations interrupted by their sins, and resumed later in glory - the question is only of His messianic glory, to which God bears a testimony according to the word of the prophet.

42 And, first, it is the Lord who announced Himself; all is at His disposal. He sends to seek the ass, and commands His disciples to reply to those who asked why they acted thus, "The Lord has need of them." Mounted on the ass, He enters Jerusalem as a King, according to the prediction of Zechariah. The multitudes salute Him, according to Psalm 118, and announce to the excited city that it is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, that they thus receive as King.

Jesus, having entered into the temple, executes judgment, purifies the house of God, denouncing the iniquity which had defiled it, and heals those who could neither see nor walk. He recalls to mind how the Psalms shewed that the Lord would vindicate His rights by the mouth of little children, and leaves the city in order to repair to Bethany. He enters as Lord, King and Judge; but He is no more of Jerusalem. By the curse of the fig-tree He shews the condemnation of Israel, full of appearance, but without fruit, and declares to the disciples, astonished at that which had happened to the tree, that, if they had faith, they should cause the mountain which was before them to disappear, all the stability of the nation, which should be cast among the peoples.

The next day, as they demanded by what authority He did these things, He returns the point of the question upon the conscience of those who addressed it to Him; a conscience too little upright to answer, and which, hiding itself under a pretended ignorance, left Him by that very thing the liberty of refusing to answer them. Also, it was evident that they would not avow that which they knew well; to answer would have been impossible, and only a sanction given to iniquity. Besides, the Lord sounds their conscience in place of recognising their authority; it is what was then fitting. He is the Messiah in spite of them, and He judges, and thereupon He presents them, commencing with themselves, with the true picture of their conduct, worse than that of the publicans and of the harlots. Then He describes all the conduct of the nation toward the messengers that God had sent them, even to His own Son, and He makes them pronounce their own sentence, which He supports by a citation of Psalm 118: 22. Finally, He announces to them, alluding to this Psalm, the consequence of stumbling on this stone, and the still more terrible lot of those on whom it should fall in judgment.*

{*This beautiful passage, from chapter 21: 28, to 22: 14, depicts with astonishing exactness all the ways of the Lord with respect to the Jews and their ways. The second invitation to the Jews, after the death of Jesus Himself, is there presented. When God could say in all its force, "All things are ready," it is then that they killed the messengers, as the Lord predicts to them lower down, chapter 23.}

Matthew 22

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Up to this point the Lord had taken them on their own ground, as Jews, citing their own scriptures, and judging their state, considering them as the vineyard of the Lord; it was the Son of the King Himself who sought fruit in the vineyard which He had entrusted to the husbandmen. But there was another point of view, the activity of His Son; and the kingdom of heaven is presented of the love of God and His counsels on the subject as the marriage supper of the King's Son, to which they had been invited and would not come: upon that their rejection and the call of the Gentiles, but, consequent upon that call, the judgment of those who had not really put on Christ. The nation, in general, had then been judged according to its actual position, and in view of the grace which it had rejected, grace which invited it to the wedding of the King's Son, where it was going to be succeeded by poor wretches collected from all sides, but received of God. The different classes of Israel now in their blindness are presented for judgment. The partisans of the law and of the rights of the Jews, join themselves with the impiety which sold them to the Gentiles, and ask Him if they should own this dominion of the Gentiles over the people of God. The Lord leaves them where their iniquity had placed them, demanding that they should render to God His true service. After that came the Sadducees, who are judged by the simple but powerful testimony of the word. The Lord Jesus gives the great fundamental principles of all the law and the prophets - principles which, moreover, should be realised only in the gospel and in the renewed man. Then He presents the enigma of His own position, according to Psalm 110: the Jews were entirely incapable of resolving it. From that moment no man durst ask Him any more questions.

Matthew 23

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The Lord, while quite owning the judicial authority of that which existed among the Jews, an authority based upon the law, pronounces a judgment, levelled at all those who administered that authority, insisting that the form even of it should no more subsist in the midst of His own and that the greatest among them should be servant, for he who exalted himself should be abased.* What was yet wanting to fill up the measure of the scribes and Pharisees was to imbrue their hands in the blood of God's witnesses, from which they boasted that they were pure. They were about to be put to the proof, and all the blood shed should be required of that generation. Finally, the Lord, moved with affection for the city beloved of God, declares that their house should be left desolate, and that those to whom He was speaking should see Him no more till they would say, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" according to Psalm 118 already cited twice: testimony of their restoration in peace at the time of the coming of Christ and of the preparation of their heart before His advent.

{*But this passage is remarkable in shewing how little, in this gospel, the Lord withdrew His own from the position of the Jewish remnant. Among them this direction had no place; to them there were neither scribes nor Pharisees nor Moses' seat; but he desires to view them in this gospel also, as a Jewish remnant, having, as such, relationship with the nation.}

Matthew 24, 25

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The nation was judged, and its restoration foretold, when its heart should be prepared to receive Him whom God had sent; but the disciples were not yet instructed in the circumstances which should take place in the interval, nor was their heart separated from the glory of the former order of things. This chapter brings us to the communications of Christ on this subject, and furnishes the warnings necessary to the faithful remnant.

The first thing that Jesus announces to them is the judgment of God upon that which existed at that time before their eyes, and of which the disciples had such an exalted idea. There should not remain there one stone on another. The Lord being seated on the mount of Olives, His disciples come to Him. That which the Lord had said to them suggested this question, or rather, these questions: When will these things take place, namely, the destruction of the temple? What will be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the age?

45 We must remember, that the age for the disciples, was not Christianity, but, on the contrary, the state of Judaism, until the coming of the Messiah; so that these things were connected in their mind. The Lord had spoken of the destruction of the temple, which has more or less connection with the same thought; nevertheless it is rather the revelation which the Lord had made thereupon that gave rise to the questions which had already pre-occupied their mind.

In His answer He does not touch upon the first of these questions, namely, the era of the destruction of the temple. In fact that did not concern them; for that temple was as nothing for them now in the eyes of the Lord. He considers their position in two points of view, namely, the general point of view, according to which they found themselves in a position of witness; and the special point of view, when the abomination of desolation would be at Jerusalem. The first extends to the end of the thirteenth verse; the second from the fifteenth verse to the twenty-eighth.

The first thing that the Lord points out is, that the ruin in which His departure was to leave Jerusalem would give place to many false Christs, which would come in His name. The disciples must not suffer themselves to be deceived by them. There would be also wars and rumours of wars,* but they must not be disturbed by them; these things must take place, but the end would not be yet. For nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there would be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places, and all these things would only be the beginning of sorrows. Such is the outside, the providential events of which they would have knowledge.

{*Here commences, it seems to me, the bearing more properly historical.}

Such would be the state of the world, and what would happen there in this time of waiting for the Lord and for the end of the age; when the time would draw near. and that those who should have intelligence must await His coming on the earth and for the earth, a waiting which identified itself with the interests of the Jews in a manner, it is true, more or less clear, nevertheless according to God. He speaks of His disciples as of the Jewish remnant; but, though they were surrounded by Jewish circumstances, the hatred against them, while having its source among the Jews, would extend still further; they would be hated of all the Gentiles for the name of Christ. There would be also treasons, many would be offended - false prophets among those who pretended to have the same hopes, and the excess of iniquity would chill many of them. But, whoever endured unto the end should be saved. All this supposes the disciples in Jewish relations; not that the testimony of God was limited to that; but, whatever may have been elsewhere the extent of the testimony, the Lord speaks here of those who were connected with the hopes, the thoughts, and the circumstances of the Jews. The testimony of the gospel of the kingdom would be borne effectively in all the extent of the habitable world to all the nations, to all the Gentiles. It is not a question here of salvation and of the union of the church in a single body with Christ, but of the gospel of the kingdom: "this gospel of the kingdom" (the gospel which Jesus preached to the Jews; not His death, which was not a gospel to the Jews, for it was an effect of their unbelief with regard to the gospel which He preached; but the testimony that the kingdom was at hand) would be announced to the Gentiles.

46 If the ground of all that abides, for the Christian, there is a speciality which is proper to the testimony of John the Baptist, of Christ on earth, and of the disciples in the latter days.

This fourteenth verse is taken quite alone as a fact which is to happen before the end of this age is come on earth. Here then the Lord, though He may have given warnings useful for His disciples, as Christians, in those days, takes the same starting-point as they take in their questions, and returns to the point whither their thoughts tended, without correcting anything as to this tendency. He interests Himself as to the same things; He does not own, it is true, the nation and the temple as they then existed; but He does not seek to raise their hopes to heaven. He supposes that their connections always subsist with the earth, with Israel, but according to God; as a remnant, and as having the testimony of God in the midst of all that. It is just what happened. during part of their life; then that was, as it were, eclipsed by the church, but it will be fully accomplished in the latter times, at the beginning of the travail of bringing forth, which will introduce the end of the age.

47 Therefore, at the fifteenth verse, the Lord determines the thing plainly by a date, or at least by an event which is local, and which has a known relation with the end; and here is the second part of His discourse, where all is marked with precision. The abomination of desolation, of which Daniel has spoken, will be placed in the holy place; and here we must refer entirely to Daniel ("whoso readeth, let him understand"), that is to say, that this has reference to what will happen at Jerusalem and in those countries, in this locality definitely, and to nothing else, and that in the latter days. When this will happen, the disciples, instructed by the prophecy, are to flee. Here the hope is entirely Jewish. It is evident that it is not for me to save my life in flying from Jerusalem; that the aim of the Christian is no more that flesh should be saved, that is to say, that his life here below should be spared. In a word, they are Jews, having faith, but in Jewish circumstances, thoughts and intelligence. They were to pray to God that their flight might not be on the Sabbath day, etc.

Meanwhile, dear reader, see what tenderness, of God in the midst of these scenes of horror, which, if the hand of God was not extended in grace, should spare no flesh! See the majesty of the heavens, which deigns to think of the time that He will provide for the flight of His poor creatures and of the Sabbath which might shackle them! But here there is a very important remark to make, which is that the Lord says, Your flight, and When ye shall see, that is to say, that, although the circumstances might alter, He always regards His disciples under their Jewish character.

From the fifteenth verse of chapter 24, it is evident that the Lord addresses Himself to them as to the same as those of whom the question is in the preceding verses: "Take heed that no one deceive you" (v. 4); "when ye, therefore, shall see" (v. 15); that is, He views His disciples as Jewish disciples in connection with the nation, as He had done towards the nation itself in the preceding chapter, verse 37, where He identifies it with the nation in the latter days, " Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Nevertheless, there is in the circumstances a sufficiently important difference. He supposes the death of many during the first period without date. When the abomination is there, it is a question of saving one's life. In these beginnings of sorrows, which have no fixed date, but which suppose Jewish disciples in Palestine, betrayed by one another and hated by the Gentiles, the hope of many is to be founded still more upon the resurrection than upon the deliverance wrought by the advent of the Messiah. The Psalms (which present to my mind the relations with the Jews, of Christ considered either as the just man, or as the King on Zion) speak either of Himself prophetically, or of the faithful remnant, animated by His Spirit with more or less intelligence, and of His circumstances in the latter days.

48 Now, the book of Psalms is divided into five parts, which treat each of a different subject. In the first the hope of resurrection is very frequently found there; in the others, almost more; in all is seen the expectation of deliverance; but in the first this expectation is passed beyond, which has hardly place in the others. Now, from the beginning of the second part, the Spirit of Christ, in the remnant, speaks as having been forced to abandon Jerusalem, of which the remembrance is precious to Him. He appeals from it to God against the Gentiles in Psalm 42; and against the ungodly Jews in Psalm 43.

It is very evident that the disciples, to whom Jesus addressed Himself, while they had, at the moment of His speaking with them, Jewish hopes, enjoyed at a later period the hope of the resurrection, and more beyond; but He speaks to them here according to their actual position before Him, and, as Prophet, He declares to them what concerned the faithful remnant of the people called to bear testimony, as in the preceding chapter He had shewn them the fate of the nation. The disciples were those "of understanding," of Daniel 11 and 12, who are called here to understand that of which the intelligence is promised them in those chapters.

The warnings for the time of testimony are then given to the end of the thirteenth verse, and, having announced the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom among all nations, at least among all those of the prophetic (habitable) earth, we have from the fifteenth the instructions of Jesus for the time of the last twelve hundred and sixty days. Then will the false Christs seduce, if it were possible, even the elect; but the coming of the Son of man will be like the lightning, for where the carcase is, there, as the flight of the eagle, will fall the judgment of God.

49 Here ends the second part, which treats of the great tribulation at Jerusalem, and of the dangers which accompany it even for the very elect, dangers to which the advent of the Son of man puts an end. The circumstances of that time, when it shall come, will furnish a date and signs. Moreover, and as a general result, immediately after the tribulation of those days, all the powers of heaven shall be shaken; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. Many warnings had been given to the disciples, but no sign to the people on earth; it had even been refused: the sign of the Son of man would now be in heaven at His coming. The generation having been already rejected, it would have been out of place to have given it a sign; it was too late, for it was about to be judged: as the tribes of the land (of Israel) shall mourn, according to Zechariah 12, and shall see the Lord come in the clouds of heaven. Every eye shall see Him; but here I believe that Jesus restricts Himself to Israel, I do not say to Jerusalem: they are all the tribes of the land of Israel who are called to mind here. But this will not be all: He will gather together the elect* of this people from the four winds, from all the countries where they will be scattered in those days. Two things, as to the epoch, are here distinctly marked by the Lord:

{*See Isaiah 65: 22 - a passage, however, which seems to confine itself to the elect already in the country; here they are sought from afar. I only quote it for the force of the word "elect" here.}

Firstly, the circumstances of which He has just been speaking. When all these things shall come to pass, His coming and the end of the age will be at the door; secondly, the actual generation of the Jews shall not pass away till all these things should be accomplished. There are circumstances for them that understand. As to dates, if the day or hour be inquired of, the Father alone knew them.*

{*For my part, I believe that all the calculations that have been made are without foundation. There may be many very interesting things in the works in which they are found, as I have often found; but the calculations themselves are baseless. I believe there have been analogous things, wherein the principles of evil, which shall break out in the last days, have been more or less developed; but as to the exact calculations, they are based on a false principle, because these dates, in their exact application, apply to the Jews of the last days.}

50 As to the generation, I doubt not but that the Lord uses this expression morally, which is constantly done in the word. "He shall go to the generation of his fathers, they shall never see light," Ps. 49: 19. "A seed shall serve him, it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation," Ps. 22: 30. See specially Deuteronomy 32, which precisely treats of this subject, in verses 5 and 20.

If the day is not known save to the Father alone, that accords, I think, with what is said in Psalm 110: "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." The Lord, who expects all here below as servant of His Father, has received but this word at His mouth, "until." Nothing shall fail, no uncertainty in the events, not one word that has proceeded out of His mouth shall fall to the ground. As to the moment, it would be as in the days of Noah; that is to say, a sudden judgment, and unexpected on the earth; they should be overtaken by it, when they should least expect it. Yet the Lord will know how to distinguish them, and to leave those whom He should think worthy, even though two men should be in the same field, or two women at the same mill.

It was then for the disciples, instructed beforehand, to watch, for they did not know in what hour their Lord would come.

But it may be asked, how it is that the Lord identifies His apostles with the rebellious Jews, who will be overtaken by the judgment; and since the church is to ascend to Him in the air, how can it happen that two shall be found in the same field in the day of the Son of man? It is true, this will not happen for the church, as it is very certain that it did not happen for the apostles to whom these words were addressed; but in this discourse the Lord speaks to no one individually, but to classes, to certain categories of people. We have an evident proof of it in verse 39 of chapter 23 touching the Jews, and in verse 15 of chapter 24 touching the disciples. "When ye shall see the abomination of desolation," etc. It is certain that the disciples had never seen it; it is even certain, from the book of Daniel, that it refers to the last days. The comparison of the twenty-first verse with the commencement of chapter 12 of Daniel, then the date attached to this event at the end of this last chapter, demonstrate it with the plainest evidence.

51 Thus then, in the twenty-third chapter, as here, the Lord speaks of certain classes of persons: and here, of the faithful remnant of the Jews. It is true that those who composed this faithful remnant at that time were in the enjoyment of privileges far superior to the position here in question; but the Lord is not speaking of this now. He is occupied with the remnant, and He could speak to His apostles under this aspect, because they were in that moment the remnant, and put by the nation in the presence of the rejection of the Messiah, whatever may have been the superior privileges which afterwards they may have individually enjoyed.

All this supposes a gospel of the kingdom, specially preached in the last times; as moreover it supposes persons who will be persecuted for Christ's name's sake, but who, at the same time, will be more or less identified with Jewish hopes, who will even be of the Jewish remnant; and I believe the word tells us so. I see, at the end of Isaiah and of Daniel, chosen ones distinguished from the mass of those who shall be spared; but they are Jews, they occupy themselves with Jewish interests, and they will enjoy the deliverance of this people and the blessings which will result from it on earth. See Dan. 10, 11, 12. Isa. 65, 66. It appears that some will be put to death, whether during the period called the beginning of sorrows, or during the last tribulation.

It is evident that these two classes will have part in the first resurrection; which is also what the Apocalypse, chapter 20, shews clearly. Also, as a principle, this ought to be sufficiently clear. We have said that the same thing is repeatedly found in the Psalms, only much more (as least as a hope) before the great tribulation of the last half-week. But this changes not the destiny of the greater part of these saints. It seems to me (but here I do not go father than that), that those who have been at this epoch faithful witnesses, but without being put to death, will be particularly identified with the Lord Jesus, as King of the Jews upon earth. They will have been, according to the measure given them, that which He Himself was upon earth; that is, a witness in the midst of a people who rejected Him. Of this the Psalms bear the imprint. Only we must add, as a fact, the testimony of the kingdom to the Gentiles; for, if there is place for mercy, the Lord could not strike without a testimony having been previously borne. Until now this preaching has not been assigned to the remnant; it was given only as a sign, as that which is to happen before the end of the age comes, and the Son of man comes down upon the earth; but it is not said that it should be the work of the Jewish remnant. It is a sign which is given them.

52 Definitively we have the commencement of the sorrows, and the counsels and warnings proper to this period; the time of the great tribulation when the abomination of desolation should be set up in the holy place, and the special dangers of that terrible moment; the overthrowing of all the powers of the heavens, the appearing of the Son of man, and the gathering together of the Jews dispersed in all the world. Or, if you will take the thing farther back, the Jews are put aside, and the principles on which the relations of God, whether with them or with the Gentiles, shall be renewed, are in chaps. 14, 15; then in 16 the church; in 17 the glory of the advent of the Son of man; the position of grace and lowliness that Christ took, and that His were to take in the meantime, end of chapter 17, 18; and in general all the principles of the kingdom established by faith, and the ways of God in this respect, to the twenty-eighth verse of chapter 20. It is in this part (and therefore I have made this summary) that we have the individual portion of the apostles, that is, at the end of chapter 19; then the judgment of the nation, or if you will of that generation, in chapters 21 to 23; the exposition of all that concerned the remnant, in chapter 24.

But this leads our divine Master to consider the remnant under another aspect, that the disciples scarce understood then, that is, its relations no longer with Israel and the hopes of this people, but with Himself; in other words, to consider this remnant as charged with His service, as the retinue of His joy, come forth to await His return, or finally, as charged with His interests here below in His absence. This is what follows from chap. 24: 45, to 25: 30. In the first case, it does but present the position and the effect of fidelity during His absence, and the manner in which unbelief would identify itself with the state of heart which puts off the thought of His return. If, during the absence of the Master, a true service is yielded by the wise and faithful servant (it is not a question here of "good") who keeps his place to accomplish, in care bestowed upon those who compose the household,* that which was entrusted him in the house, blessed is that servant; at the time of the return of the Master, he will be made ruler over all His goods. Here this is a great principle of service to which the apostles were called - true for their service in Christianity, and applicable also for each of us in his place. But the position and the principle only are laid down here. If there was infidelity, if the servant put off the thought of the return of the Master, and went on his way with those who made themselves drunken in the world, he should be counted among the hypocrites and taken in an hour when he least expected it.

{*We may remark here that the service refers to the house or to those who compose the Master's household, and the care which ought to be bestowed on them. If it is to those who formed the church, it is at least to them and to their service in its Jewish character, whether as to a body, or in an interior appropriated to the Lord, as this people was in the world. In the parable of the virgins, it is the expectation of grace, the state of those who went forth to meet Him. The third parable is the activity of service with His goods.}

53 But the Lord pursues farther this general principle, and brings us back to the kingdom of the heavens. At that time here is that to which it would be like. It is not here the church, properly so-called, for the Lord could not present the church as the church in this manner; that is, He could not, in presenting the church as such, compare it to virgins who were in the attitude of waiting, as the retinue of the marriage supper of the Lord, with a bride quite different from the church, and the latter acting no other part than that of the companions of the marriage supper. But the state of the kingdom at this time may very well be compared to such circumstances: in effect, when the Lord will come as Son of man, to execute judgment against the wicked servant, and against Israel, and to receive Jerusalem and the Jewish people as His own, then the kingdom of heaven might be regarded in this point of view; there will be persons who will go out to meet Him; there was that which represented the kingdom. It was not a question of sowing, nor of buying fields, nor of separating good fish; nor was it any more a question of the activity of the kingdom, but of the conduct of those who, having been called, were gone out to meet the Bridegroom. The matter in hand here is not a bride, but the condition of those who wait for the return of the Bridegroom.* And this is what had become of it; the expectation of the Bridegroom was lost: the virgins, at first, had acted after this principle; they could not abandon this position, however unfaithful they might have been to that which they had taken.

{*I believe that if one absolutely wishes to introduce the bride here (and the Lord does not) it is a question about Jerusalem on earth.}

54 Here it will be asked, Does the Lord speak of the church? Is it meant by that, Do these exhortations and these parables apply to you who are members of it? I answer, assuredly so. But the explanation of the word does not stop here. Church is a word which is of all importance. If we search out the use of it in the epistles, we shall see that it is not found in those of Peter, and only accidentally in that of James, and once in 3 John 3, in speaking of the conduct of an individual here below. In the Apocalypse, it is a question of particular churches but never of the church, save in the expression "The bride says, Come." In a word, Paul alone treats of this subject and employs this word, applying it to the unity of the members of Christ, to one sole church, or to one only body. Here we have: The kingdom of heaven shall be like, etc.

The church presents always the idea of a body, on earth during the period of her trial, but united to Christ on high; entirely for Him alone, separated to be His, as a wife to her husband. The kingdom of heaven supposes men on the earth, the government of God exercised over a certain state of things, the reign of heaven which continues the course of government of things here below, although in new circumstances; not in the same manner as in Israel: a government limited in its application, which puts on a particular form, until Christ comes, because He does not yet judge; and this is what gives place, He having been rejected, to the specialities contained in these parables. Nevertheless all those who recognise the authority of Christ are here under their responsibility. Perhaps, in certain cases, they are the same persons as those who compose the church; but they are looked at in another point of view.

Here then the kingdom would be like virgins gone forth to meet a bridegroom who comes to the house of his bride. He supposes them gone forth; but alas! while the bridegroom delays His coming, they sleep and are awakened at midnight by this cry: "Behold the bridegroom." What characterised the state of the kingdom, is, that all had forgotten their vocation; it was not that there were no faithful ones; the wise virgins had their oil in their vessels. But all, wise or foolish in the kingdom, whether the sincere and pious, or whether they deceived themselves, all had lost the sense of their vocation. This great truth, the coming of the Master, had its influence; they are awakened, but to be separated by the arrival and the judgment of the Master. Time enough had been given for the trial of their state, but it was no longer the time to get provided with oil. The return of the Lord, as to our service, is always judgment, and not grace. And here we see that it is not the church as bride, for He takes us with Himself at His advent, as His bride; crowning the work of His grace in power of life and fulness of acceptance.

55 But we shall find that the return of Christ here below, His manifestation, is always matter of judgment and responsibility for Christians as for others. Our rapture whensoever it may come to pass (I am not discussing that now) is always grace and full favour common to the whole church. And it is because His return is judgment that He adds "Watch"; for when He shall be there, it will no longer be the time of grace.

In the first parable we have the contrast between him who served the master humbly, and the heart which said, He delayeth His coming; in that of the virgins, the effect of this delay which should eventually take place, an effect which should be manifested even with the faithful; namely, that the kingdom should be characterised by the complete forgetfulness of the Master's return. However, the great difference was the possession of the oil of grace hidden in the heart, the Spirit of God.

For, in fact, all this would be like a man who, going to a distant country, trusts his goods to his servants, according to their ability; then, after a long interval, he returns. That is to say, the question is as to the fidelity of the servants, when they are left (to outward appearance) to themselves, and that during a long time, so that their heart is put to the proof to see whether it is truly the Master's, if they identify themselves with His interests when there is no appearance of His return; or if they forget Him, as Israel at Sinai, who believed that it was all over with Moses. But here pay attention, that it is not simply the fact of being ready in grace, but the activity which confidence in the Lord inspires. the activity of service in love of persons identified with the interests of Christ, seeking but that, and seeking it with the zeal imparted by that love, not in His presence directed by His eye, but in His absence; in the intelligence and activity which the Spirit gives, and with a knowledge of His thoughts sufficiently intimate to be able to act in His absence. The servants are left to themselves; I do not mean by this that they can do these things without grace. The contrary is sufficiently demonstrated by the case of the wicked servant. But they are placed under responsibility; their condition is put to the trial; all that the Master does is to trust His goods to them. We shall see what they are by the result. Moreover, the question here is not of the moral conduct of the servant, as in the first parable (chap. 24: 45), nor of fidelity to a position in which he was actually placed; but of intelligence, of activity, of the good-will of a servant, who has for his spring of action nothing but the mark of confidence which His Master gives him in committing His goods to him.*

{*The difference between this parable and Luke 19, which in the main is the same, is, that there the principle of man's responsibility is brought much more forward; here, the sovereignty and the wisdom of the Master. There are other things which pertain also to the character of this Gospel, but that is the principal. In Luke each receives cities according to his work; here, all enter into their Master's joy. That is necessary where individual responsibility is in question. What was important here was to shew that disciples left as Jews would be in the same joy as their Master, when He should return in glory as Son of man, being no longer a Jew, though fulfilling the promises made to the fathers. But His servants should be in the same position as Himself, not as He had left them when He went away, and His joy would be the glory. Yet it would be found also in accomplishing His promises to His people, however it might have been. But the question was not exactly about possessing cities.}

56 Let us say a few words more on the parable of the talents. Here the servant is called "good and faithful." It is that which occurs during the absence of Christ. He has delivered His goods to His servants; if they have understood His grace, if they have been touched by this mark of His confidence, they will have laboured with that which was given them, or else they will have wronged the character of their Master, not to have had an entire confidence in Him. There was only faithfulness, it is true, in the conduct of the two who had traded; for, why commit goods to them, if it was not to improve them? But the Lord keeps account of it; what He had confided was but a little thing in His eyes; but they had known Him and had been faithful. There was but one heart between Him and them, and now, at His return, they must enter into His joy; one heart in service, and one heart in joy. Also, "many things" were confided to them in His kingdom at the hour of His glory.

57 It is a sweet picture; the heart of the Lord trusts in them for His glory in His absence, and their hearts trust in Him for the result; and at His return their hearts are united in the joy. The heart of a servant on one side, and that of a Master on the other, doubtless, yet of a Master one-hearted with them, whose joy was to bless them, and to extend the sphere of their confidence according to the glory which He will have then acquired. As to His joy, they are to share it. The third servant does not lose the inheritance only; he is cast outside; he had never known his Master. This is what was wanting to him. The circumstances of the service might be the means of proving it, but there was the ground of the affair. Alas! for the details; it is that which happens too often to real Christians, and there is always the history of our failures in our service - we have not known the Master. Confidence in Him was wanting; now, can one know Him without confiding in Him? Nevertheless, to have to do with Christ takes away even the intelligence of ordinary duty from those who do not love Him, because the heart is soured by the consciousness of ill-will, and only regards Jesus as a severe judge. He will have acted toward us according to our faith. Alas, how little it is! but at least the Master is good.

In these three parables we see the history of what occurs as regards those who profess to be His, during His absence and at the time of His return, with respect to their responsibility. Next, I will only add here, that I do not believe that these three parables can be applied to the special testimony of the kingdom which will be borne at the end. The first only speaks of the charge and responsibility in the house towards the people whom the Master had left there. The second does not at all speak of this activity of grace, but of the condition of persons already called to wait for the Lord, the Bridegroom who was to come. The third speaks of those to whom the Lord delivers His gifts when He goes away, telling them that He will return after a long interval: then they will enter into the joy of their Master Himself This last is not a likening of the kingdom of heaven, because it is not a state of things, a complete whole, the object of the care or of the judgments of God; but an individual responsibility, according to that which had been entrusted to each, and in which each also will receive according to what he had done under this responsibility, and according to the confidence that his Master had in him, and that which he himself had in the goodness of his Master.

58 There is no more a question here of the Jews in the latter days, at least in these two last parables; in the last, above all, this is evident; for it is about those to whom Christ entrusted His goods on His departure, and during the long interval which elapses before His return. As to the second, it is a likening of the kingdom of heaven; and the Jews will not go out with intelligence to meet the Lord, nor afterwards slumber in the midst of affliction, forgetting - even the wise - that He may come. Such is at least what it seems to me to be, and its connection with the parable that follows confirms this thought. That there is something analogous, in certain respects, I believe; that is, there will be those of greater intelligence, who will be morally separated from the others, and who will understand. But I do not think that the conditions of the parable can be coherently applied to them. Their state had already been the subject of the Lord's instructions, in speaking of Jerusalem and of the latter days.

We come now to the third part of the discourse: the Lord arrived. This is what our precious Master announces. When the Son of man* (for it is always in this character that He is presented, when He speaks definitely of His presence here, and not merely in that of Messiah, a title in which He had been rejected), when the Son of man, I say, shall come in His glory,** it will not be merely an instantaneous act of appearing. "He will sit upon the throne of his glory"; there will be something permanent there; "and before him shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall separate them, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats." The Gentiles will be thus judged. I do not believe that it is necessary to prove at greater length that what is called the last judgment is not the question here. The Son of man is returned in His glory; He is not sitting on the great white throne, from whose face the heavens and the earth flee away; Rev. 20: 11. He is King now; He is about to reign, and not to give up the kingdom. He judges only the living Gentiles, for here there is no question of resurrection. He judges them on a principle inapplicable to the immense majority of those who will appear when God will judge the secrets of the heart; namely, according to the manner in which they shall have received certain messengers of Christ whom He calls His brethren. It is clear this does not apply to those who have lived in paganism before Christ, nor to the immense majority of those who have lived between His advent and His death. In a word, it is Christ who, as King here below, judges the Gentiles that shall be then on the earth - the nations.

{*Perhaps I have not sufficiently brought out this distinction: as Messiah, He came into the midst of the Jews to accomplish the promises made to the fathers, to the family of David, and to the Jews therein; but later on He takes the kingdom in all the extent of His rights as Son of man, to whom the Father had subjected all things. The transition from the one of these positions to the other is often perceptible in the gospel.}

{**All the verses, from verse 31 of chapter 24 to verse 31 of chapter 25, are a parenthesis, and contain moral instructions, based upon preceding revelations: the history, or the continuation of the prophecy, is resumed at verse 31, "When the Son of man shall come," etc.}

59 Let us observe by the way here His tenderness to the Jewish nation. We have trouble to find the judgment of this nation in these chapters!* He speaks indeed of the end of the age, but rather of tribulation than of judgment, of shortening those days for His elect. At His appearing all the tribes of the earth mourn, and He gathers together the elect (Jews) from the four winds. There is chastisement, it is true, but it terminates in blessing: the heart of Christ is busied with the remnant. He had said to the Jews, "Ye shall not see me henceforth until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." His heart turns in blessing towards the chosen people. Ungodly Jerusalem had filled His eyes with tears, but here He puts an end to her chastisement. There is one who has known to say, "How long?"** Compare Psalm 74: 9. The fact is, that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, that is to say, that God does not change in His counsels with Israel. "In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it; he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." Read the whole passage, Isaiah 27: 6-9; for "this is all the fruit to take away his sin."

{*In Luke, which is not so much occupied with the Jews, the Lord shews clearly the judgment which will come on the nation and which He Himself will execute (Luke 19: 27). The truth, as a warning, had been already given in this Gospel, chapter 21: 44.}

{**It is not that He indicates the day. As Jehovah had said to the Lord, "Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool"; so the Lord said, "Ye shall not see me henceforth until." etc. The repentance of the Jews is for His heart the sign that He can see them again and that they also can see Him again. Peter gives them the same sign, in Acts 3. "Be converted . . . so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ."

We see here the importance of the repentance of the Jews as a nation, for thousands since that time have repented as individuals. This repentance is to have respect to the sent One of God, for it is to be repentance for the sin which has caused their ruin and their rejection. They will say, "Blessed is He that cometh!" a word which follows these, "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head-stone of the corner. This is Jehovah's doing, it is marvellous in our eyes," Psalm 118. This explains also why the Lord, at His coming, has yet a great deal to do to place the Jews in full peace and prosperity, according to the figure of Solomon. This is because He takes up the Jews where He left them, not such as they were in the days of Solomon, or onward to the captivity of Babylon as with Judah. But He can identify Himself with them; this is what He could not do at His first coming, because they would not. He had besides other things to accomplish according to the counsels of God. Now, when they have repented of their last national fault, and they say, "Blessed is He that cometh," He can undertake their cause; and this is what He does, and it is not a small thing. The indignation will have ceased; but the thing is to put the remnant-nation in the possession of all their privileges and all their country. It is the work of Messiah when He is there, and of none other. Zechariah, Joel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, speak of these things. There is then the action of the word of God by the Spirit, on the hearts of the Jews, as Jews, before the appearing of Jesus, which action will leave them Jews; and on the other hand, the acts of power, He having recognised the nation, to put them in possession of all their privileges after the appearing. Read Isaiah 50 and 51 for the first of these things and the transition See Psalms 42 to 49, and Zech. 9. The moment of transition is found in chapter 12. See also Jer. 51: 20; Isaiah 41: 15, 16; Mic. 4: 13; 5; Isaiah 40: 10 - 14.}

60 Will there then be no cutting off? Not in the absolute sense. This is what will happen, as may be seen in the last chapters of Isaiah and elsewhere (compare the end of Zech. 13); the majority of the nation will join itself to the Gentiles and will be idolatrous. The unclean spirit which had gone out will return with seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and the last state of that generation shall be worse than the first. They will be joined with Antichrist, and will receive him who will come in his own name. They will thus be the cruel nation (and not the godly or holy nation) of Psalm 43, and they will perish with the apostate Gentiles. The indignation and the chastisement having, along with the testimony of God, separated the remnant, they will no more be counted as the nation, and He will "make of a remnant a strong nation."

61 Where then, in that which the Lord says here, is found positive judgment? It is contained, almost concealed, in these words: "For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered"; a passage which makes allusion, I think, to an expression of the book of Job 39: 30, and treats the Jews, who have thus united themselves with the enemies of God, as lost and dead, without wishing to name them anew. It is but a corpse united with the Gentiles, who, haughty as they are, will be judged on earth; for as it is said elsewhere of Babylon: "Strong is the Lord God who judgeth her," likewise strong is He who judgeth them, however they may have despised Him.

Here, in order to make the application of the passage precise, Christ does not merely come, but it is told us that, when He will come, He will sit upon the throne of His glory; whilst it will be as lightning that He will come to put an end to the tribulation and the desolation which the abomination has caused. He had set the faithful servant over all His goods: those who have their portion with the hypocrites, the wicked and slothful servants have been cast outside when they waited not for Him; but here Jesus takes His place upon His throne. There is no more a question nor a doubt about His rights nor about the submission of all to the ends of the earth. He is now "the King" (v. 34).

There are in this scene three classes of persons: the goats, the sheep, and His brethren. The judgment of the two first classes depends on their conduct toward the third. To have done these things to one of His brethren is to have done them to Himself; not to have done them to one of the least of these is not to have done them to Himself. The "brethren," I have no doubt, will be the remnant who will have preached the gospel of the kingdom among the Gentiles; the reception given to those messengers decides the lot of those who appear now in judgment. No more do I doubt that they are Jews who will bear this testimony, and whom Jesus calls His brethren, at this time; as those to whom He spoke, and that, after His resurrection, He calls His brethren, according to Psalm 22. I know very well that the Gentiles were grafted in later, but the Lord speaks according to that which resulted already from the fact that the disciples followed Him at that time rejected; and He employs this expression to mark those who among the Jews should be in the latter days in a kindred position of testimony. In principle, the disciples might apply it to themselves, and the Lord would have them know well that one day He should be King, and all the Gentiles should be forced to appear in judgment before Him, the rejected Messiah, and that they should enjoy all that which the Jews hoped as to the glory of their Messiah.

62 The brethren of Jesus, according to the constant language of the passages where this expression is employed, are the believing Jews, the remnant that believed in the Messiah (it is clear that all the Gentile believers have been admitted to the same privilege); but in this passage Jesus occupies Himself with those who surrounded Him, to encourage and direct them. As King He judges on earth. Those among the Gentiles who received well the brethren of Jesus enjoy, as blessed of the Father, the kingdom He had prepared for them from the foundation of the world; having received the gospel of the kingdom, they enjoy the effect of their faith, namely, the kingdom itself. Those who preached it, having been in the position of Jesus in testimony, will be recognised as His brethren in the blessing. But He is now King come on earth, so that His brethren are recognised here below; those put to death will have part in the first resurrection, but such is not the subject treated of here. The King is on earth, the nations on earth; so that there is nothing which can make it supposed that the brethren spoken of here are of heaven.* There will be those, but here it appears to me that they are rather the messengers of the kingdom, who have been preserved in spite of all the difficulties of the time.

{*There will be heavenly brethren, our hope and joy: if men will insist on the idea that it is they who are in question here, I contest it not. I express my conviction, formed on the study of all the chapter, and of all the Gospel itself, with the instructions which refer to it; but since there is but the word brethren here, and we all admit that the members of the church bear this name in principle, and that thus it depends on spiritual discernment to apply it, each will judge of it according to what is given him; it is not that I doubt; but I do not insist on the thing in comparison with others. See the last chapter.}

63 This kingdom is in the counsels of the Father from the foundation of the world; the church is chosen to be the spouse of Christ before the foundation of the world. The sheep are not called children, but only blessed of the Father. They enjoy eternal life, as those who refused to receive the brethren suffer everlasting pains. It is the final judgment of the Gentiles who will be on earth when Christ shall have established His throne there. Once more, it is not a question here of the resurrection.

Matthew 26, 27

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After having given us the future prospect of the remnant in all respects, the Spirit resumes the history of the events, and presents us with the recital, at once painful and touching, but for us infinitely precious, of the sufferings and of the resurrection of the Saviour. I do not think, dear brethren, of entering into many details of these chapters, because that which is here demanded is adoration, is the heart, rather than exegesis. I will only point out some particular points which belong to the character of this Gospel. And, first, some words on what the Lord says in giving the cup. It is good to remember that we eat the given body of Christ. One with Him in His glorious state, it is not of that we partake in the supper. Enjoying vitally this position infinitely exalted, we remember the sufferings which have purchased it for us; our hearts, our consciences, our souls, are nourished with the broken body; it is to Jesus dead that our thoughts recur, and to a love more powerful than death. If the body had not been broken, as Gentiles we should even have remained strangers as regards the promises, and sinners destitute of all hope.

A living Messiah was the crown of glory for the Jews; but, if He is lifted up from the earth, He draws all men. His broken body is the door for sinners from the Gentiles. On this the heart of the Christian is nourished, not merely as on manna come down from heaven, which typifies Jesus, a man upon earth, nor on Jesus in the heavens (where we are one with Him) - it is there the hidden manna; but on this devoted victim of propitiation which I see brought to the altar, and there sacrificed, slain for us - a victim full of love and of devotedness.

64 I pause before this mysterious scene, where He all alone (for no man could be there save to bend his head and adore) where the victim of propitiation, the man Jesus, presents Himself before the face of Him who, in His offended majesty, comes out to take cognizance of sin, in order that we might find on the tracks of the righteousness of God, which has burst forth and is accomplished, nothing but an infinite and immutable love: the love of the Father, enhanced by the accomplishment of the eternal righteousness to His glory. It is then the precious Saviour, humbled to death, that we have here, His body given (and one could not go lower down), and His blood shed out of His body. In that manifestly it is not a question of Jesus, such as He is at the present time; for He is glorified. This natural life He has left for us. He only presents it to God as a thing already given elsewhere; but He speaks here of a double effect of this blood which He has shed; first, He speaks of it as the foundation, or at least the seal, of the new covenant; and, secondly, as the foundation of the remission of the sins of many. That is, the basis of the new covenant is now laid, and, moreover, it is not a question of an act which relates to Jesus only to shew His obedience: this blood is efficacious for the sins of others. That does not merely secure new privileges, which one enjoys as a Christian, but procures the pardon of the sins of many of the Jews - not only so, but, in a general manner, of many. As to the new covenant, I will say some words here.

The old covenant, it is clear, is the covenant made with the Jews at Sinai. The Gentiles are not there for anything. The new one refers to the old; it will be established really with Judah and Israel, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah (chap. 31: 31-34). What then have we to do with the new alliance, we other Gentiles, may we ask ourselves? This is the answer. It is clear that the covenant itself treats with the Jews and with Israel, but upon principles of grace, and based upon blood of perfect efficacy before God. Now, for the moment, Israel is put aside as a nation. It enjoys no covenant.

What then is the state of things with respect to the covenant? It is that the Mediator of the covenant has shed His blood, and thus the basis of the covenant is laid: it is confirmed and established immutable before God. Christ is ascended on high, and we are one with Him, enjoying all the effect which is essentially attached to His person and to His position. We have the blood of the covenant. Those who are called to it exercise the ministry of the new covenant. Our position is to be united with the Mediator of the new covenant, and to enjoy all the privileges which He enjoys Himself, as having it established in His blood; though the covenant is not formed with us, it is established in Him before God, and we, we are in Him here below. What is the consequence of it? We drink of blood. If a Jew had drunk of blood under old covenant, it was death: could a man be nourished on death? It is the fruit of sin, it is his condemnation, it is the wrath of God, as the blood in the body was the life; and a Jew had no right to that. But Christ has suffered death. And can the Christian be nourished on death? Yes; it is salvation, the death of sin, the infinite proof of love. It is his life, the peace of his soul, the deliverance from sin, before God. What a difference! We drink of His blood, the proof of salvation and of grace, and the source of life. Nevertheless it is Jesus dead, of whom it is a question here.

65 There is in Hebrews 13: 20, another expression to which allusion may be made: God has "brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant." This shews us that Christ Himself is above, and has been raised according to the efficaciousness of the blood that He has shed to satisfy the glory of God. He, the only and beloved Son of the Father, charged Himself with our responsibility and our sins, and thus with the glory of God in this respect; and if this glory had not been completely satisfied, He could not evidently either rise again, or appear before Him whose majesty required that nothing should fail to the work. But He accomplished this work gloriously, and in that the Son of man has been glorified, and God glorified in Him; and He is ascended on high, not only as Son of God, but according to the efficaciousness of His work, in virtue of which He appears before the Father, the everlasting covenant being thus established in His blood. The question here is not of an old or a new covenant, which refers to particular circumstances, but of the intrinsic and essential worth of the blood of Christ. But perhaps I go too far away from our Gospel; I allow myself to be drawn away by the importance of the subject, and also by the precious worth and glory of the work of Him who has so much loved us.

66 I return now to the more humble precincts of my labour. We see here that the Spirit declares the value of the blood in a general way; it is shed for many for the remission of sins. The Gospel which treats of the kingdom, and of the Messiah in the Jewish point of view, must necessarily shew that the death of Christ had another aspect. In Luke, where this distinction was not obligatory, because of the non-Jewish character of his Gospel, it is said: "My blood which is shed for you." We have then the blood of the new covenant and the remission of sins. The disciples were to drink of it, as they were also to eat of His given body. Such is their portion: to be nourished on the death of Jesus, and to shew it till He come.

Until then, He would drink no more with them of the fruit of the vine. They would be nourished on Him, but He would not be nourished with them. The fruit of the vine is the sign of social joy, "wine which cheereth the heart of God and man," which they continually sprinkled in the burnt-offerings and the peace-offerings, that is to say, of a sweet savour. (See Num. 15: 5, 7, 10, where the question is not of offering for sin.) Now, of this fruit of the vine He would drink no more, whilst His disciples should drink abundantly of His death, the true drink, but a drink of separation from sin, and of Christ also, as regards His personal presence; the heavens must receive Him until the time of restitution of all things of which the prophets had spoken. Thus His social life with His disciples here below was closed; it would no more even be renewed after the same manner. They would enter spiritually into the power of His death, and would be one day anew with Him in joy in the kingdom of His Father.

In Luke, this is expressed in a manner a little different. It is said: "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God shall come"; and of the passover: "I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God." Here the things are much more left in general forms, because it is not occupied with the order of the dispensations of God on earth, but with the moral principles which are bound up with the introduction in grace of the new man.

In Matthew 26: 53 we have a circumstance which belongs particularly to this Gospel; it was just the right of Jesus, as Messiah, the Son of God, to have angels at His disposal. In chapter 27: 25 we have the solemn and frightful execration which this poor blinded people pronounces on itself, and which still weighs upon it to this day - an execration which will nevertheless be blotted out by grace, and the power of this same blood which they shed in their blindness, and which refers specially to the subject of this Gospel: "His blood be on us, and on our children!" Terrible words! O what then the heart of blinded man! Their entire apostasy from their position is more plainly delineated in John, who, besides, always presents them thus, "We have no king but Caesar," say they. Here it is their chastisement, as a nation, from the hand of God, which they invoke upon their head. They are owned in chastisement. Compare Isaiah 40.

67 If the reader compare the account Luke gives us of this moment so solemn to us all, he will find that there they are the moral circumstances which are related; here, those which refer to the degradation of the Messiah. The daughters of Jerusalem lament over Him; His prayer for His murderers, the conversion of the thief are found in Luke. If we examine John, we find the details of the sufferings omitted. The Spirit has there kept that which brings out the dignity of Him who traversed in grace, and according to the glory of His person, whatever might be otherwise His humiliation, those painful but precious moments,* precious for the present, as well as for eternity; for it is with the glory of His person, as Son of God, that the Gospel of John is specially occupied.

{*There is not what is found in Matthew 26: 37-45, nor verse 67, etc., nor chapter 27: 46, nor verses 39-44, or the parallel passages in Mark and Luke. In place of that, we have John 18: 4-9, 1l; 19: 28, 30, or in place of "expired," Mark 15: 37, we have "delivered up his Spirit," John 19: 30; it was the act which He did (according to John 10: 18), knowing that all was finished.

Compare also chapter 19: 7, 8, and the character of all the discourses of the Lord, whether before the high priest, or before Pontius Pilate, in the two Gospels.}

I will not pause longer on these circumstances, but I invite my brethren to meditate upon them. The more we are penetrated with them, the more also our poor and feeble hearts will appreciate the Saviour whom we love, but whom no one knows as He is worthy of being known. There are yet, in this chapter 27, the circumstances of verses 52, 53; circumstances important in this respect, that they bear testimony to the manner in which the Spirit of God treats Jerusalem, as being the holy city, when it is completely abandoned as regards the judgment of God. It may be forgotten for a moment, trampled under the feet of the Gentiles; but if the eye of God takes cognizance of it, in His eyes it is ever the holy city. The bodies of the saints come out of their graves after the resurrection of Jesus, and enter into the holy city. The death and resurrection of Jesus had abolished for heaven the middle wall of partition; but this does not hinder it (though, as regards His government, God had given up to chastisement the holy city, because it was not holy) from always keeping in His eyes that position; for He has chosen Jerusalem, and He will not repent of it. The same thing is seen in Daniel (compare especially chapter 9): faith thinks and speaks always thus.

Matthew 28

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We have in this chapter the account of the service which the angel renders to the Messiah, as also some remarkable circumstances to point out. The evangelist in no way occupies himself with the greater part of the details of the forty days that ran out after the resurrection. Each Gospel is the deposit of what refers to a special aim of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of Christ is diverse.

The only thing recounted by the Lord here is His interview in Galilee with His disciples, an interview which sets them in the position of testimony which He left them as Messiah, now the depository of all power in heaven and on earth. The invention of the unbelief of the Jews to keep their minds still in blindness is related to us. This is all that remained to tell of the Jews as a nation, so that if we take away the last feature, we have only this: the angel says to the disciples to go into Galilee, that they may there see the Lord. Jesus says the same thing to the women, in order that they might tell it to the disciples, now "His brethren." There had He been continually with them during His life; there the light was to have appeared for the time of distress; there the Messiah found a refuge at the time of the pride of Jerusalem (compare John 4 and all the history of the Gospels); the disciples were themselves of that country. All the associations of Jewish ideas, as regards the relations of the disciples with Christ in the midst of the Jewish people, were there. He had acted on Jerusalem, but this was now closed. He had been rejected. The law will go out from thence, when He shall have returned in power. "There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer"; but for the time He had done with Jerusalem as regards His Messianic testimony. Further, it must be remarked that the ascension of Jesus is not related here, but solely His relations with His disciples, relations continued after His resurrection and upon this principle, that all power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth.

69 The Lord has already renounced Jerusalem, saying that it should see Him no more till it repented. Jerusalem, or at least its chiefs, had cried, His blood be on us, and on our children. He takes no more cognizance of it here for the moment; in principle, His disciples were the remnant of the people. As acting from on high, He sends the gospel to Jerusalem; but it is the subject of Luke's Gospel, and of the book of the Acts, which is the continuation of it (see Luke 24: 46-53); it is there the grace of heaven, which kept to the promise of the Holy Spirit. Compare Acts 1: 1-9.

Here it is the power of Messiah already rejected at Jerusalem. The apostles were to go and instruct all nations, baptizing the disciples in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all that He had commanded, and He would be with the apostles even unto the end of the age. Let us examine a little their mission according to these words, comparing it with those which were given them in the other Gospels.

Here are the terms of these diverse missions. In Mark, who bears testimony to the ministry, to the service of Christ in the gospel, it is said to them, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Here is the most simple, the most general mission, and it is added, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." It was quite simply the preaching of the gospel for the salvation of souls, and the judgment of those who would not believe.

Here is the mission in Luke, the gospel which gives us grace, which introduces the new man and Christ in this character, "Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." Here it is intelligence and power, this last being the consequence of the exaltation of Jesus on high, and the disciples being bound to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endowed with it. As witnesses of Jesus, the disciples could not depart from the place of His rejection until they were linked with Jesus at the right hand of God, and thus, by the power of the Holy Ghost, bore testimony from Him, as being there above. A thing wholly new! it was the Son of man proceeding from Adam in a certain sense, but a new man and near to God: also, a new testimony is borne and recommences with Jerusalem - a testimony which thence shall reach men in all nations, according to the power of the Holy Ghost. It is a heavenly testimony. This, as we have said, is resumed in the Acts, God having been forced to recommence it with Paul at Antioch, because of the incredulity of Jerusalem once more reiterated.

70 In John 20: 21, we find their mission. Jesus says to them, "Peace be unto you! As my Father has sent me, even so send I you; and when he had said this, he breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." Here the thing is closer. Jesus is not yet ascended on high, but He has, according to the power of the resurrection, the life of God in Him; put to death as to the flesh, quickened according to the power of God in Spirit, He communicates to them life according to the power of the Spirit. Vitally they are one spirit with Him; for it was as man that He possessed it, although He was the power of God. Thus God breathed into the nostrils of Adam, and he became a living man. Now the last Adam is a quickening Spirit, but as He, according to the power of this life, has been sent of the Father, administrator, as man, of the pardon that man quickened by Him needed to possess to be in relation with God (compare Luke 5: 20, 24), so now He sent His disciples, made partakers by Him, and with Him of this life, to discharge from Him this office, to bear this pardon to men, and to render them partakers of it; a pardon which, by His death and resurrection, was now completely effected before God, and administered on earth according to the power of the Spirit of life, whether in receiving into the church those who should be saved, and who, being thus received, possessed this pardon; or whether, in the second place, in administering discipline. This administration of pardon received and possessed, following the exercise of this discipline, by him who is the object of it, is in the hands of every man in whom Christ has breathed His Spirit according to the degree of the power of this Spirit in him. And the pardon here spoken of is not a pardon looked at as granted in heaven, but a pardon administered on earth and ratified in heaven.

71 The apostles did that according to the perfection of the gift of God which was granted them; but we have in the word the revelation of this so important administration, according as it has been communicated to all the saints by the order of God. First, individual charity covers thus a multitude of sins; that is, in pardoning the wrongs in my brother, his sins no more exist, with regard to the government of God, as scandals and offences in the church: before His eyes love has completely displaced them. Such is the individual privilege; but this is not yet the official administration of the thing; on the contrary, it anticipates the exercise of it.

In the examples of Ananias and Sapphira, and even of Simon the magician, sins were retained. They were remitted - I say not in the same manner, but de facto--to three thousand persons on the day of Pentecost. In 2 Corinthians 2: 10 we have the sins remitted by the apostle and by the church, officially, in the exercise of discipline. That is, we have, as to this pardon, the apostolic mission, distinct from the church - a mission specially confided to the apostles, as delegated of Christ with His authority; and the administration of this pardon, communicated to a church without intermediary, the church counselled and directed in this administration, but accomplishing the act herself.

I should not have enlarged so much on this subject, if this passage did not present a difficulty which often pre-occupies the mind, and of which adversaries lay hold while the faithful do not very well know how to answer. It is then not only the pardon of sin granted by God Himself, according to a truth revealed by the Holy Spirit; it is an administration of this pardon confided to man, a pardon thus revealed on earth, confirmed perhaps, and sometimes demonstrated, by miracles, or accompanied by a deliverance or a chastening sent from God. It was an administration confided to the apostles, who were sent to gather the church introduced into her privileges by this pardon; and afterwards exercised by the church herself to maintain her members in the holy enjoyment of these privileges, and at the same time to sustain the glory of God. In the fact of chastening, where the question is neither of pardon in the sense of which we speak, nor of the official act of pardon, but simply of the efficacy of prayer; compare James 5: 14, 15.

72 I do not in any wise touch the question, What has been the effect of the actual state of the church on this administration? Apostolic delegates of this kind, there are absolutely no more. As to all the rest, it is a question of intelligence and spiritual power; but it is important to understand enough of these things to be ready to answer the pretension to forgive sins, of men who would allege, perhaps without scruple, the verses of James, of which we speak, which do in no wise belong to them.

Doubtless, God, by His grace, will keep the simple from such pretensions, and that from other motives; but it is well to have an answer. The Lord has meant to say something, and if we know what He meant to say, men cannot lead us astray and shut our mouths to make us fall into their snares. There is pardon administered here below, whether by apostles, or by the whole body; and a priest or a minister has nothing at all to do therein. If he is wise enough to give spiritual counsels, it is well; but it is not he who acts. The Holy Spirit is needed for this act. "Receive ye the Holy Spirit; to whomsoever," etc. The judgment of a body which flows not from that is perhaps a very suitable act for a human society, but which is not pronounced on the part of God; and if one speaks of acting by the Holy Spirit, this will be demonstrated in other things also.

I return now to the mission given in Matthew, having only considered the others in order the better to seize the difference. It is not here then the Son of God, sent from the Father, who sends, according to the power of life which is in Him, disciples to whom He can communicate the energy of this life, that they may accomplish their mission according to His heart of love filled by the Father. Neither is it Jesus, minister of the gospel, servant of all, sending those who are to replace Him, that every creature may hear the good news, which can now be addressed to them in His name who has fulfilled all things - such is the Jesus of Mark.

73 Neither is it the Son of man, raised to the right hand of the Father, who is about to give the Holy Spirit of power, in order that His sent ones may answer, in their work, to the exalted position that man occupies in His person (compare Psalm 68; Eph. 4), and who has already* opened their understanding that they may understand the scriptures, or the revelation of the thoughts of God, in the economies and dispensations on which this work and this presence of the Holy Spirit will cast their light. That is the exalted Christ of Luke, giver of the Holy Spirit.

{*It appears to me that an example of this is found in the choice of Matthias, before the gift of the Holy Spirit - a choice based on the explanation of Psalm 109; an explanation of which, it would seem to me, the disciples would have been incapable before that time, but the act itself had nothing in it of the power of the Holy Spirit. They draw lots, as Jews, after having understood this Psalm. Though we have received the Holy Ghost, it is of importance for us to distinguish between the understanding (though it were a gift) and power. It is evident, from the end of Luke and the commencement of the Acts, that a person may have the one and not have the other.}

But here, in Matthew, we have a rejected crucified Messiah, who, for the moment, abandons Jerusalem to its folly and its sin, and who, now risen, sends to the nations the message that His death, His resurrection, and the gift of the Father to Him risen, have enabled Him to put into the mouth of His disciples a message (no longer suitable to the Jews, who have already rejected the subject of it, their Messiah). It is no longer simply the only true God in His unity, surrounded by a people which should have kept this good and precious deposit. Now, other things in God had been put in the light for men, things which opened the door to the Gentiles, or rather which could be sent to them. Christ could not be there without the Son being named, and if the Son, then the Father and the Holy Spirit (the Holy Spirit, who acted with efficacy in the communication of the knowledge of the Father and of the Son); and, on the other hand, both the Father and the Holy Spirit had been necessarily manifested in Christ and His acts, while He lived and acted on earth; for in being Messiah, He was also Son, and it was because He called Himself such that the Jews rejected Him.

Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, all this could be sent in grace to the Gentiles. The disciples were to make them know the Messiah and the God of the Jews in this manner, or to make them enter into relation with God under this name, as by circumcision the Jews were put in relation with the Eternal or Jehovah; and this because all power was now given to Jesus in heaven and upon earth. Here is then (the rights of the Messiah being rejected by the Jews) not the establishment of the throne of David, whose influence should spread over all the earth, but He who, depository of all governing power in heaven and on earth, sent His disciples to put the Gentiles (nations) in relation with God, according to the revelation of that which was no longer hidden behind the veil from the eyes of the blind Jews, the Trinity of persons which faith recognised by means of Jesus: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.*

{*There was, in this, a revelation evidently much clearer, and relations different from those which the Jews enjoyed, as the people of Jehovah. These terms were not entirely unknown to the Jews; but they were always employed by the prophets in the prospect of the times when there would be this clearer revelation to call the Gentiles, and when blessing would be manifested for the Jews in a new measure. "Kiss the Son" is a summons to the kings of the earth in Psalm 2, and the promise of the outpouring of the Spirit, whether upon the Jews and their posterity or upon all flesh, is sufficiently known. See, amongst others, in Joel; in Isa. 44: 3; see also chap. 48: 16. Before the accomplishment of these things, or at least before they are fully accomplished to the letter, the revelation has been made of what is their foundation in God, and this name of Father, of Son, and of Holy Spirit has been proclaimed amongst the Gentiles. I do not think that it is here the unity of the Son with the Father, and of the church with Jesus by the Holy Spirit (that is taught elsewhere); but the revelation of the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for the submission of the Gentiles by faith, in anticipation of that day when the Son will be manifested in power, and the Holy Spirit fully shed abroad. But this is very precious for us, because it shews us these things in God, and makes us see that there are not only certain acts of manifestation which will take place hereafter, but the truth of God, of which one can speak before these manifestations take place. For the knowledge which the Jews and the earth will have of the Son, for example in His reign according to Psalm 2 is very inferior, it seems to me, to the knowledge which we have of Him, as being in the Father and the Father in Him, one with the Father, hidden in God. It is the same person, undoubtedly, but we have a much deeper knowledge of what He is. Further, we learn, in thus comparing Psalm 2, that the preaching of the name of the Son does not necessarily suppose the blessings of the church: now it does, because God gathers the church in Him; but the call made to the kings to submit to the royalty of Christ in the last times is made in the name of the Son, "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry." We have acknowledged Him before through grace, and we know Him as one with the Father. In this Psalm it is spoken of Him as presented to the world in time, "To-day I have begotten thee."}

74 But this mission depends on the power of Jesus as being given, and is to subject the nations that they may be His disciples, according to the claims that this power conferred on Him. It was a mission belonging yet to the age, which, though the Messiah had been rejected, was not yet terminated; it looked consequently at the submission of the Gentiles to the Messiah, in a new way, it is true, and left Jerusalem aside, because it had rejected the Messiah; but it supposes a going forward in the ways of God towards the end of this age, before which the gospel is to be preached in the whole habitable world. Those who carried this message might have higher privileges, which would be made evident when the Lord would be removed, and their first testimony rejected; those same messengers, individually, might be charged, from the commencement, with the message of the grace which was in Jesus, according to the other forms of mission that we have seen in the three other Gospels: they might preach the gospel to every creature, beginning at Jerusalem as representatives of Him who was exalted at the right hand of God, or remit the sins, on the part of Him who said, "Peace be unto you"; but it is none the less true that the speciality of the mission found in this Gospel is a mission to the nations from Jesus, speaking as the rejected Messiah, who has now all power, leaving aside Jerusalem, and mentioning the continuation of this age; promising to be with the witnesses to the end of this age, and saying nothing, either of the church, or of heaven, or of the Holy Spirit given, or of the deliverance from this present evil age, or of the privilege of not being of this world as the Son of God was not of it; but speaking of subjecting the Gentiles to the ordinances of Christ, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to bring the age to its close, according to the promise of Him who should be with them till then.*

{*One may examine Psalm 95 (and also Psalms 91 to 100), which treats of these times, as well as Daniel 11: 33 and 12: 3, 9; Isaiah 65: 13, etc., where, however, the testimony is rather practical than in word. Here is the connection of this subject in Isaiah, which may interest those who search the word; and it is only for such that I give it.

God desires to comfort His people (Isaiah 40); and in the midst of present deliverances (pledges of better ones to come), the servant, Christ, is introduced, chap. 42. Israel should have been so, but was blind; nevertheless he should be delivered, being forgiven. Cyrus and Babylon pass then before our eyes, to the end of chapter 48, the pledge of better deliverances, as we have said. God announces, notwithstanding, that He distinguishes the wicked: there is no peace for them.

Chapter 49, the Gentiles are summoned by Israel as called of God to be a servant, in whom God should be glorified. Thereupon the Messiah says, "I have then laboured in vain"; nevertheless His judgment and work were with God. The Spirit answers that it was a small thing to raise up Israel, that He should be a light to the Gentiles. From that time it is Christ, the true vine, who holds the promises as a faithful servant. Chapter 50 explains the dismissal of Israel for the rejection of Christ, Jehovah God who had made Himself a servant; and thereupon is brought out the distinction of the remnant who fear Jehovah and obey the voice of His servant, not here the church in the joy of the Son, though that has been true of a certain number from among the remnant In these passages the church finds itself only as hidden in the person of Christ Himself; which will be seen in comparing Isaiah 50: 8, 9, and Romans 8: 33, 34, where the apostle applies to the church the substance of those verses which speak of Christ in Isaiah. I will observe, by the way, that the Lausanne translation, in general very faithful to the letter, has spoilt these verses in the form it has given to them. Here, I believe, is the true contrast. God justifies; who shall condemn? Christ is dead, etc.: who shall separate us from the love of Christ? The Old Testament does not take up the union of Christ and the church: here it is the remnant that obey the voice of the servant of God, of Christ, come as Messiah here below. Nevertheless the obedient walk in darkness. Consolation is given them, a consolation properly Jewish, by calls (chap. 51: 1-4, 7), in which there is progress in their position (v. 9). They themselves call, by the Spirit of prophecy, the arm of Jehovah to awake. He answers at last (v. 17), summons Jerusalem to awake in her turn, and (chap. 52) to clothe herself with glory and honour. This passage, ending at verse 12, is all beautiful. Chapters 52: 13, and 53 give the expiatory character of the work of the "servant," recognised by the Jews in the latter days. Then come the details of blessings (chaps. 54, 55, 56, 57), and of the ways of God, and of what hinders, namely, the deep iniquity of the people in the latter days.

From chapter 58, testimony is strongly borne to this iniquity, which finally forces Jehovah to arise (chap. 59: 15, 16, etc.), and the Deliverer comes to Sion according to Romans 11: 26. Then in chapter 60, Jerusalem is glorified, and the same subject (introducing, in order to identify His person in the two advents, what Christ was at His first, chapter 61: 1, and the first half of verse 2), and the judgment of the Gentiles, are treated to the end of chapter 63: 6. Then, upon the touching call of the prophet, there is a detailed explanation of all their ways, how grace had seized the occasion, given by the folly of Israel, to be found of those who sought it not, whilst He had ever stretched out His hands towards rebellious Israel (quoted by the apostle, Romans 10: 20, 21), which explains these same points. And here, finally, we find a special remnant (all those who are spared; see Isaiah 66: 19, 20), treated as the "servants" to whom the blessing of all the nation would be a particular subject of joy. Such is what has led us to this summary of the latter part of this prophetic book: the special remnant owned of God, but having all its affections in the well-being of Jerusalem and of Israel. One may, for the last testimony to the Gentiles, compare Psalm 97 and Revelation 14: 6, 7.

The key of this summary of Isaiah 40-48 is Israel the servant: - nevertheless, no peace for the wicked. Christ, the true servant, is rejected. The remnant, true servants, are owned in that; they obey the voice of the "servant," but in prospect of Jewish interests. Translate chapter 49: 3, "Thou art my servant, O Israel, he in whom I will be glorified."}

76 That this might have an application to the unreported labours of the apostles, I doubt not; but the Bible furnishes us with no tokens on that head, at least if it be not, in the most indeterminate manner, in the last verse of the Gospel of Mark. That which the detailed history of the Acts presents us with is the fulfilment of the mission given in Luke, the rejection of the messengers at Jerusalem, where they nevertheless remained; then the labours of Peter in the midst of the Jews, and a new apostle raised up of God, to carry the word to the Gentiles by a new revelation of Jesus, so new indeed that he says, if he had known Jesus as the others had known Him, he knew Him no more after that manner. The salvation preached remained ever the same, without doubt, but with new light which God accorded.

What is the conclusion which one should draw from all this? It is, that there will be an accomplishment of this mission before the end of the age, and that the message of the gospel, here entrusted to the remnant, to the disciples, will be carried from Christ, of whom it remains always true (whatever be the state of things) that all power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth. From Christ, I say, acting in this character, the message of this same gospel will be carried to all the nations, and Christ will be with the messengers even to the end of the age.

77 The testimony to Jerusalem will be different, it seems to me; we have already said some words on it in chapter 24. I do not speak of the conversion of such or such a Jew to make part of the church, which is another thing far more precious; it is the duty of each day to teach them, according to what is given us, as it is also to preach the gospel to every creature. But as there will be a testimony at the beginning of the sorrows (as there was one in the Jewish nation at the beginning of the gospel), a testimony which will be particularly addressed to the Jewish people; so there will be a special testimony borne to the Gentiles at the end, according to the principles of the mission here entrusted to the disciples. For the promise of the presence and succour of the Lord is not only bound up with the idea of the age, but it extends to its end, and we must always remember that here, as in chapters 13 and 24, "the age" in no way applies to Christianity as an epoch. Though Christianity might happen, and did happen, before the end of the age, the age already existed at that moment, and was in a great measure run out; it was a period of the world's history in the Jewish point of view, which the presence of the Messiah was to terminate.

78 Perhaps, employed in all the force of the term according to the circumstances in which the Lord spoke, this expression supposes Jerusalem existing but rejected, and, though rejected, the object of the thoughts of God, but of His thoughts in judgment, God going to put an end to all that, and after great tribulations, to restore the city in blessing by the coming of the Messiah in glory. The gospel, sent to the Gentiles, might run independently of all that, for Jesus entrusts it to the disciples outside Jerusalem, and as having abandoned it. Nevertheless, till it was judged and restored by the coming of the Messiah, and after the repentance of its inhabitants, the age could not end; so that when we have well considered the passages, we have here a gospel or mission of the disciples, independent of Jerusalem, from Messiah rejected here below, but having received all power in heaven and on earth; a gospel addressed to the Gentiles, Jerusalem being abandoned, to make of these nations disciples of Christ in the name, not of Jehovah, but of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; a mission, nevertheless, which (though independent of Jerusalem and coming from Christ, who had quitted it until it repent) is identified with the course of an age here below, which supposes, before its end, Jerusalem the object of God's thoughts and judgments (that is, Jerusalem under the Jewish point of view), and the centre of all His thoughts, in judgment or in blessing, whilst this same gospel is propagated among the nations. For before the end of the age (supposed here by the Lord to be still in existence) Jerusalem will be all that anew (as it was so at the time the Lord was speaking), and yet more. It is a gospel, then, which may subsist among the nations at the same time that Jerusalem is the object of God's thoughts, and anew the centre of all His ways.

79 One may suppose that the preaching of this gospel begins before that is manifested. Nevertheless these were the circumstances in which the Lord already was speaking. Jerusalem standing, abandoned,* the object of the thoughts and judgments of God, and afterwards of His blessing; and Christ awaiting the time of this end of the age, sending the gospel to the nations by His disciples, independently of Jerusalem, but by the side of its existence in this state, and transporting Himself, as to the term of the testimony, to the epoch which should terminate this state of things in Jerusalem, by the manifestation of the judgment of God and the blessing which should thence ensue and flow out. We have already seen (chap. 25) the Gentiles judged on earth, according to the manner in which they shall have treated the messengers which Christ calls His brethren, as Jesus here calls His disciples, and we have seen the preliminary and final circumstances in Palestine and at Jerusalem (chap. 24), accompanied by a declaration (by the side of all that) that this gospel of the kingdom should be preached in all the world, as a testimony to all the Gentiles, and that then the end will come - the end of the age which is in question here. I invite my brethren to think of this testimony, which is to be borne in the latter days; it would be to explain prophecy rather than the gospel to pursue this subject farther here. I desired to point it out, as this Gospel does so.

{*Perhaps there may be trouble to reconcile these two ideas,"abandoned," and yet "the object of the thoughts and judgments of God"; but it is precisely the position of Jerusalem in the latter days, when His work recommences with the earth. It will be desolate and abandoned until it says, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Jehovah!" But God acts with it in testimony, in chastisement, in indignation. Such was already the case in the time of the apostles. In chapter 23 of this Gospel, it was abandoned. Nevertheless the testimony and indignation are there. See upon that, in Zechariah, specially the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12, and all his prophecy; the end of Daniel 9; 11 and 12 also, and Isaiah 65, 66; see also Jeremiah 30: 4, 8, etc. In these chapters, and in so many others, Jerusalem is not owned, but it is the object of God's thoughts and ways; according to the expressions as to Ephraim Jeremiah 31: 20, and as to Jerusalem itself, Isaiah 49: 14, etc. The fact is that Jerusalem is chosen as the Jewish people. Psalm 132: 13, 14.

We have a principle which is bound up with this, and which is very precious in its analogy for us. God, at the time of the Babylonish captivity, had written, Lo-Ammi, not my people. Notwithstanding that, in Haggai 2: 5 we find that the Spirit remained with them, as when they came out of Egypt. What encouragement for us, whatever may be the state of the church! If they had said, No, we are not in this state of Lo-Ammi, it would have been unbelief; if they had been discouraged, as if the Spirit was not with them, as at the departure from Egypt, it would have been practical unbelief also under another form. In the two cases, faith in the goodness and in the chastisement of God would have been lost.}

80 Here is the result of my researches at this time upon this Gospel; a result very imperfect, I feel, and researches which have made me feel how far we are still ignorant of all the ways of God; but which may aid my brethren to make others, perhaps, more happy and better followed up; and, if they are led to make them and are as happy as I in thus sounding the ways of God, I shall not have lost my trouble in communicating to them these, such as they are.

In the main, I do not doubt that the great principles, the thread of the ways of God (in this part of His ways) are found in these pages, and that, as a whole, it was given by Him. It is very possible that in some details my own mind has wrought, and that thus I may have overstepped the measure of what was given me; in this case there will certainly be error, or at least obscurity, even when all I have said is understood. On the other hand, those who have not yet taken the trouble to sound the scriptures ought not to be astonished if they find some things still difficult and obscure for them in these pages. They ought not to be discouraged, like a child who should plunge into the middle of a book which he ought to begin, and which he might judge too difficult; but they should set about the work, beginning with the beginning. They will find, let them be assured, many proofs of their ignorance, and very humiliating proofs; but they will also find the Lord with them, and a joy and a satisfaction of which they have not even the idea, not in the things only, but in the fact of being taught of Him; a joy and satisfaction which sanctify and attach to Him who deigns thus to be busied about our instruction, to endure with patience our ignorance, and to instruct us Himself in the truth. And how sweet is this converse with Him, in which He gently leads us on in the knowledge of His ways and unveils for us in His word all the goodness and wisdom of His counsels! Is it not evident that such converse, pursued in such a spirit, must sanctify the soul?

81 Let us remember that all this belongs to children, to those who, by the power of the good news of the pure grace of God, are grounded in the work which this grace has accomplished and rejoice in the confidence which His love inspires; the communications of His ways being for them daily proofs of this love, which nourish and maintain this confidence, and make them to know better Him, who is its object and source. May His Spirit and His grace direct all those who read these pages in the enjoyment of the everlasting salvation which He has accomplished for us!

On the Gospel of Matthew

J. N. Darby.

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Most readers already know, I suppose, that the Lord Jesus is presented to us in each of the four Gospels in a different point of view. It is only with one of the Gospels that I am going, with God's help, to occupy them at present; and if I here point out the character of each of the four, it is to put more in relief that of the Gospel taken up. First of all, the Gospels are divided into two classes: on one side, the Gospel of John; and, on the other, the first three called synoptic. This division is just. Every one in reading feels how different John is from the three others. I proceed to point out more precisely the difference.

In the first three Gospels Christ is present to men, more particularly to the Jews, for the purpose of being received, and each of them closes with the account of His rejection. It is not so with John. From the first chapter we find the Lord rejected. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not, He came to His own, and His own people received Him not. And in the following verses we see that it is grace which causes Him to be received by any. He is received by those who are born (not of the flesh, but) of God. In the entire Gospel the Jews are treated as reprobate, and the sovereign grace of the Father who draws and election are put forward. The sheep hear His voice. The Jews do not hear Him because they are not of His sheep. Moreover He is come from the Father, and come into the world. There is also no genealogy which goes up to the stock of promise in Abraham and David, no human genealogy which goes up to Adam (son) of God. It is God, the Word, who was with God and who was God; in whom was life, and the life the light of men, light shining in darkness which the darkness comprehended not; then the Word made flesh, God manifested here below. And all agrees with that: no agony in Gethsemane, nor cry on the cross. When the moment arrived, He delivers up His spirit, the hour being come to pass from this world to the Father. It is what He is that is presented to us in this Gospel; and, whether Jew or Gentile, we must be born anew. At the end the coming of the Holy Spirit, testimony before the world, is to replace Him among His own, for the world also is judged. John passes at the close to some ulterior manifestations of His glory on the earth in a manner designedly mysterious, and without any ascension scene. It is Himself, Son of man, but God manifested here below.

83 The first three Gospels, we have said, relate the manner in which Christ was presented to men to be received, and His rejection, then His resurrection; Mark and Luke add His ascension. In Luke, after the most delicious picture of the little remnant faithful in the midst of the corruption of Israel, we find the Son of man and grace toward men by Him. The genealogy goes up to Adam; and He, the second Man, the last Adam, ascends to heaven from Bethany, blessing His own. The commission given to the apostles comes from heaven and embraces all, Jews and Gentiles.

In Mark we find the servant and prophet. This Gospel begins with His ministry, preceded by that of John the Baptist. We find at the end His meeting with the disciples in Galilee after His resurrection as in Matthew; but besides an appendix from verse 9, in which what is found in Luke and even in John is briefly stated, that is to say, the heavenly side of these last events, and a commission given to the disciples more general and more universal. It carries salvation or condemnation to all the creation under heaven.

I have reserved Matthew for the last of the Gospels because I must occupy myself with it in more detail. It presents to us Emmanuel, the Messiah, object of the promises and the prophecies, Jehovah in the midst of Israel, Saviour of His people but rejected as in Isaiah 49 and 50,* and His presence on earth replaced by the kingdom in mystery (chap. 13), by the church (chap. 16), the kingdom in glory (chap. 17); but, whilst insinuating the substitution of the church and of the kingdom, the principal subject is always the Lord in His relation with His earthly people, His meeting with His disciples after His resurrection in Galilee. They are sent to the Gentiles, and there is no ascension.

{*The second part of the prophecy of Isaiah, that is, chapters 40-47, speaks of the sin of the people with respect to the controversy of Jehovah with idols; chapters 49-58, the rejection of the Messiah; from chapter 59 the restoration of the people is the matter handled.}

Consequently we begin quite naturally with the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. Jesus is viewed as the Heir of the promises, as the Son of David. We find ourselves in the atmosphere of the thoughts and the hopes of Israel, but of Israel's thoughts and hopes according to God. The genealogy is traced in the line of Joseph, from whom He inherited royalty according to the law. But His birth really of Mary presents facts evidently still more important, being close to His person as far as manifested on the earth. Save to draw the attention of the reader to them, these facts, all-important though they be, are so well known and so simply related that I have hardly need to enlarge on them. His human nature (conceived in the womb of the Virgin, without spot or stain, by the power of the Holy Spirit) is a thing perfectly holy; also it is, according to the flesh, born of God whilst being the Seed of the woman, true man in this world. And not this only. He was to be named Jesus (Joshua, or Jehoshea), Jehovah the Saviour, for He should save His people from their sins. As He was Jehovah, the people was His people.

84 Thus we have a man without sin and Jehovah manifested in flesh: a fact which is a proof of infinite grace, to which nothing is like, which abides alone in the annals of man as in the counsels of God. It is true that redemption was necessary, namely His death, in order that this fact should be available for men, and that the counsels of God should be accomplished. But all depended on the fact that God became man, that the Word was made flesh.

Never elsewhere had there been a man having perfectly knowledge of good and evil without sin, never divine perfection - God Himself - manifested in flesh, which will remain eternally true, and without which redemption itself could not have been accomplished. We shall find in all His life the perfect obedience of man, the perfect manifestation of God. Also He is owned of the prophecy in Isaiah 7, Emmanuel, God with us! and Joseph gives Him the name which was assigned Him by the angel, the name of Jesus. Thus according to the testimony of God He has taken His place in the midst of His people.

But the nations were to hope in the Branch out of the root of Jesse (Isa. 11: 1-10), and Magi from the East arrive to do homage to Him who is born King of the Jews. Already, from that tender age, must He know what it is to be rejected. The false king of Israel seeks to have Him put to death; and Joseph, directed peculiarly by God, takes Him to Egypt, whence He was to come up again, the true vine, to begin afresh the history of Israel as the green tree, the living vine; as when risen He would recommence the history of man, the last Adam. He returns, called out of Egypt, Son of God, but has to take His place where one truly an Israelite in whom was no guile could not believe anything good was to be found. He dwells at Nazareth. All this is most significant, but is only preliminary as a preface which indicates the subject-matter treated in the book of His life which follows.

85 In chapter 3 we begin His history with the preparatory testimony of John the Baptist, who goes before the face of Jehovah. Such is the clear and precise declaration of Malachi 3: 1, or, if we take the quotation of Matthew himself, it is the voice of him who prepares the way of Jehovah. Such is Christ. Jehovah in the midst of men and in particular of the Jews, such, in a striking way, is the Christ of Matthew; but the Son of God also has taken the form of a servant as we are going to see.

The testimony of John did not accept the fact that one was son of Abraham as to the flesh. God could raise up sons to Abraham by His mighty power. The judgment or the kingdom was in view. Repentance must be in order to bear good fruit; and for sinful man the very first of those fruits was repentance. His baptism, in a word, was the beginning of repentance at the approach of the kingdom and as a preparation for entering in. The people not repenting could not enter in as a lump. But if he, John, baptized for repentance, One was there who was about to execute judgment by purifying His floor, but He baptized with the Holy Ghost. These three characteristics belonged to this testimony: - particular and separative judgment (v. 10), already the axe was at the root of the trees; He who baptized with the Holy Ghost was there; He would purge His floor by a definitive judgment which would gather the good grain and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.

Jesus presents Himself for baptism. It is His floor which is going to be purged; the granary is His; it is He who burns the chaff in the judgment. But He comes to place Himself in the midst of His people. Nothing more striking than this juxtaposition; nothing more positive than the declaration that He is Jehovah; nothing clearer than the fact that He places Himself in the midst of His people in the path where grace conducts them. Assuredly He does not join Himself with the rebellious and intractable people, but from the first step taken by those who by grace listen to the word of the testimony of God, from the first step in the good way, He is found with them in His infinite grace. The heart answers at once to the testimony of John that He who came had no need of repentance: we know it. Quite the contrary, He was fulfilling righteousness. But for His own it was just the thing according to God. The life of God, which put forth its first breath in the atmosphere of God but in the midst of men, took its first step in the divine way - the way toward the kingdom which was going to appear. He would not leave them there alone. He takes His place with them. Infinite grace, sweet thought, full of His love for the heart of His own!

86 Remark also how He abases Himself here to the level of His messenger: "thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." You have your part, I mine, in accomplishing the will of God. There He is already a servant! He is baptized, and His place taken in the midst of His own, in the midst of the faithful remnant that walked under the effect of the power of God's word. And now where is He, the Servant, He who humbled Himself, who has His place with His poor people, the poorest of His flock? Heaven is open, the Holy Spirit descends on Him, the Father owns Him as His Son. He is the model of the position He has taken for us by redemption. Never had heaven so opened before; never had there been on earth an object which He could own as making His good pleasure. Now there was. For us too the veil is rent, and heaven is open. We have been anointed and sealed of the Holy Spirit as Jesus was; the Father has owned us to be His beloved sons already in this world. Jesus was such in His own proper and full right, worthy of being so in Himself; we are introduced by grace and redemption. But entered into the midst of His people He shews what is the position which in Him belongs to them; as I have just said, He is its model. What happiness! what grace! But, carefully remark, His divine person remains always such, a difference besides which is never lost, whatever be His abasement and His grace toward us. When heaven is open for Jesus, He has no object above to which He looks to fix His attention. He is Himself the object that heaven contemplates. When heaven is open for Stephen, as for us by faith, Jesus the Son of man is the object in heaven which is open for His servant. In grace the Lord takes a place with us; He never loses His own either for the Father or for the heart of the believer. The nearer we are to Him, the more we adore Him.

87 Remark here also another thing altogether notable. It is in and by the voluntary humiliation of Jesus that all the Trinity is for the first time fully revealed. The Son is there, the object specially conspicuous as man; the Holy Spirit comes and abides on Him; and the voice of the Father owns Him: marvellous revelation associated with the position that the Son had taken! The Son is recognised as Jehovah in Psalm 2. The Holy Spirit is found everywhere in the Old Testament. But the full revelation of the three persons in the oneness of God - the basis of Christianity - is reserved for the moment when the Son of God takes His place in the midst of the poor of His flock, His true place in the race in which He had His delights, the sons of men. What grace is that of Christianity! what a place is that where our hearts are found. If taught of God we have learned to know this grace and Him in whom it is come to us! Here then is our position according to this grace in Christ Jesus, before God our Father, accepted in the Beloved.

Nevertheless, if such is our relation with God, we are in conflict here below with the enemy of our souls. Well, here too Jesus must go into it for us. This follows immediately. Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. If He takes or rather makes our place with God, He must take it in face of the enemy to bind the strong man that held us captive. I know not, dear brother, if this grace strikes you as is strikes me: but it seems to me to go beyond all the bearing of our thoughts, as much as the effort to reproduce it in human words for drawing the attention of souls to it only betrays the weakness which speaks of it. However let us pursue our essay, since it can be studied in the word itself, once the attention is thus drawn to it.

Jesus takes our place in conflict: solemn moment where all depended on His victory! It was not possible doubtless that He should not bear off the victory; but if the second Man had fallen like the first, all was ended and lost. Yes, that could not be; but He must conquer for us and conquer as man. It is exactly out of this position that the enemy wished to withdraw Him, out of the position of a servant, of man as such. "If thou art the Son of God" (and the Father had just owned Him thus) - if thou art Son of God, speak that these stones may become loaves. Act as Son. There is no harm in eating when one is hungry. You have only to say this word and have the wherewithal to satisfy your wishes. That is, do your will; leave the position of servant you have taken. Not for a moment! He, being in the form of God, had taken the form of a servant; and He abides servant of His God.

88 And, in these days of slighting the word, it is good for the heart to remark how He answers. A single text of the word, of the scripture, suffices for the fidelity and the almightiness of the Lord, for the wisdom of the Son of God; a single text suffices to reduce to silence the devil who wished to lead Him astray. The Son of God remains in His position of man, the servant; and the word of God directs, is the opening of, His ways. "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." What a beautiful and perfect example! Not a movement of His heart toward any other thing than the authority of His God, of whom He had made Himself servant. The word of God issues from the mouth of God - the words issued from His mouth, blessed be His name, direct to man. Christ maintains Himself in the place of man. Man shall not live by bread alone. The word is the source of His conduct; He lives by it. It is His directory doubtless; but it is also what puts His will in movement: without it He does nothing. He is come to do the will of God. The words which proceed out of His mouth declare this will and put in movement the soul of man the servant. Such is the obedience of Christ. The devil can do nothing there; he is silent.

Remember here, though they be only accessory circumstances, that this conflict did not occur in the garden of Eden, not in the midst of enjoyments which testified the goodness of God. Christ had already passed forty days, a solemn period of exercise and endurance, as we know by Moses and Elijah, and in an analogous manner by the forty years of Israel in the wilderness. He had been withdrawn from the ordinary state of humanity, not to prepare Him for the presence of God, as Moses and Elijah had been. He was in the wilderness, far from the pleasant things which, by the goodness of God, remain to man in this fallen world, for a struggle (not that we know that this was with special temptations, but for a struggle), with the enemy. His position was such as that of the world in its moral reality as God sees it, a desert where Satan rules (Mark 1: 13). Put to the proof thus by love for us and, while accomplishing the counsels of God, submitting fully in the ways of God (for He was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness) to the sufferings which come by the power of Satan into this world, He enters into the special conflict that He had to carry on with Satan, where we have to follow Him, but fighting against an enemy already beaten. He is not weary of His service of fidelity, He remains man the servant in obedience, He owns the absolute authority of the word, resting thereon as the basis of all His conduct. It is simplicity which is absolute perfection. Satan is vanquished. I repeat, a single text of the word - whatever be the foolish pretensions of man - suffices for the Lord, suffices for Satan. May this word suffice for us! Only may God give us grace to make use of it under the guidance of the Spirit of God whose sword it is, in order that it may be effectual in our hands.

89 But to dare obey God in this world there must be confidence in God. This is the second trial the Lord undergoes for us. "If thou art Son of God, cast thyself down." Try if God will be faithful to His promise (Ps. 91). This too was just out of the path of obedience. In this path He could always count upon God; but to put God to the proof to see if He would be faithful is not to confide in Him as assuredly such. This is what is meant by the expression "tempting God," and not, to go too far in confiding in Him (Exod. 17: 7). The confidence is perfect like the obedience. He waits on Jehovah. Sure that He will be faithful, that He is so always, He has but to follow the path of obedience and to depend on Him. His word will direct His steps and His thoughts, and will be accomplished in His promises. Such are the two elements of the life of the new man, of the life of Christ in us - obedience, and dependence. Christ was perfect in both, in an obedience which had the word, the will, of God, as the source of His activity, not simply as its rule. When Satan presents the word falsely as a snare, the word suffices as a perfect answer to conduct the steps and the thoughts of man.

Remark further in these instructive answers of the Lord that, when it is a question of the wiles of the devil, the wisdom of the Lord confines itself to a striking simplicity, and in this that there is no need to think save of one's own duty. This is enough, and Satan can do no more. Man must live not by bread only, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. There is all; but it is all. His conduct is perfectly traced. It is submission, the path marked by the words of God. He does not enter into controversy with the enemy. He is found in this later with men. Here it is the perfect path of obedient man, His walk with Him. The word of God traces for Himself this path; and the end is completely attained. Satan is vanquished.

90 Afterwards Satan shews himself; it is no more a question of his wiles. He offers the world and its glory to the Lord if He will pay him homage. For the obedient man that owned God it was to betray himself, and for such a man Satan manifested has no power. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. The world is the bait that Satan can offer that one should follow him. The man who wishes nothing but his God is sheltered from every real danger here. Nevertheless it is still by the word that the Lord answers. It is the Spirit's sword for man, the sword of God, but made for man who by the Spirit makes use of it; and if he seeks only to obey, it is enough for the certain defeat of the enemy of souls. The devil quits the Saviour; and if man must fight and conquer by an obedience so simple, angels of God Himself are there to render Him service. Without being able here to bring out the instruction found in these details, I desire particularly to draw the attention of readers to the way the Lord made and took our place on both sides, so to speak: on God's side, Son, anointed of the Holy Spirit, before the Father, with heaven opened; then in conflict with Satan when in fact He bound for us the strong man.

The Lord, man here below, had been owned by the Father as His beloved Son, heaven being open on Him, and Himself anointed by the Holy Spirit. He had thus presented in Himself the place which according to God's counsels those should hold whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. He had for them entered on the conflict that the strong man wages with them and, having conquered him for them, had shewn them how, by His grace, they could conquer in their turn. He must exercise His ministry in the midst of the people, and, whilst announcing the gospel of the kingdom, spoil the goods of the strong man that He had bound.

But from the beginning the disposition of man manifests itself. John the Baptist is put in prison. Jesus, from Judea where He had wrought, goes away to Galilee amongst the poor and despised of the people. He abides at Capernaum, a place even called His city. It is there according to prophecy (and Matthew always gives us Him who is the subject of prophecy) that the light must shine: neither at Jerusalem in the midst of the proud chiefs of the Jews, nor where He was at home does He begin His work. The poor of the flock, the testimony of God, the Spirit of the Lord perfect in spiritual wisdom unite to direct His steps towards the place willed of God. I do not say that prophecy directed His steps; but His acts accomplished prophecy.

91 What Jesus announced was what John had published. It was a call to repentance because the kingdom of the heavens had drawn nigh. The throne of God had been established on the earth at Jerusalem; the Eternal had forsaken it at the time of the Babylonish captivity, and the seat of the supreme power was transported there, and this power confided to the Gentiles. But the heavens were to reign and God to establish from above His beneficent power over the earth. Up to this day He has not taken His great power and acted as king; but the king is seated in heaven on the throne of the Father, and the kingdom exists in mystery.

It is important to remark here that it is not a question only of the salvation of such or such an individual (while the things may be bound together, and in fact are so, as John 3 proves), but of the establishment of a system of authority by which the heavens impress their character in blessing on the earth. The rejection of Christ has introduced better things, and relations more intimate and more entirely heavenly; but the kingdom will be established with a still fuller development when the Lord returns. This however is not the place to pursue this theme: let us follow our Gospel.

The Lord becomes the centre of a people which are attached entirely to Him: an important principle, a right belonging to Him alone. He preaches repentance to all. One must return to God in self-judgment, for Israel was far from Him, and the crisis of their history arrived. But, besides, the powerful attraction of the Lord's call attached souls to Him by making them leave all and break every other tie. Emmanuel was there; and those He called were His. The call was to be the fishers of men.

After this the ministry of Jesus is summarily recounted in chapter 4, verses 23-25, indeed in the single verse 23. The more these verses 17-23 are examined, the more one sees that they contain, and designedly, a compendium of all the Lord's ministry. Verses 24, 25, tell us the effect of this ministry in Palestine and all the neighbouring countries. Besides it makes a ministry accompanied by a power suited to draw their attention. He gathered disciples round Him. The gospel of the kingdom was announced; and the character of the miracles was as important as the power which accomplished them: it was the power of God manifested in goodness on the earth. Great crowds followed Him. It was of importance that His disciples and even the multitude should understand what was the true character of the kingdom about to be introduced and of those about to have part in it. John's ministry however had detached a remnant from the impenitent mass of the people.

92 The Lord then, seeing that His teaching had attracted the crowd, gathers His disciples and proclaims the great essential principles which were to serve as moral foundations for His kingdom, and to characterise those who were to have part in it. The first sixteen verses of chapter 5 contain the enunciation of these principles, as well as the character and position of the true sons of the kingdom. What follows to the end of chapter 7 consists of warning against the wanderings of the heart of man, and puts the ancient sayings and precepts which had currency among the Jews in contrast with the morality required by the kingdom of the heavens. It was a question of having the heart pure and clear from hatred, and the spirit submissive in such a way that impatience should not rise up, and that its evil should not come to light in the heart itself; it was a question of the patience and the gentleness which is more bent on keeping the heavenly character than one's own goods - of the goodness ready to give and resembling the character of God Himself their Father who loves without being loved.

Next, in chapter 6, the Lord would have the motives pure, and prayer in reference to the true relations at that time of His own with God and to the desires flowing from them. He would have the aim of the heart heavenly, and that it should have confidence in God for this low world; then again (chap. 7) that one should not judge when it was a question of motives, but that one should not misunderstand when the insolent contempt of God and of morality manifested itself; that dependence and confidence should be diligently expressed in presenting our requests to God, which He would hear as our loving Father: lastly, that practical obedience should lay a solid basis for the hope of the future.

93 It is evident then that the subject spoken of is not redemption, nor the sinner, but the character which suits the kingdom and necessary to enter it. The state wished for precedes entrance into the kingdom. Their righteousness must surpass Pharisaism, for God was looking at the heart. Israel was in the way with Jehovah and must make friends with Him. The kingdom of the heavens was going to be established: there was what one must have for entering in. One had to do with God. As to the disciples, opposition is supposed to their testimony, and conflicts; which gives occasion to the revelation of the heavenly part of the kingdom; chapter 5, verses 11, 12.

Thus the positive part of our Lord's teaching embraces the promises (as v. 5) for the earth, and for the heavens the verses already referred to. Others apply generally to the spirit desired by God, which, at bottom, is the character of Christ Himself. The disciples were set as the salt of the earth (of that which was in relation with God) in contrast with every corruption, and as the light of the world, the testimony of God to those who lay in the dark outside. Their testimony ought to be clear enough for men to know to what they should attribute the fruits manifested in them. The place of the disciples was thus sketched clearly, the remnant called by grace.

The sermon on the Mount is in no way a spiritualising of the law. There are but two commandments one could say that allusion is made to; and even this is not true, for the Lord gives a teaching which does not agree with that which was current among the ancients, if He does not even contradict it; and never would He have spoken thus of the law of God. He says that every word of the law and of the prophets shall come to pass; He Himself came not to make void, but to fulfil. Moreover to "fulfil" has not at all the sense of obeying, but just simply what is said of giving the fulness. Disobedience of the law when it was in force was not the means of entering into the kingdom. The Lord, like the gospel, confirms fully the law as come from God. When it subsisted, to be obedient to it was the path of God; but here, while saying so, the Lord puts His teaching in contrast with the discourses of the times of the law. The narrow gate and the strait way characterised the walk of the disciples: their fruits would shew the true nature of those who sought to make them go out of it.

The sermon is not the rich grace preached to sinners any more than redemption, but the path traced for the faithful who would have part in the kingdom which was going to be established. It will be remarked that the name of Father is very distinctly employed in this discourse of the Saviour. As it is said in John 17, "I have declared unto them thy name"; the Son being there, the name of the Father was revealed. Such is the measure of conduct ordained for the disciples with respect to others - "perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." From this name flow the principles of their walk in this world. It is true that they were here, and He in heaven; and they addressed Him accordingly; but the Father was revealed. It is for the coming of the Father's kingdom that they were to pray.

94 Having presented the great principles of the kingdom of the heavens, the Lord comes down from the mountain, and then begins the presentation to Israel of Jehovah come in grace in the midst of the people, Emmanuel, God with them, and of all the features of goodness, compassion, love, revealed in His ways towards them up to His rejection: a picture of every beauty and of the most profound interest! These features we will endeavour as much as we can to reproduce, while feeling how much the pen, alas! the heart also even though involuntarily, fails in it. But before entering this divine garden to enjoy the flowers and the fruits that grow there, it will be well to say a word on the kingdom and on the sermon, which we have just summed up briefly in reference to the kingdom.

This kingdom, as a whole, is in view in its heavenly part and its earthly part in verses 5 and 12; and that which they were to pray for, we have seen, is the kingdom of the Father. But the disciples are all in the midst of difficulties and of persecutions, the salt in the midst of corruption, the light in a world of darkness. The law and the prophets were to be accomplished; but another thing is now introduced. Such was to be the kingdom of the heavens. The King was there in an adverse world, and in the midst of a people which was going to reject Him. But the kingdom of the heavens could not take place. For this the King was to go up to heaven; for the kingdom of the heavens is the kingdom of God, while the King and the government are in heaven.

In what precedes we have a sketch of the Lord's ministry and of the principles of His kingdom. It is a complete whole. In what follows we see Him as He is presented personally to the people with the result of this presentation. He is rejected by Israel, and Israel is replaced for the moment by the church and the kingdom, though owned anew in grace when the kingdom shall be restored. For the moment it is the personal presentation of the Lord to the people with the consequences of this presentation. As He descended from the mountain with the crowd,* a leper came to meet Him. Now Jehovah alone healed leprosy. The man had learned that Jesus possessed the necessary power, but was not assured of His goodwill. If Thou wilt, said he, Thou canst cure it. But love and power were found there: Jehovah was there in grace to heal. I will, said Jesus, be thou clean. To whom did it pertain to say thus, I will, be thou? To One only: and the thing was done. But He who said so was also there to draw near the man, as Himself man. He lays His hand on the man, He touches the leper. Beautiful picture of that which was really there! God capable of doing everything, love and goodwill to do it, but man in the midst of a contaminated race which He has touched in His grace without being driven back by the evil, without being contaminated by the defilement though He touched it to heal it; and the man was healed, for Jehovah was there, man in the midst of His people.

{*[In fact, however, we know from comparing the Gospel of Mark that this leper was cleansed before the Lord went up the mountain. - Ed.]}

95 Such was the great fact by which this part of the Gospel begins. It is the essential fact of everything - Emmanuel. Another element accompanies it. He owns the authority of the system in the midst of which He found Himself. The healed leper must go and shew himself to the priest; who, while pronouncing him clean and accepting his sacrifice, was owning in fact the divine power of Him who had thus healed the leper. The Man who is truly of humanity though without defilement, and whom the evil He came into contact with could not defile, was Emmanuel, Jehovah who healed, but entering by the door and subject to all that Jehovah had ordained in Israel.

The second fact is a fact parallel to this one. A man from among the Gentiles, with a faith which was not cramped by the proud egotism which confined all of it to the promises made to the people and to the privileges which belonged to them, but saw the divine power (if it was there) more in its own vastness, beseeches Jesus to heal his servant. The faith which places a man in the presence of God, which realises His presence, is always humble. The Gentile does not deem himself worthy that Jesus should come under his roof. He has only to say a word: everything would obey Him, as his soldiers himself. Jesus owns his faith; and the word is said: his servant is healed. But see another great truth which comes out here: the faith of the Gentile is owned, and the children of the kingdom according to the flesh shall be cast out. Where God is found, He cannot limit Himself to a particular people, whilst coming into the midst of them according to His promise; and, what is more, He cannot deny Himself nor change His character. If those who were of His people answered not to His character, they could not be with Him; and now He was revealing Himself and was the necessary centre of all that which could be owned.

96 Afterwards He is present in that power of goodness which puts aside all the effects of sin and of Satan's dominion in this world. At one word from Jesus diseases cease, and demons flee away, and those possessed are delivered. It is not only power, but goodness. It is God who is there, but at the same time the Man who has a perfect sympathy with men carries their miseries on His heart and burdens Himself with the sorrows of their infirmities. He heals while feeling them; as we hear Him groan deeply at the tomb of Lazarus, though He raises Himself from among the dead.

But it is none the less true that He is the despised and rejected of men: the Son of man has not where to lay His head - has not the privileges of the foxes and of the birds in this world. He is not of this world; and to follow Him is to break entirely with everything which is of it. God come into this world is come because the world is without Him, and ought to have absolute right to the heart; and this to separate it from the world and from the flesh which has arranged itself without Him, and to attach the heart wholly to Him who was come to seek it. And the most powerful motives for the human heart were null before the rights of God come in grace because man was lost. It is not that God does not own the relations that He Himself has formed; but that when they make good their rights against Him who formed them, these rights are lost entirely, being derived from His will: to resist Him while asserting them is therefore to destroy them. Besides, if the Lord is there, His rights rise above everything.

97 The Lord does not seek the admiration of the crowd; He does His work, but a curious multitude is nothing for Him. He goes to the other side of the lake. But to accompany the Lord, to be truly with Him, is not tranquillity, but the exercise of faith. A tempest arose, and the ship is covered with waves. According to appearances, the Lord is a stranger to the peril of His own; He sleeps, and the disciples think they will be swallowed up by the waters. They had a certain faith in Him if He were awake: at least He could occupy Himself with the danger. But all the same, what want of faith to think that the counsels of God and the Lord Himself were going to be swallowed up together by a storm, or according to the world by an accident! They were in the same ship with the Lord, the object of all the counsels of God. Accidents do not happen there, not to say anywhere else. A word on His part calms the waves and the wind. The companionship of the Lord when He is rejected conducts us in the storm, yet He seems to let all go without paying heed to it; but we are, thank God, in the same ship with Him. He exercises faith and appears to be indifferent with regard to difficulties; He is not uneasy, and His grace and power awake at an opportune moment. It is the character of the road to which the Lord has introduced His own in quitting the multitude of this world.

But there is more. Come with power to destroy the work of the devil, His presence manifests the power of the enemy; it awakes and displays itself; and, just because He acts, the Lord allows that the reality of this power should be manifested. The impure beings which become the vessels of this energy of the enemy hurl themselves down to destruction. A word of the Lord delivers him whom the world could not bind; but the world cannot endure God so near it, and under the quiet influence of Satan, more dangerous than His force, gets quit of the Lord. It is not the power of Satan which was the question (for that a word was enough), but of his influence over the heart, yea, over the heart, just as the heart of man will not have God. What manifests Him no doubt manifests Satan; but it is the deliverance of those who are in subjection to his power. But then it is God; and man wishes none of Him, even when He is delivering. It is the history of the Saviour, of God, in this poor world.

98 Such is the summary presentation of Emmanuel, of the path of Jesus towards the earth; the fulness of grace; but man will not have God. It was in Israel indeed that all this took place, and it is thus presented here; but the work is extended to the world in grace and in judgment. It is a remarkable picture of the presence of Emmanuel and of its effect: grace, goodness in power on the earth, the manner in which it was received, and the result of its manifestation for the heart of man. What follows, chapter 9, is His ministry.

In chapter 9 we find the work of the Lord, His character in grace; as in chapter 8. His person (more precisely however in Israel), but rejected. The Lord returns to His own city (Capernaum), but far from the scene which closes the last chapter (which is complete in itself), the world rejecting Him and He quitting the world.

Now He is seen afresh in the midst of His service in Israel. Faith brings a man paralysed in his body. The Lord is still here as Emmanuel, yet man in their midst, but there He is announced with the promised blessing of Jehovah's presence in grace. Here it is no question of redemption (though certainly without it there could not be such a pardon), but of the application of pardon in grace in Israel as we see in Psalm 103; and for present blessing Israel must be pardoned. The Lord comes with this blessing, and it is a direct testimony to pardon: else He would have simply healed the paralytic as in other cases. But when Jehovah came in grace, He pardoned all their sins and healed all their iniquities. The Lord announces the presence of Jehovah to do the first of these things. The scribes murmured in themselves. Who but Jehovah could pardon? But He who knew their thoughts was there and proves by the other portion of the verse that the Lord was there in the power of His grace. He heals immediately the infirmity of the sick man.

We may remark here that, in this as in the preceding chapter, He takes the title of Son of man, His title of predilection or love for us, of a much larger import than that of Christ, which, though He was the Christ, He was not come to take and never does take in Israel. He is there as Emmanuel, Jehovah to save His people, but as Son of man, a title of all importance. He who takes the kingdom in glory from heaven, who even has all things under His feet, Christ, never presents Himself as Christ. The Son of man was to be strong for God (Psalm 80: 17); but at present He must suffer. But, though in the midst of His people, necessarily when here below God must take in His nature and in His work His place in respect to men above all relationship according to the law as the rejected One on the earth. The Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins; as the crowd say that God has given such power to men.

99 The pardon then was there, and grace toward sinners. He was there in this character. He goes and eats with the tax-gatherers after having called Matthew who was one of them. It was not the outside which guided His walk. God was there, and the work was to be the effect of His presence and of His grace, not to depend on what He found. He knew also the heart and the vessels to choose and bring under the effect of this grace as His instruments. But the principle of the work was the principle of His grace: He was come not to find but to bring what was necessary: and the vessels to receive this for service were chosen vessels, known of God and disposed by grace as new and suited instruments.

Therefore He is there forgiving sins and eating with sinners; but it is Jehovah who heals (Psalm 103). The revelation as to the work goes farther. It could not be put into the old Jewish forms, nor could one take what was found in them as vessels containing it. A tax-gatherer was to be an apostle; a Pharisee at most to learn that he must absolutely be born anew. None of the old forms of righteousness really in relationship with the flesh and man in the flesh could receive the new wine: the doctrine of grace in power came by Jesus Christ. The old leathern bottles belonged to the flesh; but now was come the divine power in grace, and being completely new, it would have its own vessels. Besides, the Bridegroom was there. It was not the time for the sons of the bridechamber to fast: the time would come for that. It is a striking thing to see how the Lord always holds His rejection as an integral part of His history. The Son of man must suffer, the Bridegroom be taken away. It was Jehovah there in grace: this could not adapt itself to the old bottles and could only excite the hatred of man and of Israel who preferred their bottles, as giving them importance, to God Himself, and that when He was revealed in grace.

The following account contains the real history of Israel arrived at the point of dying.* Christ has to do with them as dead, and so He can; but those who in the way with Him have faith in Him are completely healed when every resource had failed. The virtue and the power of life were in Him, whilst in result He had to quicken Israel really dead. Such is the history of the Son of man's ministry - of Jehovah in Israel. To this are added two accessory effects of His power, as to His special character relative to Israel when appeal is made to Him under the name of Son of David. However the general character although manifested in Israel goes in its nature beyond them - Jehovah and the Son of man - and this it is which has a character of interest so profound to be remarked; but He was the Son of David in Israel.

{*Literally "is just now deceased," Matt. 9: 18; "dead at the moment." We know that the father while on the road received the news that she was really dead. Just now - the point up to which the time was extended.}

100 In verse 27 we enter exclusively on the Israelitish ground, where the spirit of the heads is fully manifested, whilst the patience of the Lord continues still in grace. The blind in Israel recover sight by faith in the Son of David, and here He is in the house, and then He opens there also the mouth of the dumb. The attention of the crowd is drawn, and they confess that they have never seen the like. But if He casts out the power of the devil, the heads of the people call His power that of the devil. The spirit of an unpardonable apostasy was already manifested; but Jesus had not done* His work of goodness in Israel, and He goes through the villages and the small towns, teaching, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and working cures. His heart was touched with compassion for Israel, for those multitudes which were as sheep without shepherds. For if He was Jehovah in His goodness, His heart could be moved with what He saw as man and until that goodness could find no more place for its exercise. His time found no obstacle in the wickedness of those who were His enemies; the harvest was yet abundant, the labourers but few. Oh, how much the heart can still feel this! He wishes as yet to accomplish His work, to have His sheep. Our part is to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers.

{*i.e., finished.}

We have then in this chapter the grace of His ministry, its true character, the ministry of Jehovah in grace, profitable for faith, but which is to raise the dead, and which, as an actual thing, is rejected and blasphemed. His person and His work have no place here save in grace. Whilst He can work thus, He continues to occupy Himself with all those who can be reached.

101 The Lord, who touched with compassion for the destitute masses, had told His disciples to ask the Lord of the harvest to send workmen into the harvest, moved by the same compassion, sends them Himself; for He is also Lord of the harvest. But here it is always for searching out the lost sheep of the house of Israel: He has always His rejection in view, but He acts still in the circle of the promises, and does not quit it whilst announcing that others would come from the west and from the east. The servant accomplishes His service in the limits of His mission; but God in His grace cannot be thus confined. The grace of His divinity and of His rights pierces across the humiliation to which He subjected Himself. But He serves in these limits still and sends His disciples into the field where He still seeks His sheep. They were not to go by the way of the Gentiles, nor to enter a town of the Samaritans. They were to preach the near arrival of the kingdom of the heavens, then to exercise the power that Jesus had confided to them, that of destroying among men all the power of the enemy up to death itself. Remark here that not only did Jesus work miracles, but He could confer the power of working them. It was the divine power which was revealed in His person whilst serving as He had been sent.

The discourse of the Lord is divided into two parts: one referring to the mission in which the disciples were engaged at that moment; the other more general, referring at the same time to the service which the disciples should accomplish after His death, really up to His return, to the presence of the Holy Spirit and to the return of the Son of man, but always to a service rendered in the midst of Israel, though the effect is extended to the Gentiles, yet by means of the persecution excited by the Jews. The first part extends from verse 5 to 15; the second from verse 16 to the end, comprising the general principles of their position.

As the disciples went from God, invested with His power to overthrow all that of the enemy, they were also to trust entirely to Him, to take nothing with them, nor to make provision of that which was necessary for their journey. Emmanuel present disposed the hearts and took care of them. The time would come without doubt, when it would not be so with them. (See Luke 22: 35, and following verses.) However, in going into a city they were to ask who was worthy, and to remain there till they went away from the city. It was, we may say, the last testimony rendered to Israel. There was still that of the seventy, the last time that He went up to Jerusalem; but there is no question of them in this Gospel. The Lord was warning the remnant in Israel. In wishing peace to a house, if the son of peace dwelt there, the peace would abide there: otherwise it would return on them. This is not the gospel sent to the world, to sinners, but the gospel of the kingdom sent to those who had ears to hear in Israel. Afterwards, where they were not received, they were to wipe off the dust from their feet. We see the final character of the testimony they were to bear. The judgment of such a city would be more terrible than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Here closes the first part of their mission. The Lord Himself sends them with the consciousness, and He expresses it, that He was sending them like sheep in the midst of wolves, and that they must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves - counsel impossible to follow but for those who are taught of God.

102 The world may be prudent, knowing evil; the heart may be simple by ignorance and find itself betrayed; the Christian may be wise or prudent, by the wisdom of God who directs him, and simple because he walks according to the life which is in him, and expresses nothing else than that which is found there. The two things are connected; because by the positive possession of good one discerns evil, and snares do not succeed; because the motives which engage men to touch them exert no influence on the heart. One preserves simplicity in acting according to what one is; and we are prudent because, knowing that we are in the midst of evil, we avoid it by the intelligence which belongs to spirituality! It is not the simplicity of ignorance, but of good which avoids whatever should make one quit one's true position before God. But (terrible word for man), "Beware of men" says the Lord; and all are cast as such now into the same mass - He does not say, of Israel. It was exactly in Israel that they laboured, but Israel is blinded with the mass of human iniquity. God could think of them and the promises, but in fact the heart of man was there as elsewhere. They would be forced to appear before the Jewish authorities by their malice, and not only so but before the Gentiles tribunals, and thus bear a witness which would reach the high places of the earth; for it is thus God carries His testimony into the high quarters of the world, and not by rendering His own worldly. But God would be with them.

103 And here we see clearly that this part of the chapter referred to the time when the Lord would be away. It would be the Spirit of their Father speaking in them. But the hatred of the human heart against the testimony of God would be shewn in pushing men on to break the ties that God had formed at the time of creation; the affections of the flesh, of the human heart, would be changed into positive antipathy. The more intimate the relation, the more implacable its hatred. There are rights in these relationships; but now it would be the rights of hatred: brother would deliver brother to death.

What a solemn effect of the rejection of Christ, the only true tie of man with man, because the will is restrained and God owned! God can hold the bridle, and He has done so in mercy, but when He is rejected in grace, there remains only the manifestation of man's heart as it is. Nature does not bridle nature; and the testimony of God merely awakens the hatred of him who wishes none of His rights, who does not wish that there should be any, because he knows that he has abandoned Him. But His grace pursues His work to attract souls.

If the disciples were persecuted in one city, they were to go to another. They should not have accomplished their task in Israel before the Son of man was come. Thus we see that this testimony of the disciples in Israel extends even to the return of the Lord. Interrupted by the destruction of Jerusalem, and unfinished, it was to be accomplished. Another testimony has been raised up of God in the person of Paul, apostle of circumcision; but here we have the mission of the disciples formally limited to Israel, and the Gentiles excluded. They were to expect reproach; they were not above their Master whom their adversaries had already called Beelzebub. Their part was to confide in God, whatever the concealed plots of their enemies; all should be set in light, and they were to act as being in it already. They were not to fear. First, they should fear Him who could cast body and soul into hell much more than those who could do nothing but kill the body. But besides, without their Father - Him who guarded them as a Father - not a sparrow fell to the ground. They had more value in His eye than many sparrows. Lastly, he who confessed Jesus before men, Jesus would confess him before the angels of His Father. These are the three motives that He gives for firmness; but they were not to think that He was come to send peace on earth. As the final result He will, reigning as Prince of peace; but a Saviour rejected is another thing. This would bring intestine war into the house; such the sad effect of the arrival of God and of truth on the earth. Man could not endure them, and still less at home; but on the other side He was the touchstone for the heart.

104 It was all over with man according to nature - nature which God owned in itself fully, but which on the rejection of Christ, the key of the arch if it could have been blessed, was fallen into ruin; and now all depended on Jesus alone; and if man violated the natural relationships by hatred, His own devoted to Him were to be above nature by grace. He was, He is, all: when it is a question of Him, all must yield, and this in regard not only to these relationships but to self (and it is always self that is in question). We must take up the cross and follow Christ. He that would find his life should lose it, and he that would lose it for Christ's sake would find it. All depended now, in a fallen and judged world, on the reception of the word and on the estimate made of it, and on righteousness according to God. He that received a prophet in the name of a prophet, because he was such, had in the eyes of God the usual value of the word that he carried (for it was the word that he loved, such as it was from God); and so with practice. Ceremonies had come to nothing. The point was the word of God and what He loved in a world which had broken with Him. If it were only a cup of water given because of Christ, the soul that gave it loved Christ and would not be forgotten. It is exactly as to God's ways in the midst of Israel that all these things are displayed. To their work in Israel the instruction given to the twelve disciples applies; but what instruction for us all as to the effect of the rejection of Christ! The chapter after this shews us the change that followed historically, and the place taken by Christ when rejected by man, alone remaining upright before God in the ruin of the world and of Israel.

The question is raised by John now in prison if Jesus was the Christ when no deliverance had been wrought for Israel. This was not a failure of confidence in the word of the Lord, for John does not refer to this word; but all is changed in the relations between John and Christ and Israel. As to intelligence John probably as an individual was embarrassed; but the effect of this embarrassment was to exchange his part of prophet for a question of individual faith, and the turn that things take and that Jesus gives them is according to divine wisdom. Fully owned of Him as more than prophet, John has to believe in Jesus individually by the testimony that Jesus gives of Himself, able to do everything, full of grace to think of the poor, and bring them the gospel, but already rejected, and a little remnant owned in His words, "blessed is he who is not offended in me."

105 So that we have still Jehovah in Israel a stone of stumbling, but a sanctuary for those who trust in Him. John must receive Jesus on this testimony. Thus it is Christ who renders testimony to John, Jehovah who owns His servant, and not John to Jesus. The testimony of the two had been tendered; the mournful strains of John, the attractive sound of the flute had been heard, both in the market place; but Israel would neither be humbled for the one nor rejoice in the other. All that was closed. Only there was a remnant according to grace, and the wisdom of God in the two had been justified in the two by these children of wisdom: and Jesus remained alone in His grace, Jehovah in the world, in a world where man had shewn that he wished none of Him, to manifest what He was in Himself for the wants of those who, in such a world, had made the discovery of their wants and their miseries. The world had been put fully to the proof, and Jesus who had done so and knew that there was nothing there to console a tried heart, who knew that His Spirit had been like the dove sent by Noah in that grace which shone only with so much the more splendour that the world was dark, presents Himself to every burdened heart as the resource, and a perfect resource, for its wants. He gives rest by the revelation of the love of the Father in His person; then, by the perfect submission of a heart bowed under the will of God, practical rest in life. But the details demand a little more attention.

The Lord was not at all insensible to His rejection; He felt it profoundly, although it was in a spirit of grace. We see Him weep later over the final obstinacy of Jerusalem; His heart of love thought with grief of the hardening of Jerusalem in seeing the city, beloved but wicked, reject the last effort of God to bring her back and bless her. Here the feeling of His heart was a little different. He had displayed His power in blessings and in testimony; and all had been in vain. He had reproached them with the hardness of their heart. He had spent Himself for them; but their heart had remained insensible. Neither Tyre nor Sidon, neither Sodom nor Gomorrah, would have remained insensible in the same circumstances; they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Their judgment would be so much the more terrible; but then in the same hour He accepts all from the hand of His Father: perfect subjection! He had seen good to humble the pride of man, and had hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and had revealed them to babes. In the eye of God these ways were good, and Jesus accepts them without question.

106 Then in this perfect submission of man opens out before Him all the truth of His glory, and of the relative position of Israel and of Him, and of Himself with men. The Son of God was there. All things had been delivered to Him by the Father, and none knew the Son but He. He was in the truth of His person which none knew. The divinity of the Son is guarded in His humiliation by the inscrutability of His person. The testimony rendered to that which men in Israel were called to believe had been accepted; but the full truth went much farther and came forth out of obscurity, now that the testimony of John, of Christ, and of His works was rejected. As for Him, He was unknown; He revealed the Father. The sovereign grace of God in this revelation is then manifested. One has but to come to Him, and he will have rest. It was no longer the kingdom in Israel, but, by the revelation of the Father, rest for the weary soul. Thus it is God in grace for him who has need of it - the Son revealing the Father.

But there is another element in this touching picture of grace. The perfect submission of a man humble of heart had been the occasion of the revelation of glory and of grace in His person. It is just the same in John 12. It is always so. Submission to the ways of God opens the door to the knowledge of His grace and of His glory. Now it was thus with Jesus as man; and He engages His hearers to take the yoke, the yoke that He had taken Himself, and to learn of Him in this manifestation of submission and of poverty of spirit, and they should find rest for their souls. It is perfect grace, the revelation of the Father in the Son, which gives rest to hearts weary of this world of sin; it is the perfect submission of the will which gives practical peace to the heart, whilst one crosses it. It is Christ the Son revealing the Father, the man Christ perfectly subject to the yoke, which gives both.

107 In chapter 12 we find the final rejection of the Jewish system and of those who were at its head. Christ breaks with the system and judges the leaders of it, takes a place above the sabbath, which was the seal of the covenant, foretells the complete ruin of the perverse generation of Israel, and refuses to acknowledge His words according to the flesh with that people, and will only acknowledge disciples who were brought in by the word and who had obeyed it. But we must examine the chapter more closely.

The Pharisees reproved the disciples for having plucked the ears of corn and rubbed them in their hands. The Lord answers, that when David, the anointed of God, had been rejected, the law of Moses had lost its force. The priests also violated the sabbath, when an occasion called for it: and there was One greater than the temple, the living God Himself making His temple in man. They ought then to have understood the meaning of those words that mercy rejoices over judgment. Further, the Son of man was Lord of the sabbath; He was above the system that He had Himself established as Jehovah, and His title as Son of man placed Him outside and above the claims which the old covenant had over man, and the rest which it demanded but could not give. He besides shews their hypocrisy in these things, in the case of the man with the withered hand. The love and goodness of God are above ceremonies, however holy these may be. Thus His person, being rejected as David's had been, is above the Jewish system, and the goodness of God cannot yield the sovereign right of His divine grace towards man. But the time of judgment was not yet. His voice is not heard in the street till the moment comes when He will raise it in judgment in the day of His glory, and when He will send forth this judgment victorious over all opposition, and even the Gentiles will trust in Him. He casts out another demon, and the enmity without heart and without conscience of the Pharisees breaks out. They could not deny the miracle, and rather than acknowledge Jesus they attribute it to a demon; that is to say, acknowledging in spite of themselves that power was there, but, being enemies of God, they called the Holy Spirit, by whom the miracle was wrought, a demon. There was no forgiveness for this.

108 After this the Lord then comes to the complete condemnation of the Jews. Full of unbelief, they, who had just attributed the sign to the devil rather than believe it, ask for a sign; but the Lord gives them none other than that of Jonas, a prefiguration of His time of being in the grave, but a sign that it was now too late for them, that the One whom they had already rejected was the Son of God, and that all connection with this generation was for ever at an end. He brings forward the men of Nineveh and a queen of the south who would rise in judgment against this generation; for a greater than Jonas or Solomon was there.

It seems to me that a deep feeling of sorrow betrays itself in the words of Jesus at the sight of the unbelief of the leaders of Israel, blind men who pretended to lead the blind. But the time of judgment was come, and the Lord pronounces that judgment. The unclean spirit had gone out of that people, the spirit of idolatry, I doubt not, for since the captivity of Babylon they had not fallen into idolatry; but the demon needed, so to speak, this people among whom the name of God was found, but where God was no longer, and whom they had rejected when He came into their midst in the person of Jesus. The house was empty, swept and garnished: religious forms and external piety were found there; but God Himself was no longer there. The unclean spirit would enter with seven spirits more wicked than himself, and the last state would be worse than the first. The last state of the people, at least that of the perverse generation, would be worse than its former sins. They have already shewn themselves as the swine of Gennesaret, after the death of the Lord; but the words of the Lord will be accomplished at the end of the times, when the Jews will again become idolaters, and when all the devil's power will be developed under the Antichrist.

It is well to understand each for himself how, if a vice is conquered without God, nothing is really gained. A gross vice may be given up for a more subtle sin. If there is not really the work of God in the heart, it may be hardened, and Satan will reign there more than ever. But here the Lord applies what He had said to the generation which had rejected Him, to the unbelieving and perverse Jews from whom God hid His face to see their end.

109 Then those who were the expression of the bonds by which He was attached to the Jewish people according to the flesh came pressing this claim. The Lord would not acknowledge them, and pointing out His disciples, said, Behold my mother and my brethren; the relationships I acknowledge are those formed by the word of God. As to the history of the Jews, all was at an end. Grace might continue and take up the people in a remnant owned of God; but as to responsibility, their history was ended. The Lord seeks no more for fruit on a tree manifestly bad, and shews Himself, as a sower, by the wayside, bringing that which, when received in the heart, would produce fruit. This, however, introduced the kingdom of the heavens in which the Gentiles could share.

The chapter to which we are now come has been so often handled that I shall have no need to dwell much on the details. Only we shall need a general glance at the position it holds in the Gospel, and some words on the last parable. We have seen the Lord pronounce on the Jewish people a judgment which extends even to the last days, breaking, as come in flesh, all His relations with them. The heads of the people had blasphemed against the Holy Spirit and brought this judgment on the entire system, although the patience of God still sought all those who had ears to hear. The Lord sought no more fruit in His vineyard. There was only verjuice after all His pains. Such really was man; for Israel was only man placed under law with all the advantages God could lavish on him. In the trial to which man had been subjected two things had been proved: that he could not attain to righteousness according to the law; and that he would not receive God come in grace, manifested in humanity to gain man and exercising a power to heal all the evils to which man had been subjected by sin.

He quits the house, a sign, I doubt not, of the immense change in the ways of God, and sits in a ship on the sea, and presents Himself as a sower, that is, as no more seeking fruit, but carrying with Him in this world what was to produce it. The Lord goes no farther than the word of the kingdom. The verses 10-17 state the judgment of the people according to the prophecy of Isaiah, of which the Lord in His patience had so long put off the accomplishment, and the separation of a remnant owned of the Lord - a remnant whose ears and eyes were opened by grace.

110 It is well to recall that there are seven parables: the first is not a similitude of the kingdom, the others are. Of these the first three present to us the form the kingdom took in the world; the last three, the thoughts of God in establishing in this manner the kingdom, and then the result of all at the end of the age. The first is occupied with individuals and the visible effect of the word. There is no question of the work of the Holy Spirit, which is found elsewhere doubtless; but here it is the exterior work of Christ in sowing, and in effect the consequence as far as manifested on the earth. We have just the word of the kingdom, but neither the kingdom nor the end of the age. Christ sows, and there is the result in this world, in man on the earth: the seed produces fruit in one case out of four. In the first the seed does not penetrate at all: Satan takes it away as soon as it is sown. There is levity of heart, an indifference which receives nothing; the word is not understood, the heart is occupied with something else. However it is a word adapted to man and sown in his heart. In the second case, on the contrary, the heart is gained as to its feelings for a moment, but the conscience is not reached. There is no rest: the doctrine has been received for the joy that the message brings; and when the word brought sufferings instead of joy, the heart wished no more of it. There was not a true want. The Holy Spirit always produces wants. It was not as with the apostles: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" In the third case the world has choked the good seed. Alas! there is no need to explain it: we see it every day. However it is a subtler thing: the world, business has not the evil look of gross sin; but the word is choken and produces nothing.

The danger and the tendency of these things are found in the Christian: according to the measure the world exercises empire over him, his life suffers from it. Be it he is not dead but he sleeps, he does not understand spiritual things; he does not see or even enjoy them. Unhappy in the presence of spiritual Christians, he enjoys not the things they enjoy, and suffers even from reproofs of his conscience. And if he goes with the world, he suffers also in reflecting on it, his conscience reproaching him with want of faithfulness; like a sick man who suffers, he is not dead: otherwise he would not suffer; but it is a sad means of knowing that life is there.

111 In the fourth case the word is understood: it penetrates, grows, and produces fruit in different degrees in different persons. In the first case it is said that the word was not understood, in this case it is said that it was; in the other cases the point is not touched. In the first case it was seen that nothing had penetrated. In the two following there was the appearance of it, but there was nothing: the plant perished without fruit. In the last case the seed is developed in the interior of the heart, and fruit is produced: precious effect according to the nature of what was sown, fruit for Him who had sown the seed and for him who had received it! There is no judgment, but the patent facts stated by the Lord in contrast with the vineyard and His fig-tree where He was seeking fruit, and in contrast also with the kingdom or state of things in the world, and their result in the judgment at the end.

The first of the following parables shews the effect of the sowing in the world up to the end of the age, but does not take in the execution of judgment: this is found, as well as the manifestation of glory, in the explanation made to the disciples in the house. It should be remarked that, in the parable of the sower, He is not named. It is the effect of the word in the heart of man, whoever may have sown. Here, on the contrary, we have a similitude of the kingdom, and He who sows takes the character (not of Christ - we have seen His work closed in His rejection, the Messiah seeking fruit was come to be received in Israel, but) of Son of man. He who sows is the Son of man, and the field is the world; but I anticipate.

We have always the general character of the work that the Lord wrought: He sowed; but not the personal result in the world. He has sown good seed in His field, but the responsibility of man is in question in the result produced; and whilst they slept, the enemy came and sowed tares. That did not hinder the good grain from being in the garner, but spoilt the whole of the crop in the field, and the evil which had been done was without remedy. It is forbidden the servants to root up the tares for fear of rooting up the good grain with them, precisely what happened when men would do so: the two were to grow together till the harvest. The kingdom of the heavens presented in this world a spoilt crop, fruit, on one side of the Lord's work, on the other of the enemy's work. Now in the parable we have only what happens in the kingdom before the manifestation of the King and the execution of judgment by Him. When He shall be manifested and the public judgment come, there will be no more parables, the mystery of God will be closed. In the parables we have mysteries, that which demands a revelation to know them; the execution of judgment is in itself the most striking revelation. In the parable we have then at the end in general the time of the harvest; and the tares are gathered first in bundles to burn them. The tares are there in bundles on the field of this world, and the good grain is hid in the garner.

112 Afterwards, before explaining the parable of the tares, the Lord gives two other similitudes of the kingdom; and remember that it is a question here of the kingdom. It is well to remark that the word for likeness is not the same in these parables and that of the tares. Here it is only the character the kingdom will take; it is "like" to, etc. In the parable of the tares, "it is become," or has been made, "like." It is a character that it has taken in actual circumstances considering the rejection of the King.

It is worth while also to remark in these parables those in which the thing in itself is the subject of comparison, and those where it is the individual or those who form the essential part of the parable. The kingdom itself is like a little grain of mustard seed becoming a great tree, symbol in the Old Testament of a thing elevated in the world, of a political power. We know well that this is come - that the birds nesting in its branches signifies the protection it affords. Compare Daniel 4: 12. It is the public appearance of the kingdom system such as it has been for ages: here is no judgment.

Next comes the parable of the leaven. The likeness is the leaven. The woman is not a sower; it is not the Lord who sows what is designated as the good seed; it is not a great tree in the world. It is a doctrine which insinuates itself everywhere in certain limits, and forms the entire lump according to its own nature. The whole is leavened: it is Christendom. But in neither of these two parables do we arrive at judgment. It is the kingdom such as it is when the grain of mustard seed or the leaven has fully acted and produced its effect. It is true that leaven is always employed in an evil sense; yet I do not think this is the aim of the parable, but the doctrine which forms all in one sole lump where it penetrates. If it was purely the evil as evil, we should have had some exception. This is marked in the tares, but on another side. It is not the good that is sown, nor the Lord who sows; so that the notion of positive good is carefully avoided as well as of him who does so. The point is not the word of God, but the fact of the general profession of Christians and in a form where no idea of good is presented; for certainly leaven is not, in the word, an image of good. No more is the parable the description of an individual. There is hardly need to discuss this point, because it is a similitude of the kingdom of the heavens, and in no case is an individual the kingdom of the heavens. Besides, the result in an individual is not that which is depicted here.

113 These then are the three descriptions of the kingdom on the earth during the absence of the king, such as the kingdom is presented to the eyes of all: a mixture of good and bad, the harvest thus spoilt as a whole; afterwards a great human and political power on the earth; and a general profession of doctrine without question of the individual state of anyone whatever. Afterwards the good corn is hid in the garner; and providence prepares the seed of the enemy to be burnt by binding them together in bundles on earth.

Then the Lord enters the house; and there, speaking to the disciples alone, He enters more into the inner principles of the kingdom of which He speaks, communicating not the effect in the world, but the thoughts of God, the great result which would explain all in judgment and glory manifested on earth, and the real aim of what the Lord had done as well as the action of those who enter with intelligence into His ways.

First He explains the parable of the tares. We have already spoken of the chief features, but the Lord adds here what concerns the manifestation of the result in this world. In the parable we have left the wheat in the garner and the tares in bundles on the field, the wicked gathered by the angels or by the providence of God. But here appears on the scene the Son of man to remove every scandal from His kingdom (which He does), and He casts the wicked into a furnace of fire where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is the judgment executed. The servants were to let the tares grow. Then after the judgment the righteous shine in the kingdom like the sun - in effect like Jesus Himself. This is the result and this the divine explanation of what was a mystery before, for the judgment manifests what faith discerns. Remark that all which is revealed is in the world, first the kingdom before, then the judgment after. The fact is stated that the corn is hidden; but nothing is said of the garner nor of the state of the corn when it is there.

114 In the parables which follow we have, as it has been said, the thoughts of God, the aim of the Lord in the kingdom, but still those thoughts, without speaking of a result in judgment, as we have seen in that of the mustard seed and that of the leaven. The first shews us the kingdom as the discovery of a treasure formerly unknown, hidden in a field; and he who had found it renounces all that he has to have it, and for this buys the field. This is what Christ did. All that He had as Messiah on earth He left to have the treasure of His people by taking the field where they were found, the world, to have them. They were hidden in this world; but Christ knew about them, taught of the Father as Man on the earth, and surrendered all up to His life to have us. If in fact we renounce all to have Christ, nevertheless it is no question (as people too much forget) of an individual, but of the kingdom; and, further, we buy no field to have Him.

The second case is a little different. The point is not a discovery. The merchant was in search of good pearls. He knew what a good pearl was, he could appreciate them, he wanted good ones. Now Christ has found in the church the object of His search, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. I do not think of the church as a body or system, but of its moral beauty. The merchant had taste for beauty in pearls, Christ for what was beautiful in the eyes of God, and, to have it, He left His Messianic glory and His life. What happiness to think that He satisfies His heart in us, and what perfection of beauty in God's eyes is the thing wrought out! Zion is called the perfection of beauty, but there it was earthly; here it is heavenly according to the heart of God.

The last parable demands the most serious attention. For my part I do not doubt that it applies particularly to these days. The net of the gospel is cast into the sea of people and gathers fish of every sort. The effect of the gospel is not that all the fish enter into its meshes, but that a quantity of all sorts, good and bad, are gathered within the net. This is the result. Then those who drew the net sit down there, on the shore, and engage in what they have at heart, in the aim for which they have drawn the net - to get good fish; and they choose, separate them from the bad, and put them apart in vessels, rejecting the bad and leaving them there. It is the fishermen who do that, and occupy themselves with the good. That is to say, when Christianity has gathered, as it has done, a certain mass of people who are placed altogether in the net of Christendom, at the end of the days the servants of Christ occupy themselves with the mass and gather the good into vessels. They are the servants of Christ who have intelligence and can distinguish them, knowing what they want. When the public government shall arrive, there will be the inverse. The angels, ministers of the providence and the government of God, take not the good but the wicked on the earth and cast them into the fire. The principle, I believe, applies always when the gospel in a district has gathered many persons: the aim of the Lord is to put His own together in companies apart. But the parable seems to speak directly of the result of the operation of the gospel in gathering many persons as having part in the christian name; then, as a second operation, on the shore they sort them and engage in putting the good apart. The execution of judgment is another thing. In this parable as in the two preceding, we find spiritual discernment with respect to the aim of God. In the second this characterises the action of the merchant; in the first and the third the field is bought, the net filled, but in the two cases the treasure and the good fish are distinguished from what is taken outwardly and govern the action both of the merchant and of the fishermen.

115 It is to be remarked that four of these similitudes do not speak of judgment, but of the outward appearance or of the aim of God in the kingdom, and of the result whether in the world or with God. The great tree and the leaven - such is the result in the world; the treasure and the pearl - such is what is acquired for God. In the first and the last we have the judgment; but the difference is sensible. In the first, naturally, we see the Lord begin the work; and He has done so, of course, without mixture of evil, the good corn being all good. The enemy makes a distinct work - cannot do otherwise. There is a harvest; but the word has produced individual plants: the mixture is found in the harvest. But there are two works distinct, and the two things remain such till the end, and the preparation for judgment is the action of God in the world, and He is occupied first with the wicked to prepare them for the judgment. Men do not act; they are forbidden to act. What is produced is the effect of the action of the Lord and of the enemy. The servants slept: that is all. Wheat and tares were always wheat and tares, fruit of a distinct work.

116 In the net the mixture was the result of the work of man, the kind of fish distinct, doubtless, but all gathered into the net by a single toil, and that on the part of men, the fishermen. This is not here a work of the enemy, but the imperfect work of man. It is only the fact however which is stated. The net is full, then drawn on shore; and those who have the intelligence of what is a good fish, those whose aim (and it is that of God) is to have good fish, sort them and put the good into vessels. The explanation, as previously, is the judgment which shows publicly what was true and understood spiritually before. But the angels occupy themselves only with the bad. In the first parable it is a question of rooting out of the world the bad, which was not allowed to the servants. In the last it is a question of putting the good together into vessels, which was their intelligent work. We must not forget that the last times were already come in the days of the apostle.

The immediate connections then existing of the Lord with the Jews were, as we have seen, terminated, and the kingdom of heaven was proclaimed according to the form which it was to take in consequence of His rejection. He was no longer seeking fruit from His vine, but was sowing that He might have fruit through the word. But Jesus continued to think of the people, shewing what He was, and alas! what they themselves were, and what was to take the place of His connections with the Jews, such as they would have been, if He had been received by them.

Chapters 14 and 16 shew us what He was then for the Jews, and what the remnant would become through His absence from that people, and the rejection or setting aside of the people. Chapter 15 brings in what He was for them as a divine person, even when the people were wicked and rejected; but being so, because He was God, and His counsels could not change. This favour extended itself to the Gentiles who had no right to the promises, although He did not abandon His positive connections with Israel; for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. But we must remember that in this unfolding of the ways of God the grace of the Lord, divine and personal grace, is manifested in the most touching and instructive manner, and practical lessons for us are brought out continually from what is passing.

117 The rejection of the testimony of God begins to be realised in facts. John the Baptist is put to death by Herod through the instigation of his wife. The Lord, touched and sensible of the violence done to His faithful servant, retires into the desert. Elias, as it is said elsewhere, had come, and they had done unto him whatsoever they listed; and the Son of man was also to suffer at their hands. This act of cruelty was not only the death of the faithful proclaimer of the Lord, but to the heart of the faithful Witness it spoke of the state of the people. But however painful His feelings were, as having come into their midst, divine love rises above all, above the sufferings of the Son of man.

The multitude hear that He has retired into the desert, and hasten thither. Coming forth from His retreat He sees the crowd, and, moved with compassion, He heals them. His goodness did not become weary in presence of the iniquity of man, now hastening to accomplish it. Even being come, the multitude was there, having nothing to eat. The disciples feel the inconvenience of their position, and wish to send them away, the natural resource of man. But God was in Israel and wished that His disciples, after so many proofs, should have the consciousness of the power that was there.

But their heart had no other resource but that which was visible to man and according to a human measure. Give ye them to eat, said the Saviour, and I myself will give to them. But they, instead of having faith in God, in the divine power of the Saviour, had five loaves and two fishes. What a difference between faith and the flesh! between God who can do everything and the poor resources which are in our hands. But the flesh sees no farther. The disciples could not make use of the power which was there. Alas! they did not think of it. But here the Lord was manifesting what He was in the midst of evil; not putting Himself in relation with Israel, if Israel wished it, but shewing Himself above Israel, the Jehovah who blessed His people, according to His heart. It was but a testimony to that grace, but it was to that grace that the testimony was rendered. In Psalm 132 it is said of the time, in which Jehovah will arise and will remember David and will act in grace according to His own heart, "I will satisfy her poor with bread"; and He does so, a testimony useless for Israel, and even for the disciples save for grace, but not for His glory. The rejected Christ is Jehovah, the Saviour of His people, spite of all. The prelude to His rejection and to His death leads Him to give the proof of His divine and almighty grace, which is above the evil and unbelief even of those who belong to Him. But it is none the less true that this is only a testimony, and that things take their course, and this is intimated here in the facts.

118 He sends His disciples to cross the sea alone, dismisses the people and goes up into a mountain apart to pray; a living picture, in a few strokes, of all that has happened. The Jewish people is sent away, Christ is on high and His own on the sea. However, as we have seen all through in this Gospel, the Jews or the disciples as a remnant are in the foreground. I have no doubt but that even the number of the baskets of fragments, however slight the indication may be, has reference to the full blessing of the latter days in the reign. It is the number sacred to that, twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve thrones for them judging the twelve tribes, twelve stars on the woman. It is the idea of the perfection of the government of God in man. This is why it is also found in the heavenly Jerusalem. But let us pass on to the more formal facts of this history.

The Lord makes His disciples embark in a little boat without Him, then He dismissed the multitude of the Jews, who had rejoiced in His presence. It is not here judgment on the people, but Himself disappears, so to speak. Those who belong to the Lord, the little remnant, are besides exposed to the violence of the storm, without having the Saviour personally present with them. He is on high alone. Mark the situation. But some other facts are brought in. The Lord rejoins them, master of all the elements which try them on the road. The water and the waves are the pathway of His feet, and as soon as He joins them all is calm, and those in the boat recognise Him as Son of God, the world likewise. Gennesaret which had rejected Him now joyfully receives Him, and its wounds are healed as the remnant of Israel had found peace.

We have not yet spoken of another fact. Peter leaves the ship to go to Jesus, before He rejoined the disciples. He walks upon the water when Peter goes to meet Him. This part of the history presents us, I doubt not, with the christian position outside Judaism. Jesus has not rejoined His disciples whom He had made embark when He had separated from them. Christ alone is the strength and the motive: "if it be Thou"; one must walk where there is nothing, as Christ walked. Trouble of the waves causes Peter's faith to fail, but the grace and the power of the Saviour are there for the others, as for himself. He stretches out His hand and supports His poor servant. This is what He has done in order that we should walk as He walked where there is no support but Himself. Once Christ is come back to His disciples, all is peace and the voyage ends; but there are some precious personal instructions here.

119 The Christian has to walk over the water, to walk by faith, as Jesus walked, where there is no path, but divine power, for man cannot walk - is totally incapable of doing so. To walk there is the fruit of the power of Christ and of faith in the Christian, but this is not all. The eye must be fixed upon the Saviour: without this, one sinks. Peter had looked at the agitated sea and was sinking. Christ being out of his view, there was a comparison made between the difficulties and himself. Impossible so to walk. He was right; but the divine power was utterly forgotten. So Israel with the spies. The cities are walled up to heaven, the Anakims were there, we were like grasshoppers. This was to forget God. Was He like a grasshopper before the Anakims? And what did the walls up to heaven? They fell down at the sound of a ram's horn. No, it is a question of looking to God and the path of His will, as Joshua and Caleb said, If the Lord take delight in us, we are well able. Peter had said, "If it be Thou," but then he should always have looked to Him. And see how foolish is unbelief. He saw the sea agitated. What if it had been calm? The reason of the difference was not there, but in looking to Jesus - or not. If one looks to Him, all is possible and all succeeds, because He can and will do all, all blessing, all the fruit of faith, thanks be to God. He is there to sustain us even when our faith comes short. If Jesus is the object who makes us walk on the water, Jesus is the strength to walk there; but the eye must be kept fixed on Him. If His power is there, the storm does nothing. If His power is not there, we sink in the calm as much as in the storm. The walk is in every case by faith: and we need Jesus always and with Him can do everything. Storm and calm are alike.

In the next chapter the great controversy with the people, a controversy at bottom with the heart of man, is continued, but on moral ground; always in the midst of Israel, but full of instruction for all ages. It is ordinance in contrast with the morality willed by God, which is immutable in this sense that it refers to the relations in which man is found placed whether with God or with man, which consists in the maintenance in walk of that which suits those relations. Once God has found these relations, whether of the creature with Himself or of His creatures among themselves, the duties exist of themselves, being only the practical expression of the relation, as a true worship rendered to God, or piety and filial obedience with every other consequence of those relations. Now the corrupted heart of man loves its own will and the satisfaction of its lusts too much to fulfil its duties; and forms of piety which feed its self-love please it more than duties and leave it free to follow its lusts. Neither God nor His character is truly known. God is not honoured by the heart, and the heart is not purified. To wash his hands suits such a man better than a pure heart or approaching God really.

120 The Lord touches distinctly this moral plague, shewing at the same time that the worship of these hypocrites was as far as possible from being accepted of God; that the commandments of men could not but put God aside and exalt man to the detriment of the divine glory. The commandments of God were nullified. His worship encroached on by the false authority of man, and in vain offered by the same persons who were dragged along in the current (for the heart of man is easily subdued by such pretensions to piety), and man replaced God in what acted on the heart.

The Lord takes care to protest openly against the very principles which led to this hypocrisy while addressing the crowd that He called to Him. There is nothing the Lord detests more than human religion, the traditions of men. Nothing shuts out God more while abusing His name and thus subjecting consciences which do not know Him truly. Nothing however is more simple; what issues from the heart is what defiles the man. But we see how the heart of man is influenced by these things, and how the simple by this means fall under the influence of hypocrites and of every class of religious teachers. The Pharisees were scandalised at it, said the disciples. And no wonder. To have a conscience before God according to His word, and in the light of God for itself, spoilt all their business. But through love for us, through the necessity of what is true and good, this is what must be. Then, at the point at which we have arrived in the history of the Saviour, it was no longer a question of minding these false doctors - these were not plants that the heavenly Father of our Lord had planted. They were to be rooted up. It was needful to leave them - a solemn thought with regard to the people and still more for Christianity! These were blind leaders of the blind; both were falling into the ditch.

121 As to the disciples, the Lord's answer goes much farther, while at the same time it makes evident the apostle's want of intelligence; in effect, the principle is evident. But what a picture of the heart of man followed, thanks be to God, by that of the heart of God and of His ways in grace! That which went out of the heart defiled the man. All is simple. But what is it that went out from it? Evil thoughts, murders, then a terrible list of those dark productions of a depraved and corrupt heart. But cannot the Lord relieve a little this gloomy picture by touches of light which are found in these hearts! He finds none. Thus characterised, He leaves the heart of man. He was not wanting in goodness, He knew the heart - knew everything about man; but beyond that list He is silent. It is not saying that there are not amiable features in the natural heart (that may be so even in animals), but morally this is what comes out of the heart, the fruits of the root of the sin which is there, restrained, kept in, modified, yet the fruit that man's heart produces wherever he is permitted to follow his inclinations.

Thus the Lord passes from the hypocritical customs used by man to cover what he is and to give himself a religious character (even though the truths which he professes may be divine, and the system in its origin emanating from God) - passes, from traditions of men and the vain worship of human ordinances, to the heart which it seeks to cover, and lays it bare. We learn what is in the heart, as God sees it in those who are not among the plants planted by the Father. And their religion which concealed it - what was it? Hypocrisy, and God set aside by human ordinances. Thus we see, in a people that God had brought near to Himself and in a religion that He had Himself established, God set aside in order to bring in man, his own traditions and his commandments, with hands washed in the place of his heart; and then, what the natural heart is in its fruits before God.

122 Now the Lord passes in the most striking manner to what is outside all the promises, to a race that was accursed according to the promises made to the people of God, to the place that the Lord quotes as an example of hardness of heart (chap. 11), and shews, whilst at the same time recognising the dispensations of God towards His people, and His faithfulness in sending them the Messiah, what a heart comes to that is driven by its need and by the faith with goes right to the heart of God, and what that divine heart is for the wants that faith brings to Him, what He is in Himself outside dispensational rules. The Lord goes towards Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanitish woman comes towards Him. Her daughter was tormented with a demon. She recognises the Lord, as the heir of the promises in Israel, as Son of David. This was truly faith as to His person; but what part had a Canaanitish woman with the promises made to Israel or with the blessings that were granted to them as the people of God? The Lord does not answer her. Deeper lessons were to be given of what man is, but also of what God is.

The disciples would have wished the Lord to grant her what she asked, in order to get rid of her; but the Lord maintains His place as Son of David. He is sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The need of the poor woman rises above her formal acknowledgment of Jesus as Son of David. "Lord, help me." Her wants are simple. They are plainly declared. But the Lord wishes to put her thoroughly to the test. "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it unto dogs." The Lord acknowledges the dispensations of God with respect to His people, however wicked they might be, and the woman does so also; but lessons far deeper are here taught. The poor woman - man as shewn in her finds his place. He is under the curse, without promise, having right to nothing, or under the power of the demon. He must own his condition, and this is what the woman does. She is a dog, but in need. Her hope is not in any right that she possesses, but in the free goodness of God. It is a need which comes face to face with God come in grace. She fully recognises what she is, a dog; but she maintains that, if it be so, there is sufficient goodness in God for such beings. Could God say, No, there is not? Could Christ represent Himself thus? Impossible. By faith want is met across all the obstacles of Jewish rites and of personal unworthiness, thoroughly owning them, but placing itself outside every right in immediate contact with the goodness of God.

123 Such is faith. It recognises the state of ruin and of wretchedness in which we are; humble and true, it brings its need to God, but counts on what He is. Now He cannot deny Himself. Besides, it is the key to all the Gospel. Jesus was the Christ, the Son of David, a minister of the circumcision; but behind, so to speak, God was there, in all the fulness of His grace, and He passed over the strait limits of Israel and of the promises to be Himself in grace - grace which sufficed for everything. The curse might be there, complete unworthiness; but if want was there and placed itself by faith on the ground of the grace and goodness of God, the barriers disappeared, want and God met together, and the answer was according to His sovereign goodness, the riches of His grace, and according to the faith which counted upon it. The daughter was healed, the Canaanitish woman happy, and God in Christ revealed.

CHAPTERS 14, 15.

I have been occupied with these chapters; for they occupy evidently a special place between the mysteries of the kingdom on the judicial rejection of the Jews at the end of chapter 12 (which goes on to the end of the age) and the church and kingdom glory in chapters 16, 17. The contexts are naturally special; for the kingdom is set forth after the ruin of Judaism in chapter 13, and the church, and the glory of the kingdom come after. What is this special place?

It is plain that chapter 13 gives the kingdom of heaven in the peculiar character it assumes when the King is in heaven, not manifested, and, as Mark says, it grows and springs up he seemingly knows not how. What then is brought out between this and the revelation of the church on earth? It is the actual proof of present rejection and the incapacity of the disciples to avail themselves of His then present power; the moral darkness of the scribes and Pharisees, the intrinsic falseness of their religious principles; but the disciples really got no farther. The Pharisees were not plants of God's planting at all; the disciples were, blind on many things as they were. The Lord is here getting on strong moral ground - what God has planted, and the human heart being the source of evil. God, not Judaism or tradition, was the spring and guide of good; man's heart is only evil.

124 But Christ, still in His own place, takes only His service in Israel; but He goes where one of the accursed races and of wicked Tyre has access to Him, owning Him as Son of David. As such He could not help her. But this brings out what must go beyond these limits - the goodness of God. This, to faith, He could not deny. Thus, while man's heart even in the Jew was only evil, God was - could not but be - good to faith. But He had not given up Israel, though all this was true; and the hungry multitude of Galilee are again fed, though the disciples are not now called to do it; He takes the loaves and does it Himself. The baskets that contained the fragments are not now the number which is the sign of perfect government in man, but of special or divine perfection - seven, not twelve. It is grace above promise, and not simply divine power able to fulfil it.

This leads me to say a few words more in detail of chapter 14. The work of rejection begins; John is beheaded, and Jesus retires, but only to find a multitude whom He meets in grace. He then shews Himself as the Jehovah that was to satisfy the poor with bread, let Him be rejected by the nations as He may. He expects the disciples to understand and use this power; but they do not - they judge by sight. "Give ye them to eat." "We have here but five loaves and two fishes!" Then He sends the disciples away while He is on high, and joins them still in the ship, connected, I apprehend, with Judaism which He had left to cross the world by divine power - our part. But Peter cannot - only but for being helped he was sinking and (like the Jewish remnant) re-enters the ship, but with Christ. The walking on water was in principle church position, walking simply by faith to meet Jesus, with no known hold, only by faith. When He rejoins the ship, they own Him, not as Messiah in a carnal way and expectation as even the disciples had done, but as Son of God, which was just what the nation would not do, and the disciples practically never did, though God taught individuals so. The country of Gennesaret which once rejected Him now receives Him with open arms. It is a divine Person then here, when not only Israel but the disciples could not own, or at any rate profit by, His manifestation to Israel.

We have then, as noted above, the moral judgment of Israel's state and of their teachers; but again the disciples are without understanding. Yet in this very chapter, where essential divine principles of truth and grace are brought so clearly out, there is a special recognition of Israel. The Canaanitish woman not only called Him Son of David, but owned Israel as the children and herself as only a dog. The Lord takes this ground, though necessarily owning God to be good to others. And the people glorify the God of Israel.

125 On the whole, we have Israel rejecting the witness of God; Christ present as Immanuel, but the disciples unable to profit by it, left and rejoined; moral principles, of man's heart, and God's overflowing goodness; but plants must be of God's planting or rooted up; Israel rejected but owned. Still the Lord distinguished the disciples as possessed of personal faith (save of course Judas) - plants of the Lord's planting; and when He now simply leaves the Pharisees, He appeals to that faith; chap. 16. Ignorant as they were of God's ways and incapable of availing themselves of what Christ was, yet the inquiry addressed to their personal faith brings out the answer (given of the Father) of that on which the church should be built. They cling to Him - to His person when the nation rejected Him, and when even they could not profit rightly by His presence in Israel. But then, when Israel was for the time rejected, that person became the foundation of everything, and the Lord (who had put the question to draw out this distinctive faith, however prejudiced and buried in traditions even they were) at once recognises the direct teaching of the Father. Now Israel was gone, on this the church would be built. The contrast of verses 1-5, then 6-12, and what then follows, is very striking. Read in verse 18, "And I also say unto thee," in contrast with or addition to the Father's revelation, and also to Peter's confessing. He had said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Christ says, "Thou art Peter"; but this was the authority, the really divine or divinely given title to give a name.

The rest of the verse is a kind of parenthesis. By the revelation of what Christ was by the Father, he partook of the nature of the foundation, as all true believers do, though not distinguished as Peter. But the building of the assembly comes out as Christ's new revelation consequent on the setting aside of all preceding leading up to the Father's revelation of His Son (to Simon), triumphant by His divine Person and nature over death, whence Satan's power could not prevail against it, though Israel's (even the disciples') hopes were ended by His death. But the Son of the living God would on this title build a church over which hades' gate could have no power to prevail. Not Peter, but Christ builds the church; but Peter does administer the kingdom. Nothing is said to him as to having anything to do with the church - save a name, which shews his confession, put him into connection with it. For if the church was built on that truth, and he had confessed it as taught of God, he was in principle (though the church was not yet revealed or begun) on the footing of it as to his acknowledgment of Christ. Hence they are charged not to say He is "the Christ." The Father has revealed Him in another way. The kingdom of heaven Peter was to administer. Every scribe instructed into the kingdom of heaven brings out of his treasure things new and old.

126 The name of Christ on which the church was built was a wholly new revelation of the Father. So in the manifestation of the kingdom of the Son of man Moses and Elias disappear, the beloved Son in whom the Father was well pleased (not merely a faithful messenger) was to be Head. Now Peter was entrusted with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. What was administered on that ground did not exclude the old things thus. This again, though given in a voice, was the Father's revelation. Individually, Peter in both cases was as yet fully under the prejudices of a Jew as to the kingdom.

Matthew's Gospel

J. N. Darby.

<24018E> 127 {file section a.}

The presenting of God's grace in the Person of the Lord, in the Gospel of Matthew, brings before us in a very striking way, how the blessed Lord took our place, and was a pattern of ours in the relationship into which He has brought us by redemption, whether of blessing or conflict, only overcoming for us. Many, many passages shew His grace in it, but in this He takes the place itself. I refer to the end of Matthew 3 and beginning of Matthew 4. The law and the prophets were till John. Then the kingdom of heaven, as presently coming in, was announced. There was repentance for the people, but a new thing to be set up. The first step in good was receiving the testimony and coming to that repentance; and their hearts, touched by grace, go.

The gracious Lord could not let His people take one step alone. He goes to be baptized by John. He, I need not say, needed no such baptism. So John receives Him: "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" The Lord answers, "Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him." In Him it was fulfilling righteousness. Still He takes the lowly place. You, John, have your part to do, I mine. "Us" is not, I believe, a plural of dignity, though it is not of much moment; it refers to John as to Jesus: compare chapter 17: 26, 27, a beautiful example of the same grace, only there He shines out as a divine Person. The Lord does not identify Himself with rebellious and perverse Israel, but with the path of God, and those who were walking in it, but He makes Himself one of them when they had taken it. The word of God entered into the ear, and led the heart of His perfect servant as fulfilling all righteousness; the blessed Son of God. He has now taken His place amongst the godly and upright though feeble sons of men, the remnant according to the election of grace in Israel. His person and personal perfectness was there, but among them according to the will of God; and He gives us the pattern and model of that into which we are introduced by redemption according to the counsels of God. When He comes up out of the water, having taken this place, He stood according to the perfect will of God as man before Him. Here heaven must respond. Lo, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Holy Ghost descending upon Him.

128 Heaven may have been opened in glorious visions of the judicial throne or the like, but never before had there been an object upon earth to which they could be opened. Divine favour might rest on Abraham, and God visit him in grace, and Enoch who walked with God find a lonely way (once indeed though in a different form followed by Elijah) into heaven; but never were the heavens opened before to man upon the earth: now they were. Further, this blessed man was sealed* and anointed** with the Holy Ghost and with power. Thirdly, the Father owns Him, a man, as His beloved Son. Now this is all our place, of which He is here the type and pattern. Heaven is open to us, the veil rent from top to bottom, the way into the holiest open. We are sealed and anointed with the Holy Ghost, and the Father owns us as sons, loved even as Jesus is loved: only we of course have it through redemption and faith in Him; He was in it personally. But He gives us the full and blessed pattern of the place in which we stand. Our connection with Him in it, and His own taking it, its being His place, is not its least blessed feature.

{*John 6: 27.}

{*Acts 10: 38.}

Nor is this all. Here, in the Lord's taking this human place yet of full acceptance, the Trinity is first fully revealed. We find indeed remarkable intimations of it in the Old Testament, for the Son in Psalm 2 is Jehovah; people are to trust in Him; and the Spirit, I need not say, is continually mentioned. But it cannot be said it was clearly revealed. That was the effect of Christianity when the Son and the Spirit had come, and the Father was fully revealed in Him, and to us made sons. And in connection with His person it is so here. The Son was there as man, the Holy Ghost came upon Him, and the Father's voice came from heaven to own Him Son. What a wonderful connection for us to see Him identified with us, or rather ourselves with Him, and that in this place, He being Son, the whole Trinity comes out revealed, and in that He is a man. Take, as an example of the effect, 1 John 2: 28, 29; 3: 1-3; where the Godhead and manhood are spoken of in one sentence of the same person, only taking up each side as suited; but we are so identified with Him that, though glory be not revealed, this much is certain as to it, that when He shall appear we shall be like Him. Is not this a wonderful connection? If He was Jehovah's delight, rejoicing always before Him, His delight was in the sons of men.

129 Many such cases, and even reasonings from it, may be found in scripture. However, such is the Son's place as man, the model place for us. It is a blessed thought, and how precious becomes His love. Still remark how the person of the Lord is maintained in its glory. Heaven is opened to us as to Him; but when it is opened, is there any object on which His eye is fixed to give heaven its character to Him, and form Him after it as in Stephen, and to saints in their measure of faith? If heaven is opened, He is the object of it. It looks at Him, seals Him, owns Him here. He could not be on earth without heaven being opened on Him, the supreme object of every thought there. This we continually see. On the Mount of transfiguration Moses and Elias are in the same glory as Christ, and confer familiarly with Him of what was first in the counsels of God; but the moment Peter would put them on a level in some sort with the Lord, they disappear, and the Father's voice owns Him as the Son, His Son who was to be heard; and Jesus was found alone. So ever. Here then, the Lord having associated Himself with His people, we have the place into which He has brought them, Himself the model of it. It is His place. He is now gone to His Father, and our Father, His God, and our God.

But the blessed and gracious Lord has fully entered into our case, the place of His people, and He now takes that in which they are in conflict with Satan, as well as that in which they are in relationship with God. Thus anointed as man, He was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Many things here suggest themselves to the mind: the difference of the position of Adam and Eve, when they were tempted; the difference of the character of the forty days during which Moses and Elias were estranged, so to speak, from the common lot of humanity; but I confine myself here to the great fact of the temptation, and the Lord's undergoing it, as the other side of our position from our relationship in Him with God. Only remark that the temptation follows this. That is fully established, and it is as anointed therein of the Holy Ghost that He enters into it. The tempter comes to Him. The point of His temptation was to lead Him out of the place He had taken as man, and first out of that of obedience, or of a servant, His perfect place as man. If Thou be the Son of God, use your authority, speak so that these stones become bread. In a word, do an act of your own will, since you are nothing less than Son of God. But the blessed Lord holds fast to the simple place of obedience, of the servant, of man, but perfect Man.

130 But several things are to be noted here. First, He has no need to go farther than His own duty, no long controversy or reasoning with Satan. The latter comes with wile; but deceit has no place in simple duty, and the Lord, as a servant, occupies Himself with that, and it is enough. Next, God's will is His motive for acting, not merely His rule. That of course it was, but His motive also: an important principle. It is not selfwill arrested by a rule even cheerfully submitted to. The obedience of Christ has the will of God for the source of His actions. Thirdly, the word of God, the scriptures, are the adequate, complete, and sufficient expression of this for man. He quotes a text and that is all. But that is all God's will expressed for man. Man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Wondrous expression! It is divine, absolutely so in its source and character, out of God's mouth, but perfectly adapted for man to live by. There is nothing like that; only Christ is the living expression of it - the Word made flesh. Man may talk very high about it, as the foolish slave of the enemy, deceived by him; but a single text is enough for Him who is the Wisdom of God, the Lord, and enough for Satan, so that he has no reply. It gave Christ His place as man, and with that Satan could do nothing. He betrayed himself and his weakness if he suggested anything contrary to it. Scripture is enough for the Lord Himself, for man here below, and for the devil. It comes from the mouth of God and man lives by it. Christ guarantees this to us.

And note the occasion. Be it so, He could not fail; but He went through the trial. All depended on His victory. If the second Man had failed for man, there was no hope; but a text is sufficient: by it He gains an absolute victory. There was no reply to it. On the authority, truth, sufficiency, and suitableness of scripture, the victory on which all hope for man depended was founded and won. The last Adam had prevailed, and prevailed by it; Satan succumbed, and succumbed to it: only it was justly used by the Holy Ghost. No will was elicited by the temptation; obedience was, and its true character and power shewn.

131 Next, the enemy would draw Him out of confidence in God and therein too, out of the true path of obedience, for it would have been Christ's own will and act. Cast thyself down. He has promised to keep you: try and see if He will be as good as His word. Perfect confidence had no need to try, no will to exercise. Again, the word is quoted: "Thou shalt not tempt Jehovah thy God." Exodus 17: 7 gives us the true force of the expression, often used as a meaning pretty nearly the opposite to the true. We have need of perfect confidence to obey and to await the Lord's time. Anticipating the Lord's time is one proof of want of confidence and want of obedience. See the case of Saul waiting for Samuel. His confidence fails and his will works, and all is lost, though he thought to shew faith and service to God. Obedience and dependence, for which confidence in God is needed, were now fully manifested, and Satan had nothing to do but to shew himself, and then the case is simple: he is Satan and may go. For "resist the devil and he will flee from you." The Lord has destroyed his force, has bound the strong man. The first two cases are wiles. And then, abiding in the simple place of obedience according to the word, waiting for God's will, obedience to the word, and confidence in what is said that God will accomplish it, entirely frustrate every attempt of Satan. He may seek to lead us openly from God by the word, but it is owning the power of it. The word of God is absolute as to that. It is still "It is written," but it is not now simply obedience, but openly affiance to God, and all is simple; and if the heart be right, Satan, revealed as such, dismissed. Angels are the ministering servants of the obedient Son of man; so for us, as scripture shews; Heb. 1.

The way in which the Lord met the enemy is exceedingly instructive; but that to which I desired especially to draw the attention of your readers was the blessed way in which the Lord took our place, put Himself in it, a model and a pattern of ours for its simple but highest privileges, and in the combat which belongs to it, in which we are, and there, in the lowliness and perfectness of a servant's place, has shewn us to our path too. But in both He really was, and the combat now over as to the relationship and blessing, He is only in glory, but as man, and has brought us into it by redemption and grace. I know no more blessed picture of our connection with the Lord, the man of God's counsels, and that because we see Him in it alone in His own perfectness.

132 In what follows the temptation, we have the sum of all the Lord's ministry; not His discussions at Jerusalem, which have another character and are chiefly in John, in the midst of a condemned people, but amongst the poor of the flock, spoiling the goods of him whom He had overcome. The rejection of John was His rejection, the close of John's ministry the beginning of His own, and leaving Judaea He seeks the poor of the flock, where prophecy had already declared that the light should spring up. He was carrying on the testimony begun by prophets, and more immediately before by John the baptist, himself a testimony not to what was, but what was to come. His person, Jehovah in grace, in their midst, was the great testimony: but His ministry followed in the train of those who had gone before, only announcing the near approach of the kingdom and calling to repentance, because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. It is the same testimony as that of John Baptist, not owning the title of the people to have the kingdom as the people of iniquity (compare Isaiah 48: 2; 57: 21), but calling to repentance, separating morally those who had ears to hear, and on the ground that the kingdom of heaven was close at hand. But there is necessarily this difference between John the baptist and the Lord, that, though they may have surrounded him as a teacher, John pointed to another, while the Lord - and great grace it was - gathered round Himself: proof that a divine Person was there: such alone had title to do it. They leave all and follow Him. He is a commanding and binding power of attraction. The whole of His general ministry is summed up in verse 23. This single verse embraces characteristically His whole ministry. The two following state the effect: His fame spread through the country, so that sick were brought to Him, and He was followed by multitudes from all parts.

The history of His ministry is here complete, multitudes surrounding Him, which gave occasion to His taking His disciples apart to a mountain (though it appears the multitude followed so as to hear what He said), and teach them what were the real principles of the kingdom which was going to be set up. Such is the sermon on the Mount. The first sixteen verses give the whole positive statement of the character and position of those who belong to it in truth, or rather to whom it belongs. It is taken, remark, in its whole extent. First, the general character of those to whom it belongs, the poor in spirit, not the haughty of this world, but those who mourn in the midst of evil. It is a characteristic of grace when evil is in the place of righteousness. Peace-making characterises God. It is striking how peace is associated with God and His work. He is the God of peace. Peace on the earth is announced with Christ: He has made peace. "Peace be with you" was His twice repeated word. The fruits of righteousness are sown in peace. Pure in heart comes no doubt first, as elsewhere: first pure, then peaceable. Pure in Himself, He is at peace, and so makes it in grace. When we are pure in heart, the Spirit of peace seeks it in others.

133 In the fourth verse we see that the promises of the kingdom rise to its highest privileges. The moral character looked for in those who were to have part in the kingdom having been stated, rising to its highest privileges and activity in grace, the consequences in a world of evil, till it was set up in power, are then pointed out; persecutions for righteousness and persecutions for Christ's name. The former shewed the kingdom of heaven theirs, the latter pointed to reward in heaven itself. Thus, while verse 5 assures the meek of the earthly portion, this points to the possessions of the reward in heaven itself. Their position in the world is then stated, the salt of the earth and the light of the world - what is in contrast with and so far hinders the corruption of that in which it is, and the testimony of God's light to those in darkness in the world around.

We have thus the character fitted for the kingdom of heaven; its earthly and heavenly portion, but its carrying out in a state of things adverse to it, persecution, corruption, and darkness - only that which was of God in it. What follows is the relationship it bears to what had subsisted up to then, and the contrast with the workings of the human heart, which may put on the form of good, or render external service to God, but not have purity within, nor God for its motive in everything; which can listen to the words of God, but not build its house in obedience to them. The law is not referred to, save in the declaration that it and the prophets must all be fulfilled. It is not obedience, but fulfilling, every jot and tittle of it accomplished. What preceded was fully confirmed, but in the person of the Lord a new thing brought in. The lusts and unsubdued movements of the human heart are wholly disallowed. The Father's name is introduced, Christ declares His name, a very important element. The kingdom to be desired by the disciples was the Father's kingdom, though He, as to the present condition, be seen in heaven, while they were on earth. But love according to His ways was to be exercised, goodness without motive save in itself. They were there to serve, not to judge, but with insolent evil not to misapply their blessings. It was a strait gate and a narrow way, and few would go in at it. False prophets, for Satan would have every hindrance, would be known by their fruits.

134 The true character and condition of the children of the kingdom, the Father's name, and the contrast of this new place in holiness, grace, and obedience, with what had gone before, while sanctioning fully what God had given previously, the law and the prophets, which must all be fulfilled. Thus the true character of the ministry of Jesus the Lord, in grace and power, and in its bearing and character in Israel, is fully given from chapter 4: 12 to the end of chapter 7. Now begin the details of His personal presentation in Israel, so that what should have acted on the hearts and minds of those He walked amongst is fully set before us, ending in His rejection by and through that, for the time, of Israel, and the substitution of the church and kingdom.

Let us then now follow the blessed character of the Lord thus revealed, Emmanuel in the midst of His people. A leper comes to Him on His descent from the mountain, accompanied by the multitudes. None but Jehovah cleansed the leper, but Jehovah was there. The leper, while doing homage to the Lord and owning His power to heal of which abundant proof had been given, was not quite assured of His good will and readiness to do it. "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." But the Man of grace was there. Jesus put forth His hand and touched him. He is come to the sorrows and wretchedness of man - a man with them. One not to be contaminated, but in grace come to those who were; not driven away by the corruption and evil, but come to man when in them, touching him as man to relieve and help, yet Jehovah. Wondrous truth! "I will," who can say it, or say it with right or with effect? God. Why should He say it, when sin, and misery, and defilement were there to produce repugnance? Perfect grace - the grace man's heart was no way sure of - was there; divine goodness touching man as man, with the will to heal, but in power, man in his defilement, but to remove it from him: such was Jesus, Himself undefiled.

135 We can hardly have a more wondrous picture or presentation of His coming to the earth, Jehovah-Man, touching man in grace, power, and love, good-will to heal in grace, and present there with man. Grace is there - a word heals - the work of Jehovah, but Man touching, laying His hand on man. At the same time the Lord, while giving this proof of His divine presence, recognises the Jewish economy as still subsisting. The cleansed leper was to go to the priest and offer his offering for a testimony. In accepting it, they owned he was healed, they owned that Jehovah was there - Jehovah there in grace, but still owning Israel as to its standing. But this divine grace manifested in Israel, being divine, could not limit itself to Israel. A Gentile - owning far more fully, as not shut up in Jewish thoughts, the divine power that was in exercise, that the Lord could dispose of all things, as he sent his soldiers hither and thither - looks for mercy for his servant, but, with a faith which, as ever when it realises the divine presence, produced true lowliness of heart, counts himself unworthy that Jesus should come under his roof. A word from the Lord, ready as He was to go to him, sufficed, and the word was spoken. Such faith had not been found in Israel. It is for the Lord the occasion to declare that many from all parts, Gentiles, shall come and enjoy the promises with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and the children of the kingdom, its natural heirs, Israel, would be cast out into outer darkness. Faith and the person of the Lord take the place of natural succession, because God is revealed, and, as He must be if He is, in grace; and once revealed must have what suits Himself, and acts in a grace which is above ordinances. It was now because the person of the blessed One was there, As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. Yet He was still subject, coming in by the door, we have seen, to the law in Israel, yet in power, and grace could not be limited to it. Jehovah healing in Israel, a man amongst them, but one who must reach to the Gentiles, going forth in grace towards them.

But we have further traits of His character in this chapter. Not only is He Emmanuel in Israel, and the God of grace to Gentile need, but He is come for the sorrows and evils that sin has brought in here below. The sick mother-in-law of Peter rises up at His word and serves them, and the evil spirits depart at once from the possessed, and all the sick are healed. But it was not merely power. His heart was in it and felt it all. "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." His miracles were miracles of goodness. It was not merely some as a testimony, but deliverance from all the effect of sin and Satan's power. One was there who revealed God in goodness, able to remove all the effects of sin in man. He was there who did it and could give power to others to do it, not a mere confirmation of testimony, but He who was to be testified of, present in that power. Nor only that, but present as One who entered into them all. But He sought no honour from men, and when His works attracted the crowd, He left the place. It was His work, not admiration He sought.

136 And this brings out another side of His character as the Son of man. He hath not where to lay His head. Such an one as the doer of miracles, the scribes would follow; but He has not lost sight and would not have others lose sight of it, that He is the rejected One, hidden and despised in the world. "Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; the Son of man has not where to lay his head." If followed, He must be followed with nowhere in this world to go to; followed for His own sake only. And thus it involves following Him absolutely - with an absolute breach with all that is of the life of the flesh, however near or dear. "Suffer me first," will not do, though it seemed the strongest possible claim. If Christ was there and went that road, His disciples must follow Him and leave all behind, nor look back. He was come into the world because the world was far from God, and in it was gathering to Himself out of it. His disciples did follow Him, and into a storm where He seemed to have left them disregarded in danger, wholly regardless of their difficulties and danger. But foolish creatures that they were, that we are, they were in the same ship with the Lord. Was He, the centre of all God's counsels, the Lord of glory, going to sink, and all God's plans, by an accident? Alas, what are we! But the Lord was there and with the deep lesson - alas! how often to learn - of their unbelief, a word from Him calms the winds and waves. There was a great calm. And the men marvelled when they had not believed.

137 But we are not quite at the close of this presentation of Emmanuel, the Lord manifested on earth. He comes into the country of the Gadarenes. There the power of Satan meets Him, a power which was terror to subject man: a word from Him and all is over. The men possessed speak under the influence of those they were possessed by as if themselves. Man does not know how Satan governs and uses him when under his power; but, to shew the reality of it, the Lord suffers the devils to go out into the swine, and the unclean animals rush into ruin. But the quiet world will not have God's presence (Satan's it cannot help now); but if God's power and presence is revealed, it cannot bear this. They beseech Jesus to depart out of their coasts, and He went. So it has been with the world. In Luke we have more details and an application to other points. Here it is the great truth of the result of God's revelation of Himself in grace in this world. The world would not have Him, and He departed out of their coasts. Terrible as will be the end of the unclean vessels of Satan's power, the quiet world rejects the Lord. In general the chapter is in the midst of Israel, but shews the dealing in grace with the Gentiles and the judgment of the children of the kingdom; and here we have passed over to a wider scene without leaving Israel. God is ever the same, and the heart of man, but proved in Israel - the world has rejected Christ. It loves its quiet and ruin; the destruction of Satan brings with it the revelation of his power. But it is God that the people will not have. Our chapter gives us thus a full picture of the Lord's presence in the world in grace and power. He is there. In chapter 9 we have more the principles of His dealings.

We find in chapter 9 the work of the Lord, its character in grace; as His person, in chapter 8 (still more definitely in Israel), but rejected. The Lord returns to His own city (Capernaum), but away from the scene which closed the last chapter, which is complete in itself; the world rejecting Him, and He leaving it. Now He is again seen in the midst of His service in Israel. Faith brings one smitten in his body. The Lord is still here as Emmanuel, yet Man in their midst, but declares Himself there with the promised blessing of Jehovah's presence in grace. It is not here redemption, though indeed there could be no such forgiveness without it, but the application of forgiveness in grace in Israel as in Psalm 103, and for present blessing Israel must be forgiven. The Lord comes with it, and it is a direct testimony to forgiveness, or He might have simply healed as elsewhere. But when Jehovah came in grace, He forgave all their sins and healed all their infirmities. The Lord announces the presence of Jehovah to do the former. The scribes murmur within themselves, Who could forgive but Jehovah? But He who knows the thoughts was there and proves by the other part of the verse that the Lord was there in the power of grace. He heals the infirmity at once.

138 We may remark that in this, as in the last chapter, He takes the title of Son of man, His title of predilection in love to us, wider than Christ, which though He was, He did not come to take, and never takes in Israel. He is there as Emmanuel Jehovah, to save His people; but as Son of man, a title of all-importance; the One who takes the kingdom in glory from heaven; yea has all things under His feet. Christ never presents Himself as Christ. The Son of man was to be strong for God (Psalm 80: 17); but now He was to suffer. But God, though in the midst of His people, must, when down here, take, in His nature and work, His place in connection with men beyond all relationship in law, the rejected One on earth. The Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins; so the crowd says, "such power to men." Forgiveness then was there; and grace to sinners. He was there in that character. He goes and eats with publicans, having called Matthew who was one. It was not the outside which governed His path. God was there and the work was to be the effect of His presence and grace, not dependent on what He found. And He knew the heart, and the vessels to choose to be under the effect of that grace as instruments of it. But the principle of the work was the principle of grace; He came not to find, but to bring what was needed, and the vessels to receive it for service were vessels chosen, divinely known, and wrought by grace into new and fitting instruments. He is there then forgiving sins, and eating with sinners, but it is Jehovah who heals; Psalm 103.

But the revelation as to the work goes farther. It could not be put into old Jewish forms and take up what was there as vessels to hold it. A publican was to be an apostle, a Pharisee at best learn that he must be wholly born again. And none of the old forms of righteousness really connected with the flesh, and man in the flesh, could receive the new wine; the doctrine of grace in power came by Jesus Christ. All this belonged to flesh, but could not hold divine power. It had seemed to test man's flesh, but what was come now was divine power in grace, and what was wholly new must have its own vessels. Besides, the Bridegroom was there: it was not the time for the children of the bridechamber to fast. The time would come for that. It is striking how the Lord always holds out His own rejection as a part of His history. The Son of man must suffer, the Bridegroom be taken away. It was Jehovah there in grace, which could not adapt itself to the old vessels, and only drew out the hatred of man, and of Israel, who preferred its vessels as giving them importance, to God Himself, and that revealed in grace.

139 The following recital contains the true history of Israel. Coming to it as just dying,* He has to deal with it as dead, and can, but those who on the way with Him have faith in Him are fully healed when all help failed. The virtue and power of life was in Him, though in result He had to vivify a really dead Israel. Such is the history of the ministry of the Son of man - Jehovah in Israel. Two accessory effects of His power are added as to its special character as to Israel, appealed to under the name of Son of David. The general character, though manifested in Israel, yet in its nature goes beyond it - Jehovah and Son of man - and this it is which is of such profound interest to trace: but He was the Son of David in Israel. And in verse 27 we enter exclusively on Israelitish ground, where the spirit of the leaders is fully manifested, and the patience of the Lord still goes on in grace. The blind in Israel receive sight by faith in the Son of David, and here He is in the house, and He opens the mouth of the dumb there too: the attention of the multitude is attracted and owns it was never so seen: but if He casts out the devil's power, the leaders of the people call His power that of the devil. The spirit of unpardonable apostasy was already manifested; but Jesus had not finished His work of goodness in the midst of Israel, and He goes around cities and villages, teaching, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing. His heart moved for Israel, multitudes as sheep without a shepherd. For if Jehovah in goodness, His heart could be moved by what He saw as a man, and till that goodness found no more room for its exercise. His time was not hindered by the wickedness of those who were enemies; the harvest was yet plenteous, the labourers few. Oh, how the heart may still feel this! Still He will accomplish His work, have His sheep. Our part is to seek from the Lord of the harvest that He will send out labourers. In this chapter then we have the grace of His ministry, its true character, the ministry of Jehovah come in grace available to faith, but which must raise the dead; and as a present thing is refused and blasphemed. His person and His work have no place here save in grace. While this can work, He still goes on caring for all that may be reached.

{*Literally 'is now at her end,' see footnote, page 100.}

140 In chapter 10 He calls His twelve disciples and sends out labourers, giving them power, a new proof of the divine person with whom they had to do. It is not merely that He works miracles, a testimony to divine clemency come into the world, but He can give power to others to work them - power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease.

I have remarked that Matthew gives an order in his recital which is the mind of the Spirit as to the bearing of the facts (that is, after the birth and before the last scene at Jerusalem). The whole history, as such, between these epochs we have seen given in one verse at the end of chapter 4. We have here first the whole number of apostles chosen, as we see in Luke, after prayer, before the sermon on the Mount. One finds at the outset of their commission how the testimony as a present service is, in this Gospel, confined to Israel as enjoying Emmanuel's presence, though it could not end there, closing at the same time by Israel's rejection of that Emmanuel. God's presence on earth could but be only for Jews, if He was the minister of the circumcision for the truth of God. The twelve are forbidden to go elsewhere. The way of the Gentiles they were not to tread, and no city of the Samaritans was to receive their visit. The lost sheep of the house of Israel were to be the objects of their care. They were to preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. All evil was to be subject to them - death itself, the power of the enemy, and the sorrows and human ills brought in by sin - leprosy and all. And as they received gratuitously - Jehovah's power to use in their hands in grace - they were to use it in the same grace; and they were to trust His power and care equally and take no provision for the way. It was Jehovah who sent. They did His service, and the labourer was worthy of his hire. Jehovah's care was there, and they, as we read afterwards in Luke, lack nothing. Further, they were to seek out the godly remnant, inquire who was worthy in the city, and abide there, and the sons of peace were to receive a blessing. Those that refused this all but last testimony, and here treated as practically the last (there was only partially the seventy on His way to Jerusalem afterwards), were judged and rejected as worse than Sodom and Gomorrha. This verse closes the direct present commission. What follows from verse 16 continues indeed their service on the same mission, that is, exclusively to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but goes on beyond the Lord's rejection and on to His coming again (v. 22).

141 The full character of their mission as thus left to serve is gone into - persecution, death - but the Spirit of their Father speaking in them, and a care over them which counted the hairs of their head. But this part of the chapter shews how deeply the Lord felt His rejection in Israel, noticed as we have seen all through. The full power needed would be given no doubt every moment, but the testimony would draw out the passions of men in a way that would break through every natural tie. Relations of nature divinely formed would not resist the hatred of the human heart against the testimony of God, and they would be hated of all men for Christ's name sake; strange feeling, which only the hatred of man's heart against God can explain! They would be brought before kings and governors, for so the Lord would bring this testimony before the great and before the Gentiles: the hatred of the Jews would do it, a plain testimony that we are here still in Israel. But the hatred would be universal: they were to endure to the end. They were to go, when persecuted in one city, to another; nor would have gone through the cities of Israel till the Son of man came. It was Christ's portion. They had called the Master of the house Beelzebub: He looked at it fully; they must face it, if they were in the place of testimony; enough for them to be as He. But they were not to fear, all would come out and they were to be out in open daylight in service; death might be there on the road, they were not to fear but Him, who could judge and deal with body and soul both. But it is remarkable how the Lord, as to Himself and them, takes the power of evil for granted, though God was with full care of His own above all; yet till judgment came as to the present manifestations of power, evil reigned (compare Rev. 2: 10); for He, the power of God, was about to be rejected, and all this power of evil pressed upon His spirit in sending them out. Now indeed as Emmanuel present He guarded them, but in this second part the presence of the Spirit marks Him gone, and already treated as Beelzebub. Such warning is not found (though the fire was already kindled) in the first fifteen verses: but He knew His portion, and warned them of theirs. But they were of value to God, and not to fear. He is to be confessed before men at all cost. But nature and the flesh, which, as to power, He could have restored, were over in His rejection. What man broke through in hatred to God they must give up in devotedness to Christ.

142 The closing of the old creation is not here doctrinally taught, but the deep feelings of the Lord, as to the practical effect of the coming in of what was divine into the scene of man proved apostate by its effect, are wonderfully portrayed. It is not only the warning to the disciples (v. 21, 22), when the enmity is spoken of, but the general effect of His coming (v. 34-36). Peace on earth was not the word now, but enmity in the closest relations. Owning the Lord is intolerable to man. The closer the relationship, the greater the hostility. But Christ came a test of everything, and as His presence and the true confession of Him awakened hostility, so the heart of His servant must take Him, the new divine thing, instead of everything. The world had proved the incompatibility of the old and the new, nature as it was and grace, and the servant and minister of grace must give up all (v. 37). Christ tests the heart as well as the world. He was the rejected One. His servant must take up the cross and follow Him. Natural life was of course the track of nature, and that must be given up too in nature to find it new with God. But then they were thus associated with Christ, and he that received them received Him. The recognition of the testimony come into the world was the reception of Him of whom it spake, and the reception of Him was the reception of Him who sent Him, and whose Witness in the world He was. This was the turning-point, the owning Him, His name and word, if a cup of cold water only was given. The difference of verses 1-15, though the principle of testimony was the same, with verses 16 to the end is very marked; the power of the then final testimony with judgment on him that did not receive it, while He was there present as Emmanuel. and the moral mark in the world of a rejected Saviour. His grace continued in patience, but the fact that He was called Beelzebub had borne its witness in His soul. The present was a final testimony in Israel; the rest, the witness of a rejected Saviour; but all in Israel, save as it brought them as guilty before Gentiles.

143 This rejection and the entire change of dispensation and ground of relationship with God are fully brought out in the chapters which follow. When I say relationship, none could really be but on the new ground of grace; but I speak of God's ways. The Lord as yet continued His testimony in the midst of Israel. And thus the chapter (11) gives us a full view of the true position of the witnesses God had sent, and the real place Christ held; His place as founded on His person and personal grace contrasted with His coming after John in His service.

In the following chapter 12 we have the setting aside the old covenant or its principles, and nature's rest with it, with the full iniquity and judgment of the Jews on the other side. But in chapter 11 we have the open history and the secret history of all that was going on. Patience of goodness as yet continued, but all was now changing. The provisional service of John before Christ, and his favoured position in it, are fully recognised. The Lord delights to own His faithful servant in it: but it is over. He came after John, was before him, and it is in this character He is now coming out, though all the rest was true. John is in fact in prison, man's evil will and enmity already shewn as the unbelief of Israel towards the Lord (v. 20-24); and John himself must believe Christ on the witness He gives of Himself. He gives testimony to John instead of receiving it from him. The chief point in John's message is to shew this change, for though in prison some uncertainty doubtless had arisen in his heart - for if Messiah, Jesus brought no deliverance - yet his heart was all right. He did not doubt the testimony of Him to whom he sent. The Lord throws the answer on the testimony all had, which His word and work rendered to Himself, yet as already the rejected One in whom the reasoners of the people were offended: blessed he who was not. The Lord then proceeds to give testimony to John Baptist, but with witness of the coming change - change which His person brought in, for as a divine person He receives not testimony from men, but He gives it to His faithful servant. And John was only a forerunner of the thing itself that was to come: the least actually in it was greater than he. Of born of woman, of gifts to Adam's children, none was greater; but the kingdom set up by Emmanuel was on the other ground, founded on the second Adam. The law and the prophets dealing with men in flesh had reached up to John: since then the kingdom of heaven was preached (not come). And this was no matter of giving a law to an acquired people alive in the flesh, or recalling them to it, but set up with flesh opposed and trial brought in. The energy of faith alone could make its way into it. This, if faith could receive it, was the Elias to come - was he who had gone before Jehovah in his spirit and power, this special coming of Jehovah; but in grace, not in judgment.

144 The rejection of His testimony is now definitely entered on, and the true character of what was taking place. He shews the state of the people as to the reception of John and Himself (v. 17-19). Warnings and grace were alike rejected. But a remnant, wisdom's children, justified God's ways in both. Such was the state of things. Then the Lord comes especially to His own testimony and the mighty works by which it had been confirmed. It was not merely moral warning closing the old warning, the list of prophets owning Israel and doing no miracles, but the manifestation of power and one working miracles claiming attention by divine power, not reckoning on any present acknowledgment of Jehovah on which the word as of the prophets could be based. It was a Person present, Himself the subject, source, and power of testimony, its object, and that from which it flowed. But Israel would not repent. His works left them without excuse, His grace made the sin the greater. It would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrha in their day of judgment, than for these cities; such was the testimony they had rejected.

But now we come to what was inside all this, the glory of His person known to none, and the revelation made by Him of that name of grace which, in the rejection of the Son and Servant, was brought out for the soul of him that was weary in a Christ-rejecting world. The unbelief, justly rebuked by the Lord, found with it no gall nor bitterness in the spirit of the blessed Lord, so that He should not be pure with His Father, it only threw Him from man into the fulness of the mind of God; but first in lowliness and submission in the place of the servant, ascribing all to His Father, yet as Son, perfect submission, but entire confidence of love, thus intelligence clear, no delay in solving the mystery, seeing it on the side of God. At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father. Then He is owned as supreme in everything, Lord of heaven and earth, and with the owning of this supremacy, the sense of the fitness of the dealing; human wisdom failed, it was fitting, necessary; how should it, base and earthly, understand divine ways? They were hidden, and hidden by the Lord of all from the wise and prudent. He puts man's wisdom in its place, its true moral place. But grace revealed them to the simple and unpretending, the unsuspecting confidingness of the babe. So it seemed good in the Father's sight; man, and old things with him, had passed away; Christ, the second Man, the Son in grace, replaced them all.

145 No one knows Him but the Father. The Father in grace can be known through Him, but God come as man in the form of a servant, none could know; and though He had presented works and words which left them without excuse in His service, yet His person none could know. But this submission, and relinquishment of all as sent, brings into His own spirit what belongs to Him in the place He now was in His person and service. All things were delivered to Him of the Father; the Son and faithful Servant had now all things in His hands, in this new place where He received them indeed, for He made Himself servant, but as Son; for He could not cease to be that, whatever His service; and now rejected of all, none knew, nor, in this His personal glory, could know Him; but He knew, and in this place revealed the Father. In this place of grace He stands alone, unknown of all (being in His service and testimony to them in their place rejected) and alone in sovereign grace to reveal the Father - that is, He who sends the Son in grace, and in such a world wholly tested, and its history, that is, man's and Israel's, over in His rejection - to say, "Come to me." If there were hearts weary of themselves and a world that thus rejected Him - perhaps could not well explain why, but weary of evil - though evil - let them come to Him. This solitary place of Christ, in grace revealing the Father, is very striking. Heir of all things, and the Son revealing the Father, but the deposit - thus alone the beginning of all anew from the Father - of all grace and perfect grace, rest for the weary, not help, though help He does, but rest by the revelation of this grace.

146 But there is another thing that then comes, but comes after this, though accompanying it: "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me." The first point was He had brought the grace and rest for him who came to Him by it, but He had shewn in His rejection the lowliness and meekness which bowed to the Father's will and accepted His rejection, looking absolutely to His Father's will and good pleasure, and thus thanking, even in the midst of sorrow, not looking at the evil to be vexed, but to His Father out of it working in His wise and holy ways. Meek and lowly of heart He gives rest to the soul; as to its state, perfect rest through the knowledge of grace, with God by coming to Christ, and rest of heart through lowliness and the absence of all working of will. His yoke is easy and His burden light, the one which He had borne.

It is interesting to see how what is stated doctrinally in John 1 is here wrought out experimentally in the history of Christ, as heretofore remarked, that the first three Gospels present Christ to men, and result in His rejection. John begins with His rejection and presents the person of Him who was rejected, and man must be born again, and then the Comforter when He was gone, and an elect remnant with others such, among the Gentiles, the Jew reprobate. Compare too chapter 17.

Chapter 12 presents the setting aside the old system, first by the principles of the new, and then by the full judgment of the wickedness of the leaders of the old, and closes with the declaration that Christ's connection was not with those with whom He was naturally united according to the flesh; but with those who received His word. Judaism was over. Judah or Israel was neither the true servant nor the true vine, but Christ; and those who received His word, the branches; for John still gives in doctrine what we learn here experimentally. The question as to the old and new principles rested on the sabbath. Law and grace were connected immediately with it, for the sabbath was given as God's rest, and a seal of the covenant; but the old as the rest of the first creation. The new principle flowed from the person of the Lord, Jehovah, Son of man, withal present on earth, and the grace in which He came. But He is still viewed as the rejected Messiah; to this the Lord refers. His disciples rubbed and ate the ears of corn; the Pharisees object that it is the sabbath, and they put the question, "Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?" The rejection of God's Anointed dissolves the bond of legal enactment. All was common, there was no rest in nature possible. For a fugitive David the bread was in a manner common. And the priests in the temple itself profaned the sabbath to maintain the command of God, and circumcise sinful flesh and accomplish the due service of God. But One greater than the temple was there. The setting of mercy above sacrifice, moral intelligence of God's ways in grace, would have saved them from their mistake in condemning even the Lord Himself. The Son of man was entirely above the ordinances of the law. The One who was to come in glory, set over all the works of God's hands, was above not only in His person and place (for He was the Ancient of Days) but as the new head of all things, alone seal of the old covenant. He is, as Son of man, Lord of the sabbath too.

147 Another principle was, that power was there in grace. These hypocrites would have done more for their own interests. It is lawful to do good on the sabbath. Thus with a rejected Messiah, old things were gone, the Son of man was Lord of the sabbath, Jehovah wrought in grace, and old things really had passed away. The animus of the leaders was shewn, and Jesus withdrew Himself according to the prophetic character given to Him. He sought no rumour, nor glory for Himself; still His power would burst forth and bring the Gentiles under His sway, and they would trust in Him. For the rejected Messiah the sabbath was gone, and rest over for the world. Jehovah in grace wrought in mercy and had not rest in man's sorrow, and the Son of man, the glorious One, was above the ordinances of the sabbath, Lord of it, the head of the new creation.

But the Lord continues His work of patient grace, destroying the power of the enemy, though seeking no present glory nor lifting up His voice in the streets. But the Pharisees, unable to deny the power with which He wrought, attribute it to Satan. This brought all to a crisis. To speak against Christ in blindness could be pardoned, but to own the power and call the Holy Ghost Satan was unpardonable. It was open antagonism to divine power undenied. The Lord shews the folly of it, Satan destroying Satan's kingdom. It was the fruit of the abundance of their heart, and that wilful enmity against God in goodness, and every word spoken shewed what was there, and men would be judged by such. They are given up. The only sign they would now have was Jonas, a rejected one in the tomb. But men of Nineveh and a queen of the south would rise up in judgment with that generation, for a greater was there in testimony than Jonas or Solomon, a greater prophet, a greater and wiser king.

148 Their final judgment is pronounced. The old unclean spirit (of idolatry and rejection of Jehovah) would return with seven others worse, and Judah's state be worse than when they went to Babylon. Then they were judged for the former sin (see Isaiah 40-48), now for rejecting the Son of man (Jehovah Emmanuel in grace) see Isaiah 49-57 (though their restoration is also taught): the end would be the giving up the nation to the worst power of the enemy. Here the deliverance is not spoken of; it is the state of the generation. And then the great result, present result, as to Christ, to which I have alluded (present ties by birth in flesh as Son of David and man on the earth) gives place to those formed by the word in the hearts of the sons of men - of the sons of grace, who did His Father's will. It is the close, not of goodness even here below, but of the history of a Christ presented to Israel and man; and the beginning of the going forth of the fulness of grace in a divine person; and the Word that brought the blessing in grace with it, and sought no fruit on His vine nor reception from man in flesh. A sower went forth to sow; and all is formed on this footing. He leaves the house, for Israel had been Jehovah's habitation; but, for the present at least, it was left by Him, and He goes to the sea-side - the moving multitude of the world - and there taught.

The first parable then gives the general character of the Lord's work. He is a sower sowing the seed of the word to bear fruit. And this parable is individual, not a likeness of the kingdom of heaven. The great principle is that the Lord brings with Him what is to produce fruit, He does not seek it in the field. It stands alone thus in the seven. The other six are similitudes of the kingdom of heaven. It is not on the other hand the teaching as to the effects of grace but of sowing; as manifested in result as to the fruit produced, one only of four produced any. Satan took away at once what was sown in the first. Conscience not being reached, the profession sprang up at once in the second, and when trouble came, because of this it was given up as lightly, and withered. In the third case there seemed more hope, but the cares of this world and lusts of other things choked it, and the man is unfruitful. In one the word of the Blessed was understood, the conscience and heart, the need of the soul awakened, received it, and various degrees of fruitfulness followed. The first did not understand - nothing was awakened, it rested on the surface. The two others seemed to receive, but it came to nothing. All, I repeat, is individual here, a constant truth, but an immense change from seeking fruit in the nation. It is put thus to him who has ears to hear, urgent and individual.

149 The disciples ask why He speaks in parables, and in His answer He makes at once the solemn difference of the position of the disciples. To them who had received His word it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but to the mass of the people it was not given. They saw, and saw not; they heard and heard not, nor understood; and the judgment pronounced in Isaiah was fulfilled in them, and they were not to be treated as a nation then: all was over with them. To him that had more would be given, and he would have abundance. From him that had not would be taken even what he had. So with that people. But the eyes of the disciples were blessed, for they saw; their ears, for they heard; they saw and heard what many favoured of God had desired to see and hear, and had not. Here we see clearly the people held as rejected and blind, and the remnant separated to Christ for the knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom, but for this very reason a kingdom with a rejected king, and which took a form that was the consequence of this.

These similitudes of the kingdom of heaven begin with verse 24. There are six: three addressed to the multitude, and three, with the explanation of one of the first three, to the disciples. I will not here enlarge because these parables have been so often explained, but give some general remarks connected with the point we are at in the Gospel.

By this rejection of the king, and His going on high, and not taking the direct power of the kingdom till His return (compare Mark 4: 26-29), the kingdom of the heavens had become like a man who sowed good seed in the field, etc. We have only had the fact of His rejection on earth and breach with Israel and the world, and the fact of what the kingdom was made like. The further truth of His exaltation and what flows from it are here; it is the kingdom such as it had become by His rejection, and I may add the kingdom on the earth, only that in the last three we have the thoughts of God as to it. The only allusion to what is out of this world is the gathering the wheat into His garner. But this is not explained. In the explanation the Lord returns to the earth again.

150 On the earth the crop should be spoiled. This would not hinder the wheat from being brought into the garner. Note, here only we have the Son of man sowing formally affirmed. It may be supposed in a general way in the mustard seed, but it is merely the fact of a small seed sown and a great tree produced, but here we have good distinctively sown by the Son of man, and another sowing by the enemy; and the effect of each, though in the same field, has its own distinctive character, and even manifestly so to the servants though they could not remedy it. If they meddled with the evil plants, they would pull up the wheat with them, and so did those who attempted it. But this was not in the church, it was in the field, the world; for our individual conduct we have other directions in the epistles, and in our church conduct. This was a question of service towards others of the servants personally in their place of servants, and plucking up evil ones out of the field, which was the world, and of nothing else. Satan's work in spoiling Christianity as a result here below, called Christendom, cannot be remedied by Christ's servants; it is a matter of judgment and divine power carried on by the instrument of that power, and in part providentially. We do not reap, cut down out of this world, either to lodge fruit in heaven, or to arrange evil in itself on earth. God will do that otherwise by His power. Indeed in this parable the servants do nothing at all. They have the intelligence of Christ as to what is going on, and what the crop is, and how it came about. This parable is the full and explained account of the whole scene in its sources, their effects, the general result here, and the intervention of God to close the scene and the effect and manner of that.

But the explanation belongs to the disciples, not to the multitude. For them, the whole scene on earth is unfolded, but not manifested judgment and its effects; that belongs too to the disciples, to the communications of Jesus to them in the house. The providential gathering of tares, God's judicial acts in the world (for it is part of the course of the history of the kingdom here), and then the single heavenly fact in the whole series - "gather the wheat into My garner"; both which are left unexplained - that is, the bundles of tares and the garner. It was necessary to introduce them, or the after public effects on earth would not have had their place, but they are no part of the parabolic instruction in itself; that is the kingdom on earth. The end of the present scene is the providential gathering of the wicked in corporate bodies, and the taking of the saints into heaven. The judgment exercised on earth will have other effects. How the evil came in is stated to the multitude, a needed instruction for all. While men slept, Satan was active. The irremediable consequence has often been noticed, and I do not go farther into it here, though of all importance.

151 All this belonged to the public history of the kingdom of heaven. The explanation of the next two has to be rather limited than extended. It is the fact - not directly by the sowing of the Son of man - that the planting of Christianity would result in a great political power, and would fill a limited sphere with a system of professed doctrine. I recognise fully that leaven is always used in a bad sense; there is no sowing of the word here that produces plants which grow up from it, not a leavened mass; and it is intended, I doubt not, to shew it was not this. But the object was not to shew it was bad, but the mere filling a mass with a system, not the word of life to souls. Moreover, when individuals are spoken of, we have plants in the kingdom or fishes out of the sea. Care is taken to shew it is not the word which works effectually in those that believe, but a general effect, and for this a word always used elsewhere for evil. We have then the general effect of Christ's work spoiled, as a whole, in this world by the enemy, and irremediably spoiled here; a great political power in the world, and a general profession spread through a limited sphere. I do not take the birds in verse 32 for evil spirits, but as used to shew the power to protect and shelter found in the tree, just as in Nebuchadnezzar's case in Daniel.

Having gone into the house the Lord explains the parable of the tares and wheat, and gives three more parables. Besides what I have said, there is only to remark that we have the actual judgment in this world at the end of the age. The Son of man gathers out of His kingdom, here on earth, all things that offend - no evil things allowed there - and those that do iniquity; and they are cast into a furnace of fire. Then the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father: I doubt not the heavenly part of the scene, but manifested in glory, not the joy within, but the glory without, still the Father's kingdom; and men are warned and encouraged to give heed. Then the Lord gives further parables, shewing His true intent and the divine mind in what was doing, however He might be rejected.

152 The kingdom of heaven was carrying the mind of God, however the Christ might be rejected, or its development on earth spoiled. The Lord had found a treasure hid in the field of this world. This was not Israel; Israel would none of Him. It was Israel's responsibility, and was over. Here He was seeking, He was acting, and takes the world because of what was there to be found in it, His heavenly people; and had given up all His earthly title and place to take this. It was worth while. Surely He shall have it more gloriously as Son of man, but He gave all up then and took the world, for all things are now His. But it was not only the value of His people in His sight, but He knew and judged of the moral beauty the nature and heart of God desired. He was it; and the heavenly saints alone, formed into His likeness, answered to this delight. He sought goodly pearls - understood what was beautiful, found one very precious one, and gave up all and bought it. Think what a privilege, what an unspeakable privilege to be the express and singular object of divine delight! For the treasure and the value He had for it, He bought the whole world, has a title to all, but with the treasure as His object; but here He seeks what can be the divine delight, and has one thing which can be the satisfying object of it. It is wonderful. We can understand why we are taught to be imitators of God; why the beatitudes express Christ's character; why the exhortation in Philippians 2 is the exact portrait of what Christ was. To have this object of His moral delight, Christ gave up all He was entitled to as Son of David then. The wickedness of man may reject Him, and shew what he is, and this we have learned in Matthew; but God always pursues meanwhile His own counsels.

There remains the parable of the fishes, also connected with the counsels of God, but carried out with intelligence by men who serve Him. Here only we have introduced the activity of men other than the Lord. Before, it was the Lord who sowed and the servants were only told they could do nothing. In the treasure we clearly buy no field to have Christ, nor do men naturally seek goodly pearls and so find Christ. Here, though the comparison be the net itself first, yet the fishermen have their part and their object and work when the net is full. The net has not gathered all fishes nor embraced all the sea, but gathered a net-ful out of it, and of every kind; and then when full they sit down and select the fish that are proper and put them in vessels. The service in the beginning was of a different kind. Either the Lord added such as should be saved, or the word acted individually. All that came were received into the flock, though soon false brethren found their way in. They were put into vessels, but not out of a net full of every kind. This is at the end, when as a fact there is a net full. Then comes quiet and deliberate selection; they sat down, when it was drawn to shore, when the gathering work had taken place, and took out the good ones and put them into vessels. Their business was with the good ones (they were their object), and as intelligent fishermen they selected them and put them into vessels. With the bad fishes they had nothing to do, they cast them away and put them into no vessels. It was sufficient to reject them and leave them cast away on the shore. They were not left in the net. By the selection the net-ful was done with, and the bad fish rejected, but left on the shore as they were. But their object and their occupation was about the good fish; they put them with deliberate care out of the net into vessels. The net full there was no more, a solemn thought in itself.

153 So, when the servants came to the householder to have his mind, there was nothing for them to do with the tares: only there, in the public field, as at the beginning, the Lord having sowed, the crop was spoiled and remained so. The Lord's servants had nothing to do with tares as to their service. Angels would make the separation in judgment. So here, the servants have to do with the good and gather them out of the net. Afterwards at the end of the age the angels have to do with the wicked. They gather the wicked from among the just and cast them into a furnace of fire. They leave the just here where they were: with this judgment the fishermen had nothing to do; their business was with the good fish, to put them into vessels; with the bad they had only to reject and have done with them. The disciples had thus the old things of prophecy, the earthly things of the kingdom, and the new of the kingdom which they now learnt. But He who could with divine wisdom teach them these things was in His own country only the carpenter's son. There He could do but little.

154 Chapters 14, 15, seem to me of considerable importance. In this respect, that they introduce the abiding patience and grace of Christ as Jehovah when Israel is already judged, and the kingdom announced as coming in in mystery; so that His person and personal grace, and that even towards Israel, remained unchanged, only must go out beyond in the nature of things. We have now not Israelitish dealings, but the abiding character of the divine Person as in the end of chapter 11, when, I repeat, the kingdom as set up in His absence had been fully announced, as after these chapters we have the church and the kingdom in glory fully announced; but here Himself. John had been beheaded by the Idumean and Roman king in Israel, but He that satisfieth the poor with bread in Israel is there. He felt the blow of John's death and retired, but when the need of the people came, Jehovah was there. He satisfies the poor with bread, Psalm 132; here, with a character connecting itself with the full establishment of governmental order* in Israel in man, though man would not have Him.

{*In the number twelve, the loaves, the tribes, and all connected with this, the twelve apostles as connected with the kingdom, the twelve stars on the woman's head in Revelation 12.}

Then Jesus goes up in His human character on high to pray, and the disciples are sent away alone on the stormy sea first, and He dismisses the multitude of Israel, taking the other place of intercession on high. When going to rejoin the disciples He walks on the sea; I apprehend the church's or Christian's place, the path of pure faith or of power, and faith in power with no ship, no boat, as a refuge: nothing external or human, as Israel was. The question then and particularly at the close, as a fact, is faith, personal faith in the Lord Himself. "If it be thou." Then if the eye is off Jesus, we are in no place at all for man to walk in. Peter began to sink. We can easily understand this, but it was really folly. He saw the wind boisterous, but He could no more have walked on a smooth sea than on a rough, and if the Lord was there on a rough as well as on a smooth. It was a question of faith and looking on the Lord, not on the sea, and so of himself. But Jesus will enter into the ship, again the earthly and human order, though glorified not humbled; then the wind will cease, and all in that ship will own Him Son of God, and the world that once rejected Him will own His power and presence, and gladly.

155 Such is the scheme, if I may so speak, connected with the Lord's unchangeable faithfulness and love to Israel as Jehovah, though leaving the remnant that had owned Him to themselves for a time. We have now the moral and simply divine character which cannot be hid or confine itself to Israel. First we have Jewish or formal religion judged, God's commandments hypocritically set aside, and especially by the clergy and religious doctors for their traditions. Superstitious gifts to the clergy are specially noticed and outward forms; but the whole result of this teaching was, the people in general drawing near with their lips, but their hearts far from God; where human commandments are introduced, men worship God in vain. If man's tool passed on the altar, said the law, the altar was defiled. But human nakedness was equally defiling. Man's religion was condemned, but man's heart was condemned with it, man was set aside as well as Israel. Not what went into the mouth defiled a man, but what came out. Soon is stated what did; but first the leaders of the Jews, as the leaders of fleshly religion always are and must be, were offended at the rejection of a religion which heartless flesh and hypocrisy could fulfil, and the judging of all that came out of the heart. But all was over, though grace went on with flesh and the Jewish system. The Lord dismisses them with the short judgment, they were not plants of His heavenly Father's planting. Now every plant which His heavenly Father had not planted would be rooted up. The fallen earthly system was over, only what He planted He would own. All else would be rooted up.

Such was the public judgment. It was not now Israel or their hypocritical and self-righteous leaders who could pass. Judgment was on all not planted of the Father of Christ, characterised here as heavenly. But to His disciples He goes farther, and shews not formal hypocrisy judged, but what does come from the human heart, and this was evil of every kind. Has He, full of love and goodness, nothing to say of good that would come from it? not a word. These are the things which defile a man. Thus the moral judgment was complete, first of the formal systems, which Judaism now was; the reality of heavenly planting, the only thing owned; all human religion vain, and interiorly and spiritually the human heart judged.

156 All was said as to man; but only to bring in sovereign grace. And now Jehovah's grace above all this appears, but as still owning Israel - for that is a main point in these two chapters when just going to set it aside (chaps. 16, 17) for the church, the kingdom, and the heavenly kingdom and glory. He is giving Israel up. Grace is going out in grace fully, according to divine fulness and prerogative; He is giving up His present place of Messiah there. God must be greater than that; still Israel's place is owned, though not set up in strength now. He goes where the cities noted for hardness of heart had their coasts, and a woman of the accursed race of Canaan meets Him. She takes Him on the ground of His place in Israel, "Thou Son of David." What had a Canaanite to do with that? He has no answer as such. The disciples put self first: Get rid of her (by granting her request), for she cries after us. The Lord in reply formally takes His place in Israel. "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Then she comes up and pleads with Him, and meets with what seems the hardest answer. "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to [Gentile] dogs." The woman takes this place too. She owns the promises to Israel, Israel's rights; she owns them to be the children, but the felt want (through grace) drives her right to the heart and goodness of God Himself. It was so: she had no right, she was only a dog; Israel was in the place of the children. But there were resources in God for even the dogs, they might eat of the crumbs from their masters' table. God's appointment and purposes (the true divine place of Israel) were owned, but the heart and goodness of God reached; masters they might be in God's plans, she owned it (that is, Him). But He who gave children's bread to children could supply the need of those who were not, and had but the crumbs around to look to. Christ could not deny the goodness of God, or limit it to Israel, however as sent He might own their exclusive title; but the sent one was Jehovah in Israel and could not be less than Himself, or other than God in His nature and goodness.

And now see how faith and God's character meet. I have thus spoken of the dispensational character of this history. Recognising Israel fully, the divine Person there necessarily over-passes its limits, but the moral character of the circumstances are of the deepest interest. Great faith produces great humility. There is the full recognition not only of entire unworthiness, accepting the place of a dog, but that there is no right, no claim, no promise, but then through grace, by reason of this, she goes right through to the goodness of God in Himself. That is true faith; she, as Christ, owned the dispensations of God, His right to have a people of His own, but saw Him revealed, Himself in Christ, and her need met the riches of the grace and love which were in Him. It is thus need by faith meets God, God Himself in goodness, but revealed in Christ, as part of the goodness was so to present Himself. We may learn afterwards to joy in God, when we know Him; but here we meet Him and as He is, as He puts Himself forth in Christ to be met. Hence Christ, to manifest this faith, puts forth the dispensational side in the strongest way, that faith, going on the ground of need, might pierce through all this up to God Himself, as the divine nature and goodness pierced through in Christ the place of service He had taken in Israel. And thus the simplicity of need meets the riches of God's goodness by means of grace in Christ on one side, and through grace, faith on the other. In this respect it is a beautiful scene. And this is, I think, progress.

157 First it is Son of David, and this was right and true recognition of the promise and Christ's title to it. But then there is no answer. Then she comes more simply in her need, and, doing Him homage, says, Lord, help us. This brought an answer, but that He was sent to Israel, not to Canaanites; it was not meet to give the children's meat to dogs. And then she takes her full place of a dog with no title, but there was goodness enough in God, riches and plenty enough for such. The blessed Lord could not say there was not. He was it there, and then He recognises the woman's faith. Her desire was to be met according to itself - as thou wilt. But the woman has all the great principles of Paul's gospel in the world. Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers, and that the Gentiles should glorify God for His mercy.

In what follows in the chapter we have the great general truth of the position of Christ brought out. He returns to His place in Israel where the light was to spring up; manifests His divine power and goodness in delivering from every evil, and the multitude glorify the God of Israel, but it is not now the twelve baskets full. It is not in the character of perfect ordained human power. The baskets are seven. The perfection remains, but it is purely divine in its spiritual character, not developed in human government. It remains, but it remains divine.

158 In that which follows we have the positive preparation for that which was going to take place before we come to the history of the event itself. That which was to take the place of Christ owned on earth is given, and in giving this, the inapprehensiveness of the disciples themselves, both as to intelligence and power, not that of Israel. Testimony to them as under their present leaders, and in their present state for the then mission of Christ, was closed. But with all the incapacity of the disciples to avail themselves of the grace of Christ then present, the revelation of what was to be the foundation of that which was to take the place of it, and of the coming glory, as well as what was the path to this, was made to some or all of them. But of the whole present position of Christ they were wholly unable to seize the true character, or use the power which belonged to it. This incapacity of the disciples is somewhat prominently brought forward in these chapters (16, 17). Still the revelation of what was needed for the new state of things coming is made to them. The Pharisees come with their unbelieving request of a sign; but the answer now is short - no sign but Jonas, Christ lost to Israel in the grave - and He left them and departed: only warns the disciples against their doctrine. But the testimony to the divine power and presence of Christ had left the disciples still without any intelligence which recognised who He was, so as to own Him as testified of down here.

But here the patience of the Lord waits upon them and recalls the testimony so that they at length understand His warnings, but present understanding of His actual position there was none as then come; nothing in their state available in divine service for Him as then revealed or even available for their own souls. They were attached to His person and this was real, but no intelligence, and, as we shall see, no power by faith in what He was, but here the want of intelligence was marked. Still the Lord's works had drawn attention everywhere, and the Lord asks them the effect of this on the people. It was various: opinions were formed, and there it ended. Some said one thing and some another.

159 But unable as the disciples might be to appreciate Christ as then there, God revealed to Simon Peter in an especial way that which was to be the foundation of the new blessing. That is, we find here, as all through, the two things, Christ presented to Israel then, and His person behind all that. Only here we find besides, the disciples unable to seize the former, and God revealing to one at least the latter. We know that all confessed Him such. "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." The Christ of course they owned Him, but here was a special revelation: His divine person as Son, Son of Him in whom was the divine and eternal power of life. This was demonstrated in the resurrection, but was there in His person: that He was the Christ they were not to say He was any more. This was over in Israel, His true name there; but on the name, being the Christ, of the Son of the living God, He was going to build His church. Here was the new thing. The Son of the living God revealed, and the church built by Christ on this great truth. The first full grand revelation of the new thing, ever in the counsels of God, but set up in Israel's place during their rejection, here, but for ever in heaven. Against this the gates of hades, the power of Satan should not prevail. Based on the person of Christ, Son of the living God, Satan could not succeed against it. This power of life proved and exercised in resurrection victorious over death and hades, the power of death which had prevailed against the first Adam could not prevail against this. Such was the great truth, but many things require notice here.

Jesus recognises it as a new and special revelation; not flesh and blood, but His Father who was in heaven had revealed it to Him. It was a positively heavenly and personal revelation, not drawn, however justly, even from prophets and teachers; not merely that there was a Christ or even a Son, but a direct revelation of His Father in heaven, made to Peter, that Jesus was the Son of the living God. The prophets no doubt spoke of Him to come, and there was sufficient evidence that Jesus was He; but here was a personal revelation, the foundation of the new thing, the church.

Next, it was personal to Simon. The whole ground of the blessedness was that it was a personal revelation: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonas, for  - " This was the ground, though prophetically given before, why he was called Peter, but a particular special new revelation was the ground of the whole matter. A successor to a revelation to Simon Bar-jonas is nonsense, because he only has it. He only who has the revelation can have the place the revelation and it only gives. He was blessed and called Peter because he had it. On this immovable rock, the Son of the living God revealed and known, the Lord's church was to be built.

160 But, further, who is the builder? The Lord only. "I will build"; not "I am building." He was going to build it. But He only was the builder, and it is not finished yet. But His work no power of hell can prevail against. But it is only His work, what He builds. Hence, when Peter alludes to it in his epistle, he has no idea of being a builder, any more than a foundation. "Unto whom coming [the Lord], as unto a living stone . . . ye also as living stones are built up," 1 Pet. 2: 4. They come and are built up, as living stones are built up. They are built on the Lord, as living stones they come. There is no human builder, and Christ is that on which they are built. Whatever others did, I suppose Peter understood as taught of God what his Master said. But Paul, speaking of the church in the same way at the end of Ephesians 2, says the same thing: "In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord." There is no human builder, and Christ is the chief corner stone. There is a house of God where there are builders; 1 Cor. 3. Paul was a wise master-builder. Others might build wood, hay, and stubble, which Christ never does: corrupters might corrupt it. Here man was builder and his work might all be burned up.

I only notice this that by the contrast we may see the more clearly what is spoken of here: not a corporation subsisting at any one given time upon earth, of which scripture does speak, but of a working going on and wrought by Christ Himself, and as yet, of course, unfinished. Further, there are no keys to the church; neither Peter, nor anybody else, had any keys for the church. It was a building going on of which the Lord was the builder, and that does not want keys, nor are keys things to build with. The keys of the kingdom of heaven were given to him, and no doubt he used them, and to good purpose too. It is a very serious mistake to confound the kingdom of heaven and the church. They are distinguished here and never confounded anywhere. Chapter 13 has given us the kingdom of heaven. Chapter 16 tells us of the church, and then adds a distinct commission as to the kingdom; one is founded on the Father's revelation to Peter, and Christ is the builder, not Peter: the other is Christ's commission especially given as a distinct thing. "And I say also," or more clearly, and "I also say to thee"; the Greek can have no other sense. The Father's revelation had laid the foundation of the church, and Christ was going to build it. Christ names His servant, an act of authority, and entrusts him with the keys of the kingdom. If we must have a wise master-builder of the church on earth, it was Paul, if we are to believe him, not Peter. The keys of the kingdom were surely given to Peter, and he used them, and administered it for Jews and Gentiles. Every Christian owns that whatever in his apostolic ministry he did, as sent by Christ, heaven sanctioned. Remark, he bound nothing in heaven; but what he bound and loosed on earth, heaven held for good, and it was sanctioned as bound or loosed there, but the things bound or loosed were only on earth.

161 Having thus fully declared the new thing founded on His person, He forbids the disciples to say any more that He was the Christ. That was the old place, now done with as presented to Israel in promise. And He begins from this time to teach them His sufferings and death at Jerusalem, and His new place in resurrection. But this they did not understand any more than the rest. God had revealed to Peter the person of Christ as Son, but his state met in no way the necessary effect and meaning of this in the world. In their state, even with true affection, they might rejoice: their master was the Son of God; but that He should suffer and be rejected had no charm for them. Remark this for us all. There may be true divinely given faith in a truth, without the flesh being subdued, so as to receive or estimate divinely the results of this truth in the world. Still it was just man, what man savours and the world; and Peter is treated as acting under the influence of the enemy of souls and the blessed Lord's work, in resisting the cross. If he had had his way, he would have hindered Christ completing His work. But the faithful Lord treats it as Satan; to savour of the things that be of man is so, it is not of God.

The Lord then openly warns the disciples that. if they follow Him, they must take up their cross and follow Him: that was His path. He then gives two reasons: first, gaining the world and losing one's soul was little profit; and, secondly, the Son of man was coming in the glory of the Father, though now humbled, and then would reward every man according to his works. The world was a passing and vain thing; but our path in it would meet its consequence in another. God and man were really opposed in their thoughts: the rejection of Christ proved it. The path of the Lord was to suffer here and His followers to follow Him; but He would come in His Father's glory and then the fruits would be judged according to the estimate of that new world to which He was hastening; and so sure was this, that some would be given to see it before they died. All this is the new thing taking the place of the old, but in the proof of man's opposition to God, and that as still in their moral thoughts in the flesh, even the disciples were unable to enter into the mind of God. They are really as far from apprehending it in the revelation of the glory; they are not out of the old things, nor able to see even the power Christ had brought into the world. They were really in the flesh as to their minds. All in every way must be wholly new.

162 The church as built by Christ we have had in chapter 16, and the keys of the kingdom of heaven confided by Christ to Peter. We have now (chap. 17) the kingdom in glory, which in its time is also to replace Christ as He then was on earth. The Lord displays it to the three who were to be pillars: Christ formally standing alone by the authority of the Father's voice, the law and the prophets disappearing. This is the great point here. We have more in Luke of the intimacy of glorified saints with Christ, and especially more of the heavenly part, they (I suppose Moses and Elias) entering into the cloud; but here it is more the personal glory, and the kingdom - as Peter himself expresses it, the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The manifested glory of His person is more fully put here. His countenance shone as the sun and His raiment is white as the light. So it is said, "Till ye see the Son of man coming in his kingdom"; in Mark and Luke, the kingdom come, or come in power. It is a bright cloud which overshadows them. In all, Peter would have joined the lawgiver and the great prophet with the Son of man; but this foolish proposal (nor is Peter alone in it) brings in the glory of the Father, the excellent glory, the cloud of God's presence, and the Son of man is owned Son of God Himself, and Moses and Elias are gone: a testimony most distinct and express.

163 It has been said, that the risen and changed are seen here. I have nothing against it, but I do not think here it is the object of the vision, but the personal glory of Christ, and the disappearing of law and prophets (surely all fulfilled) in the glory of the kingdom where the Son of man has His place alone, because the others are fulfilled, and disappear in their service, and Christ is alone; and further, He, God's beloved Son, the kingdom and glory being revealed, is now alone to be heard. Not, of course, that we do not believe all the law and prophets have revealed, but they are what testify of Christ; and now the thing is come, the Person they spoke of; and further, not as the Messiah, and Christ of promise (as such He had been rejected, and He was speaking of this, chap. 16: 20-28, and it is what introduces this vision), but as Son of man and Son of the Father, testified of immediately, personally, out of the excellent glory, as the object of delight and alone in it. It is not that He had left, or would leave, His people in the glory; He was talking with them in it, but as the One who appeared, the object testified of, He was all alone, the Father only, and we may necessarily and in His delight testifying of Him as He could and did reveal the Father.

It is a wonderful scene. But resurrection was needed to bring it out; a living Christ on earth could not be revealed in this place. It was the counterpart from it from heaven when rejected here below. The Messiah's place was God, and beside the Christ, it was the cross and the Son of man in glory, Son of God alone the object of the Father's delight. I say the Father's, for when He says Son, He reveals the Father; not Christ reveals the Father to us, but Himself in what He could not but be with the Son. It is a great thing to know, besides His person, that the Father's delight is in Christ. The Father said, "I have found my delight," such as He had been on earth, though in itself eternal. He can tell us the Father's mind perfectly. The Lord refers to this and similar testimonies in John 5. But it is not as in John 3: He speaks that He knows and testifies that He had seen heavenly things as Son of man who is in heaven, not what John Baptist declares, and "what he has seen and heard that he testifies." There Christ is revealing from heaven. Here the Father is testifying and shews His delight, that He has found His satisfying delight in that which Christ was on earth, and owns Him Son.

164 And now we find, as I have remarked, the incapacity of the disciples not merely to understand the new position Christ was taking, but even to make use of the old. Peter, with a forwardness which the Lord constantly used to bring out some truth, did not go beyond the similar glory of Moses and Elias to Christ to recognise the person of Christ. At this, though he had owned Him Son of the living God, so that he ought to have known better, we can hardly be surprised; but difficulties when they did know, and incapacity to use the power already come in with Christ, is all that marks their state. Only the Lord pursues His own grace and His own thoughts, as we shall see.

Some other important points arise out of this chapter. As regards this world, the coming of the Lord was a kind of provisional or tentative coming, though for far more important purposes. Just as He could say, till the Son of man comes, though He was there; and this double purpose is morally evident, because He came completing the trial and testing of man (compare John 15: 22-24), and also to accomplish His Father's will, and give His life a ransom for many. And it was His rejection in the first form which brought about the accomplishment of the second, so that responsibility and grace in atonement met in the cross. Thus, if they could receive it, John was Elias who was to come. The scribes were right in expecting him, but John was come in the spirit and power of Elias. To him they had done what they listed. Only if Elias came, personally he must be another; when the Son of man comes, it will be the same, only risen and glorified. The Lord allowed the difficulty to be presented that the whole scene that was going on might be brought out.

We then come to the incapacity of the disciples to use by faith the power which was then present. The poor man with the demoniac son had brought him to the disciples, and they could not cast the demon out. This draws out from Jesus the expression of the uselessness of His stay with them, when even His disciples could not make use of His power. This it is which finally leads, not to the prophecy and declaration that He would suffer, and depart, and rise again, but to the immediate expression of what drove Him away. "O, faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" The unbelief even of His disciples, hindering the efficacious testimony to His power, led to His going away. His person remained the same, and His personal grace, but His work was hindered by the faithlessness even of His own. How long was He to stay and bear with them? Thus we learn what closes a dispensation and the Lord's dealings in goodness, not the power of evil that brought Him here, but the powerlessness of those who follow Him, in making good the testimony He has given of His power and goodness. This does not cease, but in the same sentence in which He say, How long? He says, Bring thy son hither. It is what we have seen, the closing of His service here, but His person and grace only shining out the more brightly; the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and exercised wherever there was a want that came to Him, the actual meeting-place between man and God - a want, and grace in a Saviour.

165 Two things are then brought out as regards the exercise of this power of God by faith. First faith, unclouded confidence in Christ to do it, but, secondly, that there was a real adverse power of Satan, and that, in cases where that power was in its full exercise, as here, it could not be met and overcome but by nearness to God, bringing in His power by prayer and that self-restraint in which the heart was separated from nature to God. I expect no miracles in these last days, save false ones on the part of the enemy, though many things are counted miracles which in connection with God's government faith ought always to do; but for that to which faith now applies, according to the will of God, these directions are of the last importance; faith in God's power, and that in exercise in grace towards us, and this sought in prayer and separation of heart to God. Elias, we read, was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed, which I notice, because all we read of in the Old Testament is his declaration, "As the Lord liveth," etc.; 1 Kings 17: 1. In spite of all this practical unbelief in the disciples, the personal glory and grace of the Lord, and the association of the disciples with Himself in grace, is no way hidden or diminished. The close of the chapter is a remarkable witness of this in connection with what we have been seeing.

The Jews come to collect the tribute for the temple, and come to Peter with the question if the Lord paid it, tantamount to the question, if He was a good Jew. The Lord anticipates Peter, shewing divine knowledge and divine power. He asks him of whom the kings of the earth take custom, or tribute-of their own children or of strangers. Of strangers, replies Peter. Then, says the Lord, are the children free. Christ, that is, was Son of the great King of the temple, but in this character associates poor Peter with Himself. "Then are the children free: nevertheless that we offend not," etc. He then shews His divine power and in the way of Peter's natural calling disposes of the creation, of the fish of the sea, to bring him the needed money. Son of the most high God, knowing all things and disposing of creation, He nevertheless subjects Himself in grace to Jewish order; but in the title of His low place, in infinite grace He puts Peter in the same place with Himself: "that give for Me and thee." The lowliness of Him who came in by the door, the divine person, and the perfect grace, are all shewn out together.

166 The true position at this moment too is clearly seen. In chapters 18 to 20 to the end of verse 28 are presented to us in a general way the principles in which they were to walk in the new order of things, and in general what characterised this new order in contrast with nature and Judaism, while God's creation is fully owned. The Lord begins with the abnegation of self, and self-importance. We are to be as little children; one who was not such in principle could not enter into it, and he who was most so would be greatest in it. The Christian received Christ in receiving such in Christ's name. But opposition and difficulties were to be expected. Woe to the world because of them! If they put a stumbling-block in the way of these little ones who did believe, for weakness might accompany simplicity, they had better have been hopelessly drowned in the sea. As to oneself, if one found anything in oneself that led one to stumble, no self-sparing; better lose the best member one has than one's soul. The Lord always maintains in the strongest way the solemnity of God's judgment of evil. The fullest freest grace is taught us, blessed be God, but nothing to weaken the horror of evil, but the contrary.

There is comfort in what follows, if not professed doctrine, as to infants, and their salvation if going out of the world as such. The Lord's disciples were not to despise them: they were always present before Jesus' Father in heaven. I take "angel" in the common use of it in scripture, of one who represented another without his being personally there. Thus we have the Angel of the Lord; the Malak-Jehovah. They said of Peter, It is his angel. It may be an angel who does the service; but the object of the passage is not to shew who does it but what is done, and for this purpose popular language is used. But this blessing is not founded on sentimentality, or vague notions. It is founded on the parable used for sinners in general of the lost sheep, and that the Son of man was come to save what was lost; only here, with infants, it is not said to seek. But it is not the will of our Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish: of such is the kingdom of heaven. It is not, I judge, to be thought that the Lord speaks of the poor and humble in spirit; they are the greatest in the kingdom: it would be a small and insignificant thing to say of them that it was not the Father's will that they should perish.

167 We have then the case of a brother offending another, not the world; and this introduces the assembly in practice here below in the coming period. The injured person was to tell his offending brother, and win him if he could; if not, take one or two more, and if that failed, it would not merely be, You say, and I say, but the whole matter before the whole assembly with clear evidence. If he refused the judgment of the assembly, he was to be as a heathen man and as a publican. The assembly takes in this the place of the synagogue. It is remarkable here that the successors to the power given to Peter to loose and to bind, so as to have heaven's sanction upon it, are the two or three gathered as an assembly. What the assembly decided, as such, was sanctioned in heaven. The Lord adds the promise of granting what was asked by two or three so assembled, for He Himself would be there. But what should characterise the disciple was grace, and, if personal forgiveness answered the end, it was to be given constantly. Church discipline is another thing, it comes to be judicial and needed for clearing conscience. The spirit of forgiveness belonged essentially to the Christian. By being forgiven he was one, and he was not partaker of it if he had not the spirit of it.

I apprehend, in the form of the parable, that there is an allusion to the Lord's forgiveness of the nation, even after killing Him if they repented (Acts 3), and their refusal of grace, as shewn towards the Gentiles, involving them in all the consequences of their first guilt against Christ.

168 The next, chapter 19, furnishes us, I think, with some very important principles. Nature, brought up, and as God formed it, was fully recognised, but a principle and power is brought in which is wholly above it, and in its actual moral state it is fully detected and judged; while the following of Christ out of nature's power has blessing in this world and in that to come. This - setting every thing in its place on the rejection of Christ, which did reveal every thing, and brought in a new power - is full, it seems to me, of the deepest instruction. It has its occasion first as a question debated in the Jewish school, to which the Lord gives the divine answer which unfolds the whole state of things: "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" The Lord goes back behind the law to God's original institution: "He which made them at the beginning . . . . From the beginning it was not so." Thus God's natural order, the relationship He had formed, origin of all other human relationships is restored by Christ's authority. He returns to God and God's institution of man. It is not Jehovah, it is not "my Father," but God made them - a very important principle. The law takes its place as a provisional thing by the bye. Looked at as a Jewish law, a law of ordinances, God had made allowance for the hardness of the human heart, and now returned to His own thoughts and institutions. God's order created order.

But besides this, another power is come in, which is not nature but divine, as in the power of the Spirit of God, because nature is all ruined, the power of evil is in the world, to which nature is no answer, because it is what is ruined; power therefore comes in, which is above nature, as being of God, but which consequently owns nature as He made it, and His institutions. To break them is sin, to live above them is the gift of God. "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."

Hence also the Lord receives little children, and blesses them. This was in God's order, and of God's creation, in a certain sense unspoiled. I speak not of the root of sin, but of the manifestation of evil in the world. In themselves they were the fruit of God's natural order, as yet in a state unspoiled and natural. And so they are. The kingdom of heaven set up this order again in natural relationships and nature as God made it. We are not talking of the church here; that has its relationships spoken of in chapter 18.

But nature, however amiable and good in this sense, has the deep root of evil in it. This we see in the young man who runs up to the Lord. A beautiful character - his shewing desire of learning of Him, whom he saw to be the most perfect master of good, would inherit eternal life, had kept all those commandments which were the maintenance of the relationships we have spoken of. But the Lord cuts down the whole seed of man (for the young man came to Him as a man, a Rabbi). There was none good but one - God; still for man the commandments were His will, and, for man to enter into life he was to keep them in the system of the law. Relationship to God the Lord does not speak of, and He says life, dropping the word eternal, which the young man had used. But the way of life for man in this world was keeping the commandments. The young man, like Paul, was irreproachable in conduct. The Lord puts the test of lust and of his heart, and all was wrong. Instead of lust judged, and all counted dung for Christ, Christ is left for the riches which his lust clung to. This tale was told of man's heart; even where irreproachable, lust possessed it, and earth, not heaven, was its desire. The new and heavenly thing had come in which detected its state, and the fairest remains of creation: character and qualities were nothing; the heart was away from God. Riches - which to a Jew were a sign of divine favour, according to the government of this earth, now that God was revealed, and man's state made manifest, that it was a question of man's heart with God - were the greatest hindrance. The reason was simple: they held the desires of the natural heart.

169 But if one with the best qualities, and the desire of doing good, and such an opportunity, were not saved, who was to be? The Lord's answer does not avoid the consequence; with man it was impossible: plain, earnest, and solemn testimony. But that did not hinder God; all was possible with Him, and He could save. We have, then, the consequence of giving up all for Christ, but not beyond the kingdom. All here concerns the kingdom. Peter, ever forward, puts the question, What were they to have who had forsaken all? In the renewed world, which was coming, they would be on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, the first places in the centre of the kingdom; and every one who had left what nature loved for Christ's name would have a hundredfold in this world, and then everlasting life; for in following Christ eternal life comes in, not in doing the law.

170 But the principle on which it is done is also of all importance. Many then first should be last, and who were last first, but as a principle it is (chap. 20) always true. And the principle laid down is this - labouring through confidence in Christ, and not for so much reward; grace, and not law: reward is encouragement to endurance, not motive. Those who agreed for their penny got their penny, those who trusted the master of the vineyard got according to his heart. "What is right I will give," and they went on his word. The assurance of reward for sacrifice is there when Christ is the motive of the sacrifice; but where the reward is the motive of the service, it is poor pay, and indeed all is false. But thus there are (the converse) last first, those who, with perhaps later opportunity of service, have more trust in the Lord's heart and faithfulness, and reap the fruit of it in Him. The sovereign grace of God is the source of true blessing. But here service, not conversion, is the question. Chapter 18, on to thus far in chapter 20, closes the moral instruction of His disciples, as giving the true character and state of things, brought in by His rejection, and the principles the disciples were to act upon: chapter 18 more within, among saints; chapter 19 men's state and the kingdom, the principle of service being shewn in chapter 20. The Lord then proceeds to tell them of His rejection as immediate in Jerusalem, where He was going; that He could give them the cup, that was all. He was taking the lowly place, ministering, and giving His life a ransom for many: the high places in His kingdom were for those for whom they were prepared of His Father. Then, as in all the three Gospels, begins the history of the last scenes with the blind man near Jericho.

In chapter 20: 30 the Lord accepts the title of Son of David, acting in grace where the place of the curse had been. He is therefore now no longer with the poor of the flock in Galilee, but drawing nigh to Jerusalem, in the character in which He had to say to His people there as such; a last testimony to them before His rejection by them, and their judgment. Accordingly He enters into Jerusalem as King, according to the prophecy of Zechariah, only the first part of it is omitted, the accomplishment of which will be at another time. Then He will be just, and having salvation. He was it always; but it was not in that character that He rode into Jerusalem now. His whole character here is placing the Jews under the final test of the presence of Messiah their King, bringing on their judgment as about to leave them; the rejected King passes them all in review before Him, and assigns them their place. It is the last closing act between Messiah and Jerusalem. God put the testimony in the mouths of the multitude, which shall be the cry of Israel in the last days, according to Psalm 118. He acts as holy King and Judge, and clears the temple of its defilements.

Matthew's Gospel

J. N. Darby.

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171 All that follows is the final procedure in which the dignity of the humble rejected One is vindicated against the withered pretensions of the unbelieving heads of Israel; in which each class, pretending to call Him in question and perplex Him, comes to receive its sentence from His mouth. Still, for every need His power is yet in grace. The blind and the lame come to Him in the temple, and are healed. When the chief priests see this done in the temple, in public and before the multitude, and the children crying, Hosanna to the Son of David, according to Psalm 118, they are sore displeased, and appeal to Jesus to stop it. He answers by Psalm 8. He must be glorified; and, if He gave Himself, still His glory must be maintained, and if the simplicity of children did not fulfil the task, as we read elsewhere, the stones would cry out. Here we have only the short and silencing allusion to Psalm 8, and He leaves them. He would no longer sleep in the condemned, though loved, city.

We have then the testimony to the final judgment of Israel as under the first covenant, that is, of man in his responsibility. He came to look for fruit; there were only leaves, and man is judged as utterly fruitless for ever. Israel thus judged would immediately wither away. But the whole power of the people, if the disciples had faith, would be cast into the sea of the Gentiles; and so it was. At the same time the Lord insists on the power of the prayer of faith in their service.

The chief priests and scribes came to Him, as He was teaching, to demand His authority for what He did. This is the common question of what is really apostate ecclesiastical authority. That which is of God owns God's work: God's work proves itself. If God's work is done, God has wrought it, and God's authority to act is not a matter of question for those who, being of God, know His work. Man may sometimes mix that which is of himself with it, and so far spoil and enfeeble the testimony. but that which is of God they who are of God will own. In Christ all was perfect, of course. Hence the Lord puts them on their capacity to judge of God's work, and from carnal motives they avow their incapacity to judge of it. Why then should He tell them by what authority He acted? They were confessedly unable to judge of it. It was a humbling setting aside of their pretensions - avowed incapacity. But it is well to remember that God's work does not need authorisation. From whom is it to receive this? God assuredly needs none to work, or make others work, and he who pleads ecclesiastical authority for working proves that it is not God who is working, for who can authorise Him?

172 It may seem more difficult till the proofs are there, but that is a matter of faith. If Christ has given the talent to trade with, the seeking another authority gives proof that he who does so does not know his Master. He does not know that he is sent of Christ, for then he need not seek another. If he has another without that, it is simply nought. But the Lord goes farther with their religious authorities, and in the parable of the two sons shews that the repentant sinner, not the pretended just one, was the doer of God's will. The publicans and harlots went into God's kingdom before such. Terrible and humbling sentence! but so it was. Nor had the bowing to John's testimony by these repentant sinners wrought on the conscience of these hardened self-righteous ones.

The Lord then gives utterance to a parable which was the divine judgment on the whole conduct of the leaders of Israel, represented by those before Him. He had done everything for His vineyard, and then in due season He sought fruit - sent the prophets, who were rejected, and persecuted, and killed - sent yet more, and they treated them in the same way; at last He sent His Son, saying, They will reverence my Son. Him they cast out and slew. The chief priests and scribes pronounce the only possible judgment on them in reply to the Lord. It was their own sentence. The Lord then from scripture - testimony which they could not deny - shews that what they rejected was made by God the head of the corner. There could not be a plainer testimony, more immediately applicable. God, and the chiefs of Israel, the builders, were in open contradiction. It was Jehovah's doing to exalt the rejected stone. It is still Psalm 118, the special oracle of God as to these events. We have then the Lord's open comment and statement as to the result with the Jews - the kingdom of God taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom. It was to Gentiles, but that is not the special point of the Lord's words. It was to a nation bringing forth the fruits of the kingdom. If that be not done, they cease to answer to the description, whatever the patience of God; and though that be not the subject here, they also would have to be cut off. The same truth is otherwise told in Romans 11.

173 Further, the Stumbling-stone (Isa. 8) was there. It was indeed Jehovah Himself in grace. Whoever stumbled on it was offended in Him, and (this is of wider application than the chief priests) would be broken, but those on whom He fell, when coming again in judgment, would be ground to powder. Such was the present and future result of the responsibility of the Jews, to whom every advantage had been given, and to whom the Son of God Himself had come. Here the Lord is looking for fruit. The aspect of the crisis from the side of grace follows. Meanwhile the chief priests and Pharisees would have taken Him, but feared the people.

The Lord presents then the state of things on the side of grace, not of seeking fruit. A king is making a marriage for his son. This leads us on into the christian sphere of things, though taking it up first as to Jewish responsibility. It is the kingdom of heaven, only the Jewish invitation here takes no effect. The streets and lanes of the city, the poor of the flock in Israel, are not in the scene here. We have the invitation to the Jews as then given. They would not come. When all is prepared after Christ's death, they are again invited, but they made light of it, and went their way to their own occupations, or treated the messengers injuriously, even to death. This brought judgment on them and on their city Jerusalem. They were not worthy, and the King sends out to such as had no claim or hope of such a privilege - sent, as sinners of the Gentiles, and the wedding was furnished with guests. But all this was the external thing. The title really to partake is tested amongst those who have come in, a single example being taken as the principle. He must be fit for the wedding: a wedding garment can alone be allowed at the wedding, and that is Christ. Fine clothes might be displayed, perhaps, but the wedding garment was indispensable. If a man has not really Christ, he cannot be allowed there.

This, then, is the outward profession of Christendom, tested by the possession of Christ. Judgment was exercised as to those who, being there, were not fitly there. What suited the King's mind and purpose could alone be allowed. The offender was cast out into outer darkness. The fullest grace that seeks the needy does not content itself with unfitness for the place that grace brings into. All blessing, the feast of God's delight and joy, was there; but if we have not really Christ, we cannot have part in it. One who has not really put Christ on is in a state discordant with the whole place and meaning of what is going on, and he must be cast out. He had no real title there.

174 We have now special classes who come up, but only to have the real state of the nation judged, and all the classes judged; they blamed each other. All were wholly wrong before God in the point they particularly contended for as their pride. But all the phases of Jewish moral condition are brought out, and the real truth of God in opposition to them. The Jews were under the power of the Gentiles since the time of the Babylonish captivity. This ought not to have been, but their unfaithfulness to Jehovah had brought it on, only God had spared a remnant to present Messiah to them, whom they were now rejecting. Till God gave deliverance they were to bow to the chastening. It was God's hand upon them. The last of the four great empires now held the rule.

But while one party accommodated itself to Caesar, and made nothing of unfaithfulness to God, the other, instead of bowing to the yoke as humbled under God's hand for their sins, were in constant rebellion against the empire, insisting on their rights as God's people, which they had really forfeited, hypocrites with Him, and not bowing to the yoke He had laid upon their necks for their sins. These two classes come together, that Jesus might be found in fault either way. No deliverer from the Roman yoke if he accepted the tribute easily; accused to the governor if he forbade it. The Lord puts all in its place. He asks whose authority this tribute money represents: "Caesar's," they reply. Give to Caesar, He says, what is his, and to God what is God's - the true secret of their place. They marvelled, and left Him.

Then came the Sadducees, the infidels of Israel. Israel was the sphere of God's earthly government, and resurrection no express part of the law. They gave as a fine piece of reasoning what shewed their ignorance, but the Lord was plain on so capital a point. They erred, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. The Lord reveals the state of the raised, shewing the mere ignorance and folly of the reasoning of the Sadducees. It is a high and holy state where what is merely earthly will have passed away for ever. Things ordered of God, and owned here, will have passed away there. What is spiritual alone remains, and the body itself changed into suited glory. But the Lord goes farther, and shews that the origin and basis of Judaism before the law was given is God's revelation of Himself, the basis of all hope for them. His memorial name for ever condemned their thoughts.

175 If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had ceased to exist, could God have still taken their names, the name of naught to characterise Himself to Israel? He might have said, I am He who was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when they existed; and even so it would have been an utterly unworthy relationship - the God of those who had a mere animal existence. God characterises Himself by them - is not ashamed to be called their God. Could He characterise Himself by a mere dying animal, who, when He calls Himself theirs, did not exist at all? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. But this truth went farther, for, as to separation of soul and body, Abraham was dead, and, though living for God, was not what God meant him to be as his God. God was not even in this sense, as an abiding state, the God of the dead. They must be according to what He would have man, soul and body. Till all was accomplished they might wait with their spirits blessed, but this was not God's thought as to man. He was to be complete, and hence raised from the dead. The name of God indicating His relationship with those, gone for the moment, demonstrated the resurrection. For Him indeed, as we read, all are alive; but the ground of the argument here is God's relationship with them. He cannot be the God of those who do not exist. It was a living Abraham, body and soul, of whom God could be the God. Death therefore, for he was dead, proved the resurrection. Thus divine truth was established in contradiction to the Sadducees.

This brings the Pharisees forward, who used the law as a repertory of good deeds of different value to make out worth for themselves. They ask the Lord which is the greatest. This was all human pretension of doing and reasoning. The Lord goes to the root, and gives the summary and essence of the whole law in two verses, picked out of the mass of Moses' writings. This gave the law of God as He saw it. Thus we have resurrection, and another world, and the essence of the law established. Next, for Christ; whose Son was He? David's, they reply; and so He was according to the flesh, but that was only man's view of Him, and not what was being made good now. The truth that was to be fulfilled now was Psalm 110. He was David's Lord too, and going to sit on God's right hand. This closed the whole pleading between God and the people. They could give no answer, nor durst ask any more questions. The scene was closed with Israel. Yet till judgment was executed, testimony has its place in their midst; for the patience of grace is great. Morally they were now fully judged.

176 Chapter 23 is a remarkable proof how in this Gospel, till we arrive at the very last chapter, all refers to the Jews, and even there it is not what actually took place among the Gentiles in our present Gospel. The scribes and Pharisees are still seen as sitting in Moses' seat with the book of God in their hand, and in the very chapter in which they are utterly denounced (for it is the object of this chapter) in every aspect, the disciples, moving still as Jewish disciples among the Jews, are to follow what they say from Moses' seat, and their testimony (v. 34) is sent to these same Jews. No one sits in that seat now. We may find some analogies, which the church found early when it was corrupting itself; but there is no seat of Moses to sit in. Father or Rabbi is alike out of place. How completely however the testimony is here viewed as among the Jews, is seen (v. 34) where the apostolic and christian ministry is formally so treated, sent to those whom the Lord was now denouncing. With this is formally designated at once their place and ministry. The object of the chapter is to denounce those who led the people to reject their own mercy in Christ.

All the various sides of the Pharisaic evil are denounced. They impose burdens, and heavy ones, on others, but do not touch them with one of their fingers; to be seen of men, and solemn ritual observers for that purpose, is their object. To be made much of by men, set in high places, greetings, to be called Rabbi, theological doctrinal importance in the world, to be looked up to as having official religious reputation, such were they; but all this was forbidden to the disciples: he who set up to be great among them was to be servant; they were to follow the lowliness of Christ, who ever came down, yea, from the form of God to the dust of death. Christ was their Teacher and Rabbi, and their Father was in heaven.

177 Then come out the various aspects of ecclesiastical Pharisaism. First is the shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men; not going in themselves, they seek to hinder others; they profit by their religious profession to get widows' money, making long prayers; very great zeal to make a proselyte to their superstition, making him then worse than themselves; blind themselves, they lead the blind, but into the ditch. With refined casuistry as to what is evil, they shew their folly to the spiritual mind; excessively exact and zealous about the minute externals of religion, the substantial realities of it they neglect. They strain out the gnat and swallow the camel; as the chief priests bought Christ's blood for money without a scruple, but would not put it into the treasury because it was the price of blood. They clean the outside of the platter to appear very religious and holy, within they are full of extortion and excess; as whited sepulchres, clean without, full of uncleanness within. They honoured the true witnesses of God who were of old, true children of those who had killed them, piously alleging that, had they lived then, they would not have been guilty of their blood. They would fill up the measure of their fathers. God would test them, sending them to prophets and wise men and scribes, as He did in the beginning of the gospel, and they would kill, scourge, and crucify them, that, the measure being filled up, all the righteous blood from Abel might be required of that generation.

Ecclesiastical solemnity and superstition, and often with the profession of orthodoxy, have been the persecuting power and spirit of opposition to truth in every age and in every land. Look around and see where the traits here depicted are found, and see if it be not in hierarchy in the measure of its influence. Be it Jewish or Christian, it is the same story. If we go out to Mohammedans, nay, even to heathens, it is the same thing. But, specially in a pretended orthodox hierarchy, persecution and all the traits noted by Christ will be found. I appeal to every history in every land; for Jewish and Christian I may appeal to scripture, for though the chief priests were Sadducees, the scripture shews the same spirit of persecution, and the Pharisees and the doctors of the law fill up the rest of the picture, the Lord Himself being witness. Who delivered to the secular arm in Christendom, hypocritically asking for mercy? And as in Jerusalem for Jews, so in Babylon for Christendom, was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth. In the ecclesiastical power, from the pope downward, will be found in the measure of its realisation what the Lord describes here.

178 Finally, verse 37, the Lord, though in words of tender compassion, pronounces judgment on Jerusalem. Often would Christ, Jehovah her Lord, have gathered her children together as a hen her chickens under her wings, but they would not; but now her history was closed, their house was left to them desolate, and, until they took up the children's cry, the words of Psalm 118, they would not see their Lord again. The repentance of Israel (as proposed in the intercession of Christ, Acts 3, but then refused) would be the signal of His return to them. It is of importance to see clearly what I have remarked, that the position of the disciples and their ministry is in Israel more exactly among the Jews. It helps us in understanding what follows.

The testimony of the Lord to the Jews was closed. Their house was left unto them desolate, they were not to see the Lord, the rejected One, till they repented, when the prophecy of Psalm 118 comes to be fulfilled. This testimony of the Lord could be received only by faith, and that is what is available for the disciples and guides him out of the way of awaited peril. But there is another key and interpreter of prophecy, the fulfilment of judgment. What is discerned only by faith when it is matter of faith, is made plain by events in judgment. Warning prophecies are of no avail when the judgment is executed. It is too late. Thus we find in symbolical prophecies and parables that the explanation always goes beyond what it explains. At any rate, making events the proof of the truth of a revelation, while perfectly true, is not the ground of the Christian nor of faith at all. The believer has God's word, and what concerns him in the prophecy is the warning or encouragement it affords when it is not fulfilled. What is a direction to flee to the mountains worth when the prophecy is fulfilled? Where is the exhortation to wait for Jehovah available in the midst of tribulation and trial with the prophetic assurance that He will come, but in the tribulation when He is not come?

Besides, prophecy is of no private interpretation; the whole plan and ways of God as to earthly government are unfolded. This is so in a very central and important point here, perhaps we may say, as to earth the most important of all. The throne of God had been on earth from the setting up of the tabernacle, and in a special way at Jerusalem from the dedication of the temple. This ceased at the Babylonish captivity. In the beginning of Ezekiel we see the glory on the threshold, then on the Mount of Olives, and then depart entirely. But a remnant of the two tribes were brought back to Jerusalem that Messiah might be presented to them, and He was so presented to them.

179 The true temple indeed was His body, as He said to the Jews: still He owned the temple as His Father's house, though they had made it a den of thieves. Now the sad word came, "your house is left unto you desolate." The Lord now predicts present judgment, in the destruction of it; and when they took this as the end of the age, and as the same time as His coming, He unfolds all God's ways as to their testimony in Israel, and then of the power of evil, and judgment at the end when He should come to the deliverance of His servants. The Lord had merely said their house would be desolate till He came. When His disciples, still possessed with the thought of the temporal glory of Israel, boasted in what they could shew Him, the buildings of the temple, He declares that not one stone of it should be left upon another.

Then, on the disciples inquiring when the sign of His coming and of the end of the age would be, He unfolds the whole course of events as far as concerned Jerusalem, the disciples' testimony amongst that people when He was gone, and the state the Jews would get into, and the testimony such as He then could render it in the whole world; and, finally, in a distinct portion, the last events as they concerned them or those who might believe as they did.

The disciples connect what the Lord had already said with the end of the age and the hoped-for arrival of Messiah in glory which they awaited - were obliged in such case to await, and they looked for signs. This last point He does not touch till verse 30. In verse 29 He tells of overwhelming judgments and the subversion of all things supposed to be regular and stable, but no previous sign is given. These are after the tribulation and usher in His coming when it takes place. From Luke we learn that there is anticipation of judgments, at least terror as to what is coming when they take place as far as Judaea goes.

80 But I continue with Matthew. The prophecy divides at the end of verse 14, which verse goes to the end of the age. Then from verse 15 we have the special circumstances of Jerusalem and the tribulation there, closing in verses 29-31 with the coming of Christ and the gathering of the scattered Jews. But the Lord does not begin by satisfying their wish as a matter of curiosity, natural as it was, but treats it as a solemn matter as to their own service. His absence would put them to the test. The rejection by the Jews of the true Christ exposed them to every false pretender. Many would come in His name. So it is always; the rejection of a truth throws it, as it were, into the hands of Satan who gives his version of it to deceive. This is a solemn thing, and examples are not wanting of it. But the Lord is faithful. And here many would be deceived. Such deceivers suit themselves to the flesh, perhaps religious flesh, and the deception is great; men are religiously bad and hardened in evil and deep in delusion. We have had an example of it in Irvingism as to the coming of the Lord and the presence of the Holy Ghost, and a great and abiding one in the pretension (foolish as to fact, yet wise as to man) to unity in the Roman ecclesiastical body.

Further, besides the false Christs, political disturbances, restlessness, actual wars and rumours of them would attract attention and characterise the state of things on earth. But the disciples were not to be troubled; all this would come to pass, they were no signs of His coming, the end was not yet. Thus the Lord is caring for what would guide and strengthen His witnesses, keeping them calm and steady in their places. The end was not yet. He gives such instruction as would make them calm in service, not agitated with circumstances or by false hopes, neither to say, Lo! here, nor Lo! there, nor to be agitated by what agitated the world. They might still serve quietly on.

But besides these things judgment would come: the contentions of nations, famine, pestilence, earthquakes in divers places. These were the beginning of the throes of Jewish sorrows in the midst of which they were to render their testimony. It was surely the heaving of the nations; but the effect considered is on the disciples in their service among the earthly people, though that testimony would go farther. But there was more. Their own immediate sorrows and trials; they would be delivered up to be afflicted, killed, hated of all the Gentiles for Christ's sake. But this persecution from without would produce defections within; many would be offended, would turn against those once companions and betray them and hate them, and, because of abounding iniquity, many hearts not nourished directly from the flame of Christ's love would wax cold. He that went through all the difficulty and pressure to the end would be saved. This gospel of the kingdom would be preached to the Gentiles, and then the end would come.

181 In this passage the Lord seems to me to overleap the whole period in which we live, and gives the ministry of the disciples in the testimony they then had of the near setting up of the kingdom, in the midst of the Jews when He was gone and the house left desolate; and resumed when the Jews were again there to be spoken to; but especially to have in view the testimony amongst that people at the end. The destruction of Jerusalem interrupted this formally and judicially, and it would again be resumed when the church was gone, and be carried on in spite of opposition, till the end came. On to that end it clearly goes, and the present gospel of salvation is clearly passed over. Verse 14 comes in as an additional element by itself. In the beginning of His reply the Lord speaks of what would be applicable at any time after His departure, but soon passes essentially into what characterises the end in Judaea, and finally they are called to endure to the end.

Verse 14 gives us the gospel of the kingdom preached in all the world, which additionally shews us that we are here in the last days. It is for a witness to all the Gentiles and then the end comes. But it is important to remark here that it is the gospel of the kingdom. This gospel of the kingdom was what Christ could preach then, what He had been preaching, that is, that the kingdom was just coming, and that men must repent to meet it, only that it was to go out to all the Gentiles. It was to be preached, as naturally such a gospel must, as a witness, as the word was that the kingdom was at hand, only that then it was to come in with judgment and power, the end was to come according to, though then immediately and definitely, the everlasting gospel of Revelation 14 and Psalms 93-100. That was the end of the age in judgment.

According to this would the judgment of chapter 25 be carried on. Hence the brethren there, are, I doubt not, Jewish messengers of the kingdom, such as the Lord here speaks to, and of. I do not mean personally apostles, but His messengers to the nations, such as in Psalm 96, though that be modified by the prophetic tone. Only the end of the age is come when He sits to judge the nations. He has righteously judged and made wars, destroyed His adversaries, and sits on the throne of His glory; the whole state of things in the old age is judged, and Messiah comes, and sitting there. It is no longer the age to come, because it is come; only before it, the gospel goes out to all nations and then the end comes.

182 Thus the Lord has fully answered the question of the disciples, first in warnings as to their work in Judaea, available to them, then without any particular sign, save false Christs, and then more definitely what would introduce the end. There was a provisional end to service in Palestine and among the Jews as a nation, and a half-week of Daniel wholly unaccomplished; - for unbelief a whole one. This is resumed or taken up again when the faithful have to endure to the end and be saved. Other details are given elsewhere, as in Revelation 11-13, but that is not our object here, only we have that half-week referred to generally here in what follows verse 15, a distinct revelation as to the events of that closing period which in the Old Testament is unfolded to us in Daniel 12, as it is alluded to in other places as in Jeremiah 30: 7, and in the word "indignation," and consumption decreed, though this last refers rather to what arrives on the close of the great tribulation; it gives the full guidance and instruction for service.

The Lord now gives the needed warning as to the power of evil which would be in the time Daniel had spoken of when the idol that brought on the desolation should be set up in the holy place. This was not the time of their continued testimony as His witnesses in the land of Canaan; the testimony gone out among the heathen might continue, but the history of testimony is closed and the time of tribulation begins. The covenant is broken, every claim despised, and Jerusalem trodden down. I do not mean that there is no sackcloth testimony in spite of this; we read there is, when the power of evil is most displayed, but the time is not characterised by service as their then instruction and duty. Trials and persecutions there would have been then, but this as the natural accompaniment of faithful testimony in the midst of evil. Now the power of evil was dormant and characterised the state of things. The Jews accept idolatry, that is, the great body of them accepted Antichrist, and the power of Satan reigns for the moment unhindered, save as God holds the upper hand after all.

183 But He has shortened the days, or no flesh would be saved. And it is the time when Michael, that great prince, stands up for Daniel's people. But it is the time of flight for him that reads and understands as to those who dwell in Judaea. It is a peremptory sign of the great tribulation, the beginning of the last half-week of Daniel's seventy weeks. Desolation is there caused by the setting up of idols. The unclean spirit with seven others worse had entered in. They were to flee from the wonted habitations of men, and frequented places, to the desolate mountains, not to descend to get anything from the house, nor return if working in the field to get the clothes they had left aside. Woe to those hindered in their flight! But God can think of His people who trust Him even at such a time, and think of everything for them. They were to pray that their flight might not be in winter, difficult for the travel and sojourn of fugitives in the mountains, nor on a sabbath when a flight measured by a sabbath-day's journey would give a bad hope of escape in times such as never were nor would be; God would think of this for them.

But here we have and are meant to have a clear proof that we have to do with Jews, Jewish laws, as with Judaea for the scene, and with nothing else. Further, a little consideration shews that it is only of the last terrible time that it speaks. The Lord refers us to Daniel, and there we find the unparalleled tribulation which cannot be repeated, and the three-years-and-a-half, with seventy-five days added for certain cleansing. There too Michael stands up and the people are delivered, every one that is in the book. Now take 1260 days or years, nothing happened at either, after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. That is spoken of in Daniel 9 and then a period of continued calamity, desolations determined; so in Luke, where no abomination is spoken of, only Jerusalem encompassed with armies.

In a word it is the final and terrible tribulation of the Jews guilty of having rejected their Messiah, but whose deliverance will then take place in grace, those who are written in the book, for God has an elect people, and for their sakes the days shall be shortened. But in these last days we again find false Christs and false prophets encouraging the unbelieving with the hope of deliverance. They shall give signs and wonders so that if it were possible they would deceive the very elect. But these God will keep. The Lord warns them to believe none of them. They had His account of His coming; it would be sudden and unsuspected as a flash of lightning, where the object of judgment was there it would be, as the unseen bird of prey appears unlooked for where the carcase is. It is an allusion to Job 39: 30. The shortening of the days I apprehend to be the confining them peremptorily to the 1260, whereas man's will and passions would carry them on indefinitely. But the Lord would come as a thief in the night and close it all.

184 Verse 28 closes that part which is warning for the disciples as to the dangers of every kind at the time of the great tribulation. Verse 29 is God's intervention in judgment. Immediately after the tribulation of those days there is a complete subversion of governmental order. All that held a place in the ordinances that ruled the earth would be shaken and subverted, and then Christ would appear, for the sign of the Son of man in heaven is His appearing. It is not signs of a coming kingdom and then a Messiah on earth, but the Son of man, heir of all things, who appears in heaven. There may be indistinctness of glory before He is personally seen, but it is the Son of man Himself who comes and is seen. It is Himself appearing, no premonitory sign but Himself, and Himself from heaven who had gone up there, not a Jewish expected Messiah, Son of David, on earth. This shall be mourning to all the tribes of the earth or rather land - hopes disappointed, judgment come. All the earth will be dismayed surely, but here it is rather "of the land"; nor is it I conceive the mourning of Zechariah 12: 1014. There it is grace on the remnant, "the families that remain." They mourn for Christ. Here it is seeing Him come in power and all the tribes mourn.

Yet not only does the Lord deal then with those in the land, but the elect of Israel will be gathered from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. This closes the direct revelation as to His ways with Israel. What follows is exhortation and warning testimony as to the character of His coming and moral details. From verse 45 we have the estimate of conduct while He is away, in principle, state, and service, all in reference to His coming. The Lord directs them to that by which those forewarned would know it was at the doors. To the disciples such things as the idol in the holy place and the false Christs would tell it was just there. The Lord's warnings had given them the key. To Christians, as we now are with the Holy Ghost, such do not apply. A man who sets up to be Christ can have no deceiving power, for we know He is come, and when He yet comes, will come in glory, even if we have not scriptural intelligence to know we shall appear with Him. The whole scene is Jewish. No mountains in Judaea are my deliverance. I am going to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. The sabbath day's journey and all the circumstances point to a Jewish scene. To the Jew who expected deliverance a false Christ would be a great snare. With this warning no doubt all is plain, but in itself what the Lord warns against would be a great snare. Even to the Christians before the destruction of Jerusalem, profoundly Jewish as they were, it would not have been without danger, false as it was. At the end, to which this latter part applies, it becomes in the highest degree applicable.

185 We have then the well-known word: "this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." If we return to Deuteronomy 32, the expression becomes quite clear (see v. 5, 20); the last is just what is spoken of here. I attach great importance to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, because, consequent on the rejection of the Lord, the throne of God on the earth was finally set aside; but it is not the subject here, though there is analogy. Indeed it was more than an ordinary generation of men after the Lord's crucifixion, though perhaps not sufficiently so to use it as a proof that it does not apply. Nor has that unbelieving generation passed away; we have it amongst us to this day unmingled with the nations. The word of the Lord abides: heaven and earth will pass, Christ's word will not - a solemn assertion of divine testimony. The word of the Lord abides for ever. The "word of our God" says Isaiah. Precious and solemn truth! we have a testimony: God's word, essential truth that changes not, must be always true. Things change, heaven and earth pass away, all is rolled up like a garment; but truth is always truth, and God's word is truth, has revealed the truth blessedly adapted to us and the state we are in; but God's own truth, what reveals Him and His ways, what is heavenly and divine is suited, as Jesus Himself, to what is human and weak down here. We have what never passes away, and faith possesses it, the believer is sanctified by it, and Christ is the fulness of it. Grace and truth came by Him. But of the day and hour of His coming knows no man or angel. It is not a thing revealed. It is kept in the secret of the Father's counsels, the divine mind, and is not in any wise a subject of revelation; it does not come to expression out of the secret of that mind.

186 When the abomination is set up, then indeed the short remaining time is known at any rate in general, and one taught of God knows by the warnings we have been reading if the end is nigh, but when that is, who can say? So Noah, once warned, knew the judgment was then fast coming, but none else. Judgment came as a thief in the night. But this judgment, sudden and unexpected as it may be, will be sure and discriminative. The eye of God will discern those that are His, though in identical circumstances with those who are not. Two men may be in the same field, two women at the same mill; judgment will leave the one unscathed, and take the other. To the heart that was really watching and waiting for Him He would come as a deliverer from all the power of evil. The disciples were to watch, they knew not at what hour their Lord would come.

At the time of the end, when the Lord judges as a whole the unfaithful servant, the kingdom of heaven shall take, as to individual responsibility of those who make positive profession, the form or likeness of ten virgins who went forth to meet the Bridegroom, and servants to whom their Lord entrusted talents for service: the former referring to spiritual state; the latter to service.

The character attached to the saints at the beginning in the first parable is that they went out to meet the Bridegroom; as it is expressed doctrinally in 1 Thessalonians 1, they were converted to wait for God's Son from heaven. This is all important as the living characteristic of the Christian. "And ye like unto men who wait for their Lord when he shall return from the wedding": their loins girded about, their lights burning - a clear and manifest confession of Christ, and all in order in the heart, and as men ready to open whenever the Master knocked. Not a mere notion or theological idea, but the actual waiting for Christ, and the heart in a state ready to receive Him. It is well before we go farther to remark that we have not the bride here. The church is not viewed as such. If we will make out a bride here, it is Jerusalem on the earth, and that according to the whole tenor of the Gospel; not Jerusalem above. Christians are viewed as virgins accompanying the Bridegroom in to the wedding.

187 The Lord had warned the disciples in the parable of the servant, chapter 24, of the church's losing the present sense of His coming; that if the evil servant said in his heart, My Lord delayeth His coming, he would begin to persecute and fall in with the world, as it has happened. This looks at the professed assembly as a whole. Here we find that in fact the Bridegroom tarried. The effect upon all was that all slumbered and slept. True Christians forgot it - lost their character of being gone out to meet Him, as much as false professors. They had gone in, moreover, into worldly religion in spirit and principle whence they came out, though maintaining their profession, however dimly it shone; for the cry had to be resumed, "Go ye out to meet him." This is very solemn; the whole church, the brightest and the best, had forgotten their true place and character. Their original calling was forgotten and lost, but the true saints had not of course ceased to be such. There was a general waking up of all who made profession. The foolish were like the others formally and had their lamps.* But the cry came at an unlooked for, or as men would say, an unseasonable, hour, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh." They were to go out again to meet Him, to take their original calling. They all arose and trimmed their lamps; but, with the five, oil was wanting, there was no living grace, and hence nothing could last. What really shewed a right state, inward thoughtfulness of what they went out for, the effect subjectively in what was not displayed of that which was objectively before them - this was all that was wanting. They were with the others; they had their lamp or profession like them. What was to feed it, living grace within, was wholly wanting; the profession soon began to fail. It was not the time to get what was wanting for it. They were not ready. This was the great essential point. All had been asleep; the whole church, pious and all, had forgotten the Lord's coming. All that made any profession were awoke, the foolish as the wise, by the midnight cry. Any can be aroused to activity when the Lord sends forth the cry. They are not rejecters or infidels, quite the contrary, but there is no oil - the inward life and grace is wanting. Time is allowed after the awakening cry to test the reality of profession. It was soon going out. The Lord came and they had no part in the blessing - the Lord did not know them. A solemn testimony for those who may make a positive profession of Christianity! The midnight cry, the Lord is coming, is what wakes up the sleeping professors. Till then the whole church had lost the expectation of His coming - were asleep to it; but only those who had the Spirit of Christ, real living grace within, were ready to meet Him.

{*It seems these were rather torches, and they had oil in their vessels to feed them with.}

188 The points of the parable are these: the church was called to go out to meet Christ; the Bridegroom tarries, and all go to sleep, ceasing to expect Him. What wakes them up is the cry of His coming; they are called back to their original calling; but only those who had the Spirit of Christ, living grace, were found ready to meet Him, and went in to the marriage. The state of souls professing Christianity is in question.

In the following parable their service is in question. The Lord on His going away leaves talents with His own servants. It is not here, remark, natural gifts, however responsible we may be for the use of them; it is what Christ gave to His own servants when He went away. The Lord gave spiritual gifts on His departing. What were the talents given, and given to servants, for? To serve with. Those who understood their Master's mind, because they had confidence in their Master's goodness, entered in heart into His interests, which is the way of love - traded with them; one did not, he waited to be authorised, and why? He did not know nor estimate his Master. Confidence in Him was wanting, and so confidence in acting grace was not there known in the heart. The Lord is not here unfolding dogmas or explaining how this happens, but presenting phenomena. The servant who did not really know his Master did not serve Him; he feared to do so. He was in the place, had competency to act from the Lord, but did not feel interest enough in what concerned Him to act for Him while away; he had not heart enough to do it, because he did not know the Lord's heart.

The Lord does not treat the question whether there may be gift without grace; from other scriptures, as 1 Corinthians 13, we know there may; but it is not the question here, for there they might use them, where there was grace, for vanity. It is what renders one in the place of a servant an unprofitable one. Gifts of power are wholly distinct from grace. One in the place of a servant with capacity to serve (and every disciple of Jesus thus stood in that place when He was gone), who did not serve through distrust of His Master, proved he did not know Him, and was cast into outer darkness. Note here that the gift is distinct from natural capacity. This last is recognised here. The vessel was fitted and prepared, and the gift put into it. So Paul was a chosen vessel, and was then gifted for service.

189 In Luke the responsibility of man is more fully brought forward, and direct proportionate reward. Every one receives one pound, and he who gains ten gets ten cities. Here all the faithful ones enter alike into the joy of their Lord. They had known their Lord's character and acted on it, and had the blessing of it as associated with Him, were partakers of His joy, though also to be made ruler over many things. Here it is blessedness, there reward. Nor is the wicked person there cast into outer darkness; he loses even what he had-the subject is reward. If he had hard thoughts of his Master, he should have acted on it legally, if he could not according to grace. But now under grace, the want of the knowledge of grace takes away the sense of responsibility. The man does nothing; under law it is not so. A man really under it will toil and labour through fear. The whole parable shews the spirit in which Christ's servant labours according to grace, and its result, not in the kingdom, but together in the Lord's joy, which is according to grace, in our enjoyment of it. If this be wanting all is gone.

Remark another thing here, which is always so. The Lord puts His coming so as not to allow a thought beyond a living man's life. The virgins who fell asleep are the virgins who awoke; the servants who got the talent are the same that are judged. Christ was always to be looked for; and "which are alive and remain" is the right word for faith. Both parables refer entirely to the responsibility of the saints; but there is this difference: the first shews to us the universal way in which, even with true Christians, the original calling of the church was wholly forgotten. The Lord was not waited for. Only grace woke them up in time when He was coming, so that those that had grace, being ready, went in with Him: only there was sufficient interval between the cry and the coming to test personal grace. In the second it is individual all through, and the effect of individual grace in that knowledge of the Lord Himself, which made them serve with the confidence of love, without as to that referring to the Lord's return. They laboured while He was away, but not here in direct reference to His return. The state of the saints of God, as a whole, depended on that; but many have served devotedly, knowing Christ, without knowing aught really of His coming as a present expectation, though knowing He would return and take account, and their service was accepted with the blessed word, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

190 I would further remark that any application of these parables to the Jewish remnant is a mere mistake; God's dealings with and by this remnant, as far as treated in this part of scripture, are unfolded in chapter 24 to the end of verse 31, and this connects itself as to historical events on earth directly with verse 31 of chapter 25. Verse 32 of chapter 24 begins personal exhortations to verse 44. These exhortations have their application to that remnant and close with personal separation by judgment, the spared one being left on earth. From verse 45 we pass over to general christian ground - the disciples up to the destruction of Jerusalem having both positions (though the twelve and Paul had a different dispensational position), both founding the assembly; though its place was not yet revealed as afterwards by Paul, and carrying the last testimony to the Jewish people. Thus in Acts 2 you have church testimony; in Acts 3 you have remnant Jewish testimony. This closed morally with the death of Stephen, where we first find Saul as an adversary in ignorance, and judicially in the destruction of Jerusalem. Stephen began the departure to heaven, forming the heavenly company of Christians.

Matthew 24: 45-51 gives us the general history of the service willed of God, in the assembly as a whole, and the source of it in view of the Lord's return, and the resulting alternative as regards the professing body upon earth; and the parable of the ten virgins, those who went out to meet the Bridegroom, which is not the character of the Jewish remnant. The Lord comes to the remnant where they are. These accompany Him to the wedding. The parable of the talents is the responsibility of service all the time He is away, as to their service by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, personal grace or knowledge of Christ being the testing point. Now all this is a solemn warning to Christians, as to their state and service, founded on true knowledge of Christ.

191 In chapter 25: 31, we have formally His coming to earth and seating Himself there on the throne of His glory, connecting itself immediately, as I have said with chapter 24: 30, 31, which terminated the Jewish part of the prophecy and instruction. But when coming in glory with all the holy angels, He does not verily come as a flash of lightning, but takes, and seats Himself on, the throne of His glory, and gathers all the Gentiles before Him. He sits to judge the nations on the earth, the nations then living on it, to whom the message of the then coming kingdom, as declared in chapter 24: 14, had come. They were judged consequently according to their reception of these messengers. No other test or ground of judgment was applied to sheep or goats.

Remark further that there are three classes here, the goats, the sheep, the brethren. There is no reference to the dead, nor to resurrection. When the Lord judges the dead at the end of the world, He does not come at all. He sits on the great white throne, and heaven and earth flee away, and the dead small and great are brought up before Him. They are judged according to the works.

And note here, that the ground of judgment in this parable does not apply to the great body of those of the Gentiles judged there when raised. They had had no messengers. The ground of their judgment is stated in Romans 1 and 2. What renders them inexcusable is quite different from the ground of judgment here. What is here is not mentioned there, what is there is not referred to here. The judgment of the assembly on earth, and of special judgment as to the state of individuals and their service, we have already had in the three preceding parables. But before the end God, ever mindful of His mercy, sends out a message to warn the inhabitants of the whole world that judgment is just coming - what in chapter 24: 14 is called this gospel of the kingdom; warning them, that is, that the kingdom was just going to be set up. The final character of the testimony is found in the everlasting gospel, Revelation 14, and Psalm 96, called, I believe, "everlasting gospel" as being, not the testimony of sovereign grace taking us to heaven and revealing Christ sitting in glory at God's right hand, but that which was announced in the garden of Eden, that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Compare Revelation 11: 17, 18, and chapter 12, the former passage going on fully to the end, for the casting into the bottomless pit is not the final bruising of Satan which is in Revelation 20: 10. But Christ's coming and the binding of Satan in the bottomless pit is the close of God's earthly dispensational dealings, and the strange mystery of a disorder which God allows to go on while calling out souls in grace; Rev. 20: 2, 3.

192 The whole prophetic history then is contained in chapter 24: 1-31. In verses 31-44 is judgment on the Jews when He comes. Chapter 24: 45, to 25: 30 is the judgment of Christendom, of the whole state and system, their distinctive judgment. Then chapter 25: 31 takes up the consequence of the establishment of Christ's throne upon the earth in the judgment of the Gentiles. But for the immensely important fact of setting up the throne of the earth, we might say all is judgment from chapter 24: 31. But this fact is all-important, because God has a throne of judgment on the earth again, which He has never had since Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem. The Lord comes from heaven and judges the beast and the apostasy, all that rises up against the Lamb. But by this He establishes His power on earth, and in fact in Jerusalem, and thus takes His earthly throne in connection with the Jews and the heavenly saints, to whom judgment, in the sense of ruling government and power, is given. The war-judgment against the beast is in Revelation 19, the sessional-judgment in chapter 20.

This judgment of the Gentiles is spoken of in the Old Testament too. Indeed all the Psalms from 93-99 are the full inauguration of it, in the cry of the remnant, and then first giving the appeal to Israel and to the Gentiles, Psalm 100 being the call of the world up to worship after judgment is accomplished. In a word, our parable is the judgment of the quick only, exclusively the Gentiles (the Jews having been judged, chap. 24: 32-35), and the ground of it their reception of the messengers who had been sent out to announce the coming kingdom. The judgment of the quick is as final as the judgment of the dead, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The wicked have their lot with the devil and his angels in the everlasting fire prepared for these. The kingdom will be inherited down here by the righteous, blessed of His Father. It was prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

193 We may notice here that those who have preached the introduction of the millennial kingdom will have a place that those born under it will not, though these enjoy the fruit of it in peace. They have gone through tribulation and are before the throne of God, and praise Him with a nearness the others cannot (see Rev. 7: 9-17), though still on earth. I am disposed to think the 144,000, Revelation 14, are the Jewish remnant. I have so considered them habitually, and the everlasting gospel to the Gentiles comes after them. These spared ones who have received the messengers go into everlasting life. It is not merely the kingdom, but personal salvation. Those born during the millennium are not necessarily quickened; hence, when temptation comes, they follow Satan. Indeed, though we know that we have eternal life by many testimonies, yet the only passages in which it is spoken of in the Old Testament (Dan. 12 and Psa. 133) speak of it in reference to the millennium. We have it in a higher and better way, with and like Christ.

Some practical details I would yet notice. We have seen that what stamped the character and calling of the Christian was lost while the Bridegroom tarried, and the virgins were asleep. They had originally gone out to meet the Bridegroom - left the rudiments of the world and all religious association with it, for that especially is going out. They had got back into worldly religion, into the world for ease, while still making profession. There were living saints there; but what stamped their calling was lost, and therefore no separation took place. Asleep, a virgin without oil was as good as a virgin with it. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." But the midnight cry awoke both. Religious activity was roused--how much we see of it! But this led to separation, the interval between the awakening cry and the Lord's being there testing the reality of their state. They did not endure; their profession of Christ got dim and was not maintained.

Thus the midnight cry restores the character of the Christian and puts all professors into the place of their calling. But, secondly, their getting into this tests their real state. They cannot go on apart from the world. Their faith does not endure, and then comes the solemn fact: it is now too late. Just as in Thyatira (the papal body), she had time to repent and did not, and now it was judgment; she was replaced by the kingdom and the Morning Star. So here, it was too late to get the oil now and go in to the wedding. It was not the time of calling and supply of grace, but of separation and testing as to the possession of grace - a solemn thought! Who can say how soon it may come? whether individually it may not be come for some who have heard the cry, woke up and given up all, or gone back to the world?

194 This is the point, I believe, intended by not getting oil from the others; and no more than this; it was not the time of calling and communication of grace, but of testing as to possession of it. It was too late, and Christ does not know them. If this be so, and the cry is gone out, and in some measure I believe it has, it is a very solemn thought. A time does come when the calling of grace to this place and position closes, and the time of separation begins. As in another aspect of things it is true, the net was drawn to shore and the good put into vessels and the bad left on the shore, though there the tale continues to the actual execution of judgment; here they are only shut out. But that says all. The door was shut. A gospel to heathens who have not heard may and will go forth, but a possessed gospel definitely without effect there is no gospel for.

The prophetic testimony of the Lord was closed: the immediate circumstances of His last hours now rise up before us. Still in these moments of humiliation He remains the same blessed object to teach us what the wisdom of God is, and even the power of God, though giving Himself up for a season to the will of man; and He shines only the more brightly by passing through it.

The introduction is very striking, though simple. In divine calmness the Lord tells His disciples what is about to happen: after two days was the passover, and at that time the Son of man was to be betrayed to be crucified. The true Passover was to be sacrificed, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Such was God's sure purpose. The chief priests anxiously seek not to have it then, fearing a tumult of the people who so eagerly listened to Him and had seen His miracles. They need not have feared; His hour was come, and the heart of man would be led by Satan's power, where alas! they wished. Enmity against God was to have its full course. At the passover at which they feared the people, the whole people would follow them to have Jesus crucified, to bring the victim on the altar - God's Lamb, but a rejected people. They would now have their will, but God's purpose was to be accomplished. Evil was to have its way, and all, save the special work of grace attaching the heart to Jesus, and so ordering a testimony to Him and to the heart it filled - all were to bow to the power, and yield to the tide of evil.

195 The Lord is at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper: a woman comes (we know elsewhere it was Mary the sister of Lazarus; but here it is Jesus who is in view and the state of mind as to Him) and spends what she had most precious on Him - right-hearted devotedness drawn out through grace by the growing power of evil. But the disciples, led away by the spirit of Judas, are indignant at what they call waste. To be sure, spending anything on Jesus is waste in the eyes of the world. On what is useful for man, it is not waste. Even, if worldly-wise wisdom does not see too much encouragement of the poor contrary to the rules of political economy, spending something on them is not waste; but on Christ devotedness of affection to Him - to what purpose? Man's benefit may pass, but testimony of affection of heart to Him (be it that it only does that) cannot pass in the world, no, nor with disciples, where that devotedness is not. The calculations of hypocrites lead them astray, finding ready access to their heart in the state it is in. But the Lord owns it: care for the poor is all right and well; the Lord owns it, but love to Him, when the world's ruin and eternity depend on the manifestation of His self-sacrificing love, rejected or owned, is above all. It is not a corban to those who hold the place of priests, and use His name to the neglect of duty to God and those He has put us in relationship with; but a free and uncalculating heart which shews, as best it may, its unselfish devotedness to Him.

I have noticed elsewhere that it is this devotedness to Christ, to Himself, which obtains true knowledge instinctively in doing what is right, or in the revelation of Him and of truth. Thus Mary Magdalene's watching at the sepulchre makes her the vessel of communication of our highest privileges to the apostles themselves. So the gospel is first fully brought out in the blessed Lord's meeting the case of the poor woman that was a sinner in the city--like this Mary in affection, though so different in state; but each brings out the suited testimony of the Lord. But the attachment to His person draws it out, for He is the centre of all truth and blessing, and, when rejected in this world, brings out further grace connected with Himself; for in Him all divine riches and purposes are found and fulfilled, and it is His breach with the lower position of this world and promise, that raises us up with Him into the higher world of purpose and glory, and it is just there we are now in the Gospel of Matthew. It was worthy to be recorded in all ages that one heart estimated the Saviour, when the world was gone against Him, when the disciples even had not heart or understanding to see and know His preciousness in that solemn moment. It was not insincerity in them but poverty of heart; it was man's heart that looked no deeper than prudence and common sense: divine perception was not there. Attachment to Christ felt what was fitting in heart and drew out divine knowledge for Him.

196 In Judas we have the full contrast with Mary. It may be that the spending the precious ointment on Christ, and so much money lost, as he would think, roused his cupidity. It is very probable - at any rate the hour was there, and good and evil were coming to their full crisis and contrast - money was his motive and Satan suggested to him, blinded utterly by his wretched avarice, to sell the blessed Lord. Nor is the price unnoticed by the Holy Ghost. It is fearful to think for how small a sum he could betray the Master he had so known; but man's heart was to be manifested, and here man's heart under the leading and hardening power of Satan. The love of money was there, this was the lust; Satan suggested the means of gratifying it, and then hardened his heart against even natural feeling. Many a natural man would recoil from betraying with a kiss one known in long kindness and grace. It is evident also that being ever with Christ with evil in his heart and ways must have hardened him in hypocrisy.

For my own part I believe Judas expected Him to get off as He had so often escaped their power, blind as he was as to the hour being come; but this only makes it more horrible. Alas! he had sold himself, not Christ. For He could have got free, with twelve legions of angels, or gone away when they went backward and fell to the ground. But therefore it was the greater sin, and man was to be shewn by his dishonouring the Lord. measured in his mind by this goodly price. For Christ and Christ's perfectness bring out fully the evil of man's heart. What thief being alongside another would insult and outrage the companion of his misery? but, when Christ is there, the poor criminal can join in ribald insults against the Lord of glory. Oh, what a test He is, and what it shews is in the human heart under God's searching power, the searching power of Christ's presence!

197 But another scene was to take place before all was accomplished - the blessed testimony of grace in the institution of the Lord's supper. Yet here also the power of evil was to be ripened by the presence of grace. It was one that dipped his hand with Christ in the dish that was to betray Him, and as we read elsewhere, after the sop he went out. All is prepared of God and used by the Lord in the calmness of divine perfectness. A heart was ready to provide the room, nay, had it ready; and the Lord sends him word, My time is at hand (for that indeed He was come), I will keep the passover at thy house with My disciples. The Lord then refers to His betrayal in words which express, what indeed other passages reveal, His deep feeling as to its being one of the disciples who should betray Him. His knew who it was, He told it here, but what was on His heart in His love to His disciples was, that one of them should do it. The disciples, I think, here shew a true and right spirit, which indeed spoke their innocence. They were sure the Lord knew and told what was certain. Some of them would, and they distrusted themselves; but their asking freely shews they had no such thought: sorrow and honesty of heart were there. The Lord's answer alludes to the prophetic statement which told of His sorrow and the cause of its being so poignant. See Psalm 41: 9; 55: 12. The Son of man must go as it was written of Him, but terrible was the doom of him who did it. In truth it was awful: - one who had seen His miracles, been sent out to work them himself, witnessed His grace and perfectness; and then to sell Him for thirty pieces of silver! This drew out unhappy Judas; who must speak like the rest, though avoiding doing it till thus denounced. Now he would say as all, to seem as clear as others; afraid, his doom thus denounced, to be different from the rest, but only to bring out the full testimony to his known guilt.

The Lord then institutes the supper, putting first Himself, then the blood of the new covenant, then its being shed for many, in the place of the Jewish passover, the old covenant, and the limitation of everything to that people. This is the distinctive character of the supper here, suited to this Gospel. Mark's account is essentially the same. Luke's is much more personal and connected with (surely divine, but also) human affection to the disciples. But in all it is the blood of the new covenant, or the new covenant in His blood. In Matthew it is leaving association with them, breaking with men, even with the disciples down here, drinking no more of the fruit of the vine; only in Matthew and Mark His drinking it again with them after a wholly new sort is also spoken of. It was the simple and blessed testimony of the displacing all that was before, man and any previously presented ground of man's relationships with God.

198 No new covenant was yet established; but the blood on which it was to be founded was shed, and it could be announced so that Judaism was closed, that is, man's relationships with God as in flesh, and on the footing of man's righteousness; also closing any connection between the Lord come in flesh and man. His body, but His body as dead, was given as meat indeed. This carried the double testimony that there was no possible connection any more between man in the flesh and God; but also, that redemption was wrought, the true passover offered. Hence, as before that, death was death to man, now he lives by death, the death of Christ. It is not here as in Luke, "Do this in remembrance of me," but His separation from His disciples is strongly marked. He does not eat or drink with them, but gives what was the sign of His death to them, the sign of a perfect redemption by His death, but that His death, not His life with them was their portion with Him. This was a total and mighty change, the essence of their whole relationships with Him and having an eternal character. Death was the portion of the Son of God as man down here, and their part with Him and with God was founded on it.

The blood was shed for many for the remission of sins, and the new covenant was founded on it; all was dispensationally changed, but all was eternally founded also as to man, the believer's relationships with God. But present association was wholly broken off till renewed in a new way in His Father's kingdom. This is an expression of Matthew's Gospel like the kingdom of heaven. It is the higher and heavenly part of the kingdom. In chapter 13 we find it in the explanation of the tares and the wheat. We read, "The Son of man shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend . . . then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father," that higher part where they shall be in the same glory as Christ Himself, predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself: only here it is My Father; there, "their." Then Christ will anew, but in a blessedly new way, enjoy companionship with His disciples and they with Him. Blessed place and blessed familiarity! If the Lord has given up the companionship of His disciples, it is to accomplish their redemption; and He waits, as we wait, to renew it in a better place and in brighter scenes, but as truly and more intimately than they could have it here. Nothing more beautiful or touching than this intimation of the Lord at the moment of His departure. He shewed where His heart was, His love to us. And they sung a hymn together, and went out to the mount of Olives, His wonted resort.

199 But on the way the Lord reveals to them what was about to happen, and that immediately, but still with His heart resting on them. They would find only an occasion of stumbling in Him. With what gracious calmness the Lord tells them of it! For it was a poor and base path, one alas! too natural to us; but He only thinks of them to warn and apprise them of it as those He loved. But, as it was written, they were the sheep of His pasture, and the Shepherd was to be smitten and the sheep scattered. He speaks of them as those gathered to the good Shepherd in this world, the Jewish remnant gathered to Messiah the true Shepherd of Israel, though now to enter on brighter and better hopes and a more blessed service; but here the sheep of His flock already gathered, and now to be dispersed by the death of Messiah the Shepherd.

But He would rise again and then go before them into Galilee, the place where according to prophecy He had been the light of Israel, and gathered these poor of the flock around Him. As such they are looked at here, as such His death scattered them. For Messiah, the true Shepherd, was smitten, and cut off; and what was the flock with the Shepherd taken away? But risen, He would go before them again into the place where He had been associated with them; for in Matthew we have no ascension. The Acts are wholly founded on Luke's mission.

But Peter, trusting as ever his own strength, declares that he never would be offended if all were; if Jordan overflowed all its banks, he was not afraid to dip his foot in it. But self-confidence in a disciple must be corrected by abasement of self. Humble, we are safe, for God gives grace; self-confident and not humble, we must be humbled: so with poor Peter. The Lord warns him, but he maintains his confidence; and so, instead of watching and praying, he goes to sleep, and, though he knew it not, the enemy close at hand, man's hour and the power of darkness. And how easily we are led by what is wrong without exactly what is apparently evil, but what suits human nature! All the disciples are led away into the same self-confident assertion; so they chime in with Judas about the ointment; so they were carried away - even Barnabas - by Peter's dissimulation. What is of man is contagious for men, be it false boldness, or servile fear.

200 But we are drawing to the last scenes of the blessed Lord's life. He is here, the tested but perfect victim, while alas! the disciples again shew what man is! but all only brings out the Lord's grace. It is not, as in John, a divine Person above all, offering up Himself, nor the man overcoming in dependence all that pressed upon Him. Obedience and grace must be perfect in the true and spotless victim. Death and the cup were there; and He must be put fully to the proof of His obedience. But He passes through it all with His Father and yet can think of others who can think but little of Him; for, as to them, it is the testing of the disciples more than what was special to Christ that is portrayed. He looked for their watching, and they failed Him. But we have Jesus perfect in patient obedience, Jesus perfect in referring all to His Father, though feeling, and when feeling, all He had to go through.

It is the perfectness of His mind when His being a victim is in view that is here specially brought before us. He takes all the disciples with Him to Gethsemane; and then, telling them to tarry there while He went on farther and prayed, He takes Peter, and James, and John, who had also been with Him on the mount of transfiguration, and afterwards had the place of pillars farther on; and there all that was before the blessed One came upon His spirit. He began to be sorrowful and very heavy; He felt as man what He had to undergo, not mere pain or suffering, the power of death weighed upon His spirit, weighed upon it as man, yet with a weight no man could fathom. Yet with what calm simplicity He tells it out! We ought to know it, though it may be beyond our knowledge. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." His need was there, and told out to hearts that ought to have felt it and watched earnestly, occupied with Him. He looked for this, some one to have compassion. "Tarry ye here and watch with me." Blessed Saviour! what ought a heart to have felt to whom He said it? Oh how should it have watched, but alas! what are we?

201 He went on to be alone there with His Father about that which with Him only He could enter into, and which must be altogether with Him. He was perfect in referring it to His Father, and referring it alone. There the solemn question must have its solution. There alone it could, and there alone His perfectness could bring it. He fell on His face and prayed, saying, "O my Father," in supplicating earnestness, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He should feel it fully and He did: submission would not have been perfect else, but then His obedience and submission were perfect: "nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." In the perfect sense of the cup to be drunk, and the holy desire to avoid it, the piety of soul which desired it (for it was all the repulsion of sin from God, and what our wretched souls had fallen into - what man was as departed from God, which He must take upon His soul, if indeed He had to drink it, if He undertook our cause, and it was a holy desire to shrink from such a judgment and being made sin, even as bearing it before God), yet with perfect submission and obedience to His Father, whatever His will was, and to His Father He brings it there where it ought to be brought, alike perfect in desiring not to drink it, and obediently submitting to drink it if it was His Father's will; and this was His second utterance, "If this cup may not pass away from me except I drink it, thy will be done." The no reply now to His first demand leaves His soul in the unclouded perfectness of the second and third, for He was with His Father in full and solemn sense of what it was, but with Him - He is occupied with it. How could it be otherwise? It ought to have been so. The disciples sleep, leaving Him alone with God. Where else could He have now been with such a work, such a cup, before Him? Now it is over, one can linger round this scene to learn His perfectness and love, the love we shall enjoy in brighter days when we shall see Him as He is - when He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Yes, it was well; it was only right that He should be alone with His Father then. It could have been nowhere else, and He went naturally there, if I may so speak, for all His thoughts were perfect.

202 But where was he (let us think of ourselves) who was to go to prison and to death? With what touching grace He calls up to view the strange inconsistency. "Peter, could ye not watch with me one hour?" Where was the strength that was going through everything just now? yet with what grace He warns, with what grace He excuses! "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." How must one have hated oneself for such a want of earnestness and love to Him! alas, how we have to do with it! But here so perfectly is He with His Father for the depth of what was before Him, so perfectly had He had all that with Him only, that the free unhindered grace could in all liberty be as perfect towards His poor feeble but failing disciples: no weight on His spirit with them; that was borne with His Father. How perfect are all His ways! what could they be else? But He can warn them, and warn them as to what was just going on. To Him it was now the path of obedience; but what was not that was temptation. So indeed with everything: all we meet with is occasion of temptation or obedience, only there brought out where all was brought to a crisis with man. But this intercourse with the disciples at this moment is a witness of a depth and calmness in His path which is divine perfection, though in man and in human ways and grace which calls for adoring recognition. We struggle or faint, or hide our sorrow in pride. I have known what it is not to know relief till I said, O my God, my soul is cast down within me. But He has all with God, and can state it as to the fact in perfect simplicity to man. We cannot tell our grief, we need support; and where are we to trust it if it be heavy? He had His resource so elsewhere - all His heart out, looking to His Father - that He could confide where really there was nothing to lean on, only truth of heart - the spirit was willing.

Now this is greatness, only in perfection, yet in lowliness, not in self-sufficiency, in conscious weakness of humanity, but all told in perfect faith and dependence to God His Father, yet never losing His human place, yea, the very expression of it. It is here it comes out so perfectly: never a thought that was not human indeed, but never one that was not suited to such a place in the presence of God, that is, to death and drinking the cup, yet, though a man's feelings there in view of it, not one but what was according to the perfectness of One in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. It would not do that He should not have been fully in conscious manhood there, for He was there for us; nor that in that place a thought or a feeling, that was not divine in its fitness for it, should have been there, and so it was. He was not drinking the cup, but He had to feel it as to all that it was, and feel rightly about it; had He not been God as well as man, that could not have been. Surely He could not have drunk it else, but He could not have thought about it adequately, if a divine source and measure of thought had not been the spring of it in man's necessity before God.

203 Blessed Lord, I do not pretend to fathom what Thou wast: who could? But we may learn from it and adore in our hearts, we may look on and learn Who was there, and with thankfulness of heart. No man knows the Son but the Father, but oh, what traits of paramount blessedness flow forth from this Son being a man! And we shall see that, very man as He is, (and who shall tell the joy of that?) yet He is as perfect in gracious gentleness to man. What it must have been to them, when they had the Holy Ghost, to look back to, and when they knew themselves in their flight from that which He was going to meet! Humbling surely, but a great thing for the heart to have been thus humbled; for after all, we must learn what we are where Christ was, save of course atonement, and even there in respect of guilt to know the perfectness that is in Him. It is not by our minds, but in looking at perfectness in the same place in our weakness. Who will know strength like the weak one that leans on it? Still we know it as taught of God, as He in the perfectness of His person.

In verse 45, in tender words which yet shewed them their service was over, and how He had been alone, He says, "Sleep on now [watching time is finished, the power of evil in act is here]. Arise, let us be going: he that betrayeth me is at hand." But they must be fully proved, He does not send them away. They must be with Him to the end, learn the tale however gently they may. If there was over confidence as in Peter, yet even so it fitted him to strengthen his brethren when restored by a deeper knowledge of what human strength came to in the things of God. But we must learn ourselves where He was, save where He was wholly for us, instead of us, making propitiation for our sins. There He was perfectly alone, alone with God. Who else could have been? He was practically alone in Gethsemane; but He looked for their watching with Him, susceptible of human interest and watching with Him, though indeed He had only to feel how man failed Him even in that. If He looked for that watching, the sense of some one with Him, it was to feel that there was none. But the betrayer was there - and here man and the blessed Lord must be again in contrast. Unhappy Judas, over whom one's heart would draw a veil, betrays the Lord by that which was the expression of long intimacy and that held Him fast. It is horrible. Oh, he was up to his work, and would shew he was!

204 The Lord receives it with the calmness of One who, now in the path of obedience, had perfectly bowed to His Father's will. "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" For indeed, when He warned His disciples, He might have gone away, for it was dark, but for that He had not come. He could have had twelve legions of angels; but how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? It was now, having gone through all with His Father as to His path, a settled thing, not His feeling about it, but the divine path itself. It must be: scripture, the true revealed mind of God, had pointed out that path. What a testimony to scripture and its authority! In that greatest and lonely hour, that stands out from all and has none like it, it sufficed. How then should the scripture be fulfilled that thus it must be? It was by that the Lord conquered in the wilderness, by that He was as to authority determined in this moment in which He gave up all to glorify God and atone for our sins. It is to be remarked here that there is no healing of the servant which we know was wrought; another subject is set forth by the Spirit here, the obedient and submissive victim. He was going as a lamb to the slaughter. This was His place. He ever perfectly obedient, He was learning obedience by the things that He suffered; and that path is ours: human violence and human weapons in the Christian will meet with human weapons and stronger ones in the world; submission to God's will and the cross, is the path marked out for God's glory, as the world is - a wondrous lesson but a blessed one.

If we do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. This Jesus was now doing, and in the most perfect sense. He could have had His legions of angels and used no violence; but He came to obey and suffer, and do so to the full, accomplishing the work given Him to do, not to contend or escape. But here too, as with the disciples, yea, even with Judas, He has His word for the multitudes. He had sat daily with them in the temple, and they laid no hands upon Him; now they came out against Him as against a thief. There is tenderness and compassion in these words toward them; and the sense that the truth was, His hour was come as to Himself. He had been quietly with them in the temple, and they hanging indeed on His lips, and they had laid no hands on Him. But so it was to be: He was to lay down His life for the sheep, for all the glorious purposes of atonement. They were led by others, but would not have been, were they not away from God. Compassion on ignorance there might be, but this time was to signal Satan's power and Jesus' submission. He is conscious of the difference; He expresses calmly, as to His disciples, His sense of the state of things, and notices it in grace, and bows to it.

205 He was there to submit and accomplish His work. If such was the case, what were the disciples to do? Go His path they could not, though not with the evil. They were powerless, and the enemy exercises over them all the power he can. They forsake Him and fly; they fail utterly in faithful love, when danger is there. They save themselves: it is all they think of. Fight they might have done; flesh can do it; but this path flesh cannot tread. The ark must go alone first through those waters. It was the moment for devotedness; with man, a friend, that might have been; but with Christ - no - He must stand alone. The circumstances which follow do not call for explanation unless in a very small degree. The importance of them is not so much in the moral elements (though their manifestations be brighter than ever), but in the blessed and glorious work which was now accomplished. The chief priests and council held two meetings, but all was prepared already. They were enemies, accusers, and judges - had already paid the price of His capture, making an agreement for His betrayal. They were awaiting His capture in a meeting gathered together for that purpose.

The Lord was taken first to Annas, father-in-law to Caiaphas, actual high priest that year, and they question Him in the morning very early. The council was formally assembled, but when they only ask Him the questions for form, on His answer that He was the Son of God, they condemn Him and take Him to Pilate. All of this is not found in this Gospel, but will be, I think, on comparing the Gospels together. All that is important to display the willing victim, and on whose testimony He was condemned, is found here. They lead Him to Caiaphas. And Peter follows afar off; John (we know he was known to the high priest and went in) gives details not necessary to the moral scene here depicted. They may be seen in John 18: 13 and following. Here we have, first, the witness of truth in presence of vain falsehood and violence; Peter will come in his place. It is another scene. He sat with the servants to see the end, a natural feeling even as to one he loved, but which shewed no sense of what was going on. I do not think the apostles shine in all this part of the history. It teaches the difference between ministerial power when sent, and the state of a soul. How the Lord could see through and judge of fitting vessels when power should be conferred, and bear in patient grace with what man was through all! The chief priests and assessors seek for witness to put Him to death, but, ready as they and their followers might be, none was to be found.

206 At last they bring forward what was in the main a true statement, for we have it recorded in John; elsewhere we learn that the testimony, as testimony failed; there must be two for death, and they did not agree. But to man's testimony against Him the Lord returns no answer. Defending Himself was not His object, nor even teaching now; He stood as the willing Victim, as the Lamb for the slaughter, and as the sheep before his shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. The high priest turns and adjures Him* to answer if He be the Christ, the Son of God according, as we have seen, to His title (Psalm 2) - His true, full, Messiah-title among the Jews. To this the Lord at once answers, He was: for now it was His own testimony and He must give the whole truth, and adds, "moreover, also I say to you henceforth [not hereafter] ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

{*Let the reader remark here that this also is an instance of obedience to Leviticus 5: 1. It is just what being sworn as a witness is now; and the Lord, who forbids all voluntary oaths as coming of evil from ourselves, takes this at once.}

207 The affected indignation of the high priest and the willing assent of the rest I will not notice. But this is to be remarked, and we shall see it again, that the Lord is condemned for the truth, being the truth in what He said, and the truth as to His own person. He was the Victim again of insult and outrage. The truth He told was the truth, dangerous there but specially the truth there, I mean, which was in connection with Israel, and the point of faith or refutation of all for them, as He owned Himself king before the representative of the Emperor. It was the truth itself as to His person as the object of faith for them. There He was the Christ the Son of God, and rejected, He takes, as we have seen Him do, in peace, the place and title of Son of man coming in glory.

The word "henceforth" is of moment. It says that place of Messiah and Son of God, according to Psalm 2, was over from this, and they would only see Him coming in glory and for judgment, and so it is in fact for Israel. The end of chapter 23, though referring to the same judgment, applies to the remnant repentant through grace; this, to the nation in judgment. Peter's history follows. What poor feeble man is, is shewn even where love is sincere. The flesh has no power in the presence of the world; where it is leaned on, sincerity does not keep us. But it was the means of knowing himself and perfect grace to man being such, but that is not the point here. It is, as all through these scenes in Matthew, what man is in opposition to what Christ was, feeling the trial fully and crying to His Father; perfect in testimony, in truth, and in meekness, not seeking deliverance now but letting the will of God take its course. He is the silent Victim, as the sheep before its shearers, while man was boasting, sleeping, shrinking from the testimony, and denying the truth and his Master, to escape. It is a wonderful picture of a perfect Christ, and what poor wretched man is, in every respect.

Some difficulty having been felt and made current by rationalists, and some rationalists are such by trusting their minds on scripture, I will just briefly notice it, though it be hardly worth it. Matthew and Mark are the same. Luke has this difference, which is not really one: the two former speak of what the maid in the passage said to the men. Luke their remark on it, then all three Peter's denial. The last is the same in all; John is much more general, and mentions only two instances: first, when he was at the fire, when the maid spoke, in John it is merely, they said to him - and then he gives a precise point not noticed by others, that a kinsman of Malchus, whose ear Peter cut off, recognised him, which is given generally in the three others, "they that stood by"; very likely several spoke and convicted him so that he was angry, for from John 18: 27 what is said in verse 26 was probably the last time. Peter, on whose face the fire shone (for in the original it is said in Luke "sitting in the light"), went out into the entrance, but it was only to fall into the hands of another maid. I suspect he had got back into the central court, for the last time was an hour afterwards, and the Lord would look on him from where He was. Still the poor apostle's heart was true and the Lord's prayer effectual, his faith did not fail; the Lord's look, full of grace, broke him down, and he went out and wept bitterly. The sorrow of repentance, not despair, was the blessed effect in his heart.

208 After the morning's council, at which the Lord was formally condemned (for they had buffeted Him and insulted Him as a condemned person already), they led Him away to Pilate. But before the Lord's answering before the Gentile governor, we have the ways of unhappy Judas and the priests. It is remarkable how the account in Matthew brings out the wretched condition of man, believers or unbelievers, what man in the flesh is, even if won by grace to Christ; but here the wretched exhibition of those who were His enemies. Remorse seizes Judas when the evil one has done his work by him. He seems to have thought He would, as before, escape; but this made his sin worse, for he knew that power then was there, but money governed his heart, and by it Satan led him into the horrible sin, but he could not shield him when the sin was there. What was money to one who was in despair? The fruit and witness of sin is no comfort to one who is lost by it. He goes to those who ought to have led him in the right way, his heartless companions in the wickedness, and throws down the money in despair: "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." He knew well now what he had done, for lust hides sin from the conscience, and Satan will furnish excuses to the mind; but committed sin is on it, it is all dark in its trail behind; and if the love of God be not there to cling to, despair, dark, black despair, only remains. The chief priests have gained their point by Judas' wickedness: what do they care about the effects for him? With consummate heartlessness they reply, See thou to that: what is that to us ?A frightful picture of man's heart given up to wickedness. One can conceive nothing more frightful than such a state-more appalling than such a scene. Judas threw the money down on their answer. What comfort can sin when done find from Satan? And he was even here to be a witness of the terribleness of his sin; and he went and hanged himself. There is something strange in this part of the account which throws the money, and Judas, and the temple, and the priests, all together. He threw it down in the temple, naos; the word is that used for the house. How did he throw it there? I am not aware that the word is ever used for anything but the house itself. And then see the religiousness of those who can buy the blood of the Son of God for thirty pieces of silver. It was the price of blood, and they could not put it into the treasury. To buy the blood they had no scruple, to put such into the treasury was defiling. What a picture of man the Spirit of God gives all through here! and they bought the potter's field to bury strangers. They were common things, but they or any Jew was too holy to be profaned by being buried there. The most outward official religion, and the most absolute wickedness, run together; and even in a Christian, official religiousness is the bane of piety.

209 But the Lord now stood before Pilate, and it is remarkable that again His own testimony is the foundation of all. The governor asks Him if He be King of the Jews? The Lord replies (for He was the truth) in the affirmative, witnessing a good confession; for before the chief priests His confession was to that which was dangerous there, but the truth; before Pilate, what was dangerous there. He was "Son of God" before the priests, "King" before the Roman governor. To the accusing Jews He answers nothing, as I have said; He was not there to defend Himself or escape, but a willing Victim, and He was witness to the truth. But the heads of the Jewish people are before us here as the enemies of God. Pilate, who saw it was all envy, seeks to deliver Him, so much the more anxiously that his wife had sent to press it on him, being alarmed by a warning dream, and presses His deliverance; but the Jews persevere in their enmity against the Lord; and, inexcusable as the governor was, who clearly was bound to protect one he knew to be innocent, yet the wilful sin rests on the head of the unhappy leaders of the people.

210 Ecclesiastical wickedness is always greater than civil; in a persecution it is what is religious and clerical that is the spring and mover in it. But we have the terrible testimony from their own mouth of their part in it, their judgment on themselves The careless and reckless governor (to his eyes there was nothing much to care for) washes his hands of the matter and leaves His blood on their heads, and they take it in their folly. "His blood be on us, and on our children," and so it is to this day. And he delivered Jesus to their will, releasing a murderer whom they desired according to Paschal custom.

And now the blessed Lord is the subject of outrage and insult from the soldiers - accustomed as this poor world is to revel in evil when it is congregated and can encourage one another in it. The Lord bows to it all with patient endurance; He is still the Lamb led to the slaughter. The whole scene is still the patient and perfect victim. But man appears with his heart unveiled. Who would be found to insult and outrage a dying man if he were a criminal? What executed criminal would insult his fellow on the gibbet? but when Christ is there, all this happens. They wag their heads and say, He saved others, Himself He cannot save. Oh, terrible victory of sin over One who would not save Himself because He would save others. Yet if sin had its full display and seeming victory, it was to meet a grace which was, in the perfect work of obedience, accomplishing that which puts it away - a sovereign grace which allows the sin to run to its height to accomplish that which puts it away. The mere provision for present relief the Lord declines accepting, the cup His Father had given Him, that He drinks in peaceful submission, but to know its whole bitterness. But see, as has appeared all through, the awful state of these unhappy priests. They quote their part of Psalm 22 as Jesus did His afterwards. There is in that psalm a verse (8) which is the utterance of the insulting enemies of God, of unbelief; that they quote in utter moral blindness, and fulfil it.

To verse 44 we have the patient silent submission of the blessed Lord, and as heretofore, what man is when it is manifested in the light of His presence, only here ripened into perfect manifestation. From verse 45, though we find man's utter insensibility to all, a stranger to all that was going on, yet we especially get His place with God as the true Victim of propitiation. He was shut in from man and all around to God, as "made sin who knew no sin." Darkness was over all the land. At the close the Lord gives utterance to that which was going on within the veil of darkness which hid Him from all earthly things - an utterance which in few words declares to our souls the cup that He was drinking, His perfectness who was drinking it, perfectness as sinless, perfectness in reference to God. He is the Victim of propitiation; and His voice, not to man but for him, which alone could rightly declare it, announces the solemn fact of what He was accomplishing. For here He is the offering for sin, bearing our sin, made sin for us.

211 It is not now communion with His Father, though perfect submission to His will, and love to Him; but before God as made sin, yet perfect in His confidence and reference of heart to Him. It is the holy and righteous God dealing with sin as sin, yet in Him who had none but was made it, and had voluntarily offered Himself for it; the wonderful work of settling the question of sin before God, and God glorified in dealing with it, where His love to us might be infinite in dealing with sin, in divine and absolute righteousness, and His Majesty and truth made good: where perfect obedience and love to His Father was found, where He stood as made sin, with no departure of heart from confidence in God. "Thou continuest holy." It was not, as Job, reproaching God for His dealings with him, with a yet unbroken will. It is, "My God," yet with a full sense that there was no cause in Him - "why?" and the absolute sense, according to His own enjoyment of that presence, of God's forsaking Him, that which no horror is like. He is simply here the Victim, the offering to God in propitiation. We can say "why," when brought to the cross; first, as bearing our sins, and then as glorifying God.

Other circumstances or words of the Lord are not brought forward here; He stands in the solitary solemnness of the Victim before God, perfect in that place of sin. This there is nothing like. It is once for all; God is perfectly glorified and sin dealt with for His glory. It stands alone in the history of eternity and all, for divine glory depends upon it, its results immutable; for it is done, and its value cannot change or God's must, which cannot be, for His nature is glorified here as well as our sins put away. Man understands nothing of it; they say, He calls for Elias! Then we find that the whole accomplished, and Jesus yet in the fulness of His strength gives up His spirit. It is not here as in John 19: 30, "delivered up his spirit," nor as in Mark 15: 37, and Luke 24: 46, "expired," breathed His last as we say. In Luke we have also the words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" - words of faith in death, when its sting of terror and anguish which He has borne was gone. Yet death was still there, but His Father perfectly trusted in it.

212 Here all these deeply interesting parts of the scene are passed over, that the great fact of death in letting now His spirit go away from His body, really dying yet when in full strength, the dying but perfect and willing Victim might stand out before us in its own majesty and force. But all God's dispensation and God's creation, and the dead themselves, felt its power; yea, the rude heart of the Roman soldier was awed. The veil was rent, that which was the sign that man could not approach God. The whole Jewish dispensation in which man's responsibility to God was tested outside was rent from top to bottom; man's sin complete, and man down here had lost God for ever; but the way into the holiest, by a new and living way, fully opened. The sign of God's present power in creation was there; the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened, but none stirred till the first-fruits of them that slept had broken the bonds of death, and then they appeared to many in Jerusalem, the witness of the wondrous work that had been accomplished. No wonder all felt its power, or that God gave witness there even to what had glorified Him. He has indeed suffered His Son, in the accomplishment of divine counsels, to be despised and rejected of men, but we shall find that in His humiliation He has always taken care to give a testimony to His glory and what He was to Him. The raising of Lazarus, the riding into Jerusalem, the voice from heaven, and the dove; the dove and His own voice when He bows to enter in by the door with John, taking His place among the poor of the flock; the chorus of angels when He stooped to the incarnation, all are witnesses to His glory in the very place where He humbles Himself, and so it was here in the closing act of all. Nor did the heart of the centurion withstand the power of all that passed; a poor dark heathen, but at least not hardened as the unhappy Jews were religiously, and susceptible of these outward signs of divine power; he and those with him, struck with awe and fear, echoed at least with natural conscience the testimony Jesus gave of Himself when questioned by the priests, "Truly this man was the Son of God."

213 We cannot tell whether there was any divine and lasting operation, in his or the other's soul; we may hope. The object here was the public divine testimony given to the dying Lord that went home irresistibly to the hearts and consciences of those who watched Him, and brought out of their awed spirits the confession of who He was. The testimony had been spread abroad and even they knew that this was the thing in question - Was He the Son of God? What unhardened heart could resist the witness?

But what a terrible witness was this against the Jews! When God gives testimony to His Son, so that the heart of the poor pagan bows under it, theirs remain unmoved! It is well to notice that, though the saints did not arise to shew themselves at Jerusalem, yet their resurrection is connected here with the Lord's death. There He destroyed the power of him who had the power of death. But all was now closed for man and Judaism. All is to begin on a new footing, foreknown indeed and predicted; but now, the work being accomplished on which all was to be founded - yea, had been in fact, though not revealed, man begins according to the counsels of God upon the ground of that accomplished work, wrought to put away sin, to glorify God, and lay the foundation of immutable blessing the result of that which could never lose its value with God. Here, as we shall see, we go on farther than the fact of resurrection and its power, and that in connection with the residue of Israel though sent out to the Gentiles on this ground. So that while historically brought out, as a present thing, yet its realisation bears on the days yet to come, when a restored residue, not having the heavenly place, will be a testimony to Christ's death and resurrection in their own blessing, but on earth, and they disciple the Gentiles on that ground, leading them in the path of Jesus' commandments to the disciples when on earth.

But the Father would have accomplished the testimonies of His word in honouring His Son rejected and crucified; for all here is really a contrast between the blind incredulity of the Jew and all else; even, as we have seen, a poor ignorant Gentile. He was to be with the rich in His death. Not only the devoted women were watching their crucified Lord, but Joseph of Arimathea, when now He was surely dead, goes on to Pilate and begs His body and it is given to him, and he lays it in his own tomb wrapped in a linen cloth, there where never man was yet laid, and rolled a great stone to the mouth and departed. In them all it was respect and attachment, but in Joseph's act God had another purpose; not only to render due respect to Jesus, but to give the strongest proofs that He was really risen. The Jews remembered that He had said He would rise again. The fears of a bad conscience without God fear what they would not believe. Blinded they were, for what was all this in presence of power to rise again? And the thought of stealing His body was the suggestion of their own wicked heart, anything but reassured, and seeking what by self-deception might quiet the suspicious dread of a self-condemning heart. But their plans only make the matter doubly sure. They would have engaged Pilate, thinking all were to be under the powers of their restlessness, in securing the tomb. Pilate leaves it to them to settle the matter. It was their affair; they might make it as sure as they could. But what were seals or guards against the power and will of God? They might make the fiction of the apostles stealing the body absurd and impossible, but that is all. The angel does not quicken the Lord, nor raise Him, but shews - acting according to the majesty of Him who had sent him - the empty tomb. To the guards it is terror and dismay, for such any manifestation of the unseen world is to man; to them the angel says nothing. They were witnesses of the intervention of God, no guards against the working of His power. But to those attached to Jesus words of grace and restoring comfort come from heaven, "I know that ye seek Jesus; he is not here. he is risen."

214 Our Gospel here brings together in a brief statement the hearing of Jesus' resurrection and what accompanied or rather followed it, on various persons - the women, the soldiers, the Jews. As to the first, it is comfort and grace, they are the messengers of the good news to the disciples. The soldiers are alarmed and as dead men. Such is the effect of the manifestation of God's power and intervention. There is nothing which man is so unused to, and which is so strange to his heart and thoughts: A legion of devils might be sought to be restrained, but must be borne and people be used to it, save personal danger; but the presence of Jesus, who drives them out by divine power and goodness, brings the demand at once that He should leave them; and so He did. The soldiers are as dead men. It is the simple effect on the natural man of the manifestation of the power of God, of the unseen world, introduced into this. With the Jews it is deliberate hardness of heart. They seek to destroy the testimony they could not deny, that they had made secure themselves by setting the guard. The women have direct communication from God by means of the angel; they are the Lord's messengers to the disciples. We see, as in so many cases, that love to the Saviour for His own sake brings us into the place where we receive the communications of His grace.

215 It is these communications which must occupy us now. They are comforted with the assurance that He is risen; they are to go at once to tell His disciples that He was. Here it is still the relationship of Christ with Israel which is before us. We have not the special communications of Jesus with Mary Magdalene, which take us into the heavenly place of Jesus, and His interview with His disciples on this ground. We are not at Bethany with Luke, to see Him going up to heaven with hands outstretched to give a heavenly blessing, which could begin with guilty Jerusalem and reach to the ends of the earth. Nor are the various positions of the women brought out, different and distinct in their nearness to Christ; simply, briefly, the different relationships to Christ of the ignorant Gentiles, the women, and the Jews, in presence of the resurrection and what followed it.

The ascension is not found in Matthew. The Lord directs the disciples to go to Galilee where He would meet them. Nor was He content to leave it to the angel only to communicate His will to the disciples, though at the tomb this was needed to apprise them of His resurrection; He Himself meets these poor devoted women - ever the same gracious Saviour. He salutes them graciously, coming to meet them as they went joyfully in haste to deliver the angel's message and the good news of the resurrection to the disciples. And here with the gracious dealing of Jesus we are not on the ground of Mary Magdalene. There Christ presents Himself as going to the Father (His and His brethren's, the disciples), His God and their God. He was not come back to be on earth in visible and bodily presence risen, as Mary's heart hoped, but for what was better. Here He presents Himself to the remnant in connection with Israel, but calling His disciples "brethren."

216 And this gives its character to the whole conclusion of the Gospel. It puts a risen (not ascended) Saviour in connection with the remnant of the Jews, owned as brethren, sending them, as thus owned, to bring in the nations. The body of the nation remains in the blinded hostility which the presence of Jesus had drawn out. We see too how all the characteristic circumstances are drawn together here in a brief review. As the women were going on their errand, some of the watch go into the city to inform the chief priests what had happened. The elders are gathered; the facts communicated; and they deliberate what to do. Hostility to the Lord was the settled source of all. Deliberation as to receiving the clear testimony of the Lord's resurrection there was none; how to get rid of it was all these unhappy chiefs of the people deliberated about. The evidence was clear, clear by their own witnesses; they resort to bribery to engage them to give a different account of the matter, assuring them, if so grave a fault in a Roman soldier as being asleep on his post came to the governor's ears, they would secure them. Their desire to keep all quiet would be a sufficient motive, perhaps money for him too, as for Festus, and the heartless indifference of the governor would have thought as little of the resurrection as of the death of Jesus. Such at least was their ground as to the general result with the soldiers; and the money sufficed to make them run the risk. Such is the world. "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes," Psalm 36: 1.

Yet this was but the outside of what was closed, and passed away, though judgment yet lingered. The real and abiding fact with God is the risen Jesus. This, wholly new as to man, never passes away; it is the divine result, though not in all its consequences, of the perfect solution of every question as to good and evil; divine power being come in to solve it, the basis laid which spoke of evil passed away, and of the accomplishment of all God's counsels of grace in righteousness, and man in a position in which, guilty or innocent, he had never been before, after all had been settled according to God, and immutable blessing secured. Here however we have its application, as I have said, the discipling the Gentiles, recognising the Jewish disciples, the remnant of Jews already gathered, as His brethren. The disciples go into Galilee, to the mountain Jesus had appointed. There He appears; when they see Him, they do homage, but some doubt. In the utmost simplicity of truth we find that if the Jews plotted to secure their infidelity, there was no plot in the disciples, for some doubted it was He. No one would have said this who sought to compose an account; the evidences would have made it flagrantly true, incontestable. It is made more incontestable by the doubt, but it is not man's way of making it so. He comes upon them by surprise and some are not sure. A plot arranged would have secured His acceptance; a testimony unfounded in fact would not have invented a doubt. The apostle tells us in simplicity, and guided of God, what occurred.

217 The Lord addresses them on the ground of the place which now belonged to Him, which He will fully take in power hereafter, which belonged to the risen Lord, being His in right of the new place into which He had entered as man. "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth." All is not accomplished, all things not yet put under His feet, but it is His place as the risen Man who has glorified God and accomplished the work given Him to do. Hence He sends them forth beyond the limits of the King of Israel in Zion, that had been set forth fully in chapter 10, then and on to the future. Here connected with the remnant of the Jews, associating them as brethren with Himself, having accomplished redemption, they were to disciple the nations, baptizing them (not to Jehovah, not to Messiah or the Son of David, but) to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that in which the one God of Israel was fully and completely revealed; teaching them to observe that which they had learned from Him on the earth; and He would be with them to the end of the age. It is thus before the millennium, not the mystery of the church, nor the future gathering of all things. The former was revealed and confided to Paul, the latter to come in when the age was finished. Not the mission from Bethany (which the Acts follow throughout), not starting from Jerusalem nor beginning it as that did; but accepting the poor of the flock as brethren to Christ; they were to bring in, disciple all the nations on the footing of their relationship with Him as thus risen.

It is well to notice what has been alluded to: - the ministry in the Acts is not the accomplishment of this but of the mission in Luke, the book itself being, as is known, the continuation of his Gospel; nor was the ministry of Paul, who took up by a separate divine mission the evangelisation of the nations, the carrying out of this. His was more fully even yet a mission from an ascended and glorified Saviour, to which was added the ministry of the church. It connects itself even much more in its first elements with Luke. The ministry here established stands alone. The disciples are not sent to Jews, as in Luke coming from an ascended Saviour they were to begin at Jerusalem. Jerusalem is rejected, and the remnant attached to Christ (His brethren, and owned in this character) sent out to Gentiles. This, as far as scripture teaches us, has never been fulfilled. The course of events under the hand of God-another term, so to speak, the disciples remain at Jerusalem; and a new mission to the Gentiles is sent forth in the person of Paul and that connected with the establishment of the church on earth. The accomplishment of this mission has been thus interrupted, but there is the promise to be with those who went forth in it to the end of the age. Nor do I doubt it will be so. This testimony will go forth to the nations before the Lord comes. "The brethren" will carry it to warn the Gentiles. The commission was given then, but we find no accomplishment of it. It connects the testimony with the Jewish remnant owned by a risen Lord of all, with the earth and His earthly directions, and for the present it has in fact given place to a heavenly commission, and the church of God.

Matthew 24 and 25

J. N. Darby.

<24019E> 219

These chapters constitute the most distinct and definite portion of our Lord's service as a prophet. Strictly speaking, they only are the prophetic part of His ministry. The previous part of the Lord's history was the presentation of Himself as the object of previous prophecy, to those who were responsible for His reception as coming in by the door, according to that which those oracles of God had spoken concerning Him. This character and place of the Lord is particularly the subject of this Gospel, which bears in all its statements on the circumstances and condition in which the Jews were placed by previous scriptures. It closes in a very marked way in the previous chapter. The Lord had begun His ministry with the blessings of the character suited to His kingdom, revealed by the introduction of His Father's name. He closes on the continued and wilful rejection of Him by that people, by the woes justly denounced on them for their hypocrisy and iniquity. (Compare Matt. 5, 7, and 23.) From one evil they claimed exemption, but in terms which shewed their birthright in sin; they had not killed the prophets as their fathers had done. Jesus, assuming the character of Lord, hereon declares that He would send such unto them, and they should have an opportunity of shewing the difference of their spirit and conduct; then they would treat them in the same way, and, the measure of iniquity being filled up to the brim, God would dash the cup out of their hand to fill it with His own wrath to be poured upon them. Then the Lord apostrophises Jerusalem, for all this He speaks as the Lord; His beloved Jerusalem given up for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein, but still loved in itself and abstractedly in her children, and rejected with a "till," and not cast away as not foreknown, "Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye say, Blessed be he that cometh in the name of Jehovah."

Here came in the proper place of prophecy, this people and Jerusalem the special and immediate subject. This will be more apparent if we see the character attached to prophecy, as originally given and brought forth to light. Previously, as His rejection of the Jewish people and the glories of a better hope and of a higher character began to dawn through the veil of their prejudiced hopes and His humiliation, the Lord had given privately to His disciples the intimation of His rejection and deliverance to the Gentiles, and the resurrection which was to be the foundation of a future state of things; but they understood it not. Nor was it to be revealed till after His resurrection; it might be instruction to them, but was no general prophecy of what should happen concerning God's inheritance, though the centre on which all those counsels hung. But here the Lord resumed the prophetic character; I say "resumed," for so it was. Prophecy is not the law, but the warning testimony of judgment when the law has been departed from, and the turning the eye of them that believe to better hopes, and foreshewn deliverance for the remnant. It supposes (though it may be in different form or extent) apostasy. Therefore we have, "beginning with Samuel and all the prophets," for then Ichabod was written.

220 The great definite presentation of the place, end, and character, of prophecy is in Isaiah 6 (however the world might be affected by it), as to the great object of Jehovah's care - the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts (for the nations He suffered to walk in their own ways). The whole head was sick and the whole heart faint, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot it was wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. As to the vineyard it brought forth wild grapes, its wall was to be broken down, it was to be laid waste. This was the state of things as to the righteousness of that people who formed the object of Jehovah's care, the centre of His earthly plans, the place of Messiah's visitation; but Jehovah was unaltered in character and purpose: in character, and therefore He must throw down; in purpose, and therefore He would not cast away.

But His throne is now to be set up as that from which prophecy was to flow, so it is, and His train fills the temple; and a man, though of unclean lips, is sent with lips purged by a coal from the altar, and then willing to go, but still dwelling among a people of unclean lips, having seen what the Lord was, the holy, holy, holy, Jehovah of hosts. His soul filled with and affected by the contrast, but touched with the coal, it is - "Here am I, send me"; and He said, Go; but what was His message? - "Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not; make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert and be healed"; and this till the cities be waste without inhabitant; and there was a great forsaking in the midst of the land. But in it there shall be a tenth, the holy seed was to be the substance thereof.

221 Now Jehovah had long patience - He sent prophets till there was no remedy; He smote and cut them short; He let them go captive and restored them again; so that the land was filled, and the temple built; still the word ran on, though the prophets did not live for ever. Jehovah had long patience, till having yet one Son, He said, "it may be they will reverence my Son"; round His head prophetic testimony and present blessing closed for a crown of glory and witness. The word of the Lord, and the works of the Lord; the righteousness, and the patience, and the grace alike, with the Father's voice, testified who He was, but the awful knell of God's judgment still filled the unholy air of that favoured country - "Make the heart of this people fat." Now it was after long patience and marvellous love that it really came out; the sentence of God's judgment came to the earth, for all the patience of love had been tried. God had nothing more than His Son to be testified of. "How often would I have gathered" was now the word of reluctantly departing lovingkindness and favour, but stored in a heart from which it could not be abstracted, which nothing could reach to alter. If sin could drive it in there and shut it up, there it dwelt untouched in its own blessed and essential perfectness: no sin or failure could enter there to mar its perfectness or diminish its power. Such is God - such must He be known to us in Christ.

If love and favour be driven back by sin, it is but to separate it into the power of His own essential and unmingled perfectness, and there retired to dwell on, and delight in itself. Judgment shall make a way for it to break forth only in its own unhindered excellency, and unqualified and unparalysed blessing. Such is God, and such is the Lord's way; but it was now only proved by His long patience, that well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias, the prophet, to their fathers (Acts 28: 26), for in them was fulfilled his prophecy which said, "By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand," Matt. 13: 14. For the people's heart was waxed gross; and what Isaiah had prophetically pronounced, when he saw His glory, was now fulfilled, when He whose was the glory came; John 12: 40, 41. This, known to the Lord, was parabolically communicated in Matthew 13, for then His patience had not had its perfect work; now it had: and God's dereliction, His going and returning to His place (Hosea 5: 15), was publicly announced, and their house left to desolation. Then, on this same footing again prophecy begins, whether the vineyard, or (in closer judgment) the house itself left desolate; the broad foundation is the same; the remnant understand, believed, and are comforted. Nothing can be more solemn than our blessed Master's word at the close of the previous chapter. How much does a little word from His mouth! What depth and terribleness the gentlest often convey! It was not in severest judgment: "make not my Father's house a house of merchandise." He had left it. It was their house: what was it worth? goodly stones, which a poor heathen would throw down. No self-exaltation - no harsh reproach - His heart, the Lord's heart, yearned over Jerusalem; but so alas! it was. Terrible might be His judgment on the leaders of this people, who caused them to err, but of them, of the inhabitants of loved Jerusalem, He would only say in tenderness and sorrow, yet how terrible; "Your house is left unto you desolate for . . . ." And He went out and departed from the temple. Thence came the prophecy. One's heart is little disposed to turn, from the grace which filled the Lord's, to the sad and needful sorrows and judgment which were the consequence of the rejection of that grace; but it was the Lord's portion and our path, the path in God's counsels, to make even that a small thing.

222 This temple, and the circumstances of it, were then discussed by the Lord. The previous observations will have shewn how entirely Jewish in its character this discourse is; how Jewish is the base on which it rests. It is addressed to them, to whom all prophecy has its burden, the remnant who listened to the word, and here the Jewish remnant. They might obey the voice of His servant, but they were here walking in darkness, and seeing no light; for the Lord had left the house, and heavenly and resurrection glory was not yet brought in; nay they understood none of these things, no - nor after the resurrection, till He opened their understandings; "they saw and believed, for as yet they understood not the scriptures, that he must rise again from the dead."

This then is the position of those to whom this Instruction or prophecy was addressed: the Jews in a rejected state, though not cast off - in the land - the house there but their house, not God's; disobeying and rejecting the Lord; a remnant ignorant of a resurrection Saviour,* entirely as to the truth, but obeying the voice of God's servant, but in the dark as to what such a state of things would be - when, or how, to look for His coming - what sign of it - where the end of this state of things should be, and Messiah in glory be on the earth, even amongst them and they in the midst of, and connected with, though separate from, the body of the Jewish nation, and they (I do not say all Israel as well as the remnant who were obedient) all in the land together.

{*"We thought that it had been He who should have redeemed Israel."}

223 This state of things is most important, I might say essential, to the right or any real understanding of these chapters; and to the close of them the prophetic word proceeds on this earthly basis, though it may superinduce other things. But it is the Lord Christ speaking as a prophet raised up from among His brethren, on and from earth, not as afterwards in Paul's epistle to them, and elsewhere, "from heaven," "partakers of the heavenly calling." It may leave room for other things, as old prophecy did for the gospel; these are not the ground of the prophecy. This it is which makes the prophecy, while it might apply to the then condition of the disciples and direct their spirits in the details of present evil, have its force and weight, when the remnant should be in the condition which the disciples were then in, Christ only being gone; and here He spoke only as a prophet, so that it was the same thing, and that much more fully than when they were looking for heavenly things, seeing they were to put off their tabernacles, not to have "flesh saved," but to suffer in it, that they might be conformed to Him, and suffering reign with Him, having a good conscience by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was gone into heaven; the God of all grace having called them to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.

The Lord does not therefore immediately answer them as to the time, because it would afford direction in many details then; its accomplishment is yet future, for the end of the age is not yet come. The Jewish remnant were still in His mind, those with whom He had identified Himself in their earthly sorrow (though not with them only), of which the Psalms are so full and blessed a declaration. And as Isaiah's prophecy had its accomplishment in the foreseen coming of Messiah, though it had truth in principle then, so Messiah's prophecy has its accomplishment at the period of the second coming and of the trouble preceding, though it had truth of application, while Jerusalem lasted as to many of its principles then, and would have guided the saints aright at the time, though it could not have fulfilled the types it created.

224 The chapters are clearly divided into three portions: the Jewish, Christian, and Gentile advent of the Lord, or, His advent as applied to these three classes, as the apostle designates them - the Jews, and Gentiles, and the church of God. The first portion, which is strictly Jewish in all its parts and exclusively so, reaches down to chapter 24: 44, then the church, or Christian part, begins, which is continued in different characters to chapter 25: 30. Verses 31-46 are the Gentiles.

Let me briefly recapitulate the position of the prophecy. Prophecy is the testimony of God's character and purpose upon the departure of those set in relationship with Himself from the standing in which they were originally placed by His revealed will and power. It condemns this departure, recalls to the original position and gives the purpose, and therefore object of hope, out of this state of ruin to the believing remnant, sorrowing over the evil; but it does this by shewing future incoming of blessing and glory in a new principle of grace and purpose. It necessarily refers therefore to Christ's coming, for His is the glory, and by Him comes the grace; but it always therefore testifies of abiding apostasy, because His coming is the proof of all previous failure, whether He come in grace or judgment; and this comforts and sustains the remnant under the failure. Thus Isaiah's prophecy - "make the heart of this people fat" - was on their departure from God; but it had, as we have seen (Matt. 13; John 12; Acts 28), its accomplishment in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord first comes as the presented object of hope to the nation, fulfilling prophecy and doing every attractive work of mercy, and speaking as man never spake; but the heart of the people was fat. Then as Lord, for such He was, that Lord whose glory Isaiah had seen, and whence the word came, which glory was the judgment of their state, He gives them up, and, though He often would have gathered them, their house is left desolate. Here the prophecy met its accomplishment, and "this generation" stands the witness of its truth on the rejection of the Son; abidingly true has it proved the heart of the people was fat. The first coming of Christ, under the influence of which they still are, was its fulfilment, true as it always was. Our Lord then, on this state of things, takes up the prophetic character which is to have its consummation and fulfilment in His second coming; and hence (though there are many principles true in mediate application, just as the dullness and fatness of Israel's heart in the former prophecy) the prophecy treats of what is brought out in connection with the Lord's second coming, involving therefore not the Jews only, but the church and the Gentile, but as to all at His second coming. We have nothing then to look for here as fulfilment, but what takes place then.

225 The relinquished temple is the thesis - the Mount of Olives, the place whence He was to depart, and where His feet were to stand on His return, the suited place where His communications to the remnant of what was to be expected are given. I shall only very briefly present, after this introduction, what the chapters themselves present, without framing any system. It appears to me far the most wholesome way of inquiry; we know in part, I have seen no system which I do not believe false or extremely deficient. I repeat we know in part and yet all. These two statements shew the form of our knowledge.

What precedes the coming of Christ is divided into two parts, general and particular, at verses 14, 15; verses 5 and 6 stand by themselves as a warning - let no man deceive you - be not troubled - the end is not yet - there would be false Christs - and wars and rumours of wars; then the instruction. We must remember Jews are the subjects of it, but Jews owning Christ as a prophet, listening to Christ as a prophet, after He has given up Jerusalem, as Messiah, as the Lord had ceased to present Himself as the present object of faith. Nation should rise up against nation (v. 7). These were the beginning of sorrows, by which name we may describe this period, the beginning not the end. They were to be afflicted and delivered up to the Gentiles for His name sake, and be killed. This in the beginning of sorrows, evil amongst many associated with them apparently, treachery, coldness, false prophets, and many deceived, not yet false Christs; Antichrist being not yet distinctly revealed as a Jewish oppressor, and they (not he) should deliver up and kill them; the hatred was to be from the nations - Gentiles.

At the same time whoever endured unto the end should be saved. Further, as a great general fact, this gospel of the kingdom would be preached in all the world, for a witness to all the Gentiles, and the end of Jewish circumstances would not come till then; then it would. Now whatever analogy of principle there may be in the Lord's dealings (and I think there is), I believe strictly this is put in contrast with what we call the gospel. The death and resurrection of Christ could not be preached as the gospel before He was crucified and risen (previous to that His death was man's sin, though it were God's purpose); in the resurrection it could, because God had received it as atonement; but even Peter preaches it as their sin, and speaks of His return on their repentance, until further things came in. Stephen's death was the point of change as to this; but this gospel of the kingdom was, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, that God was going to set up His kingdom, though from heaven, among the Jews, in the person of His Son, even the Lord Jesus Christ; and this was to be preached to the Gentiles before He did it, for this would be the end, and the Lord would, as He always does, send the testimony before He did the fact. It is this gospel of the kingdom, then, that is to be preached before the end comes of Jewish circumstances to Jewish disciples, and this to the nations. The cry to the virgins is the personal approach of Christ, the Bridegroom of the bride.

226 From verse 15 we have a much more precise scene, a local scene; we have the holy place, and Daniel, and Judaea, and definite local circumstances, and prescribed conduct, when the abomination of desolation was seen standing in the holy place. "He that readeth, let him understand." Then those in Judaea were to flee to the mountains, for then shall be great tribulation here when this idol dishonour is set up in the holy place; no more testimony, for they are the days of vengeance, in Jerusalem or Judaea; they are to flee to the mountains; for the elect's sake, however, these days of tribulation shall be shortened. Isaiah 65: 9-22 Will shew who these elect are. During this period there will not only be false prophets, but false christs, present promised deliverers from the great tribulation, "Jacob's trouble"; but the elect were told beforehand; they were to pray, being Jews, that their flight might not be on the sabbath.

This was Jewish tribulation, from which the obedient remnant were exempt (they fled), and in which there was therefore no immediate testimony; not a period in which they were delivering up the remnant to the Gentiles. Nothing now was to be done. After this (v. 29) earthly power was to be put out in its imperial, derivative, and subordinate character, and the powers generally should be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of man would appear, and the tribes of the land (and indeed every eye) should see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven; and next, after this, He would send and gather, by His power and providence, the scattered remnant of Israel yet abroad in the world. These days of tribulation were shortened, that flesh might be saved - the only salvation spoken of in this part of the chapter; and the taking would be as the taking in the days of Noah in judgment, the left as Noah's family in mercy.

227 From verse 45 we have another scene, the place in which the then disciples were really going to be set, put on the ground of responsibility in which any would so stand who were in it, when the Lord came - Who then is a faithful and wise servant? They were made rulers over his household. We are the household of God, the Son's house; meat was to be given; the effect of faithfulness in this, reigning with Christ when He comes, "He shall make him ruler over all his goods" (v. 47).

The apostasy of the church consists in saying in heart, as settling itself here, "my Lord delayeth his coming." And so it did. The effect shewn in ruling as lords over the fellow-servants (hierarchical or clerical assumption in the absence of Christ), beating instead of feeding, and intercourse and communion with the world, eating and drinking with the drunken. A portion with hypocrites (for they never lose the profession of servants) is adjudged to them, the Lord of that servant coming. At this coming of the Lord, the church will be viewed and brought into its real aspect as regards those that make profession.

It is like ten virgins who went forth to meet the Bridegroom the original character of the instruction is here maintained. The bride is not mentioned; the virgins are Christians - the bride would be earthly Jerusalem. The virgins are called to meet Him in His coming to the marriage. But the bride is entirely omitted and passed over; for as yet, till the Lord came, the bride though loved, was nothing and nobody, hidden and lost, as it were, save to Him who, though He tarried long, still loved her. The virgins then, in whom we find therefore the similitude of the kingdom of heaven* again introduced, present the professing church as to its character and position in grace, as the talents do its service and gifts; of this we have to note some simple but very important testimony.

{*The kingdom of heaven I believe to be the setting up of Christ's kingdom consequent upon His taking His place in heaven.}

228 First, the original character and calling of the church: "they went forth to meet the bridegroom"; the condition they were found to be in - "they all slumbered and slept." When the end was coming, the godly and ungodly were found mixed together. Nor was this all: the godly had as much lost sight of their calling and original character as the mere professor, they all slumbered and slept. The sense of the Bridegroom's immediate approach they had lost; they became all insensible to this* while the Bridegroom tarried.

{*We have thus the clear scriptural statement of what has actually taken place, and God's judgment of the state godly men were in, men who had oil in their vessels with their lamps.}

Christ the Bridegroom tarried in His return to earth. The church at large, gracious or merely professing, all lost the present sense of this as their calling. Next, that which awoke them - awoke the professing church - was the cry, Behold the Bridegroom [cometh], go ye out to meet Him. The original call of the church they were aroused to, and in language which implied that, though not nominally, they had practically sunk into that world, out of which they had originally been called to meet Him: "Go ye out to meet him." This then, and this only, is the cry which awakens the church to its original position. In the next place, it finds all sleeping, and in a situation out of which they were to go to meet Him. Further, some time elapses before the Bridegroom comes, after the cry, so as to prove who had grace and who had not; for the effect of putting them in this position was to try if they had grace, which could alone sustain awakened life-giving position. The separation of professors from the church who join with Him is revealed to be the effect of the cry before the Lord comes at all. The wise only are there to meet Him. There cannot be a more simple, or more important parable than this, if the force of the words, by divine aid and teaching, be simply followed. I believe the words, "in which the Son of man cometh," chapter 25: 13, should be omitted. The term Son of man being properly always of His earthly or Jewish coming.

229 The next parable is not the position and character of the church tried as ready to meet Him, but the service done in His absence.* The Lord called His own servants and gave them according to their several ability, and took His journey. Grace, we shall see, made all the difference in character and acceptance, though gift might meet, according to divine appointment, its appropriate reward, being exercised through grace. There are three things in the parable. First, the talents conferred by Christ on His own servants, which shews that they are not natural faculties or worldly opportunities, but such as are peculiar to the servants of Christ, as such, given on His departure; next, these are conferred according to the competency or fitness of the vessel, "a man is a chosen vessel" who receives the gifts, and there is the capacity of the vessel, as well as the extent and character of the gift. The use of it was a different thing, the one talent was given according to ability as well as the five; the giving according to ability proved the fitness of God's appointment, and responsibility it may be in him to whom it was given; but the just or any use of the talent did not depend upon this. The possession of the talent constituted the responsibility for its use, for even men do not light a candle to put it under a bushel. That which led to its use is another thing, not the recognition of man or appointment through man; on the contrary, it is rested on something which is first framed to condemn and exclude that. The grace which used it is personal confidence in the character and acceptance of God; the grace is proved by, and rests for its exhibition on, that confidence in the Lord, which uses the talent by virtue of its personal acquaintance with and trust in His character; this is the thing characterising the difference between the good and evil servants. He was a good servant who acted on his personal confidence in the Lord's character, a bad servant who did not. This absolutely and pointedly excludes human appointment or recognition as the ground of the use of the gift.

{*This is characteristic of both these parables: - they suppose the knowledge of a Lord absent, of a Bridegroom coming, with whose coming in love to the Jews they are familiar and take an interest in. Consequently we find in the Jewish part previous signs, warnings, and what would happen, given to a remnant wanting all these things in the midst of a careless nation, "not desired", to the church none, for they are supposed to know and have their direction from a known but absent yet returning Lord. In the Gentile judgment it is neither of these, but a fresh testimony sent out, and they dealt with according to the manner they had received His witnesses who bore it.}

230 However the gift may be clearly recognised, and will be by spiritual judgment after it is used, yet faithfulness consists in using it in confidence in the Lord's character; unfaithfulness in waiting for something else. It cannot be personal grace thus characterised, if human appointment or any appointment by man be waited for.* The points marked as the consequence on the Lord's return are two. First, there is a large reward given in government, ruler over many things. Secondly, actual personal association with Christ in blessing, not being blessed under Him as ruled over, but "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." It does not seem that the energy and power of the Holy Ghost is taken away, though the scene of its exercise may be different (rule and joy instead of trading as a servant), save from the unprofitable servant, who is cast outside the light and glory of the kingdom. Let us remember that faithfulness consists in the use of a gift upon the ground of personal individual confidence in the character of the Lord as our master; and that this is the evidence of grace; waiting for anything else, of the want of it. The not using the talent when he had it flowed from positively false notions of God, thoughts of evil, the absence of grace, and a principle entirely condemned by the Lord as the proof of evil.

{*Some running before they are sent, and having no gift, does not prove that they who are sent should not run; rather the contrary, these are the counteracting good. It is not, ought to have a talent to run, but ought they, having it, to wait for man's sanction, or any sanction, before they run?}

Lastly. We come to the Gentiles; hitherto it has been instruction to a remnant on the earth, the Jews previous to His coming; then how He would deal with Christians upon His coming, they being caught up to meet Him, and going in with Him to the marriage (to wit, with Jerusalem and the Jews). Here we have what is consequent on His coming, "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory." This shall not be a passing act, but He shall then sit upon the throne of His glory, the glory of the Son of man, for now He is spoken of as coming as such to earth; not till then shall He sit upon the throne of the Son of man's glory, though divine glory be ever His. Then He shall not only come in His glory, but He shall sit upon the throne of it, and the nations, the Gentiles, as before the Jews and the church are brought before Him. As to them it is in elect purpose they are spared; the kingdom was prepared for them before the foundation of the world; they have life eternal, though as yet it is in earthly blessings; and the evidence of their condition was in the way they had treated His brethren, a distinct class from both sheep and goats (the former for that reason not being called "children," that is, a title peculiar in its fulness to this dispensation, "there shall they be called the children of the living God"). Further, we find that the judgment to which the goats are subjected is previous to, and only one as yet prepared for, the devil and his angels.

231 There is no association here for the blessed with the Lord in His own joy and fellowship - the first-born among many brethren, but merely the enjoyment of the prepared kingdom by reason of the way in which they had treated certain other persons whom the Lord calls brethren. This, then, is the session of the Son of man in the throne of His glory, all nations gathered before Him; and the one portion adjudged to blessing in the kingdom prepared for them, and possessing eternal life, judged according to the manner in which they had treated the brethren, the messengers of the kingdom; the rest, to the place prepared for the devil and his angels.

Thus the Jews, the Christians, the Gentiles, are judged as to the position in which the Lord finds them here (Christians, however, actually meeting Him in His return). The judgment is taken up at the close, and none of the statements in many of the details are specifically applicable to any but those found ready or unready then, but the principles would apply even according to that which we have seen at the outset, concerning Isaiah's prophecy. It would always apply. It did so definitely for desolation on the rejection of Messiah; so here the principles will apply at any time. The time of real application and fulfilment is previous, at, and subsequent to, the personal coming of the Lord; then the words directly lay hold, and the description simply applies, and as all those to whom it simply applies meet with present temporal judgment, so those to whom it applies in principle are reserved for the day when God shall judge the secrets of men's hearts. So was it with Isaiah's "make the heart of this people fat"; in the case of blessing, there is a difference, because all the saints are to be then brought into the blessing. There the long tarrying is mentioned, and the virgins are looked at as a corporate representation of the professing church during this tarrying, with the effects added not of the coming but of the cry (for they were indeed to meet Him) in rousing them for His approach, the cry being here, and the immediate application therefore earthly as to the rest. This special application at the close, when the judgment actually reached, of what was true in principle all along, while judgment did not reach, but which shall take place as to them at the judgment, when God judges secrets, is nothing more than we find to be God's ordinary way of dealing. Thus the way in which any whom Jesus is not ashamed to call brethren are treated would be ground of judgment in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men's hearts; but it has an actual manifested accomplishment in the judgment of the quick upon earth, instruction too and the object of faith. I mention this because it is often a difficulty, while this is the usage of God in His application of His word.

232 I have now gone through as simply as I could these passages, deriving merely from the passage, according to that given me, what the passage actually taught. Thus it seems to me most is really communicated, and most progress made, such as can be relied upon as sure; however our minds may work under the influence of the Spirit of God, and connect many passages together for our own profit. And I pray the Lord to bless it, simple as it is, to the edification of His people, and to teach them in heart to watch and wait for His appearing. Having heard Him announce "Behold I come quickly," may they say in guileless truth by the Spirit, "Even so, come Lord Jesus," separate in the power of the Holy Ghost, and longing beyond all thought or human wish for that; and if He who is the Yea and the Amen of every promise, says "Yea, I am coming quickly, Amen!" answer in the power of the same Spirit, the echo of the Spirit in His heart from Him who says it, "Yea, Come!" and say Amen to grace as our only, constant, and sure hope of being with Him. Amen.

Mark's Gospel

J. N. Darby.

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Introduction

If we wish for a better understanding of the Holy Ghost's thought about Mark's Gospel, we must briefly examine His teaching in the four Gospels. These present Christ to us, but Christ rejected: and, at the same time, they present the Saviour in four different aspects. Again, there is a difference between the three first and the last. The three first present Christ as the One whom the world ought to receive, although in result He be put to death. In the fourth we find the Lord Jesus rejected already, from the first chapter; and again, too, the Jews considered as cast off: those who are born of God are the only ones who receive the Lord: consequently we find in this Gospel the principles of grace more deeply unfolded - "No one can come unto me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him"; and the sheep are distinct from the world before they are called. The first three Gospels present Christ to men in order that He may be received; then they give us the history of the increasing enmity of man against Him, and finally His rejection and death.

As regards the character of each Gospel, in Matthew the Lord is considered as Emmanuel the promised Messiah, Jehovah who saves His people from their sins. "Jehovah the Saviour" is the meaning of the name Jesus. Consequently the genealogy descends from Abraham and David, the heads and vessels of the promises from whence the Messiah was to descend. In this first Gospel, when Christ is manifested in His true character, and in the spirit of His mission, He is morally rejected; and the Jews are set aside as a nation. The Lord seeks fruit in His vineyard no longer, but shews that He is really the sower; He reveals the kingdom, but in mystery (that is, in the manner in which it would exist in His absence); He reveals the church which He Himself would build, and the kingdom in its glorious state, which things should be substituted for His presence upon the earth; then the last events and discourses of His life.

Mark depicts the Servant-Prophet; and hence we have not the history of His birth; the Gospel begins with His ministry. We will speak afterwards of its contents. In the Gospel of Luke the Lord is presented to us as the Son of man, and in it we have a picture of grace, and of the work which is now going on; and the genealogy goes up to Adam. The two first chapters however reveal to us the state of the small though godly remnant amongst the Jews; a most exquisite picture of the working of the Spirit of God in the midst of the wicked and corrupt nation. These pious souls were well known to one another, they looked for the redemption of Israel; and the aged and godly Anna, who had seen the Saviour presented in the temple according to the law, announced to all who expected Him, the coming of the longed-for Messiah. In all the remaining part of this Gospel Christ is the Son of man for the Gentiles.

234 In the Gospel by John we have no genealogy at all. The Word of God, which is also God, appears in flesh upon the earth - He is the Creator, the Son of God. The world does not know Him. His own (the Jews) received Him not, but those who receive Him have the right to take the place of sons of God, being really born of Him. And since Christ is here presented as the manifestation of God, it is for this very cause that we find Him immediately rejected. This Gospel presents Him to us in His own person; then He putteth forth His own sheep, and gathers those of the Gentiles, and gives to them all eternal life, and they can never perish. At the end of this Gospel the coming of the Holy Ghost is explained to us: but let us begin to consider the Gospel by Mark.

Mark 1

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We have already said it begins with the Saviour's ministry. It is preceded only by the testimony of John. The latter prepares the way of the Lord, preaches the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and announces a more glorious Servant of God, the latchet of whose shoes he is not worthy to unloose: He will baptize with the Holy Ghost. The baptism of fire is not mentioned here, because the subject is the Lord's service in blessing, and not that of exercising His power in judgment. Fire always signifies judgment.

The Lord submits to John's baptism; this is a fact full of importance and blessing for man. Here He takes the place of His people before God: I need not say that the Lord could have no need of repentance; but He wishes to accompany His people in the first good step they take, that is, in the first step they take under the influence of the word. For Him it was the fulfilling of all righteousness. Everywhere where sin had brought us, love and obedience led Him for our deliverance. Only here He comes with His own: in death He took our place, He bore the curse, He was made sin. Here He takes His place as a perfect man in relationship with God - with the Father; that place which He acquired for us by redemption in the which we are placed as sons of God.

235 The heavens are opened: the Holy Spirit descends upon man. The Father recognises us as His children; Jesus was anointed and sealed by the Holy Ghost, even as we are; He, because He was personally worthy of it; we, because He has made us worthy by His work and by His blood. For us heaven is opened, the veil rent, and we cry, "Abba, Father!" Marvellous grace! Infinite love! The Son of God has become man in order that we also should become sons of God, as He Himself said after His resurrection: "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God." Glorious unspeakable purpose of God to place us in the same glory, in the same relationship as His own Son: in the glory to which He has a right by His own perfection as being God's own Son. "In order that he might shew in the ages to come the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness towards us, in Christ Jesus." This will be fully accomplished when that which the Lord Jesus has said shall come to pass: "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them . . . that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." Oh! what ought to be the love of Christians for the Saviour, who by His sufferings, even unto death, has acquired such a position for us, and the blessed assurance of being with Him and like Him for all eternity!

It is also important to remark that here the Trinity is fully revealed for the first time. In the Old Testament we read of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; but here, where we have the position of the second Man according to grace, the Holy Trinity is fully revealed. At the same time the revelation is clear, and the three persons appear together; the Son is revealed as a man, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, and the Father's voice owns Jesus in whom He is well pleased. We may notice here the difference between man's responsibility and the purpose of grace. God's purpose was fixed before the world was created, but it was fixed in the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the book of Proverbs (chap. 8) it is shewn that Christ, as Wisdom, was with God, that He was the object of God's delight, and that His own delight was found in the sons of men. But before revealing His counsels, or accomplishing the work which was to produce all the effects of this love, God created responsible man - the first Adam. But Adam failed to accomplish his duty, and all the means that God has employed have only brought out the wickedness of man, until the second Man should come. Thus the delight which God had in man has been manifested.

236 Nevertheless man has not been willing to receive it; there remained only the personal object of the perfect satisfaction of God; and thus in His person He has taken a position which we find revealed in this passage; that of Son of God, with the heaven opened, being sealed by the Holy Spirit. But He was alone. Upon the cross He did all that was necessary as regards our responsibility; and has done more - has fully glorified God in His love, in His majesty, in His truth, and has acquired for us the participation in His own position as man in the glory of God; not indeed as the right of God, that is, His own right as Son, but to be like Him in glory, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. This is God's purpose: and when the work of Christ was accomplished, this purpose was brought to light. As to its being fulfilled in us upon the earth, we have an example of it in the passage we are considering. Compare 2 Tim. 1: 9; Titus 1: 2, 3.

But this is not all. As soon as Jesus had taken His place before God as man, and when He had been manifested as Son of God in human nature, He is led by the power of the Holy Ghost into the wilderness, and there undertakes the struggle with the devil in the which the first Adam had been conquered. It was necessary that He should conquer in order to set us free; and notice too that His circumstances were very different from those in which the first Adam found himself. The first Adam was surrounded with God's blessings, of which He had full enjoyment; they were a present testimony of His favour. Christ, on the contrary, was in the desert with the consciousness that Satan was now reigning over man, and all outward comforts are wanting; outwardly there was no testimony of God's goodness: indeed all was contrary to this.

237 In Mark the details of the temptation and the Lord's replies are not given, but only the fact is recorded (a precious fact for us) that the Lord has passed through this trial. He presented Himself according to the will of God, led of the Holy Ghost to meet the powerful enemy of mankind; immense grace! He first shewed our place before God, having taken it in His own person; and then He entered into conflict with the devil who held us captive. The third fact that we observe is that the angels have become the servants of those who shall be heirs of salvation. Here, then, are the three testimonies in connection with the manifestation of Jesus as man in the flesh; - our position as sons of God, Satan conquered, the angels our servants.

The Saviour (v. 14), having taken His place in the world, begins the exercise of His ministry, but not before John's imprisonment. After that this forerunner of the Messiah was cast into prison, and not before, the Saviour began to preach the gospel of the kingdom. The testimony of John was very important to draw the people's attention to Him; but it would not have been right that he should have borne testimony to the Lord after that He Himself had begun to bear testimony to Himself. "I receive not testimony from man," saith the Lord, speaking of John the Baptist; John 5: 34. He bore witness to John! He was the Truth in His own person, and His words and His works were the testimony of God in the world. "What sign doest thou?" said the people; "our fathers did eat manna in the desert . . . ." And the Lord replied, "I am the bread come down from heaven."

The preaching of Jesus announced the kingdom, shewed that the time was fulfilled, that the kingdom of God was at hand, that the people must repent and believe the gospel. We should distinguish between the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of our salvation. Christ is the centre of both; but there is a great difference between the preaching of a kingdom which is drawing near, and that of an eternal redemption accomplished upon the cross. It is quite possible that the two truths should be announced together. And indeed we find that the apostle Paul preached the kingdom, but he certainly also proclaimed an eternal redemption accomplished for us upon the cross. Christ prophesied of His death, and announced that the Son of man should give His life for the ransom of many; but He could not announce an accomplished redemption during His life. Men ought to have received Him and not to have put Him to death: hence His testimony was about the kingdom which was drawing nigh.

238 This kingdom in its public power has been delayed, because Christ has been rejected (see Rev. 11: 17); and this delay lasts all the time that Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, until the time when He shall arise from the throne of His Father to judge. God has said, "Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool," Psalm 110. It is nevertheless true that the kingdom was already come in mystery according to Matthew 13; this goes on during the time that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. But when God's appointed moment shall come, the Lord will arise and set up the kingdom, and with His own power will judge the living; and peace and happiness shall be established upon the earth. And we who have received Him, whilst the world has rejected Him, shall go to meet Him in the air, we shall be for ever with the Lord, and shall come with Him in glory when He shall appear before the world, and shall reign with Him; and, what is still far better, we shall be like Him and always with Him in the heavenly places in the Father's house.

The development of these truths and of these events is only found in the word of God after the Lord's ascension, after that the foundation for the accomplishment of God's purpose had been laid in the Saviour's death. Here He announces only the drawing nigh of the kingdom, for men should have received it. But although Jesus taught in all the synagogues, there were not only those who heard Him, or who believed what He taught, but some who also followed Him. It is of the greatest importance to notice this: many in the present day profess to have received the gospel; but how small is the number of those who follow the Lord in the path of faith, in that humility and obedience which characterised the Lord's steps in this world! Let us try to follow Him: perhaps we cannot literally forsake all, as the first disciples did; but we can walk in the spirit in which they walked, and esteem Christ as the all for our souls; and that all other things are but as dung in order that we may win Christ in glory. The Lord here calls men to make them fishers of others; let us also seek others, that they too may be able to enjoy the ineffable and glorious happiness which the Holy Spirit gives. We may not be apostles perhaps, but whoever is full of Christ will give testimony to Christ; out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Rivers of living water shall flow from the belly of him who comes to Christ and drinks; John 7.

239 The Gospel by Mark does not present the person of Emmanuel, and then the grace of His mission, as that by Matthew; but sets forth rapidly His ministry in its application to men. Necessarily the ministry is the same, but the development is different. His word and His works testify equally to the authority with which He taught the people. While He was speaking, the audience in the synagogue was astonished, for His speech was not like that of the scribes who insisted upon opinions, but He announced the truth as One who knew it and could present it from its very foundation. Even evil spirits were afraid of His presence, and prayed that they might not be destroyed. Nevertheless they were obliged to leave the wretched men whom they held as their prey under their power: so that the people said, "What is this? what is this doctrine?" A testimony was raised that God had intervened to set man free, and to communicate His perfect truth to him. Grace and truth had come by Jesus Christ.

His fame spread all over Galilee. Leaving the synagogue He enters into the house of Simon and Andrew: the apostle Peter had a wife, and her mother was sick of a fever. The Lord takes her by the hand; the fever disappears, and the woman begins to serve them in a perfect state of health. As soon as the sabbath is ended, all the city is gathered together at the door of the house: the Lord heals the sick and casts out demons; the demons recognise Him although men have not. Still He remains the Servant of God, and gets up before sunrise to go into a solitary place to pray. Peter seeks Him and, having found Him, says, "All seek thee": but Jesus, always the Servant, does not seek numbers and fame for Himself, but goes away elsewhere to preach and to bring freedom from the yoke of Satan.

It is important to remark that here the Lord's miracles are not simply a sign and proof of power, but also of the goodness which was acting in divine power. It is this which gives the true divine character to the miracles of Jesus. All His works are the fruit of love, and bear witness to the God of love upon the earth. There is only one apparent exception, which, after all, is a proof of the truth we are remarking. This exception is the cursing of the fig-tree; but this was a figure of the people Israel, and one may say of human nature, under God's cultivation, which did not produce fruit - there were only leaves, that is, hypocrisy. Hence it was judged and condemned, and will never bear fruit again; the gardener dug about it, and dunged it, but all was useless; and then it was given up of God. Man must be born again - must be created again in Christ Jesus.

240 Of the love manifested in the works of the Lord Jesus we have a beautiful proof in that which follows. A leper comes to Jesus well persuaded of His power, having seen His miracles, or heard tell of these mighty works; but he was not certain that he would find willingness in Him to heal him. He says to Him, "If thou wilt, thou canst." The Lord, not content with being willing and with doing, touches the leper. Now leprosy - terrible disease! - was a figure of sin, and he that was ill of it was shut out of the camp as unclean; and even a man who might have touched him was shut out too, because he became contaminated by it. No means could be employed to cure the leper; it was Jehovah alone who could cure him; and then, when cured of Jehovah, the priest pronounced him clean, and he could, after certain ceremonies, partake of divine worship. Here the Lord comes in with this divine power and the love of God. "I will, be thou clean." The willingness and power of God were there, and were exercised in favour of the poor excommunicated man. But there is something more - He touches the sufferer. God is present; Jesus cannot be contaminated; but He has come so near to the unclean man as to be able to touch him - true Man amongst men, God manifest in flesh. God, but God in a man, love itself, the power which can do all necessary to deliver man from the effect of Satan's power. Undefilable purity is found upon earth - but love as well, that is, God is here, but Man also - and works for man's blessing. The leper is healed immediately, the leprosy disappears.

But although God be manifested in His work of power and love, He does not leave the servant's place, now that He has taken it; He sends away the healed man, saying, "See that thou say nothing to any man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded." We may remark another circumstance in this history - that the Lord was moved with compassion when He saw the leper. God, in His love, is man touched with pity in His heart for the wretched state in which He finds man: we often find this fact in the Gospels. Now the cleansed leper spreads abroad the fame of Jesus all around, so that the testimony of the power of God present with His people makes itself felt in men's minds. Jesus did not seek human glory, but to accomplish the will of God and the work He had given Him to do. Surrounded by all, He cannot enter into the city, where the astonished crowd would have assembled itself around Him.

Mark 2

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But after some days, when the expectation had lessened a little, the Lord enters again into the city. It was soon noised abroad that He was in the house, and so many came together that there was no room to receive them, not even about the door. Jesus preached the word to them, because this service was always His first object. He was the Word, He was the Truth, He was Himself that which His word announced, of whom man had need. His word, too, was confirmed by His works, and the people knew that He possessed the power that could deliver them from every evil.

They bring a paralytic man, carried of four; but not being able to get as far as Jesus, hindered as they were by the crowd, they uncover the roof - easily done in the East - and let down the paralytic man to the place where Jesus was. This was an evident proof of their faith; it was the deep sense of need, and confidence in Jesus, in His love, in His power. Without an urgent desire to be healed, and a full confidence in the power and love of Jesus, they would have been discouraged by the difficulty presented by the crowd, and would have gone back, saying perhaps, "We will come again, we may be able to get at Him another time." But there are no difficulties for faith; its principles are these - the need of finding the Saviour, of feeling our misery, and of feeling that Jesus alone can heal us - that His love is strong enough to look upon us in our wretchedness. It is of course the work of the Spirit which reveals Jesus to us; but He produces such a sense of our wretchedness that we are impelled to go to seek the Lord, and difficulties do not drive us back, because we know that Jesus alone can heal us, that His love is enough; not indeed that we are already sure of being healed, but enough to attract us to Himself in the assurance that He will do it. And if we have already come to Him, faith always produces need in the soul, and the assurance that the Saviour will respond to our need. And Christ never fails to answer to it; He may allow difficulties to prove the faith, but faith that perseveres finds the answer; and that which if we know the Lord's sufficiency, produces this perseverance is the sense of our need. The source of all is the operation of the Holy Spirit in our heart.

242 The Lord takes occasion by the wretched state of the paralytic man to point out the true root of all evils - sin. He had come because sin was in the world, and with what object then but that sin might be forgiven? It is true that, since God is just, it is needful that a perfect atonement be made for sins in order that they may be forgiven. But Jehovah, who knew everything, could administer the pardon by means of the Son of man in that manner which now makes all believers participate in a perfect pardon by means of the gospel. As to His government also He could pardon or leave under the effects of His punishment both individuals and the whole nation. Now He who was present had the right and power to forgive sins upon earth: and He gave the proof of it. In Psalm 103 He is celebrated as the One who would forgive all Israel's iniquities, and heal all his infirmities.

The great need of guilty Israel was this forgiveness: Christ announces it. As to the government of God itself, Israel could not be re-established in blessing, if he did not possess God's pardon. "Thy sins be forgiven thee," said the Lord: the scribes cry out against the blasphemy. But God, the Jehovah of Psalm 103, was there present in the person of the Son of man; and He gives the proof that this right belonged to Him by fulfilling that which is said in that very Psalm: "who healeth all thine infirmities." "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, He saith to the sick of the palsy, Arise, and take up thy bed and go thy way." The man gets up, takes up his bed and goes away. Pardon and power to heal were come upon earth in the person of the Son of man, of Him who, having divine rights and power, was down here in humiliation upon earth to bring the love and the power of God to the wretchedness of man, to the fatal miseries of the soul, giving a proof of it in freeing the body from the sufferings which sin had introduced.

God was present in love. The power to heal was there, but the important truth was that forgiveness was come upon earth. This is the first great truth of the gospel. That which is here announced by Christ is now proclaimed in the gospel which is the means of reconciling God's justice with free pardon, with the full lasting pardon of sins clearly shewn forth before men in the Lord's words. The remission of sins is announced, founded on the Saviour's work. But if this be the spirit of the gospel, if this be the work of Jesus, He must come to call sinners, He must make Himself their friend, in order that they may have confidence, and may believe in this grace, and that the world may know the Saviour's true character.

243 That which follows in our history makes us understand clearly the mission and the ministry of Jesus. He calls Matthew who was sitting at the receipt of custom. The tax was hateful to the Jews, not only because they had to pay it against their will, but much more because it was the proof of their being in slavery to the Gentiles. They had lost their privileges as the free people of God; and when their fellow-countrymen took this office, as they were wont to do, under the Roman knights, their bitterness was very great, and the man who took such a situation became hated as a perfidious traitor of the religion and the nation. Thus these tax-gatherers were despised and detested. Now Matthew invites the Lord, and many other publicans were at table with Jesus and with His disciples.

The scribes and Pharisees raise the question as to how it could be possible that a righteous teacher should sit and eat with unclean men and sinners. Jesus hears this, and answers with divine wisdom. The simplicity of the answer equals its force. "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Here it is grace that is working; and the work of Jesus presents a full contrast to the law. The law demanded human justice from man; Christ and the gospel announce divine grace which reigns and reveals God's righteousness. Here we have grace; as to divine righteousness, it should be fully revealed when Christ should have accomplished His work upon the cross: truth as important as it is precious!

Christ, the Saviour, came to seek sinners, and does not seek righteous persons; even were there any such, there would be no need to seek them, but in His sovereign grace and perfect goodness He came to seek sinners; He does not send them away but seeks them, and can sit and eat with them whilst being Himself altogether holy. This is the manifestation of God in love in the midst of sinners to win the hearts of men, and to produce confidence toward God in these hearts, and to bind all the faculties of the soul with the power of a perfect object, and to form it according to the image of that which leads it, and which it contemplates; whence to inspire this confidence, since good was come into the midst of evil, and had taken part in the wretchedness in which fallen man lay - a goodness which did not drive away the sinner on account of his sins, but which invited him to come.

244 Man's ruin began when he lost his confidence in God: the devil had succeeded in persuading Eve that God had not permitted man to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because He knew that, if he did it, he would be as God, knowing good and evil; that God had forbidden him to touch the tree from jealousy; and, if He did not wish that we should be happy, we must make ourselves happy. And this is what Eve sought, and what all men seek who do their own will. Thus man fell, and thus man remains in all the wretchedness which is the fruit of sin, awaiting God's judgment upon the sin itself. Now, before executing judgment God came in love as Saviour to shew that His love is greater than sin, and that the worst sinner can have confidence in this love that seeks sinners and adapts itself to their wants, which does not demand righteousness from man, and brings him salvation and grace by which to present him finally to God as His righteousness through the work of Christ: but He comes in love to sinful men to reconcile them with Himself. Instead of punishing them for their sins, He finds occasion to manifest the immensity of His love in coming to those who were lying in sin, and in giving Himself as a sacrifice to put it away.

In His life Christ presents this love of God, God Himself manifested in love to man; in His death He is as man before God, made sin for us in order that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, and that the righteous God, the God of love, never might remember our sins. In the history which we are considering He manifests God's love towards man. The law was the perfect rule of that which man ought to be as son of Adam; it demanded of man that he should be such, and pronounced a curse upon the man who did not do that which it required. It added God's authority to that which was fitting to the relationships in which man finds himself, and gave a perfect rule for conduct to man in these relationships; a rule easily forgotten or broken in the fallen state of man. It did not give life, nor strength, nor objects to attract and rule the heart; but it established the relationship of man with God and with his fellows, and cursed all those who had not kept it, that is, all those that were under it.

245 The flesh does not submit, nor can it submit to the law of God: grace then, whilst it establishes the authority of the law and the curse itself, since Christ the blessed Saviour has borne it, must needs change everything in the ways of God. Forgiveness is not the same as the curse, and paying a debt is very different from demanding the money. It is quite just to demand payment, but, if the debtor has nothing to pay, he is ruined; whereas, if he pays, he is set free. Christ has done more; not only does He pay the debt, but He has acquired glory for those that believe. Not only has He freed the debtor from his debts, but He has given him an immense fortune in God's presence.

But then the change is complete and perfect, and the Lord's words which follow shew us this. John's disciples and the Pharisees used to fast, and the Lord gives motives why His own could not do it. The Bridegroom was present and so it was not the time for fasting, but the time would soon come when the Bridegroom would be taken away; and then they should fast. The joy of His presence would be turned into sorrow by His absence, by the need which this absence would create in the heart. The other reason is this: it was impossible to mix the two systems; the new wine (the truth and the spiritual power of Christianity) could not be put into old bottles, into the old institutions and ceremonies of Judaism. If this were done, the new wine would destroy the bottles, and both would be spoiled, the wine would be lost and the bottles destroyed. In like manner a piece of new cloth does not suit an old garment: the garment would be torn, and the rent would only be greater. Indeed it is not possible to attach the spiritual power of Christianity to the carnal ceremonies which human nature loves, because it can make of them a religion without a new life, and without the conscience being touched. The unconverted man, if he wishes, may thus do as much good as the converted man. No, the new wine must be kept in new bottles: it is important for us to remember it. The dispensation was changed, a new order was coming in, and all was altered; the nature of the things was different - they could not exist at the same time; fleshly ceremonies and the power of the Holy Ghost could never go together. Think of it, Christians! Christianity has tried to embellish itself with these ceremonies, and often even under Pagan forms; and what has it become? It has adapted itself to the world of which these forms were the rudiments, and has become really pagan, and its true spirituality can hardly be found at all.

246 But there was an institution founded by God, that is, the sign of His covenant with Israel - the sabbath - and it was too the sign of God's rest in the first creation. Now, in Israel man was put to the proof, to see whether, with a perfect rule, and with means offered by the law (God Himself being present in the tabernacle or temple), he could serve God and fulfil righteousness as a son of Adam in the flesh. The sabbath was not "a" seventh day but "the" seventh day, in the which at the end of creation God ceased creating, and rested. The question then arose as to whether man could share God's rest: and the answer is, that he has sinned, and therefore can never have any part in this rest. Under the law he was again put to the proof; and then he made the golden calf before Moses came down from the mountain. God then exercised patience with the people until they rejected Christ. But it was impossible to establish a covenant between God and man after the flesh; man could not enjoy God's rest. More than this; the sabbath of the first creation was for man, and He who enjoyed all the rights of man according to God's counsels was Lord of the sabbath: thus these two principles are unfolded.

First, as when David, the anointed of the Lord, had been rejected, everything was common and profane; so when Christ, the last proof offered to man in the flesh, was rejected, nothing was holy for man; the seal of the first covenant had lost all its meaning. Then, when Christ renounces for a time His position in Israel as Messiah, He becomes (as we see often in the Gospels, Luke 9: 21, 22, etc.) the Son of man. Thus He is the Lord of the sabbath which was made for man; thus the sign of the old covenant disappears through man's sin and his rejection of Christ.

247 Christ's resurrection is the beginning of the new creation, the foundation of the new covenant founded upon His blood. This is the sign of God's rest for us. Satisfied, glorified by the death of Jesus, God has raised Him from among the dead and has found a resting-place for His love and His righteousness; and we, the objects of this love, are made the righteousness of God in Christ.

Thus the Lord's day is a most precious gift from Him, and the true Christian enjoys it with all his heart; and, if he is faithful, he finds himself in the Spirit to enjoy God, happy to be freed from material labour to adore God as his Father, and to enjoy communion with the Lord. It is always a bad sign when a Christian talks of his liberty and makes use of it to neglect the Lord, in order to give himself to the material work of the world. However free a Christian may be, he is free from the world and from the law, in order to serve the Lord. How much good may he not do on the Lord's day! And this is a third principle which is found in chapter 3 in this Gospel.

Mark 3

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Grace had come (John 1: 17), God Himself was present in grace; and this grace was free to do good on the sabbath. The Lord's true rest is the exercise of His love in the midst of evil. The Pharisees thought nothing of doing evil provided that their traditions were observed. God held Himself at liberty to do good; and for this reason the Lord heals the withered hand, calling the Jew's attention to this great principle in a formal way.

The Pharisees consult with the Herodians (who were their enemies) to find out how they might put Jesus to death; and the Lord departs. So the dispensation of the law is set aside by Christianity, which cannot be introduced into the old Jewish forms; and at the same time the rights of divine love, that is, the rights of God Himself are maintained. Thus the true character of the Lord's service is clearly set forth. Here the direct unfolding of the Lord's ministry ceases. That which follows consists of parables and facts, which develop it and shew clearly the relationships in which the Lord found Himself with the Jews. He withdraws Himself from the hatred of the rulers of the people, in order to carry on His service of love.

248 A great multitude from all parts of the country follow Him, having heard of the marvellous things that He did; we have here a living picture of the effect of His ministry. The Lord finds Himself obliged to have a little ship upon the lake, so large was the crowd that pressed upon Him wishing to touch Him to be healed. Also evil spirits when they saw Him, fell down before Him, saying, "Thou art the Son of God." Remark here, that which we often find in the Gospels, that evil spirits possessed people so completely, that their acts are attributed to the spirits; and the demoniacs said that which the spirits made them say, as it were of their own accord. The mind and body were so completely in possession of the spirit, that the possessed person thought that that which the spirit inspired was his own thoughts. The possession was complete. "Thou art come to torment us before the time . . . I know thee, the Holy One of God" - it is often thus. But the Lord would not receive the testimony of demons, nor allow them to make Him known.

He goes up a mountain that He may get away from the crowd for a little, in order to be alone; and calls to Him those He will, who come to Him. In Luke's Gospel we read that He passed all the night in prayer before naming the apostles. In Luke we find much more of the Lord's humanity, most important in its place. He prayed when heaven opened to Him; He prayed when He was transfigured; and when in agony in the garden, He prayed more earnestly. Here we have rather the progress of His ministry: He associates with Himself other servants to continue and extend His work. They were to be with Him, and then they are sent to preach the gospel with power, to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils. Remark here, that Christ not only does miracles Himself, but that He can give others the power of performing them. The apostles could lay their hands on a man that He might receive the Holy Ghost; but they could never give to others the power to perform miracles, and to cast out demons. This is something much more than performing miracles; it is the power and the authority of God. He gives names also to some of His disciples - mark of supreme authority - and according to the knowledge He had of their character, before He had had any experience of it.

At the same time we see how the Lord's testimony is received: His own friends think Him mad; and the leaders of the people ascribe His wonderful works to the power of Satan. O what a world we live in! Man can see nothing in the activity of divine goodness but madness and the work of the devil. But surely Satan does not cast out Satan: it is this that is real folly. If a strong man's goods are taken from him, it is clear that a stronger has come and has bound him. May God be praised! But this sin - blasphemy against the Holy Ghost - cannot be pardoned. Whilst they said, "We do not believe: this man does not keep the sabbath, he deceives us," although it was bad enough, it was pardonable; but the scribes recognised the power - a power greater than that of demons, and, instead of owning there the finger of God, they ascribed it to the prince of the demons - called the Holy Ghost a demon. It was the end of all hope for Israel, as regards his responsibility. Grace could forgive the nation, and will do it when the Lord shall return in glory; but now, as a responsible people, their story is ended.

249 It is for this reason the Lord renounces all relationship with the people according to the flesh. His mother and brethren come to call Him, but the Lord will not recognise them. He brings in the word to form new links with souls, but every link with Israel is broken. His mother has no claim upon Him, He refuses to own her call: "Who is my mother or my brethren?" He says; and looking round upon those about Him, "Behold my mother and my brethren: for whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister and mother." Here we find the break between the Lord and the people. The patience of the Lord continued to shew forth God's goodness, until the last Passover; but all was really over for the people; its condemnation could not fail to be pronounced; He no longer seeks fruit in His vineyard.

Mark 4

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Seated in a boat at the lakeside, the Lord presents the parable of the sower, who went forth to sow that which, if received in the heart, should bring forth by grace the fruit desired of God. The fruit was not to be found in the vineyard where man was to be tried just as he was in the flesh, under the old covenant, the law being written upon tables of stone. It is on this account that the Lord cursed the fig-tree which did not bring forth fruit, but leaves only; He had digged about it and dunged it, but in vain; therefore it was to be cut down. Solemn truth! Grace raises us above sin, but man in himself is lost as regards his responsibility. The Lord begins to teach the crowd in parables: saying "a sower went forth to sow." As we have said, He no longer seeks for fruit from man upon the earth, nor in His people, but sows that which ought to bring forth fruit.

250 As the sower sows, some falls by the way-side, some on stony ground, some in the midst of thorns, and some on good ground. It is no question here of doctrine, but the facts which follow the sowing of the word of the kingdom present themselves; it is a question of outward facts. Three parts bear no fruit. When the word is sown in the heart, in the first instance, it rests on the surface of the ground, it does not penetrate the heart; the devil takes away the word, and no fruit is left. In the second instance the word is received with joy; the hearers are glad to listen to the sound of grace, of pardon, of the kingdom; but when this brings with it affliction or persecution, they leave it. The hearer had received it with joy; he leaves it when affliction comes: the conscience is not brought into God's presence; the need of a troubled conscience is not felt. It is in the conscience that the word of God fixes its roots; because the presence of God is revealed and awakens the conscience. God Himself is revealed to the heart, and one finds oneself in His presence with the consciousness of being there. Self-judgment follows, the darkness passes away, and the light of God shines in the heart. When the conscience has already been exercised, then the gospel brings joy at once, and God's answer to the soul's need. Whatever the grace and the love of God may be, when they are first revealed, they do not produce joy, because the conscience is reached; the light penetrates, because God is light. Love (for God is love) inspires confidence, the heart is attracted and trusts, like the sinful woman who washed the Lord's feet with her tears; but the conscience, not being yet purged, has no joy. If the announcement of pardon gives joy, there is reason to fear that the conscience is not awakened. The understanding (perhaps also the natural affections) has understood the beautiful story of love and pardon told in the gospel, but the work is only surface-deep and disappears.

Another part of the seed fell amongst thorns, and the thorns, growing up, choked it, and it did not bear any fruit. Last of all, that which fell on good ground brought forth fruit in different proportions. The object of this discourse is not to shew how this takes place; it speaks only of the effect manifested. Doubtless it is grace, but the fact alone is told. We see the activity of grace in the heart in this last case, because it grows and bears fruit, and keeps on growing. He who has truly received the word in the heart is fitted to communicate it to others. He may not have the gift of preaching, but he loves the truth, he loves souls, and the glory of the Saviour; and the light which has been lit in his heart is to light all around him. He too sows according to his strength, and is responsible to do so. All will be manifested, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, with regard to this, as in everything else. God sends light into the heart in order to give it to others, and not to hide it. We shall receive more, if we are faithful in communicating what we possess; and, if there is love in us, this cannot fail. Truth and love both came in Christ, and unless the heart be full of Christ, the truth will not be manifested: if the heart be full of other things, or of itself, Christ cannot be manifested. If Christ - truth and love - be in the heart, the truth will shine out for the blessing of others, and we ourselves shall be blessed, and more will be given to us; and there will be liberty and joy in the soul. That which he already possesses will be taken away from the man who does not let others profit by the light he has.

251 We see here again that the Lord's ministry amongst the Jews was ended. "To you it is given," He says to the disciples, "to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but to those that are without all these things are spoken in parables, in order that seeing they may not perceive, and that hearing they may not understand, lest they be converted, and their sins be forgiven them." They are under the judgment of God. The Lord does not mean to say here that a soul might not believe in Jesus individually, and thus be forgiven; but that the nation, having rejected the testimony of Jesus, was now deserted of God, left outside, and exposed to His judgment. He reproves the disciples because they too could not understand the parable, nevertheless He explains it to them in His grace.

After this explanation and the respective warnings of which we have spoken, the Lord gives another parable which presents His ways very clearly. The kingdom is like unto a man that casts seed into the ground, who, rising and sleeping day and night, allows it to increase without taking any notice of it. The earth produces thus fruit of itself, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full grain in the ear. Now when the fruit is ripe, the sickle is put in at once, because the harvest is come. Thus the Lord worked personally, sowing the word of God upon earth; and at the end, He will return, and work again in person, when the time for the judgment of this world shall have come; but now in the meantime, He remains seated at the right hand of God, as though He did not occupy Himself with His field, although in secret He does work by His grace, and produces everything. But it is not manifest. Without being seen, He works to make the seed grow in a divine way by His grace, whilst apparently He allows the gospel to grow without having anything to do with it until the harvest. Then He will appear and will Himself work openly.

252 He teaches the people again with another parable. We do not find here the whole story of the kingdom as in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, but only its great principles, and the Lord's work in contrast with His manifestation and the establishment of the kingdom by His own presence. It grows during His absence, no one knows how, at least as regards human knowledge. The kingdom, then, is like a grain of mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds; but as soon as it is sown it grows, and becomes a large plant, even a tree large enough for the birds of the air to rest upon its branches. Thus Christianity, a little seed, that of a man despised by the world, has become a great power upon the earth, and extends its branches everywhere. Here the Evangelist repeats that the Lord spoke to the crowds in parables, and that He did not address them without parables; then He explained the whole to His disciples, when they were alone with Him.

In that which follows, we have, I think, a picture of the departure of Jesus, and of His power; the security of His own even when He seemed to be indifferent to their difficulties; then the relationship in which He stood towards the Jews. Jesus, having sent away the multitude, gets into a boat and goes to sleep whilst a tempest arises upon the lake, so that the waves fill the boat. The disciples, full of fear, come to Jesus to awaken Him; Jesus arises, rebukes the wind, and says to the sea, "Peace, be still," and all is quiet. But then He reproves the unbelieving fear of the disciples; and indeed, reader, do you think that the power of the Son of God, God's counsels, could have failed because of an unexpected storm on the lake of Gennesaret? Impossible! the disciples were in the same boat with Jesus. Here is a lesson for us: in all the difficulties and dangers of the christian life, during the whole journey upon the waves, often agitated by the tempestuous sea of life and of christian service, we are always in the same boat with Jesus, if we are doing His will. It may seem to us that He is sleeping; nevertheless, if He allows the tempest to rise in order to prove our faith, we shall not perish since we are with Him in the storm; evidently neither He nor we can perish. He may seem sometimes to be indifferent to our fate; but I repeat we are with Him; His security is our own.

Mark's Gospel

J. N. Darby.

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Mark 5

If calming the winds and the sea shews the Lord's power over creation, that which follows shews it over demons; He casts out a Legion by His word. But now we find the effect of the manifestation of His power upon the world, even where it worked for the deliverance of men. They beseech Jesus to depart, and He goes away. Poor world! the quiet influence of Satan upon the heart is more disastrous than His outward and visible power; this is sad enough, but the power of the Lord is quite sufficient to drive it away: whereas, on the other hand, the quiet influence of Satan in the heart drives away Jesus Himself. And remark that, when the presence of God is felt, it is more terrible than that of Satan; man would wish to free himself from the latter, but cannot; but the presence of God is insupportable when it makes itself felt: and indeed man has driven God (in the person of Christ) out of this world. Jesus gave Himself for us, it is true; but, as regards man's responsibility, he has driven out the Lord. I do not doubt that all this scene is the representation of the end of the Lord's history; and that the swine present to us the end of the Jews, who were hurried into perdition as possessed of the devil at the end of their history. The world did not wish to have Jesus; the Jews are cast down into hopeless ruin.

The man who is cured is quiet; he wishes to be with Jesus who is going away, but this is not allowed him. He must go and announce to others what God has done for him. Here is the position of the disciples and of all Christians after the Lord's departure from this world. They desire to go and be with Him, but are sent again into the world to declare the blessed work that the Lord has done in their own persons; they can by their own experience say what is the grace and the power of Jesus. But how deplorable is the state of the world and of man! The presence of the devil is more tolerable for him than that of God. He would wish to check the violent manifestations of the power of Satan, but cannot - the bands are burst asunder, and the man is as bad as ever. God is not a tyrant like Satan; He is good, full of grace, and frees men in Christ from Satan's power; but, this being the proof of the presence and power of God, man shews that His presence is insupportable to him, even when God manifests Himself as the deliverer from all the evils which sin and Satan's power have introduced.

254 The history which follows reveals the true relationships between Jesus and Israel. Jesus came to heal Israel; but Israel was in fact dead, speaking spiritually; when Jesus arrived, it was necessary to raise him, if it were God's will that he should live; the Lord could do it, and will do it for this nation in the last days. But then being in the way with the people, the crowd of Israel surrounded Him; and, if individual faith touched Him, the person was healed, and this is what happened to the poor afflicted woman.

Let us notice some of the details of the story: - the Lord distinguishes between true faith and the eagerness of the crowd which was attracted by His miracles and by the benefits it had received. Sincerity was not wanting in the crowd, the people saw the miracles and enjoyed their effects, but they had not faith in the person of Jesus. But there was good in the woman, by grace, that which is always found in faith, a felt need and the perception of the excellence of His person, and of the divine power that was in Jesus, accompanied with true humility with regard to herself. The poor woman is sure that, if she touch only the hem of His garment, she shall be healed; and in fact it is this that takes place. As soon as the woman is healed, Jesus perceives that the power which is in Him, and which has gone out from Him to the woman, has worked with efficacy. And it is always thus: many can hear the gospel and delight to listen to it, but faith is another thing; and faith always receives the Lord's answer to the need which it presents to Him. He may make one wait, if He finds it good to exercise the faith, but He always answers in love: the woman is perfectly healed. Faith makes the believer humble about his wretchedness; the woman wished to remain hidden, but the Lord encourages the believer, saying in this instance, "Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." However timid and fearful the soul may be in the Lord's presence in spiritual things, and however much it may feel its wretchedness, when the call is true, it opens out and confesses His grace, not the misery which had rendered this grace needful. It is then that the Lord encourages and speaks peace to the heart. Personal faith is here plainly distinguished from the eagerness of the crowd which followed Him, whether for curiosity, or for the benefits which Jesus conferred upon it. But the power of resurrection was found in Him and through Him. Israel, though dead, was only sleeping: the Lord's voice will call him into life in His time.

Mark 6

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But however great His divine power, He was manifested in a form that could lend nothing to the pride and vanity of human nature. Man was responsible to receive Him because He manifested the character of the Godhead: He would not flatter and give support to human passions, nor to those of the Jews as a nation. If man is to receive God, he must receive what God is; but this is just what his fallen nature will not do. The divine character was much more fully manifested in the humiliation of Jesus, than if He had come as a glorious King; but He was not that which man's heart desired. He was the carpenter's son, and that was enough to cause His rejection. They judged according to the flesh: the kindred of Jesus were in their midst; and they did not look any farther. Astonished at their unbelief, He leaves them after having done that which the wants of some of them demanded, for His grace never failed. A prophet is not without honour but in his own country; for it is there that he is known according to the flesh. So it was with Jesus, not only in Nazareth, but also in Israel. Remark what an obstacle unbelief is to the exercise of the power of God. The faith of the sick woman who touches His garment causes His power to come out, but the unbelief of the inhabitants of His own country hinders its exercise. We find, "He could not do any mighty work there," etc. May God grant that we may not put any obstacle to the activity of His grace, which is always ready to act; but, on the contrary, may we know what it is to profit by His power by causing it to act towards us by faith; chap. 6: 1-6.

256 Now the Lord sends His disciples to preach, and we have a proof of His power more remarkable than that of His own miracles. He gives them the power to perform miracles themselves, power to cast out all demons. This is a power evidently divine; God makes man capable to perform signs and wonders; but what man can give this power to another? Christ gave it, and His disciples, capacitated by His gift, cast out demons in reality: Christ was God manifest in grace upon the earth. We have already called attention to the fact that all the Lord's miracles, and those of His disciples are not only the results of power, such as the miracles of Moses, of Elias, etc., but they are the fruits of divine goodness. One may except the cursing of the fig-tree, but this after all is a proof of the same thing. The testimony of the Lord, stamped as it was with love, and confirmed by His miraculous works, had been rejected; and Israel - man's heart - under the influence of this goodness, of the manifestation of God, of all the care which God had lavished upon it, had not brought forth any fruit. Therefore the bad tree is judged for ever, so that it can never bear fruit again. Thus man, having shewn himself to be nothing but guilty, and so guilty, that all the means employed by God, even to the gift of His only-begotten Son, have been found to be unable to awaken a single good sentiment towards God, as to his state in the flesh, he is finally rejected of God. God can save him in giving him a new nature by the Holy Spirit, but in himself he is without hope. Who will do more than that which God has done?

More than this; the Lord has not only power to give to His disciples authority over evil spirits, but He can also dispose of human hearts. The disciples were to start without taking anything for their journey; and nevertheless, as we read in Luke, the disciples bore witness, in answer to the Lord, that they had wanted for nothing. Sustained by the power of Emmanuel, whose power extended everywhere, and armed with His authority, they were to stay in the house into which they had entered until their departure from each place. Thus they were to conform themselves to this mission; possessing the Lord's authority for their message, they were to act accordingly. And wherever their message should not be received, they were to shake the dust off their feet as a witness against that city, whose fate should be worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrha. It is true that the Lord, full of goodness and patience, sent seventy disciples again before His face when He went up to Jerusalem at the end of His career upon earth, and these were to preach the gospel. But as to the principle of the mission, that which we find in Mark was the last testimony given to Israel before the judgment of the nation. This was to be a last appeal to the conscience and heart of the people, in order that it might receive the Saviour and repent and turn to God and escape the terrible judgment that awaited it; and that there might be at least a remnant which, moved by the powerful word of God, might return to God to enjoy His goodness in the Saviour, and a better hope than Judaism had been able to give them.

257 The disciples went forth preaching that men were to repent. What grace there is in the sending forth of the gospel! Not only does God give us to enjoy salvation and His love, but employs men as the instruments of the activity of His love. O how we ought to bless God that He condescends to make use of us to carry the testimony of His ineffable love and of His truth to men's hearts - at least to their ears, in order that He Himself may cause it to reach their hearts in His grace! May we know at least what it is to have our hearts full of love, whether we preach or not, so that they may be a true expression of that grace which seeks men. Thus the power of God accompanied the disciples; they cast out devils and healed the sick.

At this time the report of the works and power of the Lord reached the king's ears; his conscience was troubled at it because he put John the Baptist to death. Here begins the history of the facts which shew practically the opposition of man's heart to the testimony of God. The enmity against the truth and the light which was fulfilled in the death of Jesus, manifested itself already in the death of His predecessor. Herod's natural conscience had induced him to listen to John; the fear that he had of the holy man who had been faithful in rebuking him caused him to have some regard for him, and to keep him from the enmity of Herodias; but that which is natural is not enough to form a barrier to the flesh. The excitement of a banquet and royal pride are enough to cause the prophet's death. Painful instance of the manner in which man deceives himself; and when he imagines himself strong enough to shew forth his power, all he can do is to reveal his weakness and his slavery to his passions. All this does but accomplish the will of God; this enmity of man's heart must shew itself, and must introduce, by the rejection of John the Baptist and of Jesus Himself, things infinitely better, through the sovereign grace of God.

258 The disciples come back and relate to Jesus all that they have done and taught; it was natural that they should be full of it. But the Saviour does not say anything about it; for Him power was a natural thing, and He wishes the disciples to come apart in a desert place to rest a little in solitude. It is always a good thing, even necessary for us whatever the blessing may be - all the more the greater it is - for us poor creatures who are so incapable of bearing the effect of power when the work is by our means, so ready are we to attribute it to ourselves without perceiving it; it is necessary, I say, to retire into God's presence, and there in His presence to find out what we are in truth, to enjoy in safety His perfect love: but to be occupied with Him and not with ourselves. This is what the Lord did in His tender consideration for His own.

But the love of God does not find repose in this world; and man, finding but little love in human hearts, is afraid of wearying the Lord when He is present there; but divine love never refuses to attend to man's wants. The people recognised Jesus and ran together from every city, coming out of their solitude to see Jesus; and He, seeing this great multitude, was moved with compassion, because they were as sheep without a shepherd. He begins to teach them: this is the first and true need of the people abandoned of their human shepherds; but the Lord still thinks of all the needs of His hungry people. The disciples would have wished to have sent away the crowd, but Jesus wishes to feed it. This miracle has a great meaning in itself, from the place it holds in this Gospel. Jehovah was the true Shepherd of Israel and was there present in the person of Christ, who in truth was rejected. Nevertheless His compassion and His love were not weakened by the ingratitude of the people.

To shew that He is really Jehovah, He acts according to Psalm 132: 15; "I will satisfy her poor with bread." This is a psalm which predicts the time of the Messiah, which will be fully accomplished in the latter days; but He who shall accomplish it was there present, and though He be rejected, He gives the proof that Jehovah has visited His people - He satisfies the poor with bread. His love was far superior to the malice of His people. He had already said that the Son of man would be put to death, and that the people would not receive their Saviour-God. With all this, Jehovah does not abandon His love; if the people do not want Jehovah, Jehovah wants the people. He gives the precious testimony that Jehovah's love does not grow weary, but remains superior to all the folly of man. May His name be praised and adored for it! We can all the more count upon His unfailing goodness not to allow us to fall into negligence, but to sustain us in our weakness; for His love is greater than all our failings, so that we can adore His patience.

259 But there is another important truth which we find here. The Lord does not say, "I will give them to eat," but, "Give them to eat." The Lord wishes the disciples to know what it is to use His power for the good of others, and that they may know how to use it by faith. Oh, what a thought that true faith employs Jehovah's power, and in circumstances which shew that His love is above our unfaithfulness and failure! How important a truth for us, that Christ is the expression of this love, of the superiority of God's grace over all our sins; for "God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." This was the proof of it; but that which was manifested in His death is always true for us in His life. "Much more," says the apostle, "being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Faith, therefore, counts upon the unfailing faithfulness of this love, and uses the strength which is made perfect in weakness. The flesh in the disciples sees nothing but carnal means, and does not look at God's love and power but at that which is seen. But the Lord gives food in abundance to the hungry multitude, and shews Himself to be both the God and Saviour of Israel.

The story which follows gives us the picture of the separation caused by the Lord's rejection, and the welcome which will be given to Him at the end of the history of this world which has rejected Him. He does not speak of the judgment of His adversaries, but of the change of the world itself. The Lord constrains His disciples to depart alone, whilst He sends away the multitude; and when they are gone, He departs into a mountain to pray. This is exactly what the Lord has now done: the disciples are tossed upon the tempestuous sea of the world; Jesus has sent away Israel, and has ascended to heaven to intercede for us. In the meantime the wind is contrary, and we toil in rowing with difficulty and trouble, being outwardly left to the Lord; but He intercedes for us always, and obtains mercy and grace for us in the time of need. Israel had been dismissed.

260 More exactly, the disciples upon the sea represent the Jewish remnant, which in fact has become the church: but here it is considered in its character of the Jewish remnant. Jesus overtakes the ship, walking upon the sea, for He can walk calmly upon circumstances which cause us great trouble. The disciples are afraid, but Jesus comforts them, assuring them that it is Himself, their well-known friend and Saviour. Thus it will be at the end of the times: Jesus will appear superior to all the circumstances by which His people are troubled; and He will be the same meek and humble companion who walked upon earth with His disciples "in the days of his flesh."

"Now when he entered into the ship, the wind ceased." I repeat that the judgment of His adversaries is not mentioned here, but that which will happen to His people amongst the Jews, when He shall return. Then the world will be again full of joy. The land of Gennesaret, which had sent away the Saviour after He had healed the demoniac, receives Him now and owns Him, and all the people everywhere enjoy His presence with delight.

Are our hearts ready to receive this teaching? Have we learned that to carry one's cross is the true position of the Christian, the path into which the Lord has led us? To walk thus we have need of an object which can rule the heart, which can possess its affections, and can fix them on what is on before, and lead them on; an object to which too the cross is united - that is, Christ who has loved us, and who gave Himself upon the cross for us; Christ who is now in glory to which He is leading us, and who shews us what the path of the cross is, in order that we may be with Him and like Him, following the path which the Lord has trod for us in His love. "If any man serve me, let him follow me: and where I am, there shall also my servant be."

Mark 7

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This seventh chapter is full of the most interesting teaching. First, the Lord's judgment upon the outward piety of the heads of Judaism, which was altogether external and nothing less than hypocrisy, and which set aside the law of God. All these washings are despised by God; the Pharisees had set aside the commandment of God to keep their own tradition. Secondly, the Lord shews that that which comes out of a man's mouth defiles the man, because it arises from the heart; not that which enters into the man. Then having thus judged Israel and man, He shews forth in the most touching manner the sovereign grace of God which passes by every barrier to reach man's need: outside of all rights founded upon the promises, demanding only that the heart should recognise it in order that it may be entirely the pure grace of God in love which does the good; revealing itself as love when man is bad, and without any hope outside of this sovereign grace.

Outward things are easy to do; man likes to make his religion of them, for they do not need a pure heart; man likes to do them, and to exalt himself and to distinguish himself from others in doing them. By them man boasts of great piety before other men, and gains a great reputation for it; but he can be bad at the same time; these outward acts do not bring him into the presence of God who searches the heart. Man by these acts is religious without possessing holiness, and he finds that this just suits him. One does not find Pharisees only in our Lord's time; they are to be found in all times. This system always attaches itself to the influence which a man exerts over another by means of a position outwardly holy; it is not the faith which possesses truth and grace for itself (which truth and grace came by Jesus Christ, and which produce holiness and communion with God who reveals Himself in them), but the official influence that a man uses to his own advantage, carelessly leaving on one side the will and the commandments of God. Thus it was amongst the Jews; they washed their hands, but not their hearts; they were very scrupulous about that which entered their mouth, and careless about that which came out of their heart.

Thus is man's religion always; he can observe such a religion as this, and deck himself with it as with a glory. But he cannot get real holiness in this way, and this is evident to the eyes of God, who sees all that goes on in the heart. True holiness shews itself in the practical walk; one may fail, but the soul sustained by grace only seeks the approbation of God; it has the consciousness of failure, and rejoices in God, for it is He who dwells in the soul, and keeps it humble. But the Pharisees and Sadducees amongst the Jews profited by their reputation and position to induce the pious to give many gifts to God, whom they represented. Thus duties towards parents were slighted, and God's law countermanded. They honoured God with their lips, but their heart was far from Him. They drew near to Him with their mouth, but not with their heart; this was full of covetousness and iniquity. God refuses altogether this kind of honour. "In vain do they worship me," says the prophet Isaiah, and the Lord repeats it. God wants a pure heart sanctified by the Spirit and by the truth; and He wants a worship which is to be rendered in spirit and in truth: the Father seeketh such to worship Him. He wants grace, but the truth is required to be able to draw near to God, a heart where the divine life exists. All this human religion, outward, Pharisaical, priestly, is judged of the Lord once and for all times. God demands a pure heart and true obedience. Men put on this kind of religion, giving honour in it to antiquity and to the traditions of their ancestors, to which man's imagination attributes great value. All that is seen through the shades of antiquity is imposing enough; but with God it is a question of the heart, and it was the same then as it is now with us: we are before God, and He sees us just as we are. Man's actual state is the question.

262 But what are these poor hearts in their natural state? This is the second question the Lord takes up. He has already torn the veil of the hypocrisy by which the Pharisees and priests tried to conceal the impurity of their hearts, and to turn to their own account the external piety which they taught; the motives of their hearts are manifested, and the efforts which they make to cover the impurity and avarice of their heart appear; their hypocrisy is manifest. The Lord does not only rend the veil of hypocrisy, but discovers also that which the heart produces. This is what God does; He searches our hearts and manifests them, and then reveals His own. This is the uncovering not merely of the hearts of the Pharisees, but of the hearts of all men; that which goes out of the mouth defiles the man, because it proceeds from the heart. What a picture! The product of the human heart consists of malice, corruption, envy, . . . in a word, of nothing but vices.

263 Was the Lord wanting in benevolence or love toward man? His coming is the proof of God's love. Did He wish to hide the good that might be found in man? Was He the only one capable of discovering the evil? Could He wish to slander the being He had come to bless, to save, and to whom He would give a place with Himself? Impossible: this could not be. But instead, knowing man's heart, He was obliged to say the truth. It was love which discloses the utter perversity of the human heart, in order that man may not remain in this state. It is indeed better that it should be disclosed now in the presence of grace than in the day of judgment, when all that is manifested will be punished, and man condemned.

Observe also that, when practical holiness and obedience are no longer to be found in the life of the leaders, a religion founded by God becomes the power of sin and of hypocrisy, and tends always to pervert the mind, to destroy the conscience and uprightness in all; because that which is looked upon as God's authority encourages hypocrisy and iniquity, and also tends to produce unbelief, because men see that religion attaches itself to that which even the natural conscience condemns. Oh how sad a story is that of the human heart and of the church of God, such as men have made it! Observe also the influence of the corrupt religious authority to blind men and to destroy spiritual intelligence. What can be clearer than that which the Lord says? But the natural conscience does not recognise the truth that it is not that which entereth into a man's mouth that defileth the man, but that which comes out of it, for it proceeds from the heart. The thing is simple enough.

The disciples do not understand, and ask for an explanation of it; their natural intelligence had been blinded by the tradition of the elders. The manner of reasoning acquired by the authority of the latter had spoilt their understanding. And indeed, do we not find many who believe that that which entereth into a man's mouth defileth him? And yet they are sincere souls; and not only so, they believe also that to eat a certain kind of food one day defiles, and that another day it does not: and this because of the tradition of the elders. This really is what the disciples did substantially; and the Lord reproves them, saying, "Are ye so without understanding also?" Here we see the judgment of the Lord against many things which keep many souls in bondage, and sincere souls even, like those of the disciples.

264 But let us turn to the precious display of God's love in the words of the Lord to the poor woman. We find that all the privileges of the Jews are recognised first; but we find also the truth of God which rises far above such privileges to manifest grace and love wherever a need may be found; not indeed where there is a right to the promises, but towards an accursed race, towards a woman from a country notorious for its hardened state. God manifested Himself in rising above all the barriers that man's iniquity and the exclusive system of Judaism had set up, even the system which He had Himself established, which was shewn to be abolished by the rejection of Christ.

The Lord goes into the borders of Tyre and Sidon; He wishes to be quiet, but goodness joined with power are too rare in the world to remain unnoticed; and the need felt awakens the soul and makes it clear-sighted. A poor woman had a daughter subject to the power of an unclean spirit; feeling her own wretchedness and believing in Jesus' power, she goes to seek Him. The weight of misery that oppressed her made her hope in His goodness. The Lord keeps to the promises made by God to the Jews, and in His answer puts forward the rights of God's people; He could not take the children's bread and give it to the dogs. Observe that the woman herself was of the accursed race; if we look at the ways of God in the midst of Israel, there was not a single promise for her; and she had no right belonging to her in common with the people of God. According to the Jews and the legal economy, she was nothing more than a dog: but present needs were there, and the power of God, always employed as it is for His own good purposes, was there too, and this inspires her confidence.

It is always thus; need and faith in the goodness and power of the Lord give perseverance, as in the case of those who carried the paralytic man when the crowd pressed around Jesus. But there is something in the woman's heart besides confidence which grace had produced there. She recognises the rights of the Jews as God's people; she owns that she is but a dog with regard to them; but she insists upon her demand, because she feels that, even though she be but a dog, the grace of God is sufficient for those who had no rights. "Even the dogs," she says, "eat of the children's crumbs"; she recognises what she is, but also what God is. She believes in His love towards those who have neither rights nor promises; and in the manifestation of God in Jesus outside of and above all dispensations. God is good, and the fact of being in misery is a claim with Him: could Christ say, "No, God is not good as thou dost suppose?" He could not say this: it would not have been the truth.

265 This is great faith, faith which recognises our own wretchedness, that we have right to nothing; but faith which believes in the love of God clearly revealed in Jesus, without any promise, yet fully revealed. God cannot deny Himself and say, "No I am not love." We have no right to expect the exercise of this love towards us, but we can be sure that coming to Christ, impelled by our wants, we shall find perfect goodness, love that heals us, and the healing itself. Let us remember that true need perseveres because it cannot do without the aid of the power which was manifested in Christ; nor without the salvation which He has brought; nor is there salvation without the help which is to be found in Him for our weakness. And that which is in God is the source of our hope and of our faith; and if asked how we know what is in God's heart, we can answer, "It is revealed perfectly in Christ." Who put it into God's heart to send His own Son to save us? Who put it into the Son's heart to come and suffer everything for us? Not man. God's heart is its source. We believe in this love, and in the value of that which Christ has done and accomplished upon the cross, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Besides He does all things well, He makes both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.

The grace of God was fully shewn towards the poor woman, who had no right to any blessing, nor to any promise; she was a daughter of the accursed Canaan; but faith reaches even to the heart of God manifested in Jesus, and in like manner the eye of God reaches to the bottom of man's heart. Thus God's heart and man's heart meet, in the consciousness that man is altogether bad, that he has not a single right; indeed he owns truly this state, and in it gives himself up to the perfect goodness of God. But the Jewish people, who pretended to possess righteousness and right to the promises, is set on one side; and, as to the old covenant, is shut out from God's favour. Only Jesus opens the eyes and the ears of the remnant brought to Him in faith. And it was not only the Jewish people which was to be set aside (and as to the first covenant for ever), but man also was set aside on the ground of righteousness, which is the principle of the first covenant.

266 Then the Lord leaves again the borders of Tyre and Sidon and returns to the country of Galilee; where He found Himself in the midst of the people of Israel. But, as we have said, He was virtually rejected by the people. Jesus has the consciousness that the beloved people is lost, and all that He does is to expect its ruin. They bring to Him a man who was deaf with an impediment in his speech, and beseech Him to put His hand upon him to heal him. Then Jesus takes the man and leads him aside from the crowd: and then puts His fingers in his ears, and, having spit, touches his tongue. Then He looks toward heaven: power is always present in Him, but sorrow oppresses His heart, because the people were really deaf to the voice of the Good Shepherd; their tongue was tied and incapable of praising God. The Lord's sighs are the expression of this feeling; inasmuch as the state of the poor man represented the state of the beloved people. Nevertheless they were happy in that the love of Him whose counsels never change rested, in spite of all, upon them. And indeed the Lord was there, and worked according to this love and these sighs; He looked up to heaven, the source of love and of power, and never grew weary until the people in favour of whom He exercised this power, would no longer support His presence. It is true they would not have been able to put Him to death, if He had not given Himself up of His own free will, but the time would come in which He would give Himself up to accomplish redemption; and until that moment arrive, He shews Himself always as the God of goodness towards the afflicted, and for all people's need.

In verse 33 we see that He separates Himself from the mass of the people in healing the deaf man. In chapter 8: 23, we have the same thing; He leads the blind man out of the town, but He heals him; only there the state of His disciples is shewn. It is touching to see this look that the Lord gives toward heaven, and the sigh of His heart as He sees the people deaf to God's voice, and incapable of blessing His name; and to see the Lord's heart for hardened men, and how this heart was in harmony with the heaven which He always manifested. There He found the certainty of this love that man rejected; and rested in the same feelings that reign in heaven, and of which He was the expression upon this ungrateful earth. The Lord's power shewed itself the very moment; the ears were opened, and the tongue was loosed. The people could not hold their peace, but published everywhere that which Jesus had done, saying, "He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." The Lord's work opens the ears, and gives cause to humble hearts to praise God, and to recognize His love. But alas! how many remain deaf to the voice of God's love! "They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not listen to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely."

Mark 8

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The Lord continues to manifest divine goodness. It is the chief thing to be noticed in this part of the Gospel. He had already given the hungry people to eat, a manifest sign of Jehovah's presence, as we have before remarked - a sign that should accompany His presence. Here it is more simply the divine power, without alluding to the kingdom which was to come. The number seven is the expression of perfection in spiritual things. The Lord's compassion makes Him think of the needs of the poor, whilst the disciples think only of human and visible means to satisfy themselves. This is the case only too often with real believers.

Then the Lord leaves the crowd, and goes into the parts of Dalmanutha. There the Pharisees ask for a sign from heaven, although they had already seen enough; but unbelief is never satisfied. But now the time of trial was passed, it was too late; the Lord leaves them. But observe the Lord's spirit towards the perverse generation; He sighed deeply in His spirit, saying, "Why doth this generation seek after a sign? There shall no sign be given to it." The end had come morally; it was useless to give proofs to hearts who had resolved not to believe. Perfect patience, love, deep pity, and sorrow in thinking of the unbelief of the leaders of the people were all there in Him, and manifested themselves all the more clearly as their hearts were hardened; and signs were useless for hearts who would not believe, and also it was not suited to God's majesty to give any to men who would not receive Him. It would be casting pearls before swine.

268 Now we find that the disciples themselves were really blind, not wilfully, but in fact. The Lord warns the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. The disciples had forgotten to take any bread, and alas! also the power of Jesus manifested in the miracles, by which He had fed thousands of people with a few loaves. The Lord reproves them, saying, "Perceive ye not, neither understand? Have ye your heart yet hardened?" They were, as it were, hardened at seeing so many miracles, and had understood nothing of Jesus' miracles in the multiplying of the loaves.

But the fact which follows shews the state of the disciples in contrast with the people. The latter did not see anything at all, and would not receive the light; the disciples saw indistinctly; they saw men as trees walking. They really loved the Lord, but Jewish habits prevented them from grasping fully His glory. They believed indeed that He was the Messiah, but the Messiah for their hearts was something else than the Christ of God, the Saviour of the world. They had attached themselves by grace to the person of the Lord, but they did not understand that divine glory which was, as it were, hid in that person, which revealed itself in His words and works. They had left all to follow the Lord; intelligence was wanting, not faith, however small it might be. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak, as we have already remarked. The Lord leads the blind man out of the city, separating him from Israel. First of all the man only sees partially: men seemed to him like trees walking. But the Lord's patience, as great as His power, gives a picture of the state of the disciples' heart, and also a picture of His untiring goodness, which does not leave the blind man until he sees clearly. Thus He did to the disciples, only here He does not speak of the means: when Jesus had ascended to heaven and had sat down at the right hand of God, He sent the Holy Ghost who led them into all truth. Then they saw clearly.

But the Lord forbids the blind man to enter into the town, or to tell it to anyone in the town, not only because He did not seek the vain glory of men, but also because He wished to avoid a large concourse of curious persons who were but an obstacle to His real work in consciences and hearts; and also because He wished to shew that the time of testimony in Israel was at an end. Rejected by the world, He commands the man who has been delivered from the power of the devils to return to his house, and there to proclaim that which God had done for him. The disciples would have done that - would have proclaimed His work - when Christ should have left this world; but here it was a question of Israel who had rejected the Lord, and God's testimony had no longer any place in their midst.

269 The Lord's discourse which follows touches upon this in the question which He asks His disciples, "Whom do men say that I am?" And they answered, "John the Baptist; but some, Elias; and others one of the prophets": different opinions, but no faith. Then He asks them, "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter answers, "Thou art the Christ"; and the Lord forbids the disciples to tell it to any man, in the most positive manner. This is the clearest proof that the testimony in the midst of the people was entirely at an end. He was nevertheless the Christ, but He was rejected by the people, which shewed itself to be its own enemy in rejecting the wondrous grace of God. Now He begins to teach His disciples openly that He must suffer as Son of man: a much greater position and title, both as regards the extent of His power, and the greatness of the dominion which belonged to Him; for all things will be subjected to the sway of the Son of man. But in order that the Son of man might take His place in glory, He must first suffer, be put to death and rise again; it was necessary that redemption should be accomplished, and that man should enter into a new position, into an entirely new state, in which he had never been even when innocent. Christ's position as Messiah was now set aside for this time, and He enters into one greater where old things are left behind beyond death, and all that is founded upon Christ's work, upon His death - enters upon a state altogether new and eternal.

Here the subject is treated more with regard to His sufferings; He puts the cross before the disciples, but He always speaks of death and resurrection. "And he spake that saying openly." This was a stumbling stone for Peter who did not wish that his Master should be despised in the eyes of the crowd; but the cross is the portion of those who wish to follow the Saviour. Peter in saying this placed a stumbling block on the disciples' path; the Lord thinks of this, and, turning about and looking upon His disciples, He reproves Peter, who had confessed Him but a moment ago, by the grace of God, and says to him, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not of the things that be of God, but of the things that be of men." We have here an important lesson, indeed, more than one lesson. First, the Christian needs to understand well that the way of salvation, the way which leads to glory and to heaven, the way in which Christ Himself walked, and in which He wishes us to follow Him, is a way in which we must deny ourselves, suffer, and conquer. Secondly, let us learn that a Christian can have true faith, and be taught of God, as in Peter's case here, without having the flesh in him judged so as to render him capable of walking in the way into which this truth brings him. It is important to remember this; sincerity may exist without knowing oneself. The new position of Christ, that of Son of man which embraced the heavenly glory of man in Him, and the supremacy over everything, rendered the cross absolutely necessary. But Peter's heart was not ready for the cross; when the Lord announces its practical effect, he cannot bear it.

270 How many hearts there are in this state! Sincere, no doubt; but they have not the spiritual courage to accept the consequences of the truth they believe. See the difference in Paul, made strong by the presence of the Holy Ghost and by faith. He says in the presence of death, "To know him [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and the communion of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death," Phil. 3: 10. But there was in him the power of the Holy Ghost, and he bore always in his body the dying of Jesus in order that the life of Jesus should manifest itself in his body. Happy man! always willing to suffer everything, rather than not follow fully the Lord Jesus, and to confess His name whatever the consequence might be; and, having walked faithfully, by grace to obtain at last the prize of his heavenly calling.

But the Lord does not conceal the consequence, nor does He wish to do so. He warns the crowd, and He warns us also that if we wish to be with Him, if we wish to follow Him, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. Let us receive the Lord's words: if we wish to be with Him for ever, we must follow Him, and if we follow Him, we shall find upon the road that which He found. Of course it is not a question of expiatory sufferings, of that which He suffered from God's hand for sin, but of His sufferings from man, the contradiction of sinners, the opposition of men, abuse and even death. We know but little what it is to suffer for the name of Jesus; but remember, Christians, that which the Lord says first, "Let him deny himself"; you can always do this by grace. It is by doing this that we learn to suffer with Him, if God should call us to it. And what shall we give in exchange for our soul? This leads us to a third lesson, which requires a little more development.

271 That which nourishes the flesh and self-love is the great system which is called the world. Man wishes to be something in his own eyes; he would like to forget God, and make himself happy, if possible, without Him. Thus Cain, when he was driven out from God's presence, after Abel's death, went away from before His face, judged in such a manner by God, that he could not hope to be admitted again into His presence to enjoy communion with Him; for God had made him to be a vagabond and a wanderer on the earth (a striking type of the Jews at this time, after having put to death the Lord Jesus, who had become, so to speak, their brother). But Cain was not willing to remain a poor vagabond; at all events he did not wish to leave his family in such a state; he wished it to escape his own proper lot; and to this end he built a city in the land of Nod ("Nod" is the Hebrew word translated vagabond in the first instance); he desired that his family should be established in the country where God had made him a vagabond. He names the city after his son, as do the great people of this world. There is to be found the father (that is, the inventor) of music, the father of them that work in brass and iron; there the riches of this present age were heaped together, much cattle. This is the world!

Man's heart, alienated from God, tries to make the earth, where he was set at a distance from God, as pleasing to himself as possible; and, in order to accomplish this, he uses God's gifts and creatures to be able to do without Him. It is said that there is no harm in these things: - this is true, but this is not the question. They are good as being created things; it is said (as a figure) that there will be music in heaven also; but in heaven it will not be employed in order to divert the mind without God. It is a question of the use we make of these things. For instance, there is no harm in strength, but in the manner of employing it; with it one does harm to one's neighbour. Is it not true that the world which knows not God uses all kinds of pleasures to enjoy itself without Him? The heart which has not God in it endeavours to amuse itself, and for this it employs all the things which are seen, heard, and invented; as for instance, the theatre, music, and every kind of thing, because it is empty and sad and cannot satisfy itself; and after a few years, during which it has kept up its natural spirits, it finds itself tired and weary, even of trying everything, and says with Solomon after having essayed all, "All is vanity and vexation of spirit." God is neglected, and the soul lost.

272 For the Christian too, amusements only lead him away to a distance from God, and destroy his communion with Him. All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world. The world and its lust pass away, but he that does the will of God abides for ever. The prince of this world is Satan, who seduced Eve with these things, having first of all destroyed her confidence in God; and it was with these things that he tried to seduce the Lord also, although, thank God, in vain. But with little trouble he succeeds but too often to seduce the hearts of men and of Christians; and to cause the pleasures of the world to have more power upon the soul than Christ Himself, than the love of a dying Saviour.

It was thus with poor Peter! It is true, he had not yet received the Holy Ghost, but this does not change the nature of his desires. He wished for this world's glory, and that under the appearance of love for the Lord. Notice here too the Lord's love for His disciples and how great is His tender care for them; He turns round and sees how great a stumbling-block Peter's words may be for the other disciples, and reproves him as severely as his words deserved. Then the Lord puts two principles before the disciples, first, the soul is worth more than everything, it is not to be exchanged for anything; secondly, the Lord is about to come in glory, and whosoever shall be ashamed of Him in this corrupt world where He is rejected, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when He shall come in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.

Mark's Gospel

J. N. Darby.

<24029E> 273

Mark 9

Now the Lord finds the occasion to manifest this personal glory of His to establish the disciples' faith, and also to shew that His presence in grace as Messiah, in the midst of Israel, was soon to come to an end; and that the new glory of the Son of man with His own was soon to be inaugurated, although it would be necessary to await the time when all the co-heirs should be gathered together. "Verily I say unto you," says the Lord, "There be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." Six days afterwards the Lord went up into a mountain with Peter, James, and John, and was transfigured before them; His raiment became shining and exceeding white as snow; Elias and Moses appeared with Him glorified in like manner, speaking with Him. We know that this apparition was the manifestation of Christ's glorious reign over the earth.

We read in 2 Peter 1-16, "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his Majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'; and this voice which came from heaven we heard when we were with him in the holy mount." These are the words of the apostle Peter when he relates that which happened to him when he saw the wonderful vision of the mountain of the transfiguration. From this we learn what the kingdom is as regards its manifestation upon earth, for they were upon earth. The bright cloud which covered them was the Father's dwelling-place, whence the voice came and into which, according to Luke, they had entered.

What a privilege for poor mortals, for sinners to have been able to gaze upon the Son of God in glory, and to have been manifested with Him in the same glory upon earth; to be His companions, to converse with Him; to possess the testimony that they have been loved as He has been loved (John 17: 23); to be with Him, and like Him in everything as Man, for His own glory; wonderful proof of the value of the redemption He has accomplished! And the nearer we shall be to Him, the more shall we adore Him, being with Him as we shall be in the Father's house. But here our evangelist does not speak of their entering; comparing however Luke 9 we find it nevertheless true that they entered into the cloud out of which came the Father's voice.

274 It was according to God's counsel that we should be with Christ, the second Man, the last Adam, and in the same glory with Him. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He may be the first-born among many brethren. It is for this that He became man: He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call us brethren. What would a Redeemer be without His redeemed? It is most certainly a far better thing to be a companion of the Lord Jesus in the Father's house, than co-heir of His glory before the world: yet both the one thing and the other are wonderful for poor creatures like ourselves. Elias and Moses are in the same glory; and we shall be like Him when He shall appear.

But the Lord's personal glory is always maintained; Peter wishes to make three tabernacles, putting Christ, Moses, and Elias upon the same footing - the three grand characters of Israel's history. But Moses and Elias disappear immediately, and the Father's voice recognises Jesus as His beloved Son; it is to Jesus' testimony that we must listen. All that Moses and Elias said is the truth, God's word, and by their means we learn God's thoughts; but they give testimony to Christ, not with Him. It is from Him alone that we learn fully the will of God, and His truth fully revealed. Jesus is the truth, and grace and truth came by Him. The death of Christ, His resurrection and completed redemption have put everything upon a new footing for men.

The believers who lived before the Lord's coming, believed in the promises and prophecies which announced His arrival; and they were accepted by faith; their sins committed during the time of God's patience, and which He bore with because He knew what He would do later on, are forgiven; and God's righteousness in forgiving them is manifested, now that Christ has died. But now God's righteousness is manifested, and the power of divine life is shewn forth in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. All is new in our relationship with God; the veil is rent, and we enter freely into the holiest. "The righteousness of God without law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." Behold Moses and Elias; but the glory in which both Moses and Elias appeared is the fruit, not of the law nor of the prophets, but of the work of Jesus Christ; and one can only possess it in the resurrection state. The Lord's resurrection too was absolutely necessary, as being the power of life beyond death, and as a proof that God had accepted the death of Christ as having answered to the question of sin. The glory belonged to another world, gained for those who believe by the sacrifice of Christ, the Son of God, although this had to be fulfilled in this world. It belongs, therefore, to the state into which Christ, the second Adam, has entered by resurrection, and is based upon accomplished redemption.

275 Thus, although this was well-suited to strengthen the faith and increase the intelligence of these three, columns of the future church, it was not to be talked about before the Lord's resurrection, and Jesus forbade the disciples to tell the things they had seen until the Son of man should be raised from among the dead. Notice the expression, "The disciples kept these words to themselves, asking one another what the rising from the dead should mean." This indeed throws quite a new light upon the resurrection. Christ rose alone from amongst the dead, and left all the others in the grave; and His resurrection is a proof that the God of righteousness has accepted His work - His sacrifice - as a full and entire satisfaction given to His righteousness and His holiness; and the man who believes in Him is accepted according to the value of Christ's sacrifice.

The resurrection of the faithful also takes place, because God is fully satisfied as to them because of Christ's work. These alone will be raised when the Lord comes, to be for ever with Him. All the disciples believed in the resurrection of the dead, having been taught thus by the Pharisees; they were not like the Sadducees, but believed that all the Jews would be raised at once; and they did not understand the meaning of a resurrection which should separate the good from the bad, and should leave the latter behind for a certain time. Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection of the saints, not of the wicked. Those who are Christ's shall rise at His coming, and their vile body shall be changed and made like unto His glorious body. There are many Christians who, like the disciples, do not understand the Lord's words. One finds many Christians who have a faith like that of the Pharisees; they believe indeed that there will be a resurrection. and, like Martha, that all will rise at the last day. The only difference is that Martha and the Jews believed in the resurrection of the Jews only; and these Christians believe in a resurrection where good and bad will be raised together.

276 It is quite true that all will rise, but true faith in Christ (notice, dear reader), true faith makes the distinction already. The unbeliever remains in his sins, and will rise for the judgment, and the true believer will rise for the resurrection of life; he will rise (as we find in 1 Cor. 15) in glory. When the Lord comes, He will change our vile body and fashion it like unto His glorious body. Christ is the first-fruits of the resurrection, but certainly not of the wicked: in no part of the word do we find a common resurrection of good and bad: we find in Luke 14: 14, a resurrection of the just, and again (20: 35), "they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from among the dead." Thus we find expressly in 1 Corinthians 15, "Every man in his own order, Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming."

Thus also in 1 Thessalonians 4, "The dead in Christ shall rise first": it is always thus. People quote Matthew 25, but in that chapter it is no question of resurrection, nor of raised bodies; it is not a universal judgment, but a judgment of Gentiles upon the earth, of those to whom the everlasting gospel of Revelation 14 had been sent at the end of the age. There are not two classes only here, but three; the sheep, the goats, and the brethren of the Judge. The principle of the judgment here is not the principle of a universal judgment. It is just according to the manner in which they have received and esteemed the Judge's brethren; that is, the messengers of the everlasting gospel, called in Matthew 24: 14, "this gospel of the kingdom."

The principles of the general judgment of the nations are explained in Romans 1 and 2; these are quite different. I speak of Matthew 25 because it is the only passage that is quoted as a reply to the uniform testimony of the Holy Scriptures to a distinct resurrection of believers, according to the declaration of John 5: 24: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death unto life." We shall all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, certainly, and every one will give account of himself to God. But when the believers shall stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, they will have been glorified already, raised in glory, and made like unto the glory of Christ, as man. "When he shall appear, we shall be like him" - it is for this that "every one who hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

277 The first coming of Christ put away sin as regards judgment; for believers He will appear the second time unto perfect salvation to receive them to Himself, to glorify them. Their spirits are with Him in heaven, whilst they await this hour-the resurrection of their bodies will take place when He shall return, and then we shall all be for ever with the Lord. When glorified however, we shall give account of everything; we shall know as we have been known. There is thus a resurrection from among the dead.

The difficulty of which the scribes talked (that Elias ought to come before the Messiah) presents itself to the disciples. Now the scribes still exercised great influence over the disciples. And in truth, this is to be found in Malachi's prophecy; it will be surely fulfilled, whatever the manner of fulfilment may be, before the Lord's coming in glory. But He came first in humiliation, and hidden, as it were, as to His external glory; He entered by the door as the shepherd of the sheep, in order that faith seeing through the darkness of His position and of His daily life, might discern not merely a Messiah, come to Israel according to the promises, but the love and power of God Himself - and might find itself in the presence of His holiness.

The Jews would have received with joy a Messiah who should liberate them from the Roman yoke; but the presence of God is unsupportable for men, even when He appears amongst them in goodness. To the coming which is still future, the Lord alludes when He says in Matthew 10: 23, "For I tell you ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel until the Son of man be come." But now He appears in humility, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death; that is, in order to be able to suffer. Thus also John the Baptist comes in the spirit and power of Elias, according to Isaiah 11 and Malachi 3, to prepare the way of the Lord. Thus the Lord answers; John must come; the scribes are right; John shall come and restore all things. But it was necessary too that the Son of man should suffer, and that He should be thoroughly despised. "But I tell you that Elias hath already come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed."

278 But if the Lord was manifested in His glory before the disciples' eyes in the transfiguration, He occupies Himself now with the misery of the earth; and that which took place is very remarkable for the display of His patience, and of the ways of God. When He comes down from the mountain, He finds a great crowd, and the scribes reasoning with His disciples. It is blessed to notice that if the Lord is recognised as Son of God, and will be manifested in glory, and we with Him, He nevertheless comes down into this world - as He does still by His Spirit - and meets with the crowd and the power of Satan for us; and again (it is well for us to notice it) He speaks as intimately with His disciples as He does with Moses and Elias. Oh, how great is His grace! But the exercise of this grace develops the position and state of man and of the disciples.

A poor father has recourse to the Lord for his suffering son, who is possessed of an evil spirit, and cannot speak. He tells the Lord that he had brought him to the disciples, and that they could not cast out the unclean spirit. This is their position; not only does the Lord encounter unbelief, but although divine power be in the earth, believers even do not know how to use it; it was in vain then that the Lord was present in the world. He could work miracles, but man did not know how to profit by this, or to use it by faith. It was a faithless generation; and He could not stay down here. It was not the presence or the power of the devils that drove Him away, for indeed it was this that brought Him down here; but when His own do not know how to profit by the power and the blessing which He has brought into the world and placed in their midst, the dispensation characterised by these gifts must be drawing to its close. And this, not because there is unbelief in the world, but because He own cannot realise the power placed at their disposal; and in consequence the testimony of God falls to the ground destroyed, instead of being established; since the followers of this testimony meet with the power of the enemy and cannot do anything - the enemy is too strong for them.

"O faithless generation," says the Lord, "how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you?" His service upon earth was finished. But see the patience and goodness of the Lord; He cannot deny Himself. All the time He is down here upon earth He works according to His power and grace, and that notwithstanding the unbelief of His own. He finishes the sentence in which He reproves their unbelief in this manner - "Bring him to me." Faith, however small it be, is never left without an answer from the Lord. What a consolation! whatever be the unbelief, not only of the world, but of Christians - if only one solitary person were left in the world who had faith in the goodness and power of the Lord Jesus, he could not come to Him with a real need and simple belief without finding His heart ready and His power sufficient.

The church may be in ruins, as was Israel, but the Head is sufficient for everything, knows the state of His own, and will not fail to supply their needs. The child's state was very dangerous, and the devil had possessed him from his infancy. The father's faith was feeble, but sincere; he says to the Lord, "If thou canst do anything, have pity upon us, and help us." The Lord's reply is remarkable: "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." Power connects itself with faith; the difficulty is not in Christ's power, but in man's believing; all things were possible if he could believe. This is an important principle; Christ's power never fails to accomplish all that is good for man; faith, alas! may be wanting in us to profit by it. However the Lord is full of goodness; the poor father says with tears, "I believe, help thou mine unbelief": sincere words from a moved heart in which the Lord had already awakened faith. It was the anxiety for his son that weakened this faith.

Now the Lord, avoiding the empty curiosity of the people, thinking rather of the needs of the father and son, commands the unclean spirit with authority to come out and not to enter again into the child. And he comes out of him, shewing at she same time his power (tearing the child, so as to leave him as dead), but absolutely subject to the Lord's authority. It is very beautiful to see that the Lord upon leaving the glory went to meet the unbelief of the world and of His own, and the weakness of the faith of those who have need of it, and that too in the presence of the enemy's great power. The Lord does not keep at a distance from us, He takes part in our sorrows, He encourages our weak faith, and with a single word drives away all the power of the enemy. Neither His own glorious state, nor the unbelief of the world which rejected Him, prevented Him from being the refuge and the remedy for the poorest faith. He interests Himself in us, thinks of us, and helps us.

280 Although the Lord be placed in glory according to His rights, these do not weaken His love for poor human-kind. But again we find an important lesson at the end of this history. Energetic faith which works (whether the miracles which happened at that time or the great things of the kingdom of God) is sustained by intimate communion with God, by prayer and fasting. The heart comes out from God's presence to drive away the enemy's power; but whatever might be the Lord's grace, whatever His power, a greater work had to be accomplished, a great work for the Lord Himself, a work of which He alone was capable - difficult indeed for the heart of man to learn, but absolutely necessary for the glory of God and for our redemption and salvation: a lesson which one must learn in order to walk in the Lord's ways. This is the work of the cross; and the wholesome lesson it teaches us is this - that we must bear our own cross.

Now that the future glory, the glory of the kingdom, has been revealed; - now that the Lord has shewn forth His power and His perfect goodness in spite of the unbelief of the world, and of His departure after having been rejected by the world - He takes His disciples aside, passing through Galilee to make them understand that the Son of man would be given into the hands of men who would put Him to death. He speaks of His title as Son of man, because He could not any longer remain upon earth as the promised Messiah, but He must accomplish the work of redemption. However after that He should have been put to death, He would rise again on the third day. Behold then redemption completed and everything made new: man is put upon an entirely new footing, at least the believer in Jesus.

Risen man does not stand upon the same footing as Adam in his innocence. I do not speak now of the lost, although it be true for them, but it is quite a different thing. Adam was in the natural blessing of a creature, but his faithfulness was put to the proof, a proof in which he failed. True enough the sinner is not in the condition of the redeemed; but in Adam's case all depended upon his responsibility. In Christ risen man had been fully tried and shewn to be perfect, proved even unto death, where He glorified God Himself. Further, He bore our sins and put them away for ever; He submitted to death, but has conquered it, and has come forth out of it; He has borne the stroke of God's judgment against sin. Satan had already employed all his power as the prince of this world, in the death of Jesus, although it was not possible that He should be holden of death: so that instead of being under trial where He had placed Himself in His love for us and in order to glorify His Father, Jesus risen (and we in Him by faith and by the hope which the Holy Ghost who unites us to Jesus inspires) is beyond the reach of all these things.

281 Death, to which Adam subjected himself through sin, is conquered, our sins are abolished before God; we are perfected for ever as to our conscience; a new state of life has begun for us, a life which is entirely new and heavenly; and heavenly glory at the end, already realised for Christ there where He was with the Father before the foundation of the world. "As He is," says John, "so are we in this world" (that is, as in the presence of God's judgment) - and we await the resurrection of the body. But Christ's position as a glorified man, is the fruit of having fully glorified God; and we, sharing His life by the operation of the Holy Spirit, participate in the fruit of His work already at this present time, as to our position before God; and later we shall be like unto Him perfectly. Adam's state when innocent was happy, but it depended upon his obedience. Christ's state as man is the fruit of an obedience perfectly complete, after it had been proved even to the point of drinking the cup of death and of malediction, when He was made sin for us.

The first state was exposed to change, and complete ruin came in by the fall; the other remains unchangeable, established upon a work that can never lose its value. We are already brought, by participating in the life of Jesus, into the relationships into which He introduces us with the Father. "I ascend," said He after His resurrection, "to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God." Only in order to accomplish all this it was necessary for Him to pass through death, to bear the cross, in order to drink the cup which His Father had given Him. He engages them then with the cross, and teaches them to expect it. But what a thing man is! We learn it in what follows.

The Lord, having the consciousness of His glory in which the Father had recognised Him a little while ago as His beloved Son, and knowing at the same time that this glory made the cross absolutely necessary to bring many sons to glory, speaks of it to His disciples; He insists that it will be necessary for them to carry it. Such was the path of the glory of which His own death was the foundation. The Lord's heart was full of the thought of the sufferings which accompanied it; of the cup He had to drink, and of the necessity of His disciples' understanding this path, and of taking up their cross. But of what were the disciples' hearts full? They were thinking who should be the greatest. Alas, how incapable our heart is to receive God's thoughts, to think of a Saviour humbled unto death for us! It is true that the Spirit of God puts in contrast here the reign of Messiah which the Jews expected, and the glorious heavenly reign which the Lord was establishing, and for which His death was necessary; but the contrast comes out strongly thus in the heart of man. He would like to be great in a kingdom established according to man's glory and man's power; he esteems it a good thing that God should condescend to this; but that His glory should be morally exalted and established, and the vain glory of man brought to nought, the manifestation of what man is; the love, holiness, and justice of God brought to light - all this is what man neither seeks nor desires; and when the Lord's heart, full of these solemn truths and of the sufferings by which He must needs pass to fulfil them, speaks of them to His disciples, the latter dispute as to who shall be greatest. How poor and wretched a thing is man's heart!

282 What incapacity to understand God's thoughts, and to feel the tenderness and faithfulness of the heart of Jesus, and the thoughts passing through it; divine love manifesting itself in the heart of a Man, and as a Man in the midst of men, in which is found a moral incapacity to enter into His thoughts; but this opens the way at the same time to the manifestation of our thoughts which are in full contrast with those of Jesus. May God grant us in His grace to hold the flesh so entirely subject, that the Holy Spirit may be the source of all our thoughts and of the movements of our hearts. Nevertheless the conscience does not keep silence if the Lord's word touches us: we know well that the desire of vain glory is a bad thing, that it is not meet for Christ, for Him who speaks, and we are ashamed. The disciples are silent because their conscience speaks.

283 Now the patient love of the Lord sets itself to teach them; He sits down (v. 35), and calls the twelve: He always thinks of us. He then teaches several principles, in which we see the consequences of the world's opposition to Christ, and the introduction of a new relationship with God in Christ risen; these principles demand some explanation. The important point here, the foundation of all the Lord's exhortations, and of all He says is this, that the glory of the kingdom to come has been revealed, and with this revelation comes the cross. It is the end of all the relationships between God and Israel, and indeed between God and man, except indeed that of sovereign grace, and the principle of a new and heavenly relationship by faith. But Christ, the Messiah according to the promises in Israel, God manifest in flesh, the last hope for man as he was upon earth, was rejected. The relationship between God and man was broken. Could one seek glory upon an earth of this kind? What kind of disposition is fitting for a disciple of Christ? Humility: he who would be first shall be the last and servant of all. Then He takes a child and declares that he who receives such an one in His name receives Christ; and he who receives Christ receives the Father who sent Him. The name of Christ is the touch-stone, the only thing upon earth really great by faith.

Then we find a reproof for a thing which in itself was love, though rough and coarse, but which dresses itself in very deceitful forms, and seems to consider Christ's glory; for love in itself is not upright: it is quite disposed to maintain the glory of Christ's name, if it can attach itself to this glory. "We saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us, and we forbade him because he followeth not us." See here the word "us" betrays the most subtle love of self: subtle, it is true, but none the less dangerous. But the Lord's answer shews how absolute is His rejection: "He who is not against us is on our part," because the whole world in its natural state was against Christ, and is still against Him; and no one could perform miracles in His name and at the same time speak evil or lightly of Him. The name of Christ is everything. Let us avoid this wretched "us," and hold fast to Christ.

Verse 41 shews how the name of Christ is everything in a world which has rejected Him.

284 But what a testimony to man's state, and to his inward opposition to God revealed in Christ! If any one was not against Him, he was for Him, otherwise he was completely God's enemy. Some important consequences follow this state: first of all the least manifestation of love for Him, which interested itself in Him, having the power of His name at heart, should not be forgotten before God. What a picture of the state of things and of the patience of Christ, who humbled Himself even to being rejected and despised, yet does not forget the least token of affection for Him, and of desire for His glory! Now we see another consequence of this position. The Lord does not wish that a little child who believes in Him should be despised; He esteems these, because their hearts recognise His name, believe in Him; and hence they have a great value before God. Woe be to him who despises them and who places a stone of stumbling before their feet; it would have been better for such an one to have been drowned in the depth of the sea. And nevertheless, as regards themselves, all depends upon the faithfulness of Christ; and on this account they need free themselves from all the things which tend to separate from Christ, which lead into sin, and bring on apostasy in the heart as well as outward apostasy. God will keep His own, I believe, but He will keep them in making them obedient to His word.

However much it may cost us, if it should be an eye that offends us, we must pluck it out; if a hand, we must cut it off; in a word, the most valuable thing possible; for an eternity of blessing with Christ is better than to keep a right hand and to find oneself in eternal torments, "where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." Besides this, God puts all to the proof: the fire of His judgment is applied to all, both to saints and sinners. In the saints, it consumes the dross, in order that the pure gold may shine in its true lustre; in the case of sinners, the fire of God and the eternal pains according to His just judgment, fire that is not quenched. "Every sacrifice must be salted with salt"; this refers to Leviticus 2: 13. The salt represents the power of the Holy Spirit, not exactly to produce grace alone, but to keep us from all that is impure, and to produce holiness in a heart devoted to God, and which introduces God into its path; and in the heart there is a link with Himself which keeps us from all corruption. We are called to keep this in the heart, and to apply the sense of His presence to all that passes within us, and to judge by this means all that is within us.

285 But observe that the believer is the true sacrifice offered to God. "I beseech you," says the apostle in Romans 12, "then, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." Here we see the true sacrifice, a reasonable service: and besides, this holy grace, which keeps us from all that is evil and impure, makes good its influence within us; and the Christian filled with practical holiness is a witness in the world. This indeed is the true state of Christians in this world; a witness in the midst of the world of a power which not only purifies but which keeps from the corruption in it. Salt influences other things and is apt to produce this effect; but if the salt itself lose its savour, wherewithal can it be seasoned? If Christians lose their practical holiness, what can they be good for? "Have salt in yourselves," said the Lord. He wishes us to exercise diligence in order that our souls, in our walk, may be thus sanctified before God, and then manifest themselves before the world; that we should judge in ourselves all that might diminish in us the clearness and purity of our testimony; and that we should walk with others in peace, governed by the spirit of peace in our relationships with them.

Mark 10

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We find some important principles in this chapter, which terminates the history of Christ's life. In the first three Gospels the account of the circumstances attending His death begins with the healing of the blind man near Jericho, which we find in verse 46 of this chapter. The first principle we find here is the corruption and ruin of that which God created down here; and in the relationships which He has established sin has entered and exercises its pernicious influence. The very law of Moses was obliged to permit things in the relationships of life down here, which are not according to the thoughts and the actual will of God, for the hardness of the heart of man.

But if God bears with men, incapable as they are to live up to the height of their relationships with Him, in things which are not according to His will and the perfection of the relationships which He has established, He does not condemn them, nor does He ever cease to recognise them as being that which He had established in the beginning. That which was established from the beginning by God Himself always holds good, and He maintains these relationships by His authority. Creation itself is good, but man has corrupted it; nevertheless God recognises that which He has made, and the relationships in which He has placed man, who is responsible in maintaining their obligations. It is true that God has brought in a power after the death of Christ which is not of this creation (that is, the Holy Spirit); and by means of this power, a man may live outside all the relationships of the old creation, if God calls him to this: but then he will respect the relationships where they exist.

286 The Pharisees, drawing near, ask Jesus if it is permitted that a husband should put away his wife. The Lord takes the occasion to insist upon this truth, that that which God had established from the beginning of the creation was always valid in itself. Moses had allowed a man to put away his wife in the law; but this was only the patience of God with the hardness of man's heart; but it was not according to God's own heart and will. In the creation at the beginning God made that which was good - weak, but good. He allowed other things when He ordered provisionally the state of His people, of fallen man; but He had made things differently when He created them. God had united husband and wife, and man had no right to separate them. The bond is not to be broken.

Again they bring little children unto Him; and the disciples forbid those who bring them. But Jesus is displeased at this. Although the root of sin be found in the children, nevertheless they were the expression of simplicity, of confidence, and of the absence of the craftiness and of the corruption caused by the knowledge of the world, of the depravity of nature. They present to the heart the simplicity of uncorrupted nature, which has not learned the deceit of the world. And the Lord being a stranger in the world recognises in them that which His Father has created.

Now is there really any good in man? The remains of what God created are found in that which is purely creature; that which is beautiful and pleasant; that which comes from God's hand is often beautiful and should be recognised as coming from Him. Nature around us is beautiful; it is God who created it, although thorns and thistles be found in it. We find that which is lovely sometimes in a man's character and also even in the disposition of an animal. But it is a question of man's heart, of his will, of what he is toward God-and not of what is natural, the fruit of creation: there dwelleth in him no good thing. There is nothing for God; but all is against Him; and this was manifested in the rejection of Christ.

287 This is the lesson we learn in the account which follows of the young man who runs and kneels at Jesus' feet, asking Him, "Good master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He was amiable, well disposed, and ready to learn that which is good; he had witnessed the excellence of the life and works of Jesus, and his heart was touched at what he had seen. He had all the fine ardour of youth, he was not depraved by the habit of sin, for sin depraves the heart. Outwardly he had kept the law, and believed that Jesus could teach him the highest precepts of the law; for the Jews even believed that some commandments were of greater value than others.

The young man neither knew himself, nor the state in which man really was before God. He was under the law; and Jesus sets forth the law first as the rule of life, given by God as the measure of righteousness for the sons of Adam. The young man does not ask how he may be saved, but how he may inherit eternal life. The Lord does not speak of eternal life, but takes up the young man at the point where he places himself; the law said, "Do these things, and thou shalt live." The young man declares that he has kept all these things from his youth up: the Lord neither denies nor disputes it; and we read that He looked upon him, and loved him. We see here that which is amiable and loved of the Lord. But what is the true state of this young man? The Lord draws the veil, and man stands before God in his nakedness; and God stands before man in His holiness. Doing anything is out of the question: how to be saved is another thing.

Let us examine what the Lord says about the state of man. The young man addressed the Lord not as Son of God, but as a rabbi, that is, as a teacher in Israel: he calls Him "Good master." The Lord will not admit that man is good; not one righteous man can be found amongst men - no, not one. He says, "Why callest thou me good? No one is good except one: that is God." Certainly Christ was good, but He was God, although He made Himself man in His perfect love. He was always God, and God became man without ceasing to be, or being able to cease being, God; only He had hidden His divinity in human nature (at least His glory) in order to come nigh unto us; for by faith divine power and love are more clearly manifested than ever. But here the young man comes as to a human teacher, a rabbi; and the Lord answers him in the same manner as he asks; but He establishes this important principle, that no one amongst the sons of fallen Adam is good; it is a humiliating truth, but one of immense weight. We cannot now find a man who is good by nature; we have seen that certain qualities remain of the first creation; but that which God had created good and declared to be good has been corrupted by the fall. Man goes in quest of his own pleasures, of his own interests, and not of God and His glory; he may seek these things honestly or dishonestly in the quagmire of sin, but he always seeks to satisfy his own will; he has lost God, and looks after himself.

288 Then the Lord, after having presented to him the commandments of the law, in which a man has life whilst he keeps them, adds in an exhortation the commandment which made Paul feel what the law produced, in the state in which man was - in death. "One thing thou lackest," says the Lord: "Go, sell that thou hast, and come and follow me." Here we see the lust of the heart exposed, the young man's true state laid bare by the Lord's powerful but simple word, which knows and tries the heart. The fine flowers of the wild tree are worth nothing; the fruits are those of a heart alienated from God: the sap is the sap of a bad tree. The love of riches ruled this young man's heart, interesting as it was as to his natural disposition: the base desire of gold lay at the bottom of his heart; it was the mainspring of his will, the true measure of his moral state. If he goes away grieved and leaves the Lord, it is because he prefers money to God manifested in love and grace.

How solemn a thing it is to find oneself in the presence of Him who searcheth the heart! But the thing that governs the heart, its motive is the true measure of man's moral state, and not the qualities which he possesses by birth, however pleasing these may be. Good qualities are to be found even in animals; they are to be esteemed, but they do not at all reveal the moral state of the heart. A man who has a hard and perverse nature, who tries to control his bad disposition by grace, and to be amiable to others and pleasing to God, is more moral and better before Him than a man who, amiable naturally, seeks to enjoy himself with others in a pleasant way, but without conscience before God; that is, without thinking of Him; loved by men, but displeasing to the God whom he forgets. That which gives moral character to a man is the object of his heart; and it is this the Lord shews here in so powerful a manner, that it touches to the quick the pride of the human heart.

289 But then the Lord goes father; the disciples, who thought that men could do something to gain eternal life, like all the Pharisees of every age, and that man ought to gain heaven for himself, although they recognised the need of God's help, were astonished. What! a rich man of a very good disposition, who had kept the law, and who only sought to know what was the most excellent commandment from their Master in order to perform it - could such an one be far from the kingdom of God? Could it be extremely difficult for such an one to enter into it? If we do not understand that we are lost already, that we need to be saved, that it is a question of the state of the heart, that all hearts are naturally at a distance from God, and that they seek an object, the object of their own desire far from Him, that they do not wish Him to be present, because the conscience feels that His presence would hinder the heart in following this object; if we do not learn this truth by grace, we are altogether blind.

At the moment at which we have arrived in this passage, it was too late to keep concealed from man (at least from the disciples) the true state of his heart. This state had been manifested; man had been unwilling to receive the Son of God. Thus it had been proved that with the best natural disposition, man, even whilst preserving outward morality, preferred to follow the object of his desire, rather than the God of love present upon earth, or a master whom he had recognised as having the highest knowledge of the will of God. Man was lost; he had shewn this fact in rejecting the Son of God; and he must learn it, and that with all his most excellent qualities he cannot save himself. "Who then can be saved?" The Lord does not hide the truth: "With men it is impossible." Solemn words, pronounced by the Lord, pronounced by Him who came to save us. He knew that man could not save himself, that he could not emerge from the state into which he had fallen, without the help of God. With men it is impossible; but then God comes in His boundless love to save us, not to conceal our state, and the need of this free salvation.

290 We must know our state; it is not a thing to be lightly esteemed that the glorious Son of God should have made Himself of no reputation, and have died upon the cross: the only means of redeeming and saving lost man. We must know ourselves, and know that we are condemned, in our hearts, in order to be able to understand that Christ has borne this condemnation in our place, and that He has accomplished the work of our salvation, according to God's glory: let the state of condemnation and sin be proved; and let the love, the perfect righteousness, and the holiness of a God who cannot tolerate the sight of sin (however patient He may be) be brought out clearly and glorified. "With men it is impossible . . . with God all things are possible." By the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by this work alone, a work which the angels desire to look into, all this can be done; salvation is obtained by faith - by faith, because all is accomplished. To God be the praise! The Lord is glorified as man in heaven, because this work has been done, and because God has recognised its perfection; it is on this account that He has placed Christ at His right hand, because everything has been done. God is satisfied, glorified, in the work of Christ.

With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. But what an immense grace which shews us what we are and what God is! "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Think of this, brethren. This means that we must expect a cross in this world. Be ready to receive the Lord's words, to take up the cross, in order to have the true knowledge of yourselves; that is, that you are lost in sin, that salvation is purely of grace, impossible for man; but that the work of salvation is perfect and complete, and the righteousness of God is upon all men who believe in Him who has accomplished it. In no part of scripture is the fundamental truth of the need of God's salvation and of man's state more clearly stated.

Now the Lord adds His teaching about the path of the cross, and the promises which accompany it: let us look at these. It is easy to see how much this story resembles that of the apostle Paul; only grace had changed everything in him. As to the righteousness which is by law, he was blameless; but when the spirituality of the law had operated in his heart, lust was discovered. Then he found out that in him, that is, in his flesh, there dwelt no good thing. But being convinced of sin, God revealed His Son in him, and then he understood that what was impossible with man was possible with God; God had done for him that which he could not do himself (that is, to gain a righteousness according to the law); and this sin in the flesh is found to be condemned in the cross of Christ, and a sacrifice for sin accomplished by Him. Instead of finding himself to be lost in this state of sin, he becomes a new man.

291 But the young man remains in his former state, and abandons the Lord in order to keep his riches; whilst in Paul's case the things which he counted gain he counted but loss for Christ. "Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." See here the difference between the effect of grace and human nature. There was wisdom to be found in Paul; and, notice, he did not only count all things as dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ from the outset, when first Christ was revealed in him, but he continued, whilst walking in communion with Him, to count all things as dung for Him.

Now follow the promises made to those who have walked thus, and the path itself, as the Lord Himself represents it. Peter suggests that they had left all in order to follow Him, as He had proposed to the young men: what should they have? The Lord declares in His answer that no man who had left house, or brethren, or sisters, etc., for His sake and the gospel's, but should receive an hundredfold such in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting. They should enjoy much more than the wretched things of this life, but with persecutions; and thus they have the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come; not of riches, perhaps, but the true enjoyment of all that is in the world according to God's will, and as gifts from God; but they will have to do with the opposition of a world that does not know God. But those who were the first in Judaism shall be the last amongst Christians.

The Lord now sets Himself in the way going up to Jerusalem. The heart of the disciples was full of presentiments of the danger which awaited them in this city. They followed the Lord in fear and trembling, because the flesh fears the malice of a world, which, if it cannot do anything against God, can persecute those who serve Him down here. Here again we see the difference of the effect of grace in Paul, who, having given up everything for the love of Christ, rejoices in the thought of the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, knowing and wishing to know the power of His resurrection. This the disciples did not know, and the flesh can never understand. But the Lord does not wish to hide the truth; He wishes the disciples to understand the place He was just going to take, and which they would have to take. He begins to tell them the things that should happen to Him, and what should be the lot of the Son of man. He should be given into the hands of the priests, condemned, and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, who would treat Him with the greatest ignominy, and would put Him to death; but the third day He would rise again. Thus ends the story of the Son of man amongst men. His own people were the first to condemn Him; and the Gentiles, by their indifference, were ready to complete the terrible act of the Saviour's rejection in this world. The people of God (the Jews) joined with sinful man to cast out the Son of God, come down here in grace. It was important for the disciples to know what should be their Master's end. The Son of man must die. This is the teaching, the foundation, of all blessing; but it was a foundation which destroyed all the hopes and all the expectations of the disciples; which shewed also that man was bad, and God infinitely good.

292 Now these thoughts of the disciples manifest themselves at once, and are put in contrast with that which the Saviour solemnly announces. Indeed the disciples seemed to be impenetrable to the truth up to the last; by grace they loved the Saviour, they rejoiced in the thought that Jesus possessed the words of eternal life (for even the Pharisees' system spoke of eternal life). Now all this was not enough to drive away thoughts of a kingdom which they believed would be established upon earth, nor a carnal desire of a high position close to the Lord's person in this kingdom. The Lord could not find a single person who could understand Him, who could enter into the thoughts of His heart, and could be touched by His sufferings; or could comprehend what He was explaining to His disciples about His death at Jerusalem, when He had led them by themselves apart.

293 James and John ask to sit, one at His right hand, and the other at His left, in His glory. There was faith in this, for they believed that He would reign; but the desire of the flesh was always at work. But the answer of the Lord, who is always full of goodness for His own, turns the fleshly question into an occasion for instruction for His disciples. He was not the only one who was to bear the cross. He alone could accomplish redemption by the offering of Himself: the Son of God who gave Himself in His love to be the Lamb of God. But as to the path, it was necessary that the disciples should enter into the same path in which He was going, if they wished to be with Him. Here the Lord shews His deep humility and submission to the place He had taken. He had made Himself of no reputation; and He accepts this place with a willing heart, not insensible to the humiliation and the sufferings of the cross, but accepting everything from the hand of His Father, and submitting to all that should be found upon this path.

"To sit at my right hand and my left is not for me to give, but for those for whom it is prepared." He does not possess the right of preferment in His kingdom. He leaves to the Father the right of choosing, and gives the special glory appointed to special work to those for whom it is prepared, and whom grace has prepared for this glory. His portion is the cross; and the cross can give the glory, if any one will follow Him as His disciple: this is now the lesson which His people must learn. He was subject to His Father, and received from His hand all that was prepared for Him according to His will; and if the disciples wished to follow Him, they must take up the cross which was in this path, and which is always in it. Besides, to follow the Lord Jesus, the disciple must humble himself like the Lord; not to be like the great of this world, which makes itself great apart from God, but to be the servant of all in love, as the blessed Saviour was, although by right the Lord of all. Love is the most powerful of all things, and loves to minister, not to be ministered to. It is thus that God manifested Himself, in the Man Jesus, in this path: it is our duty to follow Him. He who is smallest in his own eyes is the greatest.

294 Here ends the history of the Saviour's life upon earth: the account of the events attending His death begins. He presents Himself again, and for the last time, at Jerusalem both as Son of David, the object of the promises made to Israel, and also in order to be received by His people, and by the beloved city: but in fact to be rejected, and put to death. Up to this time (v. 45) He spoke of "the Son of man who had come to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." But now He presents Himself in the only relationship in which He could be with His people according to the prophecies.

He enters by Jericho, the cursed city, but He enters it according to the grace which surpasses the curse; indeed He was going to bear it Himself. The Son of David comes in grace, with divine power, able to accomplish all things, but in humility and lowliness. He answers, therefore, to this name of Son of David, shewing forth His power in grace in healing the blind man. The crowd accompanying Him does not wish Him to be disturbed, but He stops and listens to the needs of His people in His grace. He orders Bartimaeus to be brought, who runs to Him with joy. His felt needs make him run to Christ, who is just the One to meet his needs, and to apply an effective remedy.

The blind man was a speaking picture of the dark state of the Jews; but in that which took place we see the Lord's work in producing by His grace the feeling of need in the heart of a Jew at that time. No doubt it is true for every time, but especially in this case, of the Jews in their state at that moment. The crowd, when Bartimaeus asked what the noise was, said to him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. This was a name which did not convey any idea to the Jews; Nazareth was rather a name with which reproach was connected. But there was faith to be found in the blind man's heart, according to the place that Jesus took with regard to His people: the man says, "Son of David." He recognises the truth that Jesus of Nazareth had the right to that title. Jesus responds to his faith, and heals the blind man. He receives his sight, and follows Jesus in the way.

This is a touching picture of Israel's position, and of the work which was going on in the midst of this people. The Son of God, the Son of David according to the flesh, the fulfilment of the promises was come in grace, and was able to heal Israel. There, in the place where the Son of David was recognised, the power which He brought with Him, and which was in Him, took away blindness. Israel was totally blind; but divine power was present to heal; and if there was faith enough to recognise the Son of David in Jesus, the blindness vanished. It is beautiful to see grace enter there where the curse had fallen; but it is grace which works there where Jesus is recognised as Son of David; grace which opened the eyes of the blind man, from henceforth made His disciple.

Mark 11

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We have already seen that the Lord assumes here the title of Son of David, a name which spoke of the accomplishment of the promises and constituted Him true king of Israel. The name which He took habitually and by preference was that of Son of man. This name had a much wider signification and announced the right to a power and a lordship much more extensive than those of the Son of David; it put Christ into strict relationship with all men, but asserted His right to all the glory that belonged to the Son of man according to the counsels of God. In Psalm 2 we find the two titles, of the Son of God - the one which was given to Jesus as born down here in this world, and that of King of Israel, though in rejection. Then in Psalm 8 (after shewing forth the state of His people in Psalms 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) we see His glory, the extent of His power, as Son of man, who is set over all things. In Daniel 7 we find again the Son of man brought before the Ancient of Days, from whose hand He receives dominion over all nations.

In chapters 11 and 12 of the Gospel by John, Christ being rejected by man, God wills that a full testimony should be rendered to Him in the three characters of Son of God, Son of David, and Son of man. The first is the resurrection of Lazarus; the second at the entry into Jerusalem, seated upon the ass; the third when the Greeks come to ask to see Jesus: then the Lord says, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fallen into the ground die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." In order to take possession of these titles, He must have His co-heirs with Him; - He must die.

296 In our chapter He takes the second title, and presents Himself to the Jewish nation for the last time upon earth according to the prophecy of Zechariah. He will present Himself later in the glory and take possession of the throne of His father David; but now all He does is to present Himself to His people as the One who fulfils all the promises made to them. He knew well what would be the result, and that He was about to take the larger title of Son of man; and this in order to have His co-heirs with Himself; when, according to His Father's counsels, He should take His great power and reign. But it was necessary that this last testimony should be rendered to the people on the one hand, and to the Lord on the other, on God's part; that is, by the mouth of little children and sucklings He would take His glory, anticipating thus the establishment of the kingdom in power.

Now this king was Emmanuel, the Lord Himself, and Jesus acts here in this character. He sends His disciples to bring an ass' colt from a neighbouring village, and when its owners asked what the disciples were doing in taking it, they answered according to the Lord's command: "The Lord hath need of him"; and the man sent him at once. All was done in order that the word of the prophet might be fulfilled; because in this Gospel we have always facts presented not only as the effects of sovereign grace, as indeed they were, but as the accomplishment of the promises made to His people. Notice that a part of the verse quoted is left out; that is, two expressions which have to do with the Lord's coming in power to take possession of His kingdom. These are the words, "just" and "having salvation"; as the "just," Christ will execute vengeance upon His enemies: as Saviour, He will deliver the remnant; it was not yet time for these two things.

The disciples therefore brought the colt to Him; and then the Lord Jesus entered into Jerusalem as king. A very great multitude, moved by the power of God, having also seen His miracles, and especially the resurrection of Lazarus, go before and surround Him, spreading their garments in the way, and cutting down branches from the trees in order to cast them upon His path, giving Him the place and glory of a king, and in fact recognising Him as the royal Messiah. An admirable scene in which it is not the cold reasoning of man's intellect which is in question - nor is it merely the effect of His miraculous deeds, although a fruit of this - but the mighty working of God upon the minds of the crowd, compelling it to give testimony for a short time to the despised Son of God. The testimony also of Psalm 118 is cited; a remarkable prophecy of the last days in Israel, often quoted. The Lord Himself spoke of the verses which precede those which God put into the mouth of the crowd, "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner."

297 There the crowd used the verse which announced the recognition of the Son of David by the remnant of the people Israel: "Hosannah!" (a Hebrew word meaning "Save now!" which becomes a kind of formula for asking the Lord's help when the true Christ or Messiah is recognised), "Hosannah to the Son of David: blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; hosannah in the highest." Now this cry recognised Jesus as the Son of David, the Messiah. Such was the will of God; that His Son should not be left without this testimony, without being honoured in this manner. Now He acts in Jerusalem according to this position.

All the city was moved, asking who this could be; and the crowds said that He, Jesus of Nazareth, was the prophet who was to come. Jesus enters the temple, and purifies it with the actual authority of Jehovah, driving out those who profaned it. He judges the nation and its rulers, saying, "It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves." But if He is Jehovah present in the temple, He is always Jehovah present in grace for all the needs of His people: He heals the blind and the lame. But no testimony is sufficient to penetrate the hard covering of unbelief which envelopes the hearts of the chief of the people, when they see the miracles. Hearing the children crying "Hosannah!" they become indignant. The Lord teaches here that the time for convincing them is past, and appeals to the testimony of Psalm 8 as to this. God had foreseen and foretold these things: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained praise." If the people refused Him, God took care that He should have the praise which became Him.

But all is over for the people, until the sovereign grace of God shall act to awaken a part of it in the midst of the tribulation which its unbelief will have brought upon it; and this remnant, awakened to repentance, will cry like the children, "Hosannah to the Son of David!" but then all will be grace. According to man's responsibility all was over, and the people judged: and this is what the Lord shews in the incident which follows. He will not stay in rebellious and unbelieving Jerusalem, but goes to Bethany where the power of the resurrection had been manifested; where He can find an object and a refuge for His heart amongst men, after that His people have rejected Him.

298 Then when He returns to the city, He is an hungered, and seeing a fig-tree upon the roadside, He seeks fruit but finds none at all upon it - nothing but leaves. He curses the tree, saying, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever"; and the fig-tree is dried up at once. This is Israel according to the old covenant, man according to the flesh; this is man in the place where God has spent all His care and employed all His means - man for whom God could give up even His only-begotten Son, in order to get some good from his heart, and to reach him to gain him over to that which is good, and to Himself. All was in vain; He had spared the tree this year also, upon the intercession of the dresser of the vineyard (Luke 13); He had digged about it and dunged it, but it had produced no fruit. What could He have done to His vineyard which He had not done? It is not all that we are sinners; we are still sinners after that God has done all that is possible to gain man's heart. This shews us the importance of Israel's history, and our history as told by God, and that of His patience and of all His ways, except that we have afterwards the supreme testimony of His love in the death of Christ, so that we are still more guilty. Plenty of leaves, but no fruit; pretence to piety - religious forms, but the true fruit according to God's heart, that which He seeks in His own, is not to be found in man.

Israel according to the old covenant, that is, man according to the flesh, cultivated by God's care and set aside for ever, will never bear fruit for God. It has shewn itself to be useless and to have been unable to repay all the care God bestowed upon it. Man, naturally, is condemned to everlasting barrenness. This miracle is all the more remarkable, as all Christ's miracles were not only signs of power but a witness of the love of God. Divine power was there, but to heal, to cure, to free from the power of Satan and from death, to destroy all the effects of sin in this world. But all this did not change man's heart; on the contrary, by the manifestation of God's presence, it awakened the enmity of his heart against Him - too often hid from man himself in the depths of his heart. Here only do we find a miracle which bears the character of judgment.

299 Now all is brought out clearly; man can be born again, can receive the life of the second Adam. Israel can be restored by grace according to the new covenant; but man in himself, man in the flesh who is judged, after all that has been done to bring forth fruit, is shewn to be incapable of bearing anything good. God saves men, God gives them eternal life. Man in receiving Christ receives a life which brings forth fruit; the tree is grafted, and God seeks fruit on the grafted branch; but He has done with man in the flesh, except as concerns the judgment which must come upon him for his sins; and thanks be to God, He is free to liberate him from this state by grace, to save him by the blood of Jesus Christ, to beget him again, to reconcile him with Himself, to adopt him as His child, and make him the first-fruits of His creatures. Israel is left, and man judged; but the grace of God remains, and Christ is the Saviour of all those who believe in Him.

But what a scene is this in which Christ, the Messiah, the Son of David, Emmanuel upon earth, enters His house, there with His holy eyes looks upon all that which man does in it, and shews His indignation against the sacrilege which had made it a den of thieves. He vindicates the glory and the authority of Jehovah in driving out those who desecrate the temple. Then He finds Himself face to face with all His adversaries, who come, one set after another, to condemn Him: but they find the light and wisdom which shew clearly their position; so that, in wishing to condemn, they find themselves all condemned; and the Saviour is left free to follow up His work of grace and redemption in the presence of His adversaries now reduced to silence. But before judging them by His answers, each class of the people shews forth the fundamental principle which would give His disciples the power to overcome the obstacles which these condemned classes of Jews would bring up against them; since outwardly the power and established order were in their hands.

"Have faith in God," says the Saviour, when Peter wonders that the fig-tree is so soon dried up. All the power which presented itself to the weakness of the disciples would vanish before faith. A most important principle in a Christian's walk and service: only this faith must be exercised without any doubt at all, bringing God into the scene; and must not be the motion of the will, but the consciousness of the presence and of the intervention of God. Thus it happens that, where faith is found, and that requests are made by faith, the effect follows surely. Yet with all this, the presence of God is the presence of a God of love; and when we pray asking that our desire may be accomplished, we must be in communion with Him, and then we realise His power in answer to faith, and then the spirit of forgiveness towards others is found in the heart. For example, if I were to cherish revenge upon my enemies, I could not hope that my prayers should be answered; and even if I were heard, I should be punished. God would not intervene in this manner, for He would refuse such an evil desire; or even if He found it well to answer the prayer, we should draw down the chastisement upon ourselves. For God in His government always acts according to His character.*

{*As this thought may be a little obscure for some, it may be presented thus in other terms: "Faith, which finds an answer to its prayer, must have found God, and be in the enjoyment of communion with Him; but then God is love; and in order to realise His power to get the answer, one must know what it is to be in His presence, which faith has discovered; but this communion cannot be known if there is no love. Consequently, when we present ourselves in faith to ask for the fulfilment of our desire we must forgive our brother that which we may have against him; otherwise, we are in God's presence as regards His government and thus subject to the effect of our sins."}

300 Now He enters again into Jerusalem; He will not lodge in the city now given up by God. Here He begins to pass in review, to examine all the heads of the people, of which I have spoken; and first of all we find the examination of the authority which sets itself up against His own. He walks in the temple, where the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders come, and ask Him by what authority He does these things, and who has given Him this authority. Thus we see them set one against the other; the authority of either is questioned. The official authority, that which is outward, was in the hands of the priests; the truth and obedience to God were in Jesus. If His power had been manifested already, it shewed no sign of avenging itself at present: it was useless to shew any more signs of power; they were already condemned; having seen sign after sign, and having hardened themselves in unbelief, it was now high time for judgment, not indeed of its execution, but of moral judgment; they were left without an answer.

301 The heads of the people ask by what authority He had purified the temple. There was no zeal for the holiness of God to be found in them, plenty of zeal for their own authority; and this is characteristic of prelates - they think about their own authority and not about God. The Lord Jesus thought only about the authority of God; and that which He did was the effect of it. If the conscience of the rulers had not been hardened, even though they had not been pleased with that which the Lord had done, they would have kept silence, ashamed of the state in which the temple was found to be whilst under their care. Having rejected the Lord, they could not recognise His authority; proofs were useless, from this time forth. But the Lord's divine wisdom makes them recognise their own incapacity to resolve questions relating to authority and divine testimony.

He asks if John the Baptist's mission were divine. If they said, Yes, then John had witnessed to Jesus; if no, their authority was compromised before the people. Where was their right to ask, "What is the truth?" They knew it; yet they were glad enough to have the honour, long lost, of having a prophet in the midst of Israel. To own their sins did not suit them; and so the light was soon put out for their hearts; but the people always accounted John to be a prophet. Thus they dared say neither Yes nor No. This was their confession, that they were not able to judge of the claims of a man who professed to have a mission from God; because they could not say whether John was a prophet or not. If this was the case, Jesus need not answer them, nor satisfy them about His mission, as persons armed with God's authority, to which one is bound to tell the truth.

Mark 12

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The incapacity and incompetency of the governors among the Jews is clearly shewn forth. They had pretended to judge the Lord, but the word of divine wisdom in His mouth had judged them and compelled them to confess their incompetency. Now the Lord begins in His turn to shew all the classes of the Jews the state in which they were, and first that of all the people. Israel had been Jehovah's vineyard; He had let it out to certain husbandmen in order to receive its fruit in due season. He had done all He could for His vineyard; it was impossible to do more than He had done. Israel enjoyed all the privileges which a nation could enjoy. At fruit-time, the Master sends His servant to receive the fruit of the husbandmen.

302 The prophets sought these fruits from the people on God's part, for He was Master of the vineyard; but the husbandmen took one servant and beat him, they killed another, and rejected all of them. Thus Israel treated all God's servants sent by Him to call them back to their duty. At last, having yet one Son, His well-beloved, He sent Him also to them, saying, "They will reverence my Son." But they took Him, killed Him, and cast Him out of the vineyard. They wanted to take possession of the vineyard by killing the rightful heir.

Let us look a little into this parable. With what dignity and calmness the Lord exposes the past conduct of the people of Israel, and also their conduct at that very moment! He was ready to suffer, He had come to die; but His enemies' acts must be clearly shewn forth; they filled up the measure of their iniquity with their eyes open. Poor Jews! God in His sovereign grace will have compassion upon them, and will restore His people (by a new covenant) to its place of the people of God owned by Him. Mark always narrates everything rapidly. The consequence of Israel's sin is shewn; but we know from the other Gospels that the Jews in their answer were obliged to pronounce their own sentence; and that they understood well what the parable meant. Here the simple fact of their ruin is told, and that of the rejection of the Christ, the Son of God. The Master of the vineyard, the Lord of Hosts, would come and destroy the wicked husbandmen and would give His vineyard to others.

Then He quotes once more Psalm 118, and asks the chief of the people (a question which applied directly to Himself), "Have ye not read this scripture? - The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." What a plain prophetic declaration of the position of Israel and its consequences! All Israel's history, presented in brief, perfectly described in a few verses: all their conduct from Moses' time till the cross set forth in a few words; their sin towards Jehovah, towards Christ, towards the prophets, and the fearful consequences for the nation, and God's ways towards it. God takes away all its privileges, and gives over His vineyard (where He would seek for fruit) to others. Thus with this great fact of man's sin and Jewish unbelief - that is, with the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord - He would be exalted to the right hand of God, and would become the head of the corner. Here also we have the key of Old Testament scripture by prophecy; for with a single glance we see all God's ways communicated to spiritual intelligence. It is only divine wisdom and divine revelation which can reveal to us God's thoughts and man's deeds, and which can announce them to us.

303 We have seen that all classes of the Jews come, one after the other, to judge the Lord; but in fact to be judged. The Pharisees and Herodians present themselves first to catch Him in His words. They did not dare to lay hands upon Him, although they would willingly have done so, because they had fully understood that the parable of the vineyard and husbandmen had been spoken against them; but the people were still under the influence of His words and His works. The rulers feared the people, slaves not merely to their own passions and unbelief but to the people itself; and they feared still more to do anything against the Lord, believing that the people would favour Him, since they had neither the power of faith, nor the freedom which is the result of uprightness; but they were dependent on the favour of the people.

The Lord's hour was not yet come. They sent certain spies to catch Him in His words. The Pharisees, filled with pride as to the privileges of the people, and ever ready to stir up it against the Romans, flattered its passions. They were subjected to the Gentile yoke on account of their sins, and were no longer recognised as God's people. The promised Messiah had been sent in the person of the Lord, and they had not been willing to receive Him, because He manifested God upon earth, and their hardened heart did not wish for God; they wished to possess the glory of being God's people, but not to receive God and submit themselves to Him. The rebellion of their heart against God was united to the rebellion of their national pride against the Gentiles.

The Herodians, on the contrary, accepted the Roman authority, and did not trouble themselves about Israel's privileges: but they were ready at all costs to seek the good favour of that powerful people, who held the people Israel under its heavy yoke by God's judgment. Now if the Lord had said that they ought not to pay tribute, He would shew Himself hostile to the Romans sway, and the Herodians would be ready to accuse Him; if He said that they ought to pay, He was not the Messiah who should free His people from the hated Roman yoke. They did not think of any other deliverance: and hence He would have lost the favour of the people. The Herodians and Pharisees were reconciled for the purpose of getting rid of the Lord: but divine wisdom answers to every difficulty.

304 The Jews ought to have submitted to the yoke which God Himself had placed upon their neck until the time when grace should free them, and they should receive the Deliverer who should come according to God's promises; and until these should be fulfilled they must humbly render to God His due, always accepting their chastisement at His hands. But they did neither the one thing nor the other; they were hypocrites before God, and rebellious towards men. The Lord asks them to give Him a coin with the Emperor's head upon it, and asks, "Whose image and superscription is this?" The Jews reply, "Caesar's": and Jesus says, "Render to Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and to God the things which be God's." And the Jews go away astonished. A just reply, which not only answered their accusation, but which recognised at the same time Israel's true state and the judgment of God.

Next come the Sadducees, another sect of the Jews, which did not believe in the invisible world, nor in angels, nor in the resurrection: God had given a law to His people Israel, that was all. Accustomed to the arguments of men, they did not expect to meet with divine wisdom, nor the irresistible force of the word of God. They present a case which (supposing that to be true which their folly imagined) rendered the resurrection ridiculous and impossible: for they suppose that the relationships and state of this world continue in the other. This is what men do: they mix up their thoughts with God's word, and since these thoughts do not agree with it, they think it unintelligible and reject it. But in this case a vital and fundamental truth is in question: and the Lord not only reduces His enemies to silence by the wisdom of His answer, discovering their hypocrisy, but clearly reveals the truth itself which is taught in a hidden manner in the Old Testament, and furnishes it with His own authority.

305 Everything depends upon this truth; it is the evidence that Jesus is the Son of God, and that God has accepted His sacrifice. It is the victory over death: all that belongs to man's wretched condition is left behind; it is the entry into man's new estate according to God's counsels; the introduction into the eternal state of glory and full conformity of Christ. It is true that the wicked will be raised for judgment, but the Lord looks upon His own and their state, as also does 1 Corinthians 15. The Lord means to say that the Old Testament contains the revelation of this truth. As to His person it is clearly taught in Psalm 16; but it is said that the Sadducees only received the law of Moses; now this law first of all has to do with that which God had established upon earth for His earthly people: and life and incorruptibility have been brought to light by the gospel and by the resurrection of the Lord Himself. And although this light was clouded in Old Testament times, nevertheless it was not wanting to those who, pilgrims and strangers upon earth, sought a better country and a heavenly city. The immediate teaching referred to God's government upon earth, but by faith the hearts of the faithful could amply find in it that which they needed to point them towards an eternal and heavenly country.

The Pharisees believed in the resurrection, and, as to this, they had the understanding of the truth; but the Lord wished to shew that if the Sadducees only received the law, the law itself, God had at all times given that which was enough to lead the spiritual understanding to expect better things than the earthly, and by faith to bring it into closer relationship with God than could be enjoyed in His government either of the world or of His people, however real this government might be. The Lord then condemns the Sadducees entirely; they were quite ignorant of the scriptures and of the power of God. The Lord first reveals the truth; as soon as a person is raised from the dead, he is like the angels and it is no longer a question of marrying or giving in marriage. Then he shews that in its first elements the first expression of the relationships of God with men (when God spoke to Moses) contained a life beyond death, and consequently the resurrection; since man consists of body and soul, according to God's counsels. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had been dead a long time, but God was always their God; and yet they were still alive; and they would not consequently remain always under the power of death, but would rise again.

306 The Sadducees, who only believed in the law, needed a clear proof of the truth taken from the law itself. And whatever may be the truth as to the Sadducees, it is important for us to understand that from the beginning, when God enters into relationship with man, sin and death having entered, God always takes resurrection ground. There is no other true foundation of blessing. The very promises made to Israel are founded upon this truth; at least the fulfilment of them (Acts 13: 34). Thus the first thing which the gospel reveals is rooted in the first distinct manifestation of God in relationship with men, a relationship founded upon redemption (an external thing in Israel, it is true, but eternally accomplished in Christ). But as the great truth of Christianity, the new state of man, is established by the Lord's word, so also the perfection of the law, as the standard of man's duty, is brought into light.

One of the scribes, who had heard the Lord's reasoning with the Sadducees and perceived that He had answered with true and divine wisdom, drew near and asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" The scribes believed that the commandments differed in value, and that some were worth more than others to make up the sum of righteousness to which a man ought to attain. The Lord answers again in this instance without turning back the question upon those who asked it to their confusion, but He establishes the two great pillars of man's responsibility: the unity of God, and man's duty towards Him and towards his neighbour. This was Israel's faith, and his duty towards all. The Lord does not quote the ten commandments, but the great principles of the law as to the whole duty of man. The Lord knew how to bring them out, divinely hidden as they are in the books of Moses; Deut. 6: 4, 5; 10: 12; Lev. 19: 18.

The sense of duty was perfect in Him, as also grace and divine love; One greater than these. It is beautiful to see this perfection in the Lord: the grace and the love of God were manifested in all His life; we have seen them. But here we find also the perfect rule of walk and of the duty of man upon earth according to the law; not that which was evident to all men (that is, the ten commandments, which are the first thing to come to mind), but principles scattered here and there throughout the books of the Old Testament, which shone out everywhere for Him - for a heart which understood and possessed the perfection of manhood before God; for He shewed forth divine perfection before men. His heart saw the one, and understood it, whilst the expression of the other sprang naturally from the same heart. The conscience and heart of the scribe are touched; he gives testimony to the perfection of the Lord's reply, adding that to do thus was worth more than sacrifices and burnt-offerings. He was not far from the kingdom of God. A heart which understands God's thoughts about man loves that which God loves; the moral difference of that which is good is far removed from the capacity of receiving that which God reveals for the blessing of His people. Now from this time forth they durst ask Him no question. The Lord's wisdom was too great for their hearts.

307 But the Lord in His turn asks them a question, and all the truth relating to His and to their own position depended upon its answer: "Whose son is Christ?" The Jews said, "David's." It was true, but then the Lord said, "How then doth David call him his Lord if he is his son?" Jesus was the Son of David, but He must sit upon the right hand of God as Lord in man's nature. This was the key to the situation. But the Lord's relationships with the Jews were at an end; each class had presented itself before Him and had been judged.

Verses 31-40. Here the Lord denounces the scribes who corrupted the word of God which they pretended to explain; they took the form of godliness, and sought their own glory and other people's money, even that of widows, to whom they obtained access under the pretext of piety. For this cause their judgment would be all the more terrible; but God does not forget His own in the midst of the hypocrisy of the seeming religious. They may make mistakes: perhaps the widow's mite helped to pay Judas; but it was given to the Lord, and the widow's heart which was occupied about the mite did not escape the Lord's eyes, nor the notice of His love. The rich had given much, but the widow offered herself as a living sacrifice to the Lord; she gave all her substance. Perhaps she might have employed better means, but she gave her mite from the bottom of her heart to the Lord, and it was received on His part: we should think of this.

Mark's Gospel

J. N. Darby.

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Mark 13

We have seen the people judged, each class brought by God's hand into the Lord's presence to receive their judgment; we have seen them morally condemned by the word of God and by the blessed Lord's wisdom. But the iniquity which drew forth the execution itself must cause many difficulties to the disciples. They would have to walk in a way full of dangers, and they are warned themselves here how they may escape the judgment which was about to fall upon the beloved people for their sins. The Lord would no longer be present to guide them; but His heart could not leave them in ignorance either as to the path or as to the difficulties they would have to encounter. And the testimony which Jesus gave of it would make the difficulties and dangers a proof of the truth of His words, and an encouragement for their hearts when they should find themselves in the trouble.

But the Lord does not stop at the fulfilment of the judgment soon to be realised, but opens up the ways of God up to His coming, when Israel shall be blessed again after having passed through such a judgment that a little remnant only of the people will be left; and the power of the beasts (that is, of the Gentile empires) will be destroyed, Satan bound, and the world will rest in peace. Nevertheless it is more as a warning to His disciples that the Lord speaks here than as an announcement of the peace and rest of the world after the execution of judgment.

The disciples, accustomed to see in the temple the house of God and the glorious centre of their religion, full of wonder, point out to the Lord the beauty of the buildings and the size of the stones, and, as often happened, they give to the Lord the opportunity to communicate God's thoughts to them about the times and the state of the guilty nation. He announces to them clearly the destruction of the temple as a certain fact; but when the disciples asked when that should happen, He speaks of the people's state up to His coming, as far as this history has to do with the service of His disciples. In general that which is said is similar to that contained in Matthew's Gospel; but the Holy Spirit here presents the Lord to us as being more occupied with teaching His disciples.

309 As in Matthew we have general teaching here, which goes on to the end of the period of the proclamation of grace; then the especial sign of the final ruin of Jerusalem, which immediately precedes the Lord's coming in glory. This interest in the disciples as to their testimony and service answers to the character of this Gospel, which gives us a history of the service of the Lord Himself. The Lord does not immediately answer the disciples' question, but warns them of the dangers they would encounter in their service, after His departure. Satan would raise up false Christs to deceive the Jews, and many should be deceived. They would have to be on their guard. Wars and rumours of wars would take place, but they were not to be troubled about this; these things must happen, but the end should not be yet. These were the beginning of sorrows, but not the end.

He does not speak of the mission of the apostle Paul, but of that of the twelve in the midst of the Jews; only the gospel must be preached to all the nations before the end. The fact is asserted, without its being said how it ought to be fulfilled. We know that it will be the gospel of the kingdom, as it might have been preached during the Lord's lifetime. Here is the simple announcement of a testimony of the gospel sent to the nation before the end should come. But the consequence of this testimony, as far as the disciples were concerned, would be persecution; they would be beaten in the synagogues and accused before kings and governors for a testimony to them. This is the means which the Lord uses to carry the gospel to kings and to the great of the earth. The preachers are not the great of the earth, and His disciples would have always to preserve their true character; in this they would appear before kings and rulers as prisoners to give an account of their faith.

Thus the apostle Paul appeared before the Jewish council, before Festus, Agrippa, and finally before Caesar. But the possible result of the preaching of the gospel was not all. The revelation of God in the person of Christ, or in the preached word, awakens the enmity of the human heart. So long as God is not revealed, everything is tolerated; but when He is revealed, man's will rises up against His authority, and against the pressure which this revelation exerts upon a conscience not at rest; and the closer the relations are, the greater is the hatred. This hatred breaks all the ties of nature: brother would give up brother to death, and the father his son; the children would rise up against their parents and would put them to death; and the disciples would be hated of all men for the Saviour's name.

310 What a testimony to the state of man's heart! If one speaks of the name of Jesus and of His love, of the love of Him who came to save us, the hatred of man's heart breaks all barriers; it refuses to recognise and tramples down all natural affections. But the time of deliverance will come, and here it is an earthly deliverance that is in question. It is still better for us; if we are killed, we go to be with the Lord; if He comes, we shall be glorified with Him. But here the Lord speaks of the testimony and service of the apostles in the midst of the Jews. In whatever way we look at it, there remaineth a rest for the people of God. But there is more; God would be with them in the way. When the disciples should be in the presence of the magistrates, they were not to meditate upon that which they ought to say; it would not be necessary to prepare discourses; the Holy Spirit would be with them; and it should be given them what to say at that very moment.

Here is the picture that the Lord draws of the service of His people in the midst of the Jews up to the end; He adds that the gospel shall be preached to the ends of the earth. But now in verse 14 He comes to a more precise and definite notice of the events which should happen in Jerusalem at the end. "When," He says, "ye shall see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let those who are in Judaea flee to the mountains." Here we must look at Daniel's prophecy which speaks of this abomination: we find it in chapter 12. The word "abomination" simply means idol; and it is called abomination of desolation because it is the cause of the desolation of Jerusalem and of the Jewish people.

The Jews will receive the Antichrist. The Lord said, "I have come in my Father's name, and ye have not received me; if another come in his own name, him will ye receive." Then under the influence of Antichrist they will turn to idolatry again. The unclean spirit which came out of them after the Babylonish captivity will enter into them again with seven spirits worse than itself, and the last state will be worse than the first; Matt. 12: 43-45. They will then set up an idol in the most holy place, where it ought not to be placed, and God's judgment will fall upon the people and city. The desolation will be complete: "There shall be trouble such as never was." And Daniel says, "At that time Michael shall stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people, and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was . . . ." This trouble must last for a time, times and a half, that is, three and a half Jewish years, or 1,260 days, or 42 months. Then those who are written in God's book shall be saved - those who shall have endured to the end in spite of the difficulties, sufferings, and the oppression of the Antichrist and Gentiles as the Lord had foretold.

311 In the meantime, during the time of their general service, the Holy Ghost would give them all wisdom, and even the very words they would need. The Lord's goodness here is very remarkable; we find the Lord thinking even of the weather in the midst of this terrible judgment, so terrible indeed that nothing like it has been known in the world's history. He tells them to pray that their flight be not in the winter. He does not speak here as in Matthew of the sabbath, because Jewish things are not so much in view here as in that Gospel. He thinks of those who are with child and of those who give suck in those days. Ah! how great is the Saviour's compassion; nothing escapes His gracious memory. Whilst warning His disciples of the most terrible judgment, He thinks of all the difficulties they would meet upon the road He teaches them to take.

But the Lord has shortened these days, or no flesh could be saved; but He has shortened them for His own elect's sake. Then to give a hope of deliverance and of escape from sufferings, false Christs and false prophets would arise and would perform miracles and signs (so great is Satan's power when God permits) to seduce if possible the very elect. But they had been warned; and now after this unparalleled tribulation which should come upon Jerusalem, the end of the dispensation would come; all established authority should be overturned by God's judgment. The order which He had established for the government of the earth shall be thrown into confusion. The signs of His judgment appear.

Then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. The Lord appears to take possession of the earth, which He not only has created, but which He has acquired as His own as Son of man by His death. But that which is specially announced here is that He will send His angels to gather together His elect from all parts of the world. It is always a question here of the land and of Israel: the blessing of the Gentiles and of the whole world will take place, but it is not the question here. Our place is a far higher one: when Christ shall appear, we shall appear with Him; Col. 3: 4. The Lord will have already gathered us to Himself in the air, He will have glorified us already and made us like Himself, according to His boundless grace which has acquired this glory for us according to the eternal counsels of a just God; we shall be like His Son and with Him for ever, the firstborn among many brethren; but here He speaks of the elect in the midst of Israel, dispersed amongst the Gentiles.

312 All here has to do with the earthly people. "This generation," of which verse 31 speaks, is the perverse and unbelieving generation of the Jews, which indeed remains even to our day a race separated from all the others. They dwell amongst the nations, but they remain ever a separate people, kept for the fulfilment of the counsels of God. We find this fact and the force of the word "generation" in Deuteronomy 32: 5-20: "It is a perverse and crooked generation." And as regards the judgment under which the nation lies, after that the Lord has pronounced these words, it is said in verse 20, "I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom there is no faith."

The three times and a half make up the time which the goodness and mercy of God have shortened, the last half-week of Daniel which remains still unfulfilled. After that the abomination shall have been set up in the most holy place, where it ought not to be, there shall be three years and a half; and after that, some days to purify the temple. Thus the remnant of the Jews will have the consolation of knowing in the midst of the great tribulation that it will only be for a short time. But we are quite ignorant as to when this solemn moment will come; it is not revealed; God alone knows when it will be. The Lord sends out the disciples in connection with the Jews; and when they should see that these events were beginning to be fulfilled, then should they know that the time was drawing near.

313 "Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away." The destruction of Jerusalem under Titus the Roman emperor was something like this, but the Lord's prophecy was in no wise accomplished. First of all, the Lord did not come after this event; then also that about which Daniel had spoken had not come to pass. Whether we count 1,260 days or 1,260 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, nothing happened at that time; and then there cannot be two tribulations "such as never were." In Luke's Gospel we find first of all the destruction of Jerusalem and the present state of the Jews; nevertheless he does not speak of the abomination of desolation; but he distinguishes very clearly the siege under Titus from the coming of the Lord much later on. Mark's Gospel speaks first of all the disciples' service up to the end, and then of the final tribulation, beginning with the fact of the setting up of the abomination of the desolation where it ought not to be; this begins at verse 14.

We find this time of tribulation in Jeremiah 30: 7; but in the trouble which came upon the nation at the destruction under Titus the Jews were not saved. In Daniel 12 we find again deliverance and the intervention of God by means of Michael; and this will happen at Christ's second coming. The only passages which speak of the great tribulation such as never was are Jeremiah 30: 7, Daniel 12: 1, Matthew 24, and Mark 13; all these refer to the last days terminated by the manifestation of Christ.

Lastly the Lord exhorts them to watch and pray, for they know not the hour when this time should come. He was like unto a man going upon a journey, who left His house (we see that the earth and Jerusalem are in question), and who gave authority to His servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. This is a picture of the manner in which the Lord has left His disciples in the midst of the Jews. But that which He said unto them He says unto all, Watch. This is the exhortation for us; we are called to wait for the Lord, not knowing when He will come back, lest He find us sleeping. May grace work in our hearts, so that we may be expecting His coming with real desire to see Him; may we walk in such a manner as to be able to rejoice always at the thought of His coming! May it never be too soon for us!

Mark 14

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Let us go back to the history of the Lord's life, and to the last days of this blessed life. Two days after was the passover, and the chiefs of the Jews sought to kill Him; nevertheless they feared to stir up a tumult amongst the people, because they felt that His doctrine and miracles had produced a powerful effect in their hearts; they said, "Not on the feast day, lest there be a tumult among the people." This was their opinion, but not God's. The Lord must die as a true paschal lamb slain for us. Besides, He must die the very day of the passover, to surpass the sacrifice of the law, which commemorated the deliverance from Egypt, and which prefigured an infinitely more precious deliverance; that is, the deliverance from guilt before God, and from the dominion of sin.

The Saviour's death drew near, and feelings of affection and of iniquity developed themselves on one side and the other. Here we see Mary, who used to sit at Jesus' feet to listen to Him and to understand His words. There her heart had drunk in the instruction which flowed from Jesus' heart; and Jesus, the source of all blessings, was the object which had fixed her heart, and she had felt it in her affections. The grace and love of Jesus had produced love for Him, and His word had produced spiritual intelligence. Now this love for the Saviour made her sensible of the increasing hatred of the Jews. The disciples knew that these sought to kill Him, but Mary felt it; not that she was a prophetess, but her heart felt the presentiment of that which man's hatred desired, and she did what she could as a witness of her contrary sentiment; and the Lord makes this act of love speak wherever the gospel is announced in the world.

It is sweet to enter into the house where this family dwelt (here this was done in the house of Simon the leper), this family beloved of the Lord, for it was the refuge of His heart when, rejected by the people, He could no longer recognise the city which He had loved so long: He was accustomed to live with this beloved family. Martha, who seems to have been the eldest of the sisters, occupied with much serving, faithful and beloved of the Lord, but not very spiritually-minded, understood but little of that which filled His heart. Mary used to sit at His feet to hear His teaching; and the Lord had raised from the dead their brother Lazarus. Thus Mary's heart attached itself to the Lord, and became the expression of the little remnant which, united to Jesus Himself, followed the progress of God's ways; it did not stop at the hopes or thoughts of the Jews, but although the intelligence which the Holy Spirit would give was still wanting, it followed the Lord closely, and thus was ready to receive all when the revelation should be made.

315 It has been remarked that this Mary was not at the sepulchre seeking a living Saviour among the dead. It is always thus; hearts attached to Jesus for the love of being near Him receive from Himself the revelation of His wisdom and glory, when the time comes for it. It is blessed to remark also that the Lord, although He were God Himself (all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him) was really a man, perfect and holy in everything, and in every thought; nay, He was the source of every good thought. He was not on this account insensible to these intimate affections; there was the disciple whom Jesus loved, and He loved to speak of it; the Lord loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, and their house gave a rest to His heart when an ungrateful world and a rebellious people had rejected Him. A fruit of His grace without doubt, but none the less dear to His heart on that account.

But alas! that which is a savour of life unto life is a savour of death unto death. That which Mary expended in love to the Lord awoke the avarice of Judas, for it was a loss to him. Others also fell under Judas's influence, led away by his evil thoughts; but the Lord justifies the woman. "She hath done what she could," says the Lord, full of grace; and her devotedness to the Lord should be recognised in all ages. When the Lord in His divine love gave Himself, she by grace did all that a heart consecrated to Him could do, and her name must accompany the Lord's in the act which is the most powerful testimony to His eternal love. Although that which she could do were but little, a little is never forgotten of the Lord when the heart is faithful.

Verses 10-12. Now all hastens on to the end. Judas, urged on perhaps by the force of the bribe, but in reality urged on by the devil, goes away to betray the Lord. Good and evil are accomplished; they are accomplished at the cross. No conscience, no fear of God arrests the chiefs of the Jews on their way of iniquity and opposition to the Lord of glory; they consent together with Judas to give him money to betray the Lord. He seeks occasion to give up the Lord into the hands of the priests without too much noise - a wretched employment truly!

316 Verses 12-16. But in the meantime the Saviour must explain to His followers the manner in which He gave Himself for them, and He institutes the precious memorial of His death, in order that we may always think of it; and that not only we may believe in the efficiency of this sacrifice accomplished once and for ever for us upon the cross, but that our hearts may be attached to the Saviour who loved us and gave Himself for us; thinking of Him and shewing forth His precious death till He come. We Christians are placed between the cross and the Lord's coming, securely founded upon the finished work of the former, and looking forward always anxiously to the moment when the latter shall take place.

Although the Lord had now arrived at the time of His deepest humiliation, the glory of His person and His rights over all things remained always the same. He tells His disciples to enter into the city, where they should find a man bearing a pitcher full of water. In the house where he would enter, they would find a heart prepared by grace to receive the Lord. To him they should say, "The Master saith, Where is the chamber where I shall eat the passover with my disciples?" He knows all circumstances and all hearts: the disciples find the man as He had told them, and prepare the passover.

Verses 17-21. The Lord, when it was evening, came with the twelve. It was the commemoration of the deliverance of the people out of Egypt; but the Lord was going to accomplish a better redemption, and He institutes an infinitely more excellent memorial. But for this He must die. They were all at the table together, and the Lord Jesus, full of love, looking upon His disciples felt deeply the fact that one of them who had lived in His holy presence should betray Him. He knew well who would be the traitor, but He expresses the anguish of His heart when He says, "one of you shall betray me." He wished to prove their hearts again and to bring to light that which was within. They believed the Lord's words, and each one full of trust in Him and of holy distrust of himself said, "Lord, is it I?" A fine testimony of upright and tried hearts thinking of the fact and of the possibility of such a crime with more confidence in Jesus' word than in themselves.

317 But the Lord must suffer all these sorrows - He does not proudly hide them, but desires to lay His sorrows as a Man in human hearts; love counts upon love. There were sorrows which could not be poured into the hearts of men, and nevertheless it was God's will (blessed be His name for ever!) that we should know the sufferings of His Son; which, although beyond our reach, are nevertheless presented to our hearts. Thus we hear the Lord crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And if we cannot reach the depths of His sufferings, we can understand that they were infinite. Now at the table the Lord announces to them His departure from the world according to the scriptures and the terrible judgment of Judas; for the accomplishment of God's counsels does not take away the iniquity of those who fulfil them; otherwise how could God judge the world? For all work together to accomplish His counsels. Men's evil will too is always active in doing evil. The Lord's object, as we find written in this gospel, is not to point out the person who should commit the crime, but to make them feel that it was one of the twelve who should do it.

Verse 22. Now the Lord institutes the supper, a precious sign and memorial of His love and of His death. Up to that time, the passover had been the commemoration of the deliverance of the people out of the captivity in Egypt, when the blood of the Lamb was put upon the doors of the houses where the Israelites were. Now the blood of a more excellent Lamb has been sprinkled upon the mercy-seat in heaven, before the eye of God; when Christ, the Lamb of God, accomplished everything for the glory of God and for the salvation of all believers. The work has been done: in the sacrifice of the cross Jesus drank the cup of malediction and cannot drink it again; He perfectly glorified God about sin; it is impossible to add anything, as though anything were wanting to complete the perfection of this work. He has borne the sins of many, and can never bear them again; He cannot offer Himself again, He is for ever seated at the right hand of God; Heb. 9: 24-26. He would have had to suffer often, if His one offering upon the cross had not taken away for ever all the sins of all believers; without shedding of blood there is no remission.

The forgiveness of sins for believers is full, perfect, and eternal through the work of Christ. If we sin after having received the forgiveness of our sins, Christ prays for us and is our Advocate in virtue of this propitiation and appears in God's presence for us, as our righteousness (1 John 2: 1, 2); and the effect of His intercession for us, is that the Holy Ghost works in our hearts; we are humbled, we confess our faults to God, and our communion is re-established with the Father and the Son. But the sin is not imputed as a crime, for Christ has already borne it - it has been imputed to Him. As was the case in the passover in Egypt; God said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." The blood of Christ is ever before the eye of God, ever present to His memory. Thus Christ washes our feet with the water of the word, as He has saved us by His blood, when by grace we have believed. But if God does not ever forget the blood of Christ shed once for ever, He does not wish us to forget it. The Lord Jesus in His boundless grace wishes us to think of Him, to remember Him. Precious manifestation of love for us, that the Saviour should delight in our remembrance of Him, and that He has left us a touching memorial of Himself and His love. Oh, happy thought that Jesus wishes us to think of Him, because He loves us! The sacrifice cannot be repeated, but its value is ever the same before God; and Jesus is seated at God's right hand awaiting the time when His enemies shall be set as a footstool beneath His feet; and we await Him until He come to take us with Him to the Father's house; and in the supper we shew forth His death till He comes.

318 It is important to remark that there is no sacrifice in the present time, and that the Lord is not personally present in the bread and wine. The church of Rome says that the Lord's supper (or rather the mass, as they call it) is the same sacrifice as that which was accomplished upon the cross. But when the Lord said, "This is my body . . . do this in remembrance of me," He was not yet upon the cross. His blood was not yet shed, and when He broke the bread He did not hold Himself in His hands, still less Himself crucified, for He was not yet upon the cross. There is no such thing now as a crucified Christ; He is seated at God's right hand, and there is no shedding of blood now. It is a blessed fact that there is a sign, a commemoration of this, but that it should be so really and substantially is impossible; there is no such thing now as a dead Christ.

319 We shew forth in the supper His death and His blood shed for us: but a glorified Christ cannot be a sacrifice; cannot come down from heaven to die; and if the bread be changed into His body, and there be a soul in it, it must be another soul; this is absurd. They say that the Godhead is everywhere, and that the substance of the body is there; but the soul is individual: this lives, feels, loves, is a single individual soul. According to Romish teaching the soul of the Lord Jesus leaves heaven; but it cannot be the same soul, and if it is another, it is absurd. The Lord says in Luke, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood": - that is, it represents the blood - for the cup itself is not the new covenant. Thus the bread presents to us in the most striking way the body of the Lord crucified upon the cross, and the wine His blood shed for us.

Lastly, the Lord gives to His disciples of the fruit of the vine to drink; and it is called this after that the Lord had said in verse 24, "This is my blood of the new covenant." It is quite clear that when he says, "I will drink no more of it," He speaks of wine in its natural sense. After Supper they sing a hymn, the Lord being perfectly calm in spirit. They go out to go to the Mount of Olives. The Lord warns His disciples that this night they shall all be offended because of Him, and that they would leave Him according to Zechariah's prophecy, "I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." But He announces to them His resurrection, and that "after he is risen, he will go before them into Galilee." We find a difference between the Lord's appearing in Galilee and in Bethany: the latter is related in Luke's gospel. It was from Bethany that He ascended to heaven. In Galilee the Lord is always looked upon as being on the earth, although risen from the dead; and He gives to His disciples the commission to preach the gospel to, and baptize all nations. This service was not accomplished by the apostles - later on they left it to Paul (that is, the preaching the gospel to the nations) having recognised the Lord's election and sending out for this work.

We see that the commission in Mark is still different; it is connected with the Lord's heavenly power. The Lord's own work was done chiefly in Galilee; and the Jewish remnant is recognised as gathered together and accepted; then it is sent out to bring the Gentiles into the blessings which were expected from God. The announcing of heavenly blessings, salvation revealed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven when Christ ascended there, is quite another thing. But whether the blessings be earthly or heavenly they cannot be brought in by the first man; the second Man is the only possible foundation of everything.

320 Now the Saviour must be quite alone in His work and sufferings, and man must shew what he is when he is not kept by God. The disciples were warned, but Peter, full of confidence in his faithfulness (and he was sincere), trusting to his own strength, would not believe the Lord's words. But the flesh cannot resist the power of Satan. The Lord would find Himself abandoned and denied; and man, however sincere he might be, would have to recognise his utter weakness: a humbling lesson, but a very useful one, and one which makes the Lord's grace and patience shine out. It is very important to recollect - and we learn it clearly here, that sincerity is not enough to keep us right; it is quite a human quality! and we need as well the Lord's strength against the wiles of the devil, and the fear of the world. If the Lord be not there, a young girl can upset an apostle. The fear of man is a dreadful snare for the soul; and this fear worked mightily in Peter's heart. Even when he had received the Holy Spirit, he dissembled at Antioch, when some Jewish believers had come from Jerusalem.

Remark how the Lord prepared the two greatest apostles for His work! Paul tried to destroy the name of Christ from off the earth, and Peter denied Him openly after having known Him, and after having done miracles in His name. Thus it was not possible for them to talk of anything but grace: and all the false confidence in self was destroyed in their hearts. They could strengthen others by the consciousness of the Lord's grace which had borne with them and forgiven them; also they had learnt by experience what the evil of the human heart is, and how weak man is, even the Christian, without the help of divine grace. Thus the Lord says to Peter, "When thou art converted [that is, repented of thy fault], strengthen thy brethren." He failed again afterwards in such a manner that Paul had to resist him to the face; and Paul himself had to have a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to buffet him, lest he should be exalted. The flesh is never improved: how necessary then is it for weak Christians to watch, to have ever present the consciousness of their weakness, and to seek that strength which is made perfect in weakness, that precious grace of the Lord which is sufficient for us. It is not necessary that we should fall, for God is faithful and will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able; but we must watch, that we enter not into temptation.

321 In the scene before us, whilst the Lord was praying in agony, Peter was sleeping; when the Lord submitted Himself like a lamb which before her shearers is dumb, Peter used the sword to strike; when the Lord confesses the truth calmly and firmly before His enemies, Peter denies Him. This is what the flesh is, and the fruit of false confidence in self! Peter, too, had been fully warned. The Lord had said for the second time that, before the cock should crow twice, he would deny Him thrice. But Peter trusts in himself: "If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise." We know that Satan's wiles were there, for Satan wanted to sift Peter like wheat; but the Holy Ghost here directs our attention to the false confidence of the flesh of the human heart. But let us turn our attention towards the blessed Lord, the example of perfect faithfulness, just as Peter was that of false confidence and of the weakness of the flesh. We see in Jesus a true Man, although divine power were necessary in order that the human nature should endure all that He suffered without failing.

The Lord desires three disciples (those who were especially with Him and who were to be pillars in the church later on) to be with Him, and to watch while He prays. The anticipation of the cup which He was to drink, weighed upon His spirit; death, the expression of the judgment of God against sin, was before His eyes, and Satan made all this to lie heavily upon Him in order to prevent His accomplishing the work of salvation, if it were possible. The Lord felt all, and was faithful in everything; He began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy. There was no agony in Stephen's death; it was a triumph full of peace and love; he goes to his Lord who was expecting him at the right hand of God in heaven, praying all the while, like his Lord, for his enemies. The Lord is full of anguish at the prospect of death; and here we see what death was for Him; the reality of His work, when He bore our sins in His body upon the cross. At this moment (in the garden of Gethsemane) He was not yet bearing them, but the feeling of that which was before Him weighed upon His heart; the weight of sin and of the curse was being felt by His spirit with God, for He was still in communion with His Father. He must not only submit Himself to the righteousness of God as made sin for us before Him, and bear the penalty of it; but also He had to suffer "for His piety," in that the anticipation of the penalty weighed upon Him before He bore it. He offered Himself willingly but in obedience, for the glory of His Father, and for us in grace; He was obedient unto death. His name be praised! and it shall be eternally praised.

322 Stephen rejoiced, because Christ had suffered and had opened the way into heaven for him by bearing the judicial punishment of death for him; and He has done so for us also. We can understand the value of His death in the eyes of God, and we can look up to Him as Stephen did when full of the Holy Ghost, looking steadfastly into heaven.

The Lord had left the disciples, except Peter, James and John, at the entrance into the garden; but He had taken these three with Him, and told them to watch whilst He prayed. He prays that the hour may pass from Him, if it be possible. He had borne all the cups of suffering from the hand of sinners without complaining of them. His Father's favour was sufficient for Him! But this cup, was the being made a curse; the just One made sin, the finding Himself (who had always been in the Father's bosom the object of an infinite love) forsaken of God. On account of His piety, He wished to draw back from this if possible. But if we were to escape the penalty of sin, He must bear it for us.

This penalty, however, was but an occasion and a proof for the Saviour of perfect submission and obedience. But still He says, "Not that which I will, but that which thou wilt." He felt all, He lays everything before His Father, so that He goes through all as a trial in perfect submission to His Father. As a trial, all was over: the will of God was manifested, and the Lord's obedience was perfect, although the work itself was still to be accomplished. The disciples were unable to cross even the shadow of the trial; and all men His enemies. Satan was there in all his power, and above all, there was the curse to be borne for sin, before Him. All was trial, but He, in subjection to His Father's will, shewed forth His love to Him.

We are allowed to witness the exercise of heart of the Saviour, and to take part, in our weakness, in the anguish of His heart, although He was alone in the trial itself: immense grace! In the work He must be quite alone: and here too He is alone, but with adoring hearts we can listen to the Saviour's cry when He opens His heart to the Father about His sufferings. Ah! may our hearts be kept watchfully attentive by the Holy Spirit to the holy sighs of the Saviour! We are invited to look upon Him, to understand what He has done for us, to enjoy the feelings of His human heart and His perfection, as a true Man for us. Thus, in John 17 we are permitted to hear Him when He presents Himself to the Father, placing us in His own position of favour before Him, and of testimony before men. If the peace which we possess belonging to this new position founded upon His finished work is so great, the privilege of hearing His cry of anguish is no less so.

323 Remark with what gentle words the Lord reproves His disciples. He shews Peter in the kindest way the difference between fervent courage when the enemy was not present, and the incapacity to watch one hour with his agonized Master; and He excuses the disciples with loving words - "the spirit is ready but the flesh is weak." At the same time being full of the solemnity of the moment, He warns them also to watch and to pray lest they enter into temptation. We never find the Lord's own sufferings preventing Him from thinking of others. On the cross He can think of the thief, just as though He were not suffering Himself: If He had not time to eat, still He always had time enough to announce the truth to the crowd which followed Him; tired at Jacob's well, His heart does not grow weary of speaking of the living water, nor of looking into the poor Samaritan woman's conscience. He was never tired of doing good; and He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

But the time was come: the last time He finds them sleeping like the other times. He must experience that moral solitude in which He found Himself amongst men even in the midst of His own disciples. There is a solitude in the which one is quite alone morally, although others be there actually. The traitor was coming near; "Sleep on now," says the Lord. "Rise up, let us go, he that betrayeth me is at hand." The Lord must receive the last witness to the weakness of man's heart when left to itself, and hardened by Satan. Judas betrays Him with a kiss, so terrible is the hardness of his heart! "Take him," says he, "and lead him away safely." But the Lord, who had gone through all in His soul with God, is in perfect peace before men in these unparalleled circumstances. He speaks to the crowd which had come out to seize Him: He had been with them daily in the temple, and they had not taken Him - but the scripture must be fulfilled. The Lord wishes to bear witness to the authority of the scriptures; if these announced His death, He must die. The scriptures are the revelation of God's counsels and purpose as well as of all His thoughts. The Lord too, as a man upon earth, took them as the rule and motive of all that He did and said, although He was always in unspeakable communion with His Father. They are the revelation of God's thoughts for the earth and for man upon the earth; and they reveal too, his heavenly destination, and what heavenly things are. What an immense blessing to possess them!

324 The disciples all forsake Him, and flee. Later on, Peter followed Him afar off, and was brought into the high priest's palace. The Lord submits in perfect calmness; all had been weighed already in His Father's presence; His will made everything simple for the Lord; but no one could follow Him into the valley of death, nor stand up before the enemy's power, except the faithful Saviour Himself. It was the hour when the wicked one was allowed to have power, that the Lord might give Himself into the hands of the impious for us. The disciples fled, a young man wished to follow Him, but the more the will ventures in this path, the more it is obliged to retreat with shame. They wished to lay hold of the young man, and he fled naked. Poor Peter went further, to fall still lower, learning at the same time for his own good, what we all are. It is a good thing to think of the Lord's anguish before God, when He opens all His heart to His Father; and we see His deep sufferings, His perfect calmness before men, the fruit of His perfect submission: men counted as nothing in it; Satan could do nothing - for the Lord had taken the cup from His Father's hands. This is most important teaching for us.

We must understand that the Lord's condemnation was a determined thing: the chiefs of the Jews sought but the means to consummate iniquity and murder under the show of justice. They sought witness against Him to put Him to death; but it was false, and the witnesses did not agree together. Many were ready to give witness, but their testimony availed nothing: the Lord must be condemned upon His own witness. It is grievous to look upon the enmity of the human heart against the Lord, who had never done anything but good to men; who had healed the sick, given the hungry to eat, raised the dead, cast out devils, and manifested divine power in doing good.

325 When the Son of man came, divine power, which was sufficient to drive out all the consequences of sin upon earth even to death itself, was manifested; Christ worked according to this power: He bound the strong man in the wilderness, and plundered his house: there was a power upon earth sufficient to drive away all the effects of sin; for the power of God manifested itself in goodness. But this only awakened the natural enmity of the human heart against Him: there was no motive for the death of Jesus: this enmity was the only cause. That which took away the grievous effects of sin, did not take away the sin itself from man's heart, but manifested God enough to awaken the natural enmity of the heart, and thus to shew what this heart is.

In Luke it is said also (chap. 4: 13), that "the devil departed from him for a season"; but then he comes back again as the prince of this world; he had nothing in the Lord, but that the world might know that He loved the Father, and as the Father gave Him commandment, even so He did; John 14: 30, 31. The devil could say to Jesus, 'If thou dost persevere in sustaining the cause of men, I have the right of death against thee.' Indeed the curse of God weighed down upon them, and the Lord must pass through death, and drink the cup of God's curse upon sin, if He is to liberate man. Did He draw back from this terrible penalty of death and the curse? He felt it, but He drank it for love to His Father and us, and in perfect obedience. He entered where we were in sin and disobedience, in obedience and grace; He who knew no sin was made sin for us; the Lamb without blemish offered Himself to God for us.

Here in this chapter we find the Lord as a lamb who is dumb before her shearers. He does not answer to the accusation of His enemies; they were there with the intention of putting Him to death and He knew it; and He was there in order to give His life a ransom for many. He does not answer the accusations full of malice and falsehood, but when the chief priest asks Him if He is the Christ the Son of the Blessed, He gives full testimony to the truth. He is rejected and crucified for His own witness to the truth; but although He recognises the truth according to the high priest's question, nevertheless He does not go beyond His position of Messiah amongst the Jews.

326 He added again His testimony to His position as Son of man, the position He was just going to assume at that time. We have seen that He had forbidden His disciples to say that He was the Christ, telling them that the Son of man must suffer. Now we find the fulfilment of this, for Christ is recognised as the Son of God according to Psalm 2, but from this time forward He takes the new position of Son of man according to Psalm 8. They should see - no longer the promised Christ amongst them in grace, rejected as He is in Psalm 2, but - the Son of man sitting at the right hand of God, coming in the clouds of heaven, and manifesting His power in judgment. Only He waits, seated at God's right hand according to Psalm 110, until His enemies be placed under His feet as a footstool.

We now see Him in heaven, having accomplished the work which the Father gave Him to do; we see Him at God's right hand, our sins abolished, waiting until His enemies shall be made His footstool.

The Lord confesses the truth when superior authority demands it, He is absolute perfection - the truth itself. Satan can do nothing in this case, except indeed to bring the truth into evidence in the Lord's mouth, and to be the instrument of accomplishing the work of redemption which God wished to be done: eternal thanks be to Him! As to men, the Lord is held to be guilty of death because He speaks the truth, and the truth as to the work of God's love in the sending of the Son. God's truth, as well as the person of the Son of God, and God Himself are the objects of hatred of man's heart; but the truth came by Jesus Christ, and grace in the sovereign power and wisdom of God was fulfilled by means of this hatred, a hatred in which man shewed himself to be a slave of Satan. What a contrast between religious, ecclesiastical man, and the truth and grace of God!

But let us think of the blessed Saviour who submits as a sheep which is dumb before her shearers, to the outrages which men heap upon Him without offering any resistance; He might have had twelve legions of angels, but He did not use His power. He was in a state of patient love and obedience. The most painful thing for Him was to find Himself denied by His disciple, and this was far more so than the outrages heaped upon Him by brutal and ignorant men. But whatever His suffering might have been, the weak disciple's failure did but draw down upon him the Lord's look to encourage his faith, to sustain his confidence in Him, and to produce in his heart tears of repentance instead of despair. The Lord's sufferings, however great they were, did not hinder the action of His wondrous heart. May His name be eternally blessed!

Mark 15

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The Gospel by Mark relates very briefly the circumstances of the Lord's condemnation: this is an important fact. As soon as He has been rejected by the Jews, Mark speaks of that which took place before Pilate, to relate again that which is necessary, and to shew that the Lord is condemned here too for the testimony which He bore Himself to the truth (although it was really through the malice of the principal Jews); for indeed Pilate strove to set Him at liberty, but having no moral strength, and despising the Jews and all that belonged to them, he gives the Lord up to their will without conscience. When Pilate asks, "Art thou the king of the Jews?" Jesus answers, "Thou sayest." To the accusations of the chief priests, He answers nothing: His testimony had been given.

The Lord Jesus was soon to be a victim. All these accusations were nothing, and Pilate knew it; but the Jews must manifest the spirit which animated them. Pilate tried to get rid of Jesus and of the difficulty, by a custom which seems to have been introduced at that time, to set free a prisoner at the Passover, to please the Jews. He also sought, in making this appeal to the people, to ward off the blow of envy and malice of the priests: but in vain, for the Lord must suffer and die. The priests incited the people to ask that Barabbas should be released, and the Lord crucified. Pilate tries again to save Him, but to satisfy the people he gives Him up.

In all this the Jews are guilty; of course the Roman governor ought to have been firm, and to have acted justly, and not to have left the Lord exposed to the priests' hatred; he was careless and without conscience, and despised a poor Jew who had no friends; also it was important for him to satisfy the turbulent populace. In Mark's Gospel however, all the hatred and animosity against the Lord are found in the priests; they are always and everywhere the enemies of the truth and of Him who is Himself the truth personally. Pilate's resistance had no effect; it was God's will that Jesus should suffer: He had come for this, and it was for this that He gave His life a ransom for many. In that which follows we find the story of the brutality of the heart of man which finds its pleasure in outraging those who are given up to its will without being able to defend themselves. Besides, the Lord must be despised and rejected of men, both by the Jews and Gentiles. This proves that man would not have God in His goodness.

328 Again, the Jewish nation had to be humbled - and the soldiers mocked the whole nation in mocking its King. The Lord was dressed in purple as a king, smitten and mocked with pretended honours, and then led away to be crucified. Upon the cross was written "King of the Jews"; the Lord was numbered too amongst the transgressors. What is especially brought out here is the humiliation of the king of Israel. "Let the Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross," say the chief priests, "and we will believe." Those who were crucified with Him railed upon Him: we know that one of them was converted afterwards, and that he confessed Jesus to be the Lord.

Up to verse 33 we see the Lord's humiliation and the apparent triumph of evil. Man generally, and Israel as a nation, shew their joy in being able to get rid of God's faithful witness, of His presence, and of the true King of Israel: but they lowered themselves in trying to degrade the Lord, whose love continued to accomplish the work which the Father had given Him to do, in the midst of the outrages, the blindness, the folly, and the wickedness of men and of His people Israel, which alas! filled up the measure of its iniquity. The Saviour's love was stronger than man's perverse hatred - blessed be His name for it! But from verse 33 we find a deeper work than the Lord's outward sufferings, however real and profound they were to Him. He was left alone; there was no one to have compassion upon Him; we find nothing but desertion and cruelty. But there is a great difference between the cruelty of man, and the penalty of sin executed by God.

At the same hour all the country (or perhaps the earth) is covered with darkness. Christ is alone with God, hidden from things visible, in order to be entirely with God. He bears the penalty of our sin, He drinks the cup of malediction for us; He who knew no sin is made sin for us. In Psalm 22 we see that the Lord, feeling fully the pressure of man's hatred and malice, turns to God; He had foreseen what was to happen, and His sweat had become, as it were, drops of blood in thinking of it. He turns to God and says, "Be not thou far from me!" but to the anguish of His soul He is forsaken of God. And never was He more precious to God - He who was eternally precious to Him - than in His perfect obedience! But this obedience was fulfilled in His being made sin for us. Never had He so glorified His Father in His righteousness and love; but being made a sin-offering, and feeling in the depth of His soul that which God is against sin, He bore the penalty of it.

329 Thus God had to hide His face from Him who was made sin for us. This was necessary for the glory and majesty of God, as well as for our salvation. But who can sound the depths of the Saviour's suffering? He who had always been the object of the Father's delight is now forsaken of Him! He who was holiness itself finds Himself made sin before God! But all is over, all God's will about the work which He had given to Jesus to do has been accomplished. Blessed thought! the more He has suffered, the more He is precious to us: and we love Him as we think of His own perfect love, and of the perfection of His person. All suffering was over for Him at His death; and in His resurrection all is new for us! all our sins are forgiven, and we are with Him in God's presence, and when He comes we shall be like Him in glory. But though He died it was not because His vital force was exhausted. He cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost. All was over, and He gave up His spirit into the Father's hands; He really died for us. He offered Himself without spot unto God, and God laid upon Him the sins of many. He must die, but no one took away His life; He had the power to lay it down, and to take it again! He gave it up Himself when all had been accomplished.

Then the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and here we see the way of the holiest opened to all the believers who were under the law. The curtain between the holy and most holy places signified that man could not enter into God's presence (Heb. 9); the death of Christ has opened a way of entry into the holiest by His blood; Heb. 10: 19, 20. Immense difference and precious privilege! By this blood we can enter into God's presence without fear, as white as snow, to rejoice in the love which has brought us into this place. Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross, and has brought us to God Himself - He, the just One, who died for us unjust ones.

330 And again by one offering He hath for ever purified them that are sanctified; He cannot offer Himself again: if all our sins had not been cancelled by this one offering, they could never be, for Christ cannot die again. It is not a question of sprinkling - "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." The apostle demonstrates this solemn truth, saying, "Otherwise he must often have suffered since the foundation of the world, but now once in the end of the world he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself," Heb. 9: 26. When a man believes, he enters into the possession of this blessing, and he is for ever perfected in Christ before God: sin cannot be imputed to Him, because Christ, who has borne and expiated it, is always in God's presence for him, a witness that his sins are already put away; and that he who comes to God through the Saviour is accepted in Him.

People say, "Then we may live in sin." This was the objection which was made to the gospel which the apostle Paul preached: the answer to it is found in Romans 6. If we really have faith in Christ, we are born again, we have a new nature, we have put off the old man and put on the new one, we are dead to sin, dead with Christ by faith; crucified with Him, so that we live no more, but Christ liveth in us. We are new creatures: there is a divine work in us, as well as a work for us. If Christ is our righteousness, He is also our life, and then the Holy Spirit is given to us, and we are responsible to walk as Christ walked; but this does not interfere with the work of Christ for us - a perfect work, accepted of God, in consequence of which He sits at God's right hand as a man in that glory which He had as Son with the Father before the world was. Before Christ came, God did not shew Himself, and man could not enter into His presence. Now God has come out and come to us in love, and man has entered into His presence according to righteousness in Christ.

Then the centurion's conscience speaks, whilst all stand afar off (v. 39); all, except the disciples who have fled, are enemies. But the loud voice of the Lord without the least sign of weakness, and the fact that He gives up the ghost to the Father at once, act powerfully upon this man's soul, and he recognises in the dying Jesus the Son of God. Now the work is finished, and God takes care that if His death has been with the transgressors, He should be with the rich in His burial, honoured and treated with all reverence. The women who followed Him occupied themselves with Him, looking upon Him afar off when He was crucified: and some of them, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of Joses, saw the place where His body was laid in the sepulchre. For Joseph of Arimathea had gone to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus: more courageous at His death than during His life. This often happens; the greatness of the evil forces faith to shew itself.

331 But the women, notice it well, have a more blessed position still; they had followed him from Galilee, and had ministered to Him of their substance; and we find them near the Lord when His disciples had left Him. They had not been sent to preach: but their devotedness to the Lord, their faithfulness and constant love for Him when dangers present themselves, shine forth in the Lord's history. We find another proof that the Lord gave up His life, and that it was not taken from Him, in that Pilate wondered that He was already dead, and that he called the centurion to assure himself of the fact. When he knew it, he gave the body to Joseph, who put it in his own new tomb till the sabbath should be past.

Mark 16

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The history of the resurrection in Mark is very short and simple. There is no doubt that more than one troop of those women who followed the Lord visited the sepulchre, one after the other. It is clear that Mary Magdalene arrived before the others, and that the other Mary and Salome were together; then came the others. Each Gospel gives us what is necessary for our faith, and that according to the special teaching which God desires to be presented in that Gospel. For instance, in John's Gospel we have the story of Mary Magdalene, and that beautiful story is fitted to the doctrine of that Gospel. Verse 9 of this chapter speaks of it also; she came whilst it was yet dark; here in Mark we see her at sunrise. Other women had bought spices to embalm the Lord; perhaps they had already bought some before the sabbath began, in order to rest during the sabbath day; and certainly after the sabbath was over, that is, at six o'clock, they waited till the morning to embalm Him.

332 But when Mary Magdalene came to the sepulchre, the stone, which was very large, had been already rolled away from its mouth by an angel come down from heaven; and the Lord was no longer there. He was risen, in divine power, in perfect calmness; all the grave-clothes which were left in good order in the sepulchre. That which God did to awaken men's attention is related in Matthew 28: 2-4; but Jesus was not there. The great stone did not present any obstacle to the Lord's egress; the divine power which raised Him from the dead and the spiritual body which He then possessed, made His disappearance from the sepulchre easy.

Mark only speaks of Mary Magdalene's first visit to the sepulchre in verse 9; in verse 2, the other Mary and Salome are spoken of. Mary Magdalene had already gone away from the sepulchre to announce to Peter and John the fact of the sepulchre's being empty. These enter into the sepulchre, finding the stone rolled away from its mouth; they find an angel seated on the right hand of the place where Jesus lay, who encourages these timid but faithful women, "Fear not, ye seek Jesus . . . he is not here . . ." and then he shews them the place where He had been. It is blessed to see the goodness of God: there was still some unbelief in the women, for they ought to have understood that Jesus was risen; the angel had told them so. But this was too much for their faith; they believed in His person, and that He was the Son of God, but His resurrection was as yet too glorious a truth for their faith. Their heart was sincere, but they sought the living amongst the dead: and here the grace of God, full of compassion, reassures them.

These women did not find Jesus dead, but the blessed testimony that the beloved Saviour was alive. They are made the messengers to the disciples of the word of the Lord from the mouth of the angel. It is the consecration of the heart to the Lord that brings light and intelligence to the soul, if we are seeking the truth and Jesus Himself. Mary Magdalene shews more consecration of the heart to Christ than the others; and this is why she is seen at the sepulchre before sunrise, and is the first of all of them to see the Lord. Moreover, a more excellent message is confided to her; she was to go to the apostles themselves to announce to them our more excellent position, our higher privilege. The Lord says to her, "Go to my brethren and tell them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God." The disciples are here called the brethren of Christ for the first time, brethren of the risen Christ. His God is our God; His Father is our Father.

333 These women, although honoured of the Lord, have not yet so great a privilege; another message is confided to them. The risen Christ assumes two characters: His relationship with the remnant of Israel, and His new position as a glorified Man before the Father. In the first He appears to His disciples in Galilee, where He used to be with them habitually; in the second relationship He ascends to heaven from Bethany. The mission of the disciples too is different. Matthew presents to us the first; and, in consequence, we do not find there the history of the ascension; Luke gives us the second, where the Lord ascends and is received into heaven. The message to the disciples is given to Mary and Salome; they are commanded not to depart from Galilee. That which happened there is not told here: the women go away afraid.

Then this Gospel gives a summing up of the other part of the story of Jesus risen, of that which is found in John's and Luke's Gospels; of Mary Magdalene's case, and of the two disciples who went to Emmaus; after that, the general mission of the apostles, who were to go and preach to the whole world. Whoever should believe and make public confession of Christ should be saved. Miracles should be performed, not only by the apostles, but also by those who should believe by their means; they should manifest, by the wonders they should perform, the power of Him in whom they believed.

Finally the Lord is received up into heaven, and sits at God's right hand. The apostles go out to preach in the world, and the Lord works with them, confirming the word with the signs which accompanied it. Salvation depended upon faith and the confession of Christ, and the Lord, when the word had been planted, bore witness to His truth by powerful signs; this facilitated faith, and left unbelievers without excuse.

Compared view of the First Three gospels, etc.

Part 1.

J. N. Darby.

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I apprehend that the Gospel of Mark, which brings under our view the service of Christ, and particularly His prophetic service, and, hence, records simply the accomplishment of that service, as the events arose, is that of the three first Gospels, which gives generally the chronological order of events. Luke places, in general, events in the same order as Mark, where he follows chronological order at all. In a large portion of his Gospel he drops the chronological order, and gives a general series of instructions, of which the occasions and elements are found scattered in the other two Gospels, or are found only in Luke. I take Mark, therefore, as presenting, in the main, the historical order. It is to be remarked, that, as is stated in the end of John, very few of the events or miracles of our Lord's life are recorded: only such as shew forth His ministry, and specially in the earlier part in Galilee, and then at the close of Jerusalem. In these the Gospels, in the main, go together. Luke has a large portion of the middle part of his Gospel occupied with general moral teaching. But the way in which this comes in is not difficult to perceive, as in chapter 9 it is said that the time was come for Christ's receiving up. In all the Gospels the common history of the concluding events begins with the healing of the blind man near Jericho. In Matthew the method pursued by the evangelist is very evident; and the displacement of subjects, where they are found, is connected with that method. I will begin with him. The birth of Christ itself - not found in Mark - is treated in connection with the subject of the evangelist, or rather of the Holy Ghost, by his pen. Luke's account of Christ's birth, far more detailed than Matthew's, bears its own stamp too.

But I will now consider the order of Matthew and the reasons of it, as far as God enables me. Matthew gives us the presenting of Messiah-Jehovah, Son of David, to the people; and the form His service took in consequence of His rejection, with the substitution of the new thing which took the place of Messiah's being then received - the church prophetically announced, and the kingdom of glory. The residue of Israel have also their place beyond the intervening epoch of the church, existing on to the close. The general subject of the Gospel, what characterises it, is the presenting of Messiah-Jehovah according to hope and promise, and its consequences. Hence the genealogy by which the Gospel begins* is Messiah's genealogy, traced to David and Abraham, the two great depositaries of promise and heads of blessing to Israel by original promise and given royalty. Christ was heir of both. It begins also the Gospel; for the accomplishment of this blessing, according to promise, is its subject. Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers. Luke has his genealogy elsewhere, after the whole history of Christ's birth has been given in connection with Israel, but in Israel's subject-place in the world. From heaven only the angels announce its universal scope. It is connected with the opening of His ministry, and goes up to Son of Adam, Son of God.

{*Remark, that the Gospel of Matthew begins with this genealogy; for, coming in the way of promise, the connection of Christ with the stock of promise was the foundation-stone of His position. In Luke, the genealogy is not till chapter 4 and goes up to Adam. The connection is with man. What precedes, is a very full and most interesting statement of every element of the actual condition of Israel. Then begins the Son of man's history - grace.}

335 To return to Matthew. In speaking of Christ's birth, Joseph is addressed as son of David, Mary being espoused to him. The child's name thus divinely born is to be called Jehovah the Saviour, for He is to save His people from their sins; all coming to pass, that the prophecy of Emmanuel's coming might be fulfilled. He was the Emmanuel of Israel who was thus born.

Next, at Bethlehem, according to the prophecy, the Gentiles come to own Israel's king, in contrast, moreover, with the false one. Such is His place; but, from the beginning, to be rejected in it. But He is to begin Israel's fortunes afresh, so to speak, as called out of Egypt, the true vine. In due time He returns back, but it is to take His place with the remnant of Israel, the poor of the flock, in despised Galilee, and be called a Nazarene. Such was the place in Israel of Jehovah-Messiah: fulfilment of promise - the place to which He had really a title, what He really was - His place, in fact. Such are the three great elements of the history of the introduction of Christ into the world, as given in this Gospel. Of course, this is not in Mark; but it gives to us the character of the Gospel. Matthew then passes on to the opening of His ministry, John preparing His way. This, and the temptation, are given in all three Gospels, as the two opening facts, but with some characteristic differences. As to John's ministry, it is simply generally introductory. In Luke you have "All flesh shall see the salvation of God"; and various moral instructions to different classes; and the title of "generation of vipers" is applied to the multitude in general. In Matthew he is simply to prepare the way of the Lord (Jehovah). His prophetic appearance is noticed. The Pharisees and Sadducees only are a generation of vipers. In Luke he preaches the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; in Matthew "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." As regards the temptation, Mark only briefly mentions the fact. The only point to be noticed is, that Luke puts the temptation of the pinnacle of the temple last, giving the moral order: Matthew, the offer of the kingdoms of the world; after which, he sends Satan (now fully manifested) away. Luke, consequently, does not notice this last circumstance, not necessary for his object. Matthew and Mark both notice that Jesus' ministry commenced after John was cast into prison. This makes Him go into Galilee.

336 In Matthew, thereupon, a fact is noticed which casts a light on the course of the Lord's ministry, connecting Him, as it does, with the poor and despised of the flock in Galilee. He came and dwelt in Capernaum, leaving Nazareth; accomplishing thus a remarkable prophecy of Isaiah, directly connected with the most specific prophecy there is, of the separation of the residue in Messiah's time. (See Isaiah 8: 13, and following.) All this is generally stated in Luke (chap. 4: 14, 15), only His preaching in Nazareth is given* - of that when we speak of Luke.

The call of Andrew, Simon, James, and John, follows, as in Mark; for here what naturally followed historically has its place in Matthew. It is not merely preaching, but the beginning of the gathering of the residue round His own person. They leave all, and follow Him. They believed on Him, note, already (John 1). Luke here leaves the order, to give the character and service of Christ's ministry, with which the Spirit is specially occupied in that part of that Gospel. Mark had already stated, generally, His preaching on His going into Galilee; and then proceeds with historical circumstances in Capernaum, etc. But Matthew opens out here, into a large general view of His public ministry, and the attention it drew; and then gives a full summary of all the principles of the kingdom He was preaching, and what characters had a place in it. Hence, after His beginning to gather the residue, he tells us of His going all round Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom (Mark says, kingdom of God), healing, casting out devils, so that His fame spread throughout all Syria. The report went abroad, and multitudes followed him from all sides. This, of course, embraces some considerable time, and presents, purposely, a general view of the work, and its effects; a picture, in a few verses, of the effects of His ministry. The gospel of the kingdom was spread abroad, and attention universally attracted, for it was accompanied with power.

{*It is a common practice with Luke, to give events briefly and synoptically, and then expatiate on the details of some one point which brings out moral principles and feelings.}

337 Hereupon, the Spirit of God, without defining any time, but merely saying that the sight of the multitudes gave occasion to it, enters into a full statement, well known as the Sermon on the Mount, of the great principles of the kingdom embraced as preached, before it came in power, by a faithful few, to whom persecution for righteousness, and for His name's sake, is presented as a probable part of their lot. These principles are the spirituality of the law, and the revelation of the name of the Father. Israel was on the way to the Judge. It was not the great, wise, doctors, Pharisees, but the poor of the flock that entered into the mind of God about the state of things - were like Christ - who would enter into the kingdom. It is not preaching the gospel of salvation, but the principles of the kingdom. The suitableness of this, after shewing us how the preaching of that kingdom had attracted the notice of all, is evident. The comparison of Mark 3: 13, and Luke 6, shews, I think, clearly, that these are the same occasion; but Mark does not give the sermon; and Luke, who does more briefly, shews it was when He had chosen the twelve. This last circumstance is not given in Matthew. They are noticed as already chosen, at the time of their sending forth (chap. 10: 1), which was a subsequent act.

We can hardly speak of date in Matthew for the sermon on the mount; because, while Mark gives details of Christ's ministry in Galilee (of which Matthew, indeed, gives many afterwards), Matthew here gives a general comprehensive view of that ministry as a whole. Still it was, in a general way, at its commencement; and the sermon is introduced, out of its historic place, before all the details of the ministry in Galilee, in order to give the character of the heirs of the kingdom, when the fact of its preaching in Galilee, and the public attention it had excited, had been brought before us. The place which these instructions have in this Gospel is entirely determined by the subject. He gathers the residue round Himself. The kingdom is announced in all the prophetic country (Galilee) with power, the report spread, the character of the kingdom given. This closes the great introductory portion. We have then the details of the presentation of Jehovah Messiah, and the result gradually developed: and that at once very rapidly and characteristically. For the great statement, as a whole, of what was doing as regards Israel, was closed with the sermon on the mount.

338 A second portion of this Gospel closes with chapter 9: 34. Into this second part I will now enter. First, He is Jehovah in Israel; for Jehovah alone cleansed the leper, and the Jewish Mosaic ordinances are here owned. This miracle is introduced out of its place. It took place after the going into Capernaum, and healing Simon's wife's mother. But it gave the first grand characteristic of Jesus' presence in this Gospel - Jehovah Messiah in Israel. But Matthew teaches us the rejection also of this, and the consequent setting aside of Israel, and the introduction of the new thing. Hence, on the cleansing of the leprosy by "I will, be thou clean," follows the healing of the Gentile's servant on the Gentile's faith in the divine person of the Christ, with the announcement of the admission of the nations, from all sides, into the kingdom, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom would be thrust out.

This, Mark does not mention. Though happening at this period generally, when the Lord was frequently at Capernaum, I apprehend, from the history given in Luke, that it happened later. It is introduced here for the great principle involved in it. What passed in the synagogue in Capernaum, in the first mentioned visit to it, is omitted in Matthew. It had no place in the purpose for which Matthew's account is given. But he takes up the latter part of the same sabbath visit, the healing of Peter's wife's mother, and a multitude of other sick, because it gives an additional character of Christ's presence, in which, in grace, prophecy was accomplished as to Him - His profound interest in the sorrows of Israel (and, indeed, of man), that is, His charging Himself and His own heart with all, taking them on Himself. This pity, note, is mentioned. His going out into the desert is left out. This scene at Capernaum is only so far out of place, as the account of the leper and the centurion are introduced before it, as the great characteristics of His position, whereas they historically come after it.

339 Another characteristic element of His condition, as thus come in Israel, was that Messiah and Lord as He was, He had nowhere to lay His head. He was just going to cross over the sea of Tiberias, when He declared this to the scribe: but this happened later in His service in Galilee, as we see by comparing Mark and Luke. But it is introduced here in Matthew, without any note of time, as an important element in the position of Jesus. The circumstances of this passage over the sea, afford us another element of His history. Not only is He rejected and houseless, through man's hatred, and God's love serving man in spite of that hatred; but, if so, His disciples, the remnant, will be tossed about while He appears to be asleep. But they are in the same boat with Him who can calm the sea with a word, and still the raging of the waters, though He may allow them to rise for the trial of the faith of those that are His.

The healing of Legion comes in exact order as regards the passage over the sea; but as to the general order, is, consequently, displaced with it. But the picture it affords of the character and results of Christ's presence, tends to complete the divine instruction of this Gospel. Power was there to set aside wholly the most mighty, and, for man, unbridled and irresistible power of Satan. The time was not come for his being bound in the bottomless pit, and the demons therefore say, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" The effect on the poor maniac is not told here. That is blessedly given in Luke; who, therefore, only speaks of one in whom this effect was produced. The simple point here was the complete power of Satan, and the power present to set it aside. In Luke we find the subsequent service of the delivered remnant unfolded. Here it is the present position of Jesus and the Jews. A word where His power is exercised, gives complete deliverance, and thus the remnant are set free; but, as regards the mass, the result is figured by the unclean swine. They hurry on to destruction. As to Christ, He leaves their coast.

340 Here Matthew returns pretty much to the general order of the history of His service in Galilee; but the bearing of the Gospel is fully maintained. The Lord heals the sick of the palsy in Capernaum, His own city, as it is called; for there He had fixed His residence when not going through the country. This case begins a new series, shewing the power, character, and efficacy of His coming, always keeping in view, and illustrative of, the general subject of the Gospel. That coming is presented here to Israel, according to promise; and its result as reaching far beyond Israel on His rejection. And here the case of the paralytic is presented with special view to this result; that is, to the place Jesus takes as rejected by Israel, and the grace and personal power from which that flows. Palsied as man, as Israel particularly, was, the source of this in the government of God lay deeper than outward circumstances. It was their sins that had brought them there. But grace had come; one having title to forgive, and specially here as regards God's ways and government, though surely in view of, and founded on, the needed sacrifice. He is really the Son of man (far more than King of Israel); but, as such, He has brought grace and power into the midst of the people. The Lord meets the whole case - goes to the heart and conscience of the sufferer. "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee." In reply to the reasoning of the scribes in their hearts, He, who searches the heart, replies by this wonderful truth: "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins." Thus He takes not the title of Messiah, not the righteous man of Psalm 1, nor the Son of God of Psalm 2, but of the Son of man of Psalm 8; His full title, when rejected in the former character, and, at the same time, of perfect grace, as entering into man's condition and sorrow. To prove His title, He by a word makes the paralytic rise up and walk. This act then, under the title of Son of man, is of the largest import. It is grace, forgiveness so as to restore. He is Son of man - all Israel wants - but His title much larger; and meanwhile the Accomplisher of that which is the witness that He is the Jehovah of Israel's blessing (though coming as Son of man), who forgives all their sins and heals all their infirmities. He proved His title to one by the accomplishment of the other. In this way it is very characteristic. Compare Psalm 103: 3. The Lord, in this Gospel, never calls Himself anything but Son of man; others, Son of David; and the demons, Son of God.

341 Next, the Lord calls Matthew, or Levi. This is still in the historical order; but introduces most important elements of the Lord's history, in connection with the subject of this Gospel. It is grace above all traditional, or even Israelitish thoughts (for he was the expression of Gentile dominion over Israel); but the Lord came as physician, not to call the righteous, but sinners. Note! to call, not simply to bring blessing to Israel (though labouring in Israel), and crown their hopes and state. He calls, and calls sinners. It is grace; but the Lord's comment on this goes farther, and is more explicit. He cannot put the new wine of power, living power and grace, which He is bringing in, into the old bottles. The whole position is brought out in its double aspect. The Bridegroom - the Bridegroom of Israel - was there. The faithful remnant of Israel, the disciples, the children of the bride-chamber, who recognised Him, and attached themselves to Him, could not mourn. How should they? Besides, the truth was, that these ordinances for flesh could not receive the new wine of grace, and of the Spirit. Thus, that He was present in Israel, and the impossibility of Israel, as it was, being the vessel of the power, grace, and purpose of God in Him, are both here brought out. The new wine was to be put into new bottles.

Chapter 8 gives, historically, His service, and its results. This applies its principles, shewing the grace that met Israel in Jehovah's presence; but, in fact, the impossibility of that power in its energies, being introduced into the system in which Israel then stood. In point of fact, He is rejected by the characteristic leaders of the nation.

In what follows in Matthew, we have the Lord's persevering grace in Israel, though the new wine, He well knew, had to be put into new bottles. Israel's real state is shewn, explaining why there must be this new power - life-giving power - introduced; but grace towards Israel is shewn, which will persevere across (however temporarily suspended by judgment on the people) the whole church interval of time, to resume its activity in the latter days towards the beloved and chosen people. This is remarkably brought out to the end of chapter 10. The disciples are sent forth, forbidden to go to Gentiles or Samaritans; and they would not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man will come. Chapter 11 brings out their present rejection, as having rejected John and Himself; the revelation of the Father by the Son being the result - the resource of the heavy-laden, the easy yoke in the midst of sorrow.

342 I may remark here, that Matthew having, in order to shew the principles of the kingdom, introduced the sermon on the mount, already as a great general feature of the Lord's teaching early in the Gospel, omits here the choosing of the twelve; on which, after coming down to a level place (English translation, "the plain") a little lower down the mountain, the sermon seems to have followed. See Mark 3: 13; and Luke 6. The case of Jairus' daughter, on the other hand, and of the woman who touched the hem of His garment, are introduced here; though this comes, I apprehend, historically, after the parables by the sea-shore, and Jesus' return from healing Legion; the last Matthew had, as we have seen, already given to complete his general picture of Jewish history.

The bearing of the two facts recorded in chapter 9, consequent on the teaching as to the new bottles and before the Jewish mission of chapter 10, on the course of the Messianic history as presented by Matthew, I shall now advert to. The real state of Israel was death. On the point of dying as seen by others, in God's estimate Israel was dead before Jesus came. He visited it as dying - He really found it dead. So it is treated here; but, come in life-giving power, Jesus will give it life. This will be accomplished when He comes again; but He was, at His first coming, on the way with Israel and the whole crowd around Him, and power in Him where faith was in exercise through grace, to arrest death, to give life where all else had failed. The poor woman thus represents the residue whose faith laid hold on Jesus in the midst of the crowd around, and thus distinguished from it. These the Lord owned. They are healed and saved on the way. As regards the one for whom He set out, He must, when the time comes, not heal but raise from the dead. For God holds Israel yet as but asleep, though really dead morally. This will be at the close. Hence He acts in power with the blind in Israel, who own Him Son of David. On their faith, following Him even apart from the crowd and assured He could do it, He gives them sight. The dumb, in like manner, receives his speech. Sight and a voice to praise are restored to them. It was never so seen in Israel. The Pharisees, blaspheming, ascribe it to Satan. But we have seen that the subject here is the persevering grace towards Israel, of which the two forms were shewn in the woman and Jairus' daughter.

343 Hence, in spite of the blasphemy of the Pharisees, which yet shews the condition of Israel as a nation, the Lord continues His course of patient grace (chap. 9: 35), and seeing the shepherdless multitudes, is moved with compassion, and utters to His disciples His sense of the greatness of the harvest and the fewness of the labourers, urging them to pray to the harvest's Lord to send them out; and in this spirit sends the twelve forth. These are sent exclusively to the house of Israel - the lost sheep of the house of Israel in the midst of opposition and difficulty; but their mission continues after Christ's death, but still viewed as exclusively to Israel, and omitting all notice of the church or Gentiles, and overleaps all the time in which the people are not as such in the land, and tells them to go through the cities, which they would not have done till the Son of man was come. He was there, but the Lord goes on till He be come as such in power. It is, as I have said, the persevering grace to Israel distinguishing the remnant. This mission, relatively to what immediately proceeds, is not out of its historical order in Matthew; but its exclusively Israelitish character is only in this Gospel.

In chapter 11 the Lord returns to the present position of Israel in reference to Himself, and its results as to the place He was about to take, the real reason of His rejection. The preparatory message of John is closed, and he comes to have his own personal place according to his own faith. Great above all born of women, the least in the kingdom is greater than he. The Lord bears witness to him, not he to the Lord. He is rejected; Christ is rejected by the Jews: warnings and grace alike. But the real truth of this rejection was, not his want of worthiness, but that Christ's person is too glorious to be known by any but the Father; or the Father whom He made known, by any but Him, and such as He revealed Him to; all were dependent on this, that is, on Christ's revelation of the Father to them. That is the glory of His person as Son - as Man on earth is brought out. Next in reward of perfect submission comes full joy. He had learnt the sorrows of man; knew how hopeless to seek good there, and presents Himself in grace as the rest of the weary, and the spirit of submission as shewn in Him for repose of soul on the way. This is historically the complete change of the dispensation.

344 Mark has not this account, and the two parts of this discourse in Matthew (that is, the rejection of John and Christ, and the shewing what His rejection by the Jews, while guilty as to what they did see, really came from, that is, the divine glory of His person which none could fathom; and the blessed remedy in Christ's revealing the Father to the babes) belong historically to different times. The latter part is found in Luke 10: 21, where it is said, "in the same hour," which is precise; and it is found after the mission to the seventy, where its connection is beautifully evident on the joy of His disciples on their return. It is general here, in Matthew 11: 25; it was "at that epoch" or "season": and such it essentially was, when His rejection, now after His ministry, took a definite form and a decided character. Luke's statement in chapter 8, of what the Lord says as to John, has also a more moral character, that is, more reference to the moral grounds of rejection, less to the dispensational.

This change of dispensation is brought out in a very important point, in what follows in Matthew. The sabbath was a formal seal of the covenant, "I gave them my sabbaths." See Ezek. 20: 12. These were the intimation of, and based on, the idea of rest in the first creation, and that by man's obedience under law, and the connection of Israel with God, as a people enjoying promise on the condition of obedience. Not only they had failed, but they had practically rejected the great Repairer of Breaches - the obedient One. The introduction of the facts relative to the sabbath here is only so far out of the chronological place as the introduction of other posterior events has pushed them forward. Their moral place, in connection with the object of the Gospel, the change of dispensation or ground of relationship with God, consequent on the rejection of Jehovah Messiah, is evident. Two great principles are presented; - the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath, and - grace - it is lawful to do good; mercy, not sacrifice, is what God delights in. Some interesting details are connected with it. David's rejection opened this liberty. Sacred things had become in a measure common. So now where David's Son was. The priests profaned it in the temple. The glory of Christ's person was above the temple, as the duties of that, because God was there, were above the sabbath. Had they understood mercy, they would have had moral light, and not condemned those who through the glory of the Son of man were entirely guiltless. His person was above the conventional bond He Himself had formed, His rejection (and Son of man, compare Psalms 8 and 2, implies that), broke it on their part wholly, giving place to this higher and wider title. Thus the sign of the first covenant with Israel, and expression of God's rest in creation, had found the place in which the truth of man's and Israel's state set it. Only sovereign grace took up the hope of rest; and, blessed be His name, through the unchangeable title of His person, above the effect of responsibility in His creation.

345 The closing scene is then beautifully and solemnly brought out. The Pharisees seek to destroy Him. The judgment of their system, and the introduction of supreme grace, was insupportable. But Christ was not now to execute judgment. He would shew judgment to the Gentiles, but personally then He would not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax till He sent forth judgment to victory. Blind and dumb, healed by His power, are a witness to the people that He is Son of David. The Pharisees, unable to deny it, ascribed the power they cannot deny to Satan; blaspheming the Holy Ghost. For this there was no forgiveness. Sovereign grace may re-create and thus restore Israel; but the tale of its responsible condition is now told. The tree was corrupt. It was an evil and adulterous generation; no sign would be given it but that of the Son of man in the heart of the earth like Jonas, and all their hopes buried with it, to be founded by grace on Him they had rejected. Nineveh and the queen of the south would judge them. The unclean spirit once gone out, would return with worse; their state and judgment would be worse than when they went to Babylon. The Lord then denies all His natural ties with flesh, that is, with Israel, in the person of His mother and brethren, and accepts only the fruit of the word in the residue, as that which belongs to Him.

In Luke 8: 19 the circumstance of His mother's and brethren's coming is placed at the end of the parable of the sower, bringing out the moral importance of the word without any reference to the rejection of Israel, or mark of date, though there be such found in the English, not in the Greek. The teaching as to Nineveh and Jonas, and the statement as to Beelzebub, is all given together in that part of the Gospel of Luke which is not chronologically arranged, but events put together in their moral bearing, and so applied; chap. 11: 14-36. The message of John in Matthew 11, and the internal change connected with it, to the revelation of the Father by the Son, has no place in Mark. If Luke gives the moral change, and Matthew the governmental one, connected with the rejection of Jehovah-Jesus, Messiah, Mark, who shews us the service of the Lord in testimony, does not present this dispensational change in either form. The immediate facts leading to it are of course given by him historically in their place.

346 We find, therefore, in our Gospel, before the parables (in which the essential service of Christ in the word is given, and the subsequent forms of the kingdom; and in Mark, what is peculiar to him, the entire absence of Christ's direct ministry when these forms arose) - before this, I say, we find the blasphemy of the Pharisees, and Christ's preference of His disciples to all natural relationship. What follows the parables in Mark (save His being despised in His own country, which comes in its place in Matthew, and we will consider farther on), we have already seen transposed in Matthew to an earlier part of the history, where we have seen its application to the subject he treats of. The facts I refer to are the crossing in a storm, and the history of Legion which follows; the raising of Jairus' daughter, which happened on His return; the woman with an issue of blood, which all go together; and the sending out the twelve, which, as we have seen, is given a peculiar importance in Matthew, and is introduced in connection with a most general statement of His ministry, so as to imply no date; Matt. 9: 35, 36. But Matthew introduces there, in their proper place relatively to what goes before the displaced series just mentioned, two facts omitted in Luke and Mark, which bore upon his subject in a way already noticed; Matt. 9: 27-34. On this follows the general statement of His ministry and sending out of the twelve. Luke, in the main, here follows the order of Mark, that is, gives the history chronologically; Luke 8: 22.

The parables we have frequently noticed as beginning a new scene, taking a wholly new ground for Christ as to His own ministry on earth, and as to the kingdom. He comes to sow, not to seek fruit. He brings with Him the only thing which can produce fruit; and the kingdom is not His presence in power, at any rate until the harvest. We get the public result in the world while He is away, and then His aim and object, and the great result under His hand. But the result of His teaching in Israel was to be reckoned the carpenter's son, and to prove, that in his own country and house the prophet has no honour. This, in Matthew, is in its place only by the transposition of other facts, above noticed, to a preceding part. It is thus brought into direct moral connection with His rejection, and the general effect of His sowing the word. It is not in Luke as a distinct event. In what follows we have a development by facts of the great change taking place, rather than the unfolding of it in figure or teaching, until He opens out the new thing, and then, after that, the closing history comes on. With the evidences of the change already fully taught came the proofs to Israel of the character of Him who was rejected.

347 First we have the account (chap. 14: 1-13) of John's imprisonment and death by the wicked and apostatising king of Israel, identified with the Gentile power of the west. But this does not diminish (chap. 14: 14-31), though taking His full part in the sorrow, Christ's interest in the shepherdless people. He shews Himself to be that very One who in Israel's brightest days to come will satisfy the poor with bread (Psalm 132); but withal He dismisses Israel, and, while His disciples are toiling in His absence, is on high to pray; He rejoins them, and all is calm; v. 22, 23. There is such a thing as walking on the water by night to meet Him; but the eye must be fixed on Him. It fails for the earth. He rejoins the ship (the remnant of Israel), and all is calm, and He is owned Son of God. In Gennesaret, where He had been once rejected, He is now received, and all are healed. The death of John Baptist forms no part of Luke's history; he refers to His imprisonment in closing the account of His ministry quite early in the Gospel; chap. 3. The results follow in the same succession here as in Mark. The greater part of them are not in Luke at all; that is, from the feeding the five thousand to Peter's confessing Christ; the whole of which forms one subject. The retiring into the desert, in Matthew, consequent on John's death, is, in Mark, connected with the rest given to the disciples on their return from their mission. In Matthew this mission had been displaced to shew all God's dealings with Israel in this respect. It is found in chapter 10. What I have spoken of just above (chap. 14), evidently forms a complete subject - a view of all His relationship with Israel from John's rejection to the millennium.

348 In chapter 15, we find the question of a Pharisaic righteousness, and tradition opposed to God's law, and all Israel's worship as a nation, rejected on Isaiah's authority. God would have the heart right. To the disciples He denounces the true character of the Pharisees. They had only to leave them alone; with leaders in evil they were to have nothing to do. They were leading Israel into the ditch. The disciples were dull in apprehending this truth; but He explains that truth to them in grace, shewing what man, man's heart, is. Christ having judged thus the Pharisaic Israel, an important event presents itself. He does not go out of Israel, but goes to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, which He could take elsewhere as a pattern of evil and obduracy. There a woman of the accursed race of Canaan meets Him. She appeals to Him in His character of Heir and Fulfiller of promise: on this ground she has no title, no answer. Christ fully recognised the people in God's point of view. The bread was the children's: He is minister of the circumcision. The woman owns it; but alleges there was grace in God, out of pure goodness, which could reach beyond the dogs which had no title. Hence she receives the blessing on the ground of what God was: a principle of immense essential importance, and at this moment opening up a ground of God's dealings, which was to be the basis of all hope. Hence we see Jesus in the midst of Israel, and owning it, but a perspective of blessing which was founded on what God was in Himself, and applicable to the sorrows of one who had no title at all. In chapter 15: 30, 31, the presence of persevering grace and goodness in Israel, so that every ear that could hear, and every heart that could feel, might be reached in spite of the Pharisees, is brought out in the power of Christ in grace, so that they glorified the God of Israel. Instead of this general statement, the force of which is evident as regards the place which Christ still held in respect of Israel, we find in Mark a special miracle of opening of ears, and loosing the tongue of the deaf and dumb man - Christ's personal power and its character (for He will do this for Israel as He does for us). Hence it is not glorifying the God of Israel there, but Jesus has done all things well - His service and its excellency.

349 The second time the Lord feeds the multitude, the act is presented in another way from the first, though the power be the same, and its character confirms the view we have taken. This is the case in Mark, as well as in Matthew. The second instance of miraculous feeding is not found in Luke. In the first it is the power of Messiah as King in Israel, and able to give this power to others. There is no need, says the Lord, to send them away, "give ye them to eat." In the second it is the patient and tender compassion towards Israel, of which we have spoken. The multitude had been long with Him, and He would not let them go fasting away. The number twelve, as elsewhere remarked, is indicative of divine governmental power exercised in man; seven, of spiritual completeness; and such, I doubt not, are their bearings here. This patience of the Lord with Israel, though shewn everywhere in fact, was not the subject of Luke's Gospel; it presents throughout, after the first two chapters, the morally new thing. The third chapter is transitional. The circumstances which followed the feeding the five thousand, in chapter 14, and subsequent reception when He had been rejected before; His absence on high, while the disciples were toiling on the sea, referring to the change which should take place in His relationship with Israel, have no place here; for it is His patient grace where that change has been already witnessed of and shewn. Indeed, what follows is the expression of the fact, that it is now already brought to light. The two great classes which composed the nation desire a sign: He refuses it; they could discern the sky, but not this time; they should have none but Jonas, and He leaves them; and warning His disciples against them, brings out the witness of their dulness to profit by their teaching. This closes this part of the history, and introduces the witness as to the entirely new order of things, which a rejected Saviour was going to set up - the church, and administration of the kingdom of heaven on the earth.

In Luke the demand of a sign is found, with other similar statements, and the Ninevites and queen of Sheba, in the general instructions of chapter 11. The prophetic doctrine as to the church and the keys of the kingdom of heaven is found only in Matthew. The Father had revealed to Peter the person of Christ, and Christ gave him his place in the kingdom.

350 Here the disciples are forbidden to announce Jesus any more as the Messiah; and the Lord henceforth tells them of His suffering, death, and resurrection; and next shews them the glory and character of the kingdom in the world to come; the law and prophets disappearing and leaving Christ to be heard as Son of God. Thus we have Christ - no more to be announced - the future glory of the Son of man - and the Son of God to be heard now, the law and prophets disappearing. All this is directly associated with the glory that was to take place on His rejection. They were not to tell of it till He was risen. His (as to the Jews) provisional but rejected coming is illustrated by that of Elias in John the Baptist. What is said here of Elias, forms no part of this instruction in Luke; for there it is more moral power which forms the subject, and not dispensational history. We find, after the transfiguration, the anticipated display of the kingdom in heaven, the power of Satan manifested; the disciples were not able to cast him out. This marks the incapacity to avail themselves of Christ's presence here on earth as the reason of His departure; a solemn lesson in any dispensation of God. As yet, Christ Himself still exercises His patient power. The promise is given of displacing the most apparently solid seat of power if faith were there. This is remarkable after their incapacity to do the smallest thing when He was there. This is only in Matthew. In Luke there follows the judgment of the various forms in which selfishness displays itself. In all the three Gospels the cross is taught. In Matthew there follows a circumstance which gives its character to all this part of the Gospel of Matthew only - blessedly associating the disciples with Christ. As children of the great King, they were free from the tribute paid to Him (the temple Didrachma), but which then, not to offend, He will pay. He shews divine knowledge, and divine power over creation, but He is subject; and He puts Peter into the same rank of son with Himself. Thus we have the church and the kingdom in administration and in glory. The matter of the didrachma had shewn in what spirit the true sons of the kingdom were to walk till it came in power.

Thereon (chap. 18) follows a series of incidents opening out this walk, and with a good deal of detail. The principles which should govern this walk personally and collectively are taught, the assembly of disciples taking definitely the place of the synagogue as to being within and without. This is peculiar to Matthew, as introducing here the new institutions of God. Others are found dispersed in Luke, in their place, as general moral instructions, which character they also have. In particular we have the unprofitableness of flesh, but the relationship God formed in it owned. These general instructions go to the end of chapter 15: 28. As to the order of it in Matthew, there is no particular remark to make. It follows as in Mark. The general instruction of leaving all, and taking up the cross, is also found in a similar way, put before the last part of the Lord's history at Jerusalem, which begins with His passing through Jericho; Matt. 19: 16; 20: 19; Luke 18: 15, and following. They naturally precede historically His own rejection; but in Luke a mass of instruction comes in between the last chronologically stated fact (chap. 10: 17) and this, with much as to God's ways in grace peculiar to Him; with parts, however, of what we find here in Matthew, dispersed among other matter, according to the subject spoken of.

351 A few of the points in Matthew call for particular notice. The spirit of a child is the pattern of a Christian. God has His eyes on little children with special favour. They are to be received in Christ's name. It is not the Father's will they should perish; not that they are not lost in nature: but Christ came to save the lost sheep. The parable of the lost sheep is applied to them. This last part, as to God's dispensation as to them, is peculiar to Matthew. Next, extreme jealousy as to occasions of falling, in oneself; care not to stumble the weak; the means to be taken to preserve godly order as to wrongs done, are prescribed; and here the church, i.e., two or three assembled in Christ's name, is introduced as taking its place. It thus becomes the new centre - completely takes the place of the synagogue. What is there bound on earth is ratified in heaven, and what agreed thus to be sought on earth given from heaven. The two or three assembled in Christ's name become a constituted institution, sealed, when real, by the sanction and authority of heaven, and the inside or outside of it takes the place of Jew and heathen. This is peculiar to Matthew; this is extended to the spirit of personal forgiveness as regards the individual. Compare for both 1 Corinthians 6. But the kingdom of heaven (not the church) is hence like the King who forgives and afterwards brings all on the guilty where the principles of His own conduct were not accepted and imitated. Thus the Jews (with whom on Christ's intercession God dealt in grace, forgiving them the ten thousand talents, refusing grace towards the Gentiles) came under the full guilt of all as to God's ways with them as to the kingdom. But the principle is now morally true, save the general principle stated elsewhere; this also is peculiar to Matthew.

352 The teaching of the Lord on marriage, is not in Luke, referring, as it does, to the peculiar instructions of Judaism. The latter part which introduces the special power of the new thing, while sanctioning God's original and gracious institution, is in Matthew alone. 1 Corinthians 7 answers to this. The case of the children and of the young man, in which nature as God created it is held blessed; the law, as applied to man (second table), shewn to be the path of life, if nature could keep it, is found in all. Sovereign grace is needed for being saved, for flesh is fallen and evil; and seeks, if outwardly blameless, its delight elsewhere than in God. This is more briefly stated in Luke, as a great general principle. The answer to Peter on this point, in Matthew, has this also in particular, that it introduces the dispensational glory hereafter in the kingdom, and thereon adds the parable of the householder and labourers, to guard, by sovereign grace and goodness, against the tendency to turn the encouragement afforded by reward into a claim of self-righteousness. It is on the seizing of this, and through this, and the already stated principle of the first last, and last first, depends. Only grace, and because it is grace, inverts it, and puts last first: while the former states the shortcoming of nature, that first shall be thus last.

The last events now approach, and Christ sets out on His way to Jerusalem. Here, all the three Gospels are together: only the request of Zebedee's children is not found in Luke. This connects itself with the cross of which He had been speaking; and the sovereignty of God, giving to whom He would. Christ's answer is the manifestation of His perfect meekness in humiliation - His absolute subjection to the will of His Father - His perfectness, as put to the test in motive, and obedience, and self-renunciation. He could lead His disciples into suffering with Him, and tell them it would be so; but for the reward, as to their place and glory in the kingdom, He must refer them to the Father. But while the expression of perfectness in Jesus, it gave a moral character to the exaltation also. The least in self would be the greatest there. He came in perfect love, not to be honoured, and to give His life a ransom for many. Nor would there be thus merely Jews in the kingdom, according to their then hopes, and His presence on the earth. The redemption work in love was now about to be accomplished. This closed up the full character of the change, and the real work He came to do. In what follows the Lord takes again the Jewish character, because He was for the last time, and in order to suffer, presenting Himself to the people.

353 This last history is, in all the three Gospels, introduced by His healing the blind man on the roadside by Jericho. Jericho itself has a peculiar character in Jewish history. The first opposing power to Israel's taking possession of promise; marked with a curse as the seat of the power of evil when the power was overcome; visited by Elijah on his way to Jordan and glory; healed by Elisha on his return to Israel, when the glorifying of Elijah had been accomplished: - it had the stamp of a certain initiatory character in God's relationship with the land of promise, not the direct title of blessing, but the way of blessing, through the curse, and the meeting the power of evil. Here the Lord, just as He was called out of Egypt, begins His last presentation to Israel. He heals the blind under the name of the Son of David - heals them who under that name called on Him for mercy, in persevering faith, in spite of the multitude. He had compassion on them. Luke adds here mercy to the chief publican, and the Jewish correction of the idea of the kingdom, announcing His departure, the responsibility of His servants, and the judgment upon His citizens, who, when He was gone, sent after Him, to say they would not have Him to reign over them.

The riding into Jerusalem on the ass's colt, follows, then, alike in all the three Gospels - His presentation to Zion as king, according to Zechariah. Some details are given in Mark; His survey of the temple, and going out again, and returning the next day, when He cleanses it. The general fact is merely stated in Matthew: that is, the result of His royal visitation as Jehovah the king, without holding to the order, for the fig-tree was cursed before He cleansed the temple. In Luke He weeps over the city; that evangelist again, as he is wont, presenting the Lord's moral grace and tenderness, the kindness of Jehovah. The cursing of the fig-tree is not in Luke. This is dispensational, the judgment of fruitless Judaism, as under the old covenant, adding with it the power that would accompany faith in God, in the new thing to be set up. The whole, apparently stable, power of that system would disappear. And so it has. What follows is common to the three Gospels: but there are characteristic traits. The question of authority in the priest is met by their avowed incompetency as to John. The parable of the two sons is peculiar to Matthew. It is the Lord's judgment as to the fruit of His work among the Jews, His judgment of these last.

354 The parable of the husbandman, and the revelation of the rejected stone, are next in all three Gospels: the various classes of persons in Israel come up for judgment. But this parable is general: referring to all that were active in the vineyard the Lord had planted. This was taken from the Jews. Broken now by stumbling on the stone, they would be ground to powder when He should fall on them, that is, all on whom it should; for, indeed, they will not then be alone, as they were in the stumbling on the stone. But responsibility to bear fruit was not all. They had rejected gracious invitations to the marriage of the king's son. This is not in Mark. In Luke 14 there is a similar parable. I am not quite clear whether it is the same. It is, if so, introduced in Luke in its place, and its absence from Mark here accounted for. It is not introduced in Matthew, with any connection of time or circumstance, as having been spoken at this time. Its place, as to the judgment of the Jews, is evident. They are judged in it for the rejection of grace, as they are in the parable of the husbandman for failure in producing fruit.

Some circumstances are added in Matthew, and which are important as to the judicial dealings of God, which are wholly omitted in Luke: while the moral tone and pursuit of grace, in spite of evil, is more largely delineated in Luke. The contrast of the dealings of God with Jews and Gentiles, with which last the house is filled, and the judgment, both of Jews and professing Christendom, is what characterises Matthew. The difference of the two parables in Luke and Matthew will make us sensible of the characteristic difference of what is given of God in the two Gospels. I will enter, therefore, into the details of each, sufficiently to shew it. In Matthew it is a similitude of the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew, we have two messages; those, I doubt not, of the apostles in the lifetime of Christ, and of the same after His death, when all was accomplished and ready. It is, in a general way, made light of. By others, the servants are ill-treated and slain. Thereupon the murderers (the Jews) are slain, and their city destroyed. This is the judgment on the Jews and Jerusalem. Then the message is sent out to the highways (the Gentiles), and the wedding furnished. There a person is found (many are called, but few chosen) not having personally what belonged to and suited the wedding, and he is cast out into outer darkness. This is, evidently, more than an earthly dispensational judgment. In Luke, a certain man makes a great supper: it is not for the king's son, nor the kingdom of heaven. The two first summons of Matthew come together, in general, or are absorbed in one; the moral details of excuse are given, and there is no slaying and ill-treating of servants. There the poor of the city (that is, among the Jews) are sought out; but this does not fill the house, and the highways and hedges are sent to (the Gentiles), and the house filled. There is no judgment of the Jews, nor of the unworthy guests. The moral character in grace of the parable in Luke, is evident; the dispensational dealing in Matthew, equally so. Only the Jewish rejecters do not taste of the supper. We can well suppose it to be a different parable, though the Holy Ghost gives us but a very small part of what was done and said, and even of one and the same discourse only what instructs on the point in hand.

355 Next, the Pharisees and Herodians are judged, the opposed classes among the Jews, of strict and temporising Jews. Christ puts the Jewish position (and, indeed, of everyone) on the true ground; I mean as to their real relationship to the Gentile power or empires. Next, the Sadducees are judged, and the true nature of the resurrection shewn, and from Moses himself; only Luke, in addition, gives here a clear statement of the connection of the resurrection with the age to come; and, at the same time, affirms the abiding intermediate state of the soul. Next, the essence of the law is taught. The same instruction is found in the general teaching in Luke, not in the parallel place to this, and the parable of the good Samaritan is annexed. But this, I apprehend, was another statement to the same effect, as may easily be conceived. The true substance of the law being stated, the position the Christ was to take, unintelligible for the Pharisee, and consequent on His rejection, is then brought out, and silences the pretended wisdom of the Jewish teachers. The Lord's instruction is drawn from Psalm 110. It is easy to see how this closes, with the most perfect fitness, these remarkable interviews.

356 But, in Matthew's Gospel, which certainly goes over to the future hopes of Israel, while judging its present state, as we have seen (chap. 10), we have, with the general instruction to beware of scribes, a remarkable passage, recognising their official status and authority. They sit in Moses' seat. Yet the actual practical judgment is more full and terrible; and to this is added, that, as they excused themselves from the guilt of the prophet's death, such would be sent (apostles, prophets, etc.) to them, and they would be put to the test on this point also, that, the wickedness being come to its height, the blood of all righteous men, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias the prophet, might be demanded of this generation. This is peculiar to Matthew, and shews that a ministry was sent to the Jewish nation, as such, in the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, ending in the judgment of the nation. The connection of this with God's dealings with the Jews, as taught in this Gospel, is evident, and important for understanding other passages and dealings of God. In Mark this warning as to the scribes is very generally and briefly given.

The plaint over Jerusalem is not found in Mark. It is in Luke: but when Christ was in Galilee, and warned by the Pharisees, because of Herod. Its appositeness to Matthew's subject here is evident. It is, word for word, the same as in Luke, save that Luke says, "till [the time] come that," instead of "till": and Matthew adds "henceforth" after "ye shall not see me." I cannot doubt it is the same saying. I apprehend that it is introduced in Matthew in connection with the subject treated of, rather than in historical order of time. It is introduced without any verbal connection with the history whatever. However, I do not speak with any positiveness. It is in Luke, in the general, and, as to order of time, unhistorical part of the Gospel.

Mark and Luke relate here an incident omitted by Matthew - the widow's mite. It naturally belonged to Luke's Gospel to introduce it in its place, which is the same it has in Mark. It did not enter into the special teaching of Matthew here, as to the destruction and judgment of Jerusalem, and the dealings of God with the Jewish nation, as such.

357 In the two following chapters of Matthew (24, 25), we have a complete view of the state of things consequent on the Lord's absence, and His judgment on His return, including general directions and warnings for the conduct of disciples during this period. In Matthew it is much more complete dispensationally than in Mark and Luke. The four parables added in Matthew instruct us in what relates to Christians, and to the Gentiles on the Lord's return to earth; so that the whole scene is opened to us. Luke and Mark contain only the warnings to the disciples, viewed in connection with the Jews. In this part, also, there is a difference.

Mark, in the main, resembles Matthew; but there is a less exact division into what is general, and what refers to the final state of Jerusalem. Much - though that final state is spoken of - might be applied generally; and it is much more personally addressed for service. Hence there is found there (what Matthew omits) a direction as to what they are to trust to, when called up before governors, adding details as to evil and treachery, which, in Matthew, are found in the directions given, as we have seen, for the whole course of the disciples' ministry among the Jews, from beginning to end, in chapter 10. Compare Mark 13: 11, seq., and Matthew 10: 19, seq. Hence the question also is different in Matthew. There is added to the inquiry, when the destruction of the temple should be, "What is the sign of thy coming, and the end of the age?" Hence the direct application of the answer in Mark and Luke, is to the present service of the disciples: though, in both, it goes on to the end. In Mark, similarly to Matthew; and in Luke distinguishing very clearly the destruction by Titus and the subsequent events. There is more than one difference in Mark; verse 10 of chapter 13 does not end as Matthew 24: 14: "then shall the end come." (The question went only to the destruction of Jerusalem.) Compare Mark 16: 15, 20. Then the passage of Matthew 10 comes in. The abomination of desolation stands merely where it ought not. There is the absence of precision in the epoch of the signs; "in those days after that tribulation." These circumstances shew, that though the close is certainly given, it is not the object. The Lord's exhortation closes with "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch."

358 The present testimony is spoken of in Luke 21. There is no abomination of desolation; the days of vengeance come, no unequalled tribulation. Jerusalem is trodden down and led captive, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. There is no question of an end coming. Verse 25, unconnected in period with what precedes, introduces the coming of the Son of man. The nearness then of the kingdom, and the exhortation to watch, closes the passage.

In our Gospel, Matthew 24, we have the general testimony of disciples among the Jews, with the fact of the gospel of the kingdom, which Christ had preached, going to all nations, bringing in the close. The bringing before kings and rulers, etc., belongs to chapter 10. Then the special last half-week of Daniel is entered into in detail, the great tribulation with false Christs, etc., closing with the immediate coming of the Son of man. The elect of Israel are gathered from all lands. To verse 44 practical warnings are given. In verses 45-51 we have the service of the disciples, in their own responsible relationship within to the household (and, hence, practically Christendom), brought out. The result is, "the servant is made ruler of all," on the one hand; or hierarchical connection with the spirit of the world ends in his judgment as a hypocrite, on the other. The parable of the virgins (chap. 25) gives the original calling of Christians, and their return to it: the talents, the liberty of divinely given ministry. The words "in which the Son of man cometh," are omitted in all the best texts. Verse 31 of chapter 25 continues from verse 31 of chapter 24, and gives the judgment of the nations who have heard the gospel of the kingdom. Thus, the whole scene, from the service of the disciples, consequent on Christ's death - that is, the testimony among the Jews, the responsibility of the disciples when things took the Christian form; the last testimony amongst, and judgment of the nations, with the special week of tribulation, and coming of the Son of man - are all clearly brought out.

The Lord's preparing for death then comes on. It was two days before the passover. Luke is much more brief here. He leaves out the anointing by Mary; and the general fact of the priests consulting Judas going and accepting money, Satan's influence over him, and his seeking to betray the Lord, are briefly stated all together, as an introduction to the whole scene. The local scene is much less given. All the moral character, and incidents, and heavenly result, are much more fully stated; as the thief on the cross, with the intermediate state, and other circumstances. It is usual with Luke to give the historical facts briefly and synoptically, and enlarge on special moral details. Mark and Matthew go together in order and contents. The statement of Jesus, that He could have twelve legions of angels, and Judas going and hanging himself; Pilate's wife's message: his washing his hands, are all omitted by Mark; as are also the opening of the graves, and the resurrection of the saints. Otherwise, the accounts are uniform. We find in both the council of priests, the woman's anointing Christ, Judas' going to the chief priests, the meeting to eat the Passover (His conversation at table), the Lord's supper (only remission of sins is not in Mark), the going to the mount of Olives, the warning to Peter, Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, His appearing before Caiaphas, Peter's denial, Christ's appearing before Pilate, His mocking by soldiers, His crucifixion and death, with its effects on the centurion and His burial. Matthew adds, at the close, the account of sealing the stone, and setting a watch at the sepulchre.

359 In Luke we have many moral circumstances added, giving a different character to several points. As regards the passover, He speaks of its fulfilling in the kingdom of God, giving a present character to the effect, instead of leading onward to the world to come. Matthew and Mark had not this at all. So of the fruit of the vine. In Luke the Lord does not speak of drinking it new in the kingdom, but says, previously, He will not drink of it till the kingdom of God be come. The desire to partake of it with them, and the Nazarite character in connection with this (v. 16-18) are added, and besides the institution itself, the inquiry who should betray Him is just stated and no more; but the strife, who should be the greatest, is found here only, giving a peculiar insight into their state, and the moral position of Jesus and its consequences. The sifting of the disciples by Satan, and its connection with Simon's fall, is found also in Luke only; the change in their position as to the apparent care He would take of them also; His human dependence, and the extreme character of His sufferings in Gethsemane, that is, the angel's strengthening Him and His agony and sweat as drops of blood, are carefully presented to us, while the circumstances are very briefly given, and are all much more fully in Matthew.

360 The circumstances of His answer to the chief priests are quite summarily related in Luke 22: 66-71. The coming in the clouds of heaven, the future kingdom, is also omitted. It is the present position of Christ only which is noticed. Note - Both in Matthew and Luke, instead of "Hereafter" must be read, "Henceforth shall the Son of man sit," or "ye shall see the Son of man sitting," that is, He was taking now this new position. The answer before Pilate is related briefly in Luke, like the betrayal and His appealing before Caiaphas; and in its general effect; but the sending before Herod is found in his Gospel only. Royal apostate Judaism comes into the scene. The daughters of Jerusalem, and the Lord's answer to them, are found here only also. The intercession of Christ on the cross for the Jews, answered in Peter's sermon, the beautiful incident of the thief also are found, both of them in Luke only, as well as Jesus commending His spirit to His Father, that is, His confidence in His Father as a man. The centurion owns Him to be a righteous man. These are the chief peculiarities, and, as many have been seen, not unimportant ones, of Luke.

We now arrive at the circumstances attending the resurrection, which are different in each Gospel, and evidently enough connected with the object of each. For instance, the ascension is left out in Matthew, and Christ is associated with His disciples in Galilee, the place of His visiting the remnant, the connection with which is maintained all through Matthew, as in chapters 10 and 24. The first verse of chapter 28, I apprehend, was Saturday evening when Sabbath was past; the second relates to an event not in immediate connection with their visit when they came in the morning. The stone was already rolled away. Indeed Mary Magdalene seems to have been there before the others, while it was yet dark, and the stone was already gone. Matthew puts with the women's visit, in a general way, yet in a distinct paragraph, the effect of the circumstances attending the rolling away the stone: how the keepers trembled at the visiting of the tomb by the angel to roll it away; whereas, when the women came, the angel answered and said, "Fear not ye." They are told to go and tell the disciples He would go into Galilee, and they would see Him there. Jesus meets them as they return, and tells them the same thing. We are then shewn the final and wilful obstinacy of the nation in rejecting the testimony of their own instruments, which they knew and believed to be true. Christ joins the disciples in Galilee. There, in virtue of all power being given Him in heaven and earth, they receive their commission to go and make disciples of all the nations: the mission is now extended to the nations, not confined to Israel; they were to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the great dispensational christian revelation, to teach them to observe what Christ had commanded, and He would be with them to the end of the age. This mission rested on the fact of all power being Christ's in heaven and on earth, and extended the previous missions of the remnant, instituting one which embraced the nations at large. These were to be made disciples of. The account is very general and brief, only adding how the stone was rolled away to the other accounts; the whole else is the meeting in Galilee and consequent mission. This is the more remarkable, as Matthew must have been present at what John relates of Jesus appearing in their midst at Jerusalem.

361 Mark leads us at once to the morning of the first day, at the rising of the sun: and we have the details, as to the women, of what Matthew only gave the general result of. The same message is given: but it is not followed up farther. The meeting with Mary Magdalene, of which we have the details in John, is stated, and that of the two disciples going to Emmaus, of which Luke gives the details; also the general fact of His appearing to the twelve [eleven] together at meat, of which we have details in Luke and John. We have then, His resurrection having been recounted, the universal mission and continuation of service in the power of Christ Himself, the consequence of faith and public acknowledgement of Christ on one side, and of the refusal of the gospel on the other. The fact of His ascension and session at the right hand of God; their going forth to preach everywhere, according to the mission and of the power which accompanied their service according to promise, are then recorded. This, while connecting the accounts of all the Gospels, as to the proofs of His resurrection, has the character of service and testimony, which we have seen belong to Mark.

362 The commencement of the account in Luke is pretty much the same as in Mark and Matthew: the women go to the sepulchre, and are told by the angels that He is risen; but no details are given, only it is said in general that the women told the apostles and the rest, and that Peter ran to the sepulchre. But we have large and interesting details as to the two who go to Emmaus: there is nothing as to going into Galilee. But two very important points are brought out, not in the other Gospels. He opens their understandings to understand the scriptures, and they are to wait at Jerusalem until they are endued with power from on high; the two essential and necessary means of christian service, as it has always to go on. The apparition to Simon, mentioned by Paul, 1 Corinthians 15, is also mentioned, and, briefly, the Lord's coming into their midst when assembled. The corporeal reality, though it was now a spiritual body of His human nature, is very prominently brought out: He was still a living man with flesh and bones. He explains the Old Testament as to Himself, both on the way to Emmaus and here. His death and resurrection are shewn as in the mind of God, and repentance and remission of sins were to be preached to all the nations, beginning, according to the dispensation of God, and in grace, with the "Jew first." All connection with Galilee is omitted. He begins afresh with Jerusalem as from heaven, and so with all nations.

It is the gospel as we know it has been preached, and (leaving out the church) as Paul preached it; and the Acts present it to us. The account goes on as if Christ went out that same first day to Bethany, and that He then ascended thence - so entirely is Galilee left out. Yet Luke is he who in the Acts lets us know Christ rested forty days before He ascended; but he gives, by divine wisdom, like the others, what the truth was he was given to teach. Christ leaves them for heaven, blessing as He leaves. As to the first effect, while full of joy, they are daily in the temple. There Christianity had its cradle and its birthplace. The character of the close of the Gospel is evident. Bethany was the place Christ frequented the last week before He suffered: the home of His beloved ones in grace, where He was anointed for death - where He shewed Himself Son of God in resurrection. This He transfers to heaven, and blesses as He goes up. They associate all with the temple. This was more than tarrying at Jerusalem, or beginning with it. What a true picture of it all! How much more we learn here of the great truths of Christianity connected with His resurrection than in Matthew or Mark. It is not simply the fact, nor continuing the scene or connection in which He had been, or merely extending it. John has as we know, while full in this part of the Lord's history, quite another character. Surely this comparison of the Gospels, and of the details as their contents, throws much light on the purpose of the Gospels, and of each of them distinctively, and abundantly confirms the divine inspiration of all, because the mind of God shines all through their structure.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOLUME 3.]

Compared View of the First Three Gospels, etc

Compared View of the First Three Gospels, etc. Part 2.

J. N. Darby.

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I now turn to Luke. It is remarkable how this Gospel brings out the moral condition of things in their various phases, and first of Israel in the days in which the Lord came. We have first the whole status of Judaism most clearly and graphically presented. In the body of the Gospel Luke gives us in general the Son of man, and the great moral principles of relationship between man and God. But for this reason, before this begins, he pictures to us very fully the state of Judaism by itself, and all the blessings which remained to the faithful in it: Herod (an Edomite) king of Judea - the Jewish service going on in Davidical order; angels, ministers of God, His messengers to a godly priest, prophecy, and more than prophecy brought in according to promise; the house of David entering on the scene, but in poverty and low estate. Note, the explanation of the name of "Jesus," as saving His people, is not given, but He is the Son of the Highest. At the same time, He will have the throne of His father David. Next, as Haggai said, the Spirit remains among them, and acts in holy men and women according to ancient Jewish witness, such as Hannah in the desolations of Israel. Jewish hopes are prophetically sealed of God by prophecy. Chapter 1: 67-79.

The Jews, at the same time, are under the dominion of the Gentiles, successors to those to whom Jerusalem had been delivered. They are disposed of at their will. Still the promise is sure, and its accomplishment announced by an angel to the poor of the flock. The heavens see further into this grace; there is goodwill toward, more exactly, God's good pleasure in, men. But the Jewish order is still there; the faithful accomplish the ordinances of the law, but they await with desire the fulfilment of the promise, and see it in Jesus. They know each other as a remnant. Anna spake of Him to all them who waited for redemption in Israel. Yet prophecy in the remnant sees well the place the new-born child is to hold in Israel. He is for the fall and for the rising again of many. Such is the scene presented in the first two chapters of Luke, and of which the other Gospels say nothing, while this is silent on all the royal question and Herod's effort to destroy Christ, Jesus coming up out of Egypt, the coming of the Gentiles to Israel's King, all which referred to God's dealings with Israel. Further, Christ is a real man; grows bodily and mentally, and in favour with God and man, in His gracious ways. But, child or not, His person was not changed. He depended on no outward mission to have it. At twelve years old, full of the power of His relationship, He is, with comely fitness and marvellous competency, occupied with His Father's business, yet returns into the human child's obedient place.

2 After that comes the service. In the third chapter we enter on what is common to this Gospel and that of Matthew, but the form is very different. John's preaching, in Matthew, is repentance for the kingdom; in Luke, for the remission of sins. One feels the difference: one is dispensational, the other moral. So in Luke: "All flesh shall see the salvation of God." It is not merely the Pharisees and Sadducees, but the multitude, who are a generation of vipers. So he gives the practically moral test to each class that comes to him. The result as to John, at least his imprisonment, is given at once. Christ is owned Son of God by the Father, and the Holy Ghost comes on Him. Here this part of the Gospel closes, and the Lord's genealogy comes in, not connected with these Jewish scenes and the promises of Abraham's and David's, but traced up to Adam, Son of God; introducing the great and, to us, all-important character of Son of man.

This makes us easily understand the reason why the genealogy is placed here, and the distinctive character of what precedes it. The whole Jewish condition is there, as we have seen, brought out with one little inlet into heaven, on Jesus coming into the world; and now we have His place as Son of man, One who, as representative of man according to divine perfection and counsels, is come to begin the new thing, and become the centre of the new creation. Only for that His death was needed for God's glory and our salvation. (Compare John 12: 23, 24.) But in His own moral perfectness we have the new thing.

The moment His being Son of man, descended according to the flesh from Adam, has been shewn, He is led to be put to the test by the enemy who had deceived the first Adam (chap. 4). This scene we have had as a fact in Mark, and detailed in Matthew, with this difference, that there it is given in historical, and, I may add, dispensational order; here in moral, the scriptural temptation by the Scriptures coming last. Hence Luke omits the sending away of Satan after the offer of the world and Satan's proposal that He should worship him. After this, the moral power of work and victory in obedience is noted in His returning in the power of the Spirit into Galilee. None of that power was lost; indeed, Christ not having failed in subjective obedience, the strong man was bound. Hence the first thing is not, as in Matthew, the manifestation of power, and then (attention being attracted) the description of the character suited to the kingdom; but the presentation of Himself in grace, the Spirit of the Lord being upon Him, He being therefore man. The gracious words told in their hearts; but in His own country He was, for them, Joseph's son - such is the place of the Lord from heaven, the Son of man (last Adam) presented in grace to men and to Israel. Christ had already preached and acted in Capernaum: but the Spirit of God we see thus formally presents Him in Luke. And the Lord shews, that coming in sovereign grace sent from God, there was no limitation to Israel, as Elias went to Sarepta, and Naaman, the Syrian, was healed; while in either case many in Israel are left aside. Hence unbridled rage in His Jewish audience; but He was not subject to its power. This is all peculiar to Luke.

3 With the exception of displacing the calling of Andrew and Simon, as we shall see, Luke now follows the same order as Mark. First, His power over the enemy is shewn (chap. 4: 33-37); next, over diseases, and all that sin had brought in. This is the power He had in the world as having bound the strong man - He could spoil all his goods, work an entire deliverance of man from Satan's power, and all its consequences in this world. But He seeks no witness to Himself, does not allow the devils to speak, and retires from the gaze and throng of men when His miracles had drawn their attention. He goes first into the desert, and then, when they would stay Him, pursues His work. This characterises His presence in the world.

The Lord now begins to gather round Himself (chap 5). In Matthew, this gathering round Himself is brought in immediately He appears as the Light in Galilee, according to promise, preaching the kingdom; and then He goes round everywhere; and, when crowds follow Him, explains the character suited to the kingdom. Here, His mission and power as Son of man on the earth being shewn, He, though retiring from view, begins then to gather to Himself. It will be remarked, that we have a much fuller development of the way in which the disciples are called to follow Him in Luke. Simon hears the word in his ship. Christ works a miracle which reveals His person; the effect is just and deep conviction of sin in connection with that person. Then they leave all and follow Him. It is, I apprehend, Luke who changes the place of this. In that which immediately follows, he takes the same order as Mark. In Matthew we have the whole of this arranged according to subjects.

4 What characterises these facts in Luke is their being presented as the various displays of power in grace. First, Jesus heals that which Jehovah alone healed, the figure of sin as disease and defilement, which excluded from Jehovah's presence, and from communion with His people. He cleanses them from defilement. He charges the cleansed men to tell no man, but it is noised abroad. He heals all who come, but retires into the wilderness and prays. There is power and grace, but it is the Son of man. Next, doctors of the law and Pharisees were then there, and (an expression so fully shewing the situation) the power of the Lord (of Jehovah) was present to heal them. Faith brings the paralytic man; Jesus goes to the root of all evil in Israel (and everywhere), but here especially deals with it in respect of the government of God, and pardons the man's sins - Jesus brings forgiveness. The word is, "The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive." Yet it was the Jehovah of Psalm 103. Here "so seen in Israel" is omitted. Next, we find grace receiving the vile. He came to call sinners as a physician for their need. Grace was thus shewn in the midst of Israel, but on principles which went necessarily beyond it. Jesus receives sinners in grace, making all new. These cases, indeed, are common to the Gospels, whatever the order may be, and prominent in them as stamping a plain character on Christ's mission. Only Matthew, introduces the centurion's case where he places it, as especially shewing the bearing of the state Or things on the extension of grace to the Gentiles. The fact that, though in connection with Israel, the presence of the Lord and the principles here brought into view went necessarily farther, and could not be confined to the Jews definitely, is brought out in the question as to John's disciples, and the new wine and old bottles, etc.; the vessels must be new for the new power. But Luke adds here a moral principle not noticed in the other two Gospels; that human nature will like the old thing best.

5 This subject is pursued (chap. 6) in two remarkable cases as to the sabbath, the key-stone of Jewish ordinances: the case of David eating the shewbread - the Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath; and the healing of the withered hand - divine goodness rises above ordinances. Luke gives the facts more briefly than Mark. Matthew puts them much farther on in the history, where they are connected with the rejection of Israel. The first of these cases presents the position of the rejected King whose need was above ordinances, and whose condition really abrogated them; adding that, as Son of man, consequently, He was Lord of the sabbath. The second is the title of grace to rise above them. For grace is of God.

Next, we find the nomination of the apostles. After the Lord's personal position and character had been brought out, this finds a natural place. He selects His instruments. This still follows the same order as Mark; who, after a general statement of the position of Jesus, continues his account with the same event. Matthew has not this choice of the twelve. He continues his full account of Jesus' mission in the midst of Israel till He sends them out to continue it. In Luke we find again here the dependent character of the Son of man. He is all night in prayer before He chooses the twelve. Here comes in the sermon on the mountain in its place; and we have clear evidence of the intended omission by the Holy Ghost of this choice of the twelve in Matthew, for as a man he must have known it, for he was one of the twelve. We have seen Matthew bringing in the sermon on the mount much earlier, as the principles of the kingdom. In Luke 6: 17 it should not be "the plain," but "a level place" - still on the mountain. Luke gives the substance of the sermon in its great moral principles. His power, note, was shewn in the multitude (v. 17-19). The Lord addresses Himself in Luke to His disciples, as being themselves in the place He speaks of, instead of stating the abstract principle. The woes too are added. It is an address to the heart and conscience of the person present. He weaves in too, as verses 39, 40, other general principles connected with the precepts He is giving. So verses 44, 45. Here we have left Mark, who does not give the sermon on the mount. He gives the choice of the apostles, and then passes on to the full blasphemy of the Pharisees, and Jesus' refusal to listen to His mother, preceding the parables from the ship, as in Matthew 12 and 13. But the order in Luke, in this particular case, helps us, as it does in Matthew, to identify the sermon on the mount in the two Gospels.

6 From the mountain He enters into Capernaum, and heals the centurion's servant. Here Christ's divine title and power is shewn; but he does not use it to shew the rejection of Israel, and the reception of the Gentiles as in Matthew. The widow of Nain, again, shews the divine power and compassion of Jesus in the place of death and sorrow; this circumstance is peculiar to Luke. In Matt. 8 the leper, and the healing of Peter's wife's mother, are introduced respectively before and after the centurion's servant, without reference to the order of time. After this, the relative positions of John and Christ are brought forward; which is not in Mark, and is much later in Matthew. I apprehend its historical place is here. In Luke we have the moral effect of both inquired into. The people and publicans justified Christ, having humbled themselves under John's baptism; the Pharisees not, having refused to do so. Matthew introduces here Jesus thanking the Father for His way of dealing with the wise and with babes, and the real reason of the change taking place; taking it again, I apprehend, out of its historical order to complete the picture of that change furnished by John's position and message. This justifying of wisdom by her children is then illustrated by the woman who was a sinner, in contrast with Simon the Pharisee.

This deep-reaching moral picture is in Luke only, as are also the few words which follow (chap. 8); which cast so clear a light on the Lord's life; and give the double character of devotedness - that of the apostles, and of the women who followed Him. One of the parables of Matthew 13 is then given, that is, the present service in the word, and responsibility of man, his duty to maintain the light. The case of Jesus' mother and brethren is then introduced in Luke, as shewing Christ's value for those who kept His word, and not as a witness of His breaking His ties with Israel in the flesh. None of the parables relative to the kingdom are spoken of. Here we return to the historical order which is in Mark until the feeding of the five thousand inclusive; that is, the history of Legion, Jairus' daughter, the sending out of the twelve, and the feeding of the multitude. As regards Legion, the difference is remarkable. In Matthew we have the display of Satan's power, as it would afterwards work in the Jews, and the request for Jesus' departure; not any detail as to the poor man that was healed. In Luke, as in Mark, we have the details of the effects on him: - the Lord's real work in grace in the matter. In the case of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood, the same brevity may be remarked in Matthew.

7 In Luke all the moral circumstances are much more brought out in detail, as indeed in Mark also. What is shewn in Luke especially is grace, divine power acting in the kindness and goodness of a Man filled with charity. It is not, as in John, a divine person so much as a divine character; and that in the perfect sympathy of a Man. What shews this (as the case of the widow of Nain, Simon and the woman that was a sinner) is constantly found in Luke and not in the other Gospels. It is grace in and towards man.

On the other hand (chap. 9), the mission of the twelve, which comes in its place here, is given much more briefly, and with no special reference to Israel; nor the elaborate unfolding of the place which testimony would have among the people until Christ's return, which is found in Matthew. We have the fact: they are to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick, and to go free from care and dependent on Himself. It is the same mission, but in its simple actual character. The effect on Herod is here introduced. Luke gives no account of John the Baptist's death. There is a short allusion to his imprisonment (Luke 3: 19), when John's preaching is spoken of; but this part of Israel's sin formed no part of his subject. Otherwise the same order as Mark's is still followed here. On the return of the twelve, the Lord goes into a desert place, is followed, and heals those who have need of healing. In these miracles, necessary to relate as great witnesses to Christ's power, Luke gives but the fact briefly, and, as so given, having more power in that respect. The connection of it with Israel, and His dismissal of the people, and taking Himself another position while His disciples were toiling alone, are all omitted. In Matthew and Mark, the closing circumstances of this miracle lead to a series of events and incidents. which refer all of them to Christ's special relationship with the Jews, the moral position of these, and God's estimate of them; all of which are omitted in Luke. Matt. 14: 22 to 16: 12; Mark 6: 47 to 8: 26.

8 All three Gospels then come to Peter's confession of Christ and the transfiguration. Only in Luke the common opinions as to Christ connect themselves more directly with Herod's, and what is there said. For Luke 9: 18 is directly connected with chapter 10, and that with what precedes. Still the transfiguration is a great central event in all, and that connected with the confession of Peter. In all the rejection of Christ and the taking up the cross are founded on Peter's owning Him to be the Christ, and precede the revelation of His glory. There are some differences to be noted. Matthew recounts Christ's instruction as to the church, which was to take the place for the present of His Messiah glory; and the place Peter was to hold in the administration of the kingdom. Here also in Luke the matter is simply stated in its own moral force; and the details of Peter's dislike to the cross, and the Lord's rebuke, are omitted. The character of what they are about to see is also more simply stated.

In Matthew, for whom the change from Messiah to Son of man is a main point, and the future coming of Christ in this character (see Matt. 24: 30), the expression used in connection with this display of His glory is the Son of man coming in His kingdom. In Mark, where service in the word forms the subject, it is the kingdom of God come with power. In Luke it is simply till they see the kingdom of God. There is a difference also in the details. The moral circumstances again appear in Luke. The disciples are asleep. The Lord is speaking of His decease. It is the entry of Moses and Elias* into the cloud that alarmed them. All the ensuing conversation relative to John's being Elias, of which Matthew and Mark speak, is not found in Luke's account; but he returns after the casting out of a devil to the doctrine of the cross (v. 44, 45). And further, in the rest of this chapter, in Luke 9, we have all the forms which self takes, and which it would excuse and justify from the grossest to the most subtle; and the claim of Christ and the service of grace in the kingdom is shewn to be paramount to every thing. Two of the circumstances are given in Matthew and Mark; the second, that of the little child, as an example, with a large addition of instruction as to offences; and with the addition, in Matthew, of the position which the church takes, as in the place of Israel in respect of offences. This passes off in Matthew to other questions relative to the Jews.

{*It rather appears that the second "they" refers to Moses and Elias, though it is not absolutely certain.}

9 We then find in Luke a mission not noticed in the other Gospels, that of the seventy (chap. 10). It is in principle the same as that of the twelve, only more urgent, but there is no limit as in Matthew 10. Those that rejected them were to be equally sure that the kingdom of God had come nigh to them. Such was essentially the message, with proofs of the power of Him that sent it. From this onwards to the commencement of the closing scene (chap. 18: 31), what we read in Luke is either not in Matthew and Mark, or is here connected with other subjects than the historical ones found in those Gospels; and the various circumstances are introduced in their moral connection. On the return of the seventy the great moral connection of the gospel with eternal hopes comes out. The power of Christ's name over the demons brings to Christ's mind the final overthrow of Satan. Still the subject of joy for them was not that they could cast out devils, but that they belonged themselves to heaven - their names were registered there. This gave a very clear and definite character to the Gospel. It is in this connection that the hiding these things from wise and prudent, and revealing them to babes, is introduced here; not in connection with the rejection of John Baptist and Christ, and the total change in God's dealings with man taking place, as in Matthew 11. Hence it is added here, that the Lord turned to the disciples to remark their blessedness, for these things were brought to their eyes. It is the blessing of the heavenly people which is before us.

What follows is in Luke alone. After the essence of the statement of the law, the Lord shews to him who would justify himself by a cavil on the terms, that grace, the new and blessed principle of God's dealings, makes us, by its own nature, the neighbour of every one that has need, and obliterates, by its divine nature, the divisions formed by ordinance which work no grace, but, with the heart such as it is, tend to nourish pride by distinguishing him to whom they belong. The bearing of this instruction, and its deep moral character, are evident.

10 Next, we learn the value of hearing the word - in contrast with cares - and that of prayer, its character and success (chap. 11). We have then the final hardness of the Pharisee shewn, and the way in which Satan possesses the heart void of God, though it seem reformed; but without application to Israel's final state, as in Matthew. The Lord turns, on one speaking of the value of natural ties with Him, to the word; that God owned those who heard and kept it, as the only true tie - the Ninevites and Queen of Sheba, as owning the word from feebler lips than He who was there, would condemn that generation. We have then the judgment of the moral state of the Pharisees, but not here connected with the final judgment of Jerusalem, and the connection of the disciples with Israel, as in Matthew. Still the Lord shews, that all the blood shed would be required of them, as in Matthew.

We have then a general warning as to their principles, and those on which the disciples were to act, taken, partly from a private warning to His disciples, partly from His instruction to the twelve when He sent them out, partly from His statement as to the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost: but this is here employed to encourage the disciples in acting on the principles of the upright testimony He had spoken to them of; shewing that the Holy Ghost who was spoken against, spoke in them, and would tell them what to say; chapter 12.

As the Lord had urged on His disciples, faithfulness, uprightness, and boldness in testimony, so now He goes on to press on them disinterestedness and absence of all carefulness. This, however, is introduced by one who looked to Him to order things rightly on earth. This He entirely disclaims, and turns to the multitude to press on them the folly of having their portion here, which death in a moment could snatch away. With His disciples He presses another motive, namely, their preciousness in the Father's eyes. Here some of the instructions of the sermon on the mount come in.

But the Lord goes on to urge another motive, giving an additional character to their devotedness. Not only it was the Father's good pleasure to give them the kingdom, so that they might well trust Him for all things: but He Himself was coming again. Christians were to be as those that waited for Him. He gives the beautiful picture of His love making them happy in glory, girding Himself and coming forth to serve them; till then they must watch with girded loins. The difference of the faithful and unfaithful professing servants is then brought out. One cannot but feel, in all this and what follows, even though parts of what is recorded are found in Matthew and Mark, that we are in a wide sphere of moral instruction not entered on elsewhere: and that all this is given with a moral purpose, not in reference to historical order. He is in Israel, but developing great principles which cannot be confined to Israel.

11 In what immediately follows, He shews that they must bow to the truth or be judged. He came in grace, and the power of divine love: but there was nothing to answer it. His death would open the flood-gates of this love to the chief of sinners, not wait till there was righteousness enough to receive it. But while this love was in Himself, He was straitened in its display and revelation, till this baptism of death was accomplished. This love, this incoming of God, would raise all the enmity of the human heart. It is not as Prince of peace that His power would be shewn. Not only so, but, by the present manifestation of the grace, though straitened, the fire it would light was already kindled. The Jews ought to have discerned this time. Looked at, naturally, as under the law, they did not become reconciled on the way; they would go to prison till all was paid.

Personally, if they did not repent, they would all perish, like those slain by Pilate at Jerusalem, whom they thought special objects of judgment; chapter 13. This instruction is closed by the parable of the fig-tree in the garden, spared by the intercession of the gardener, that is, for the painstaking service of Christ; then, if fruitless, to be cut down. It only spoiled the garden. In all this, and what follows, we have the judgment of the present state of Jerusalem and the people, in connection with the Lord's presence. Meanwhile, He asserts, while shewing their hypocrisy, His right to minister in grace, in divine power, blessing to Israel, in opposition to their legal ignorance of and absence from God. The urgency of the acceptance of this ministry is then pressed. He was going through the cities and villages teaching, and presses the entrance at the strait gate; for the time would come when they would seek to take credit from His having been among them, He would in glory reject them, and they would see Gentiles with Abraham and the fathers, and themselves thrust out. Finally, on the Pharisees urging Herod's evil intentions, He shews that Jerusalem must fill up its guilt in rejecting Him, the Jehovah who would ever have gathered her children, and now mourned in tender grace over her who was henceforth to be desolate, till, according to Psalm 118, she saluted Him who came in the name of the Lord.

12 In chapter 14 the Lord, on occasion of a dinner in the Pharisee's house, continues His instruction on the grace which characterised God's ways now, and that again in contrast with the sabbath; silencing them, with the same reasoning as to their own conduct. He then unfolds the path of present grace, and its results with God; namely, first lowliness, taking the lowest place (God would exalt, in due time, those who did so: such was His own course); next, to act in grace, and not on the principles of worldly selfishness. The recompense would be in the resurrection of the just. In all this, He is bringing out the spirit and character of the new thing, into which He was leading men; the character of the new man in a world of evil. The reference of one of the company to the joy of eating bread in the kingdom of God, perhaps a commonplace remark, perhaps felt, leads Him to apply the principles He is expounding, to the consequence of their rejection in Israel then. The kingdom was presented in grace; the Jews, in their national capacity, from temporal motives, were slighting it. The Lord would call the poor of the flock, glad to come; and the Jews, as such, be excluded. But the enjoyment of blessing, at the same time, would depend on unqualified decision in oneself, and against the much greater power, in flesh's judgment of it, exercised against those who sought it.

It will be remarked, that the parable of the great supper in Matthew has a much more dispensational and judicial character. The city is burnt up. It is the king's son the marriage is for. The king's turning to the poor of the flock in Israel, the judgment of those entered, the conduct of many towards the messengers, are not found in Luke; nor the fact of the house being filled with guests. That is, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the general Gentile body of professors are not brought out. The first invited are excluded from the Supper in Luke as unworthy. I am disposed to think it a different occasion.

After insisting on decision, and counting the cost, the Lord concludes by saying, a man must forsake all that he has; and if the salt has lost its savour, it is good for nothing.

13 Chapter 15 begins a series of instruction, shewing the character and effects of grace; and the change, dependent not on dispensation, but on the full revelation of the divine character, and the consequent judgment of the whole condition of man; though it was in Israel that condition was put to the test. The well-known fifteenth chapter brings out the whole scheme of God's ways in grace with the sinner; in Christ, the Spirit, and the Father; and, in general, that it was the divine joy to save and act in grace. It shews the way in which Christ sought His sheep, and charged Himself with bringing it home; the way the Spirit sought diligently with the light brought to bear on all; the path of man's ruin, and the way the Father received Him on His return; and, finally, the self-righteous Jewish condition.

Next, we find the way in which grace estimates this world, and man in it; with the use to be made of his forfeited possession in it; that is, of what he possessed, though he had forfeited all title to it. Of this, also, the Jews were the special illustration. When the human earthly place was lost, another future was to be the motive on which the use of present possessions was to be founded. Then the veil of the other world is removed, and we see that this world's being our portion, excludes from that. In the close of this parable, which points at the complete substitution of the heavenly blessing for the earthly, and the judging of all things, in their eternal character, by the letting in of that new light, the Lord shews that Moses and the prophets would have led the Jews to own Him, and be delivered; and that if they did not hear them, His own resurrection would have no effect. The connection of great moral truths with the setting aside of the Jewish system, and the setting it aside by these moral truths, and the grace which belonged to God's nature, when He revealed Himself; both of them too wide for Judaism (the latter, contrasted with its spirit, as the former left all its ordinances necessarily behind), instead of setting it aside dispensationally, is very remarkable in all this part of Luke; chapter 16.

In the beginning of chapter 17, are collected a number of passages found in Matthew and Mark, with additional matter, in which the principles on which the disciples had to walk, in their new service, are stated. Such are - care against giving occasions of stumbling to the little ones of Christ; forgiveness of what is personal; the power of faith; the recognition that, at best, we have only done our duty. The order and way in which these are introduced and used is the only thing to be particularly noted here. In what follows we have an interesting example of the way of deliverance from the legal ordinances. Ten lepers are cleansed. The Lord sends them - their cleansing was the fruit of Jehovah's power - to shew themselves to the priests, according to the law. They go, believing Him, and are cleansed. Nine pursue their course; one turns back. Outwardly farther from privileges which exalt flesh, he more easily discovers that Jehovah, whom he went to own in Jerusalem, is in Him who had cleansed him. He turns back to offer his thanks there. The Lord, since he had found the true place where God was, sets him entirely free from Jerusalem: "Go thy way," He says, "thy faith hath made thee whole." He was not only blessed but free. The kingdom of God was really in its power in His person amongst them. And this was so true, that, rejected as He was going to be, the time would soon come, when the disciples would be glad to have such days as they then had with Him.

14 The Lord then, as in chapter 12, He had given the church's place at His coming, gives the Jewish condition and in general the world's. The same instructions are given, in connection with the judgment of Jerusalem, in Matthew, of which the prophetic announcement in Luke is farther on. Here it is the unfolding the condition of the disciples and the Jews, flowing from His then presence and the place His removal would give them. The condition of the witnesses in the final days of Jerusalem is given here, not as in Matthew in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem. This last is directly and distinctly given by itself, and with plain reference to presently coming events, as a positive object of revelation in Luke.

Here the subject is the condition of the disciples; and the warnings are connected with His teaching on that point. Hence the direction to pray, though having a peculiar parabolic application to the latter days in Jerusalem, has a universal one for men in every circumstance in which they are in difficulty and need. But this dependence upon God was hardly to be expected when the Lord returned. Except the comparison of the times of Noe and Lot, all this is found in Luke only; and the whole is general, and applicable to the coming of Christ, in its bearing on the world at large, though where the carcase is there the eagles will be gathered together.

15 The characteristic traits, suited to the kingdom, and approved of God, are next shewn. Lowliness - because of our sinfulness - lowliness in the sense of our nothingness. Here we have some of the account, given in Matthew, of the relationship and position of children, in a moral connection, as is usual with Luke. Then, entire devotedness, and the heart purged; not simply the outward keeping of the commandments, however sincere. Goodness is denied to man. One only is good - God Himself. What seems blessing here below, is the greatest hindrance to entering into the kingdom; but grace can do everything. Nor will devotedness lose its reward in this world, or the next; chapter 18.

This closes the moral developments which compose all the middle part of Luke, and form instructions of the highest interest, connected with the present moral introduction of the kingdom. They contrast with Matthew 13, where we have the dispensational earthly survey of it; and with chapters 16, 17, when the great change of system and organisation is brought out to light. Save two or three general principles, such as taking up the cross, the young ruler seeking the best commandment to have eternal life, and the exhortation to lowliness, all this part is omitted in Matthew and Mark. It characterises Luke; and even the topics introduced, which are found in Matthew and Mark, are so in a different connection. On the other hand, a good deal that precedes the transfiguration in Matthew and Mark is omitted in Luke. In this part of Luke historical order is not generally to be sought. This is now again taken up, as it is in the other Gospels too, by telling the disciples that rejection awaited Him from the Jewish rulers. The prophecies were thus going to be accomplished. The disciples did not understand Him.

The history of the last events, begins, as we have seen in reading Matthew, with the entrance into Jericho, where the blind man owns Him as Son of David, and receives his sight. But here also the grace which receives the vile, in spite of Jewish prejudices, must be brought out in Luke; chapter 19. This is the more remarkable here, as connected with His character as Son of David, and His speedy entry into Jerusalem, according to Zechariah. Zacchaeus had been honestly faithful to his conscience; but that day salvation came to his house. His heart had been drawn; but now salvation came to him. The Son of David, Messiah the King, would, in spite of Pharisees, meet the wants of the poor and despised in Israel, however false their position. And that of Zacchaeus was so; and no attempt to satisfy the exigencies of his conscience changed its falseness; indeed this creates them But in a time of confusion (and who does not see such?) grace reaches through the forms this confusion takes in individuals, to meet the need which lies at the bottom of the heart, and which grace had produced, and which shews itself in many a detail of which grace takes notice, and which grace can see (though selfishness cannot), as the Lord did here. Such grace as Jesus' draws them out, as it did here; but that grace, at the same time, passes by as well all the efforts to quiet the conscience. It brings salvation. Zacchaeus was a son of Abraham, surely as much as the Pharisees. I am disposed to think, that the healing of the blind man is out of its place in Luke, and is introduced before the Lord's entry into Jericho, in order to give its true character to the reception of Zacchaeus.*

{*The expression employed, I judge, carefully avoids the moment or act of entering into Jericho. The Greek for "as he was come nigh unto Jericho," Luke 18: 35, is in a form always distinctively used for a period or course of action, a state of things during which a thing happens. It may refer to an individual act; but it is while a thing takes place not as it takes place, as a particular point. It is at the period in which Jesus came into the neighbourhood of Jericho, which He did in a particular manner; in fact, at that time.}

16 Besides the very interesting history of Zacchaeus, Luke adds the parable of the traffic with the mina, referring to the way in which the kingdom would be set up, and the Jews' rejection of Him. It is evident that there are certain points of analogy between this and the parable addressed to the disciples in Matthew; but there are important points of distinction. Here responsibility is much more distinctly brought out; God's sovereignty, though ever wise sovereignty, in gifts, less. In Matthew one had five talents; another two; another one, according to his several ability. Here each has one; all depends on the faithfulness of the servant. Hence, it is not, as in Matthew, one common joy, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord"; but "Be thou over ten, thou over five cities." It is reward in the kingdom, not common joy with Christ; each being faithful in what was entrusted, and having gained according to what was given him. But another point is brought in, not merely the faithfulness of the servants, in which the analogy, though not sameness, of the two parables lies. The question of the Jews receiving the kingdom or not is treated; they could not, for they would not receive the King. Christ was now near that place where this question was to be decided, the city of the great King; and men thought the kingdom should immediately appear. He shews them that another order was to be followed. He was going to a far country, heaven, to receive the kingdom. Meanwhile, He left His servants to trade; not yet to be His partners in the glory of the kingdom - that would come afterwards. They would have their place in it according to their faithfulness in His absence; to them that had, more would be given. But there was another class of persons, His citizens - over whom He should have reigned - the Jews; but they, in their rejection of the gospel after His departure, declared they would not have Him to reign over them. They are, on His return, brought before Him and slain. It was not merely the rejection of Christ; - He interceded for them on the cross, for that as their ignorance, and the Spirit comes to tell them, He will return on their repentance; - but their opposition to this last, as a message sent after Him, that they will not have Him. This gave the full instructions as to the course the introduction of the kingdom would take.

17 He rides into the city on an ass. Part of the cry recited here, not in the other Gospels, is worthy of remark: "Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest." That is, in Luke, they not merely raise the cry of Israel in the last day, according to Psalm 118, but the announcement is extended to heaven. There peace is settled. The power of the enemy is gone; and that glory, which is above the heavens, fully established. Peace reigns there, so that the blessing on earth can follow. This additional and characteristic announcement naturally belongs to Him who reveals the Son of man, and heavenly and eternal things. Further, we have still grace shewn here; the other special part of Christ's character in Luke - He weeps over the city on seeing it.

The question of His authority is in all the three Gospels, as is also the seeking of fruit from the husbandmen; but Luke omits the marriage of the king's son, which, in Matthew, gives the other part of God's dealing with the Jewish people. Luke had already given an analogous parable; but dealing with the subject morally as to the effect of Jesus' teaching, and calling men, and the result in its extension to the Gentiles, after He had shewn His love to the poor of the flock in Israel. In Christ's reply to the Sadducees, an additional and important element is brought out in Luke - the first resurrection peculiar to the children of God. In Matthew, the present authority of scribes, etc., as in Moses' seat, is recognised; but they are denounced by the Lord in the most awful way. Here, after the manner of Luke, the true moral point of their character is stated; no authority is spoken of, and they are left there. A few words suffice for this; chapter 20.

18 Then comes the widow's mite (chap. 21), which is not in Matthew.

In all this part Luke's account tallies exactly with Mark's. The character of Jerusalem, as killing the prophets, and the Lord's patient grace, which would have so often assembled her children, found in Matthew immediately before the prophecy of chapter 24, is in Luke 13. I apprehend, as I expressed in speaking of Matthew 23, it is introduced by Matthew, in connection with his subject, somewhat out of its place, but not so far as to time as might be supposed. The journey mentioned in Luke 9: 51, and in chapter 17: 11, was the last, which, I suppose, are the same, if the sense of chapter 9: 51 is rightly given.

The collection of moral instructions, which follows on chapter 9, leaves the chronological connection untouched. The transfiguration practically closed the Lord's ministry, as the Lord in the midst of Israel; and that, in all the three Gospels. In all the three, besides the account of the birth of the Lord, which is not in Mark, there are three parts: His ministry in Galilee, which closes with the transfiguration; then He specially announces that He is to suffer, and that as Son of man; then we have a course of instruction, whether dispensational or moral. The latter character is largely developed in Luke, so that this second part, in which Christ has the place of Son of man (the subject of Luke's Gospel), is very much longer, contains a great deal of additional matter, and draws out what is found in Matthew and Mark in quite another connection. The third part begins with the blind man near Jericho.

In the second part, in all three Gospels, there is, as to historical circumstances, merely the last journey, and what passed in it; so that the blind man at Jericho connects itself, through this journey, almost immediately with the transfiguration. He then finally left His service in Galilee, and set out to suffer in Jerusalem; so that the character of His service was changed, or rather it was closed: only that He continued to shew mercy, and to bear witness in grace, till it was actually and finally closed. But He had forbidden His disciples to say He was the Christ, for He was soon going to suffer as Son of man, and could say now, "How long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?"

19 John shews, I apprehend, that there was, after His leaving Galilee, a course of movements in detail not found in the other Gospels. He goes up into the coast of Judaea from Galilee, the other side Jordan, and goes to Jerusalem; Mark 11. Jesus was at Jerusalem in winter, at the feast of the dedication; John 10: 22. They seek to kill Him, and He goes beyond Jordan again; comes up to raise Lazarus, and again departs to a country called Ephraim. Then He comes up for the last time; Luke 9 and 17. This, of course, was a little before Easter. The address to Jerusalem was thus, at any rate, on His last journey up to Jerusalem.

To come now to the prophetic warning of the Lord. The question recorded, as put by the disciples, shews at the outset the difference of the object of the revelation. Christ, as in Matthew, had assured them that the temple would be thrown down. The inquiry, as to the sign of Christ's coming and the end of the age, is not presented nor noticed in Luke. The question here put, relates solely to the destruction the Lord had spoken of. Hence, while the early warnings referring to this epoch are found here, more briefly, yet much as in Matthew, the prophetic account closes with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and says nothing of the abomination of desolation. The times of the Gentiles have then their course, till they are fulfilled, Jerusalem being trodden under foot. After this come the signs, and the Son of man is seen coming in glory. The difference of this and Matthew is evident. The passage in Luke, while giving the subsequent events and the coming of the Lord, is specially occupied with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, judicially ushering in the external Christian order of things; while Matthew is exclusively occupied with the time which is yet to come, and (save the fact that the gospel of the kingdom was to be preached to all nations) confines himself to the testimony in Israel. We shall see something analogous in the Lord's supper.

20 The close of the warning in Luke 21 is also peculiar. The warnings of Noe and Lot are not given here in Luke, but in chapter 17. Instead of that, we have verses 34-36, where the day is declared to come on the whole earth; but then the warning directed to the disciples, that they may escape and stand before the Son of man, leaving it open to a full millennial accomplishment. Thus, while it deals with the remnant, it is much more large and general. In Luke 17 the Noe and Lot comparisons are given as a warning, in contrast to the present character of the kingdom then through Christ's presence. The kingdom was there in His person; but His rejection would change all, and then He would come as a flash of lightning in the midst of the busy selfish occupations of this world, like the deluge on the world and the fire on Sodom.

I do not think, from chapter 17: 22, the Gospel of Luke has a date, until the last events. What is narrated, is added to what precedes; and then, when the prophetic warnings are given, that is, when the residue are warned, the present change is brought forward, and the time of the Gentiles dispensationally stated.

In what follows in chapter 22, in the main, the three Gospels are alike; only Luke, as he usually does, where not led out into moral development, gives a very brief and concentrated resume of the facts more distinctly stated elsewhere. I refer particularly now to Judas and the chief priests. The "then" of "then entered Satan," ver. 3, is not in the original. It was after the sop he entered in. Before that, he had put the betraying of Jesus into his heart. This is all put together, with the chief priests' counsel; chapter 22: I-6. A similar instance is as to John Baptist (Luke 3: 15-19): as is also the visit of the women to the sepulchre.

Then follows the choice of the room for the Passover. Here there are some important circumstances peculiar to Luke. First, the Lord's love and feeling about it (v. 15); next, the reference to the eating the lamb for the last time, and the cup: besides the institution of the Supper, the presence of Judas, and the strife among them who should be the greatest. The manner of expression, too, is according to the character of that Gospel; that is, opening the then next present order of God's dealings, instead of going on dispensationally to the renewal of God's relationship with the world. The Passover was to be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Hence He was glad to eat of it for the last time in His earthly association with His disciples. This is not in Matthew. It is the great moral fact of universal bearing of the death of Christ.

21 Next, as to His drinking of the fruit of the vine. In Matthew, He takes His character of Nazarite separation from Israel, until He drinks it in a new way in the Father's kingdom: the time of future blessedness spoken of, in this way, in Matthew. Compare chapter 13. Here, He takes the Nazarite place as a present thing, but closes, so to speak, every thought of this association in the present time, fixing the mind on the present setting up of the kingdom. In Matthew in connection with His death, and the founding of the new covenant thereon, He goes quite on to the establishment of the Father's kingdom: only shewing His separation from all on earth, till that establishment of the kingdom came. The words of institution differ, also, somewhat. In Matthew, He replaces the passover: and the words, "this is my body," only are given. In Luke the gift of grace is noticed. In Matthew it is noticed as going out beyond the Jews, to whom Christ had presented Himself, as related in that Gospel - shed for many, for the remission of sins. In Luke it is the simple, personal application of grace - "for you."

The inquiry among the disciples who should betray Him, is found in Luke in a few words, as we have seen in other cases. On the other hand, an humbling moral circumstance is stated; that, even here, was a strife among them who should be greatest - at such a moment! But it gives occasion to the perfect and patient grace of Christ, to teach them the true path of glory He had followed - that of humility, and being servant to all; and to own, in unspeakable grace, as if dependent on their kindness, their perseverance with Him. Also He appointed to them a kingdom, as His Father had appointed to Him: so that they should be at table in His kingdom, and sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The very greatness of the glory and the blessing ought to silence the dispute.

In Matthew the fact here revealed is given (Matt. 19: 16-30) in connection with setting aside human righteousness, and riches as an advantage and reward connected with it (that is, the setting aside the Jewish system); and with the glory, in the time of the regeneration, consequent on the loss of all for faith: still shewing, in chapter 20, that grace - sovereign grace - characterised God's dealing with men in the kingdom.

22 To turn to Luke 22, where the general application of Christ's death to faith is spoken of, the result of the present faithfulness of the disciples in connection with Christ before His death would meet its judgment in Jewish millennial glory. But into His death - which, while witnessing judgment of sin, was the means of salvation - they could not follow Him; to be saved by it was another thing. Their service in His suffering in the kingdom would be recompensed with glory in the kingdom; but death, as such, man could not stand in, such as he was: that belonged to Christ only, a lesson they had not yet learned. They could not go into it as death from the divine judgment of sin; but they could as a sifting from the enemy, to learn that they could not, but must be dependent on Another's doing it. This is found only in Luke; and the ardour of nature is suffered to go farther in Peter, to teach the entire incapacity of the energy of nature to do the work of God (its ardour only making its fall more apparent and terrible); so that, by the experience of what it was worth, and grace meeting it, one should be better able to strengthen others with true strength. This done, the Lord shews the difference of their position during His life, and that induced by His death. He had served them as a living Saviour. They must suffer, and, humanly speaking, shift for themselves when He became a dying one. On the earth He was reckoned among malefactors; for the things which concerned Him drew to a close. New ones would begin.

This contrast of Christ's life, and His disciples' connection with it; and His death, and the impossibility of their being connected with Him in it, is peculiar to Luke. Into the latter, that is, the scenes connected with His death, he now enters. This point is important. The human character of the blessed Lord's suffering in Gethsemane is much more brought out in Luke; and circumstances of the deepest interest are added, while the details of the thrice repeated prayer are omitted, and all is brought together in its moral character. The chief circumstances added are these.

The Lord already on arriving at the place, Himself perfect in the sense of what it was, warns them of their need and how to meet it. "Pray that ye enter not into temptation." Further, an angel from heaven appeared to Him to strengthen Him. Here we find His human position clearly brought out. Again, we have the solemn sign of the conflict in which He was: His sweat as great drops of blood falling down. All this s brought together without distinguishing His three prayers. Save the answer of the Lord to Judas as to his kiss, nothing distinctive, that I am aware of, is in what follows, only the healing of Malchus is more briefly noticed. Conflict through prayer in view of temptation, not to enter into it, characterises Luke's account of Gethsemane, not the being sorrowful unto death. The forsaking of the disciples is not in Luke. The personal human conflict of Jesus is His subject. The trial of Peter follows in Luke. The Lord had closed His address to those that came, by saying that it was the hour of Satan's power - alas! their hour also, but the time of the exercise of the power of darkness; happily for us, for the light has shone there, and in that light, the power of darkness is gone for us. This Gospel brings in, in connection with this, Peter's history under temptation and the power of the enemy, before pursuing that of Christ's interrogatory.

23 There is no difficulty in the details, as has been imagined. The maid spoke to the men, a man to Peter. The perfect grace of the Lord is brought out here in a circumstance omitted elsewhere - the Lord's looking at Peter. The personal sorrows of Christ are given as such in Luke. His being buffeted is given also before His interrogatory: and this last very briefly in the testimony of Christ Himself, who declares the uselessness of reply; that henceforth they would not see Him, but in glory. All the witness as to the destruction of the temple is omitted.

The account of Luke is here also much more brief, but an important fact added (chap. 23). Judas' death is not found (see the Acts), nor the message of Pilate's wife, nor the Jews taking His blood upon their head, nor, subsequently, the crown of thorns and insults. On the other hand, the sending to Herod is brought before us, and thus the full uniting of all against the rightful Lord of the world - the Christ - is presented to us; with the solemn but too natural picture of the opposition to Christ, uniting those who in their personal interests and passions were otherwise enemies. They can compliment each other in treating Christ thus. Pilate, doubtless, would have quieted thus a disturbed conscience by throwing the matter over on Herod, or avoided the guilt. But thus it was to be. Nor can men thus escape the fruit of their own wickedness. He hoped to get rid of the matter. What is noticed in Luke is, that he delivered Jesus to their will.

24 The circumstances attending Christ's crucifixion give a very different character to the scene, though the great central truth is necessarily the same. He is all through now, indeed, the green tree. It is the Man, the Man dependent on the Father, the holy confiding Man, as full of grace now as when walking through a world enlightened (had it been possible) by His miracles. His sufferings, His death as King of the Jews, are recounted surely, the veil of the temple is rent; but the accomplishing so many prophecies, and the expression of His expiatory agony, are not noticed. Nature wept at His sorrow, His loss, and the terrible act was felt; but it was over themselves these daughters of Jerusalem should weep. He was the green tree, and if this happened in Him, what should be done to the dry, the lifeless Jerusalem, whose sorrow He was bearing, whose state in judgment He had in grace stepped forward to take for the remnant, who would fain have seen Him received, and acknowledged the sad estate of Jerusalem? Still a nation's sin was there. Judgment was due, and He, the green tree, took it on Him. The remnant would thus escape, but the dry tree, what would be done in it? It is not simply salvation here, but judgment on the nation. Thus unfolds many Psalms, and the desire that the meek and righteous should not be ashamed for His sake.

Verses 35-38 very briefly recount what the other two evangelists relate in detail; and then we have the deeply interesting account of the malefactor, which, as the weeping women drew out the judicial dealings with Jerusalem, and the place Christ took as to the judgment due to the people, unfolds the heavenly portion through faith in Jesus, in virtue of expiation and grace of one who leaves this earth, however great a sinner a man may be, be he who he may, before even the kingdom is set up at all. This we have constantly seen is in view in Luke, - the eternal, moral, heavenly blessing, what we call Christianity, in contrast with the order of dispensations, while even owning these. Even the dispensational part (the weeping women) is treated morally. The poor thief, converted, justified, and cleansed, was to be that very day with Him in paradise. The traits of his conversion and faith are admirable. The circumstance that the sun, the centre of all natural light and life, and of the whole system of nature for us, was darkened is added (v. 45). Nature was put out, and its central sun darkened, as it were, but the way into the holiest laid open by the very same thing.

25 But, on the other hand, there is no rising for the earthly witness (as in Matthew) of bodies of the saints. Further, there is not the agony of rejection from the light of God's countenance - the opposite to all that every righteous man in Israel hitherto could say, for they had been heard. But we have the new man, the man that trusts in God. Having passed through it and drunk, in perfect obedience, the bitter cup, He can say, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." In death, He trusts His soul to His Father. So the centurion also here recognises the Lord in this character; "Certainly this was a righteous man." Luke adds the moral effect on the people now, as so often happens under the effect of what their misguided passions had led to. That He was with the rich in His death is then related by all.

In what follows, as we have so often found, Luke relates in a general way, bringing all together, the discovery by the women and by Peter of the resurrection of Jesus; but there is no apparition of Jesus here to any of them; chapter 24. Angels spoke to the women - they to the disciples. It was as idle tales to these; only Peter went to the sepulchre and found it was so, and departed wondering. But then Luke gives the details of the touching history of the journey to Emmaus, just noticed by Mark, where Jesus reveals Himself; and here it is by an allusion to His death, which, though in no way the Lord's supper, intimated a part of the same truth as that. The Christ they had to know was a Christ who had died, whose body had been broken for them, and who then disappeared - was to be known by faith. At the same time He had expounded to them the Scriptures. This and indeed something more, is again found after His personal revelation of Himself to Simon, and to the eleven and others. We have His revelation of Himself first to Peter, and then the clear setting forth that He was really a risen man, having flesh and bones, and having even eaten with them. Two things then are presented, divinely given intelligence of Scripture, and power given from on high.

26 Such are the great bases of the Gospel here presented - the Man risen - known in death, and gone away; scripture understood by divinely-given spiritual intelligence; and power from on high. Of this last we have little to boast. Next, all that passed in Galilee, recorded by Matthew, is omitted. Matthew gives his last glimpse of Jesus there, and does not speak of the ascension. What is recorded also by John as passing in Galilee is also omitted.* He closes with the respective positions of Peter and John (representing the Jewish and Gentile parts of the Christian church), without historically mentioning the ascension. All this part of the history is omitted in Luke, and the link of the Lord's departure is with Bethany, His home when rejected of Jerusalem, the heavenly family. There He blesses them, and, as He does so, is taken up to heaven. The mission they receive is according to this. It is not going forth to the Gentiles, assuming the acceptance of, at any rate, the remnant of Israel; nor simply enlarging the service to all creation; but as from outside all, as from heaven, to preach to all the Gentiles, beginning at Jerusalem, which for heavenly things needed it as much as Gentiles, and as to dispensation, had the first place as object of promise. They were to go to all, but "to the Jew first." The apostles were witnesses, but the Holy Ghost also would be given. Though their blessing and mission were from heaven, they find their way to the temple, there praising God.

{*The Lord teaches the ascension to Mary Magdalene. See John's Gospel. though there be no account of it.}

To simplify the use of the parallel columns on pp. 28-36, a change has been made in the method of cross reference, and the paragraphs on the next page adjusted accordingly.

Relative order of the Three Synoptical Gospels

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The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are arranged in three parallel columns in the following pages, in their relative order with references in black type to each passage running consecutively.

°Put after the Scripture indicates that no parallel passage occurs, the small figures such as 74 143 shew immediately where the Parallel passages can be found in each of the other Gospels.

Mark is the most strictly chronological.

Luke follows him closest where he is so; but the middle of the Gospel is a collection of instructions not chronological, but morally connected.

Matthew orders his materials, or the Holy Spirit by him, to shew the dealing with the Jews, as come to them according to promise, and the change to the new thing; and, though prophetically speaking of church as well as kingdom, leads Christ at the close to Galilee with the residue, and does not follow the history to the ascension; but he alone gives the history of the resurrection itself. Harmonies lose the distinctive power of the Gospels.

I believe Matthew 28: 1, to mean the evening of Saturday, the crepuscule of evening, not of morning: verse 5 is a new paragraph. Luke 24: 34 alludes to the appearing to Peter, of which Paul speaks. Luke's account as to women is quite general. Mary Magdalene was at the sepulchre when it was dark; Peter and John go, and go away home. Mary remains and sees Jesus. When the women come, they see the angels and flee. Mary Magdalene, taught of Jesus, goes and tells the disciples. As the others went, Jesus meets them, and desires them to tell His disciples He was going into Galilee. Mary Magdalene was to tell them He was going to the Father. It was only in their flight the woman said nothing to anyone. After meeting Jesus they were probably re-assured; and, at any rate, afterwards they told what the angels told them, as we learn from the Lord going to Emmaus, and see Luke 24: 9. But he unites all in a general statement as often, and adds other women. Verse 12 is apart; the Greek has not "then." The accounts are very brief, and refer to the object of the Gospel. Several saw Him. See Mark 16: 14; and 1 Corinthians 15.

[Refer here to the Tables, pages 28-36 of vol. 25 Expository No. 4.

GRAPHIC 1 GRAPHIC 2 GRAPHIC 3 GRAPHIC 4 GRAPHIC 5 GRAPHIC 6 GRAPHIC 7 GRAPHIC 8 GRAPHIC 9

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Notes of Readings on 1 Corinthians

J. N. Darby.

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1 Corinthians 1.

The first epistle to the Corinthians consists of details more than of great truths, and therefore not so much has been written on it. Sosthenes is associated with Paul, as having laboured there, where he had also been chief ruler of the synagogue; Acts 18. The association of others does not hinder the sole authorship of Paul. So, in addressing the Galatians, he speaks of "all the brethren which are with me," because he was shewing that the whole church of God was against them.

Verse 2 brings to view the roots of the main question of the church of God, two classes of persons being taken up there. This gives importance to the epistle. "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." Those that call on the name of the Lord Jesus are professors, assumed to be faithful till they went or were put out, not necessarily the body of Christ but the house of God. The assembly in Corinth, as elsewhere, is recognised as representing the church there. They were not born like the nation of Israel, but saints by call; sanctified in Christ Jesus, not after an external sort merely. The universality of the application is carefully maintained, its divine claim over all Christians everywhere. The direct address is to the Corinthian assembly, but the apostle takes in all the Christian profession elsewhere. He addressed them as saints, and I have no doubt that he considered them truthful, unless they were proved hypocrites. But calling is professional simply; just as John says that whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him; but of hypocrites this would not be true. Though there might be hypocrites there, they would be characterised as of the church of God at Corinth. It is not what my judgment of individuals may be, but the statement of what their character is in such a place. There may be, and there was, an assembly of God in Corinth; and the apostle treats them as sanctified in Christ Jesus; then the rest as calling on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is a different thing from sanctified in Christ Jesus. Though a man who calls on the name of the Lord, unless he be a hypocrite, is sanctified, yet the calling on the name of the Lord does not give him title as such to be styled "sanctified in Christ Jesus."

201 The epistle is addressed to the church of God with all that call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; that is, generally, till chapter 10, to the house of God; after that, to the body specifically. There is a different state of things now. If men take the name of the Lord, they are bound by all that is written to such; but it does not follow that Paul would have written such a letter to them now, nor do I believe he would. He gives meat in due season. He would have to do with what is practically fallen away from the truth, and he would not deal with this as with a body of persons like those gathered in Corinth. As yet we have not the fact that false brethren had crept in. "Sanctified in Christ Jesus" is not the same thing as "sanctified by blood" in Hebrews, but quite different ideas; the latter not necessarily rising beyond external consecration, though, where faith is, it consecrates to God.

In Ephesians 4 the distinction re-appears more definitely, which we have seen in 1 Corinthians already. First, "one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling"; next, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism," the wider circle of profession; and then the largest of all, "one God and Father of all," etc., returning to the intimacy of His children "who is in you [or 'us'] all." So the apostle, in Acts 17, quotes a Greek poet, "for we are also his offspring." Compare also Ephesians 3: 15, "Every family"; and Adam was thus called son of God. It is not, of course, the spiritual bearing of the name; it is used as here naturally. At the time when the epistle was written, all that bore the Lord's name were looked at as true believers, unless proved to the contrary. It is wholly different now; and Paul would not have written to them as to the Corinthians, though professors are now bound by what he then wrote, because they make the profession.

We shall find another thing in the epistle: that the consequence of the association in verse 2 is, that the local church has taken the standing of the whole body. It will come out more in chapter 12; but in associating all professors of Christianity with the church at Corinth, he deals with them as they stand, upon the ground of the body of Christ, though only a local assembly.

202 It is striking to see how the apostle, after the salutation in verse 3, takes up all that he saw to be good, as a testimony to their reality, before he begins to deal with the evil (v. 4-9). "Ye come behind in no gift." There was gift, but very little grace. "The testimony of Christ was confirmed in you"; "In everything ye are enriched by him in all utterance, and in all knowledge." They had the truth and power to communicate it. They were waiting also for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; not exactly His "coming," nor more (I think) than that He is hidden as yet. There is nothing about the rapture here, nor the judgment. In Hebrews 10: 26 it is the stronger word, meaning complete knowledge, or, as often elsewhere, recognition. Peter, in his second epistle (chap. 1: 5-8), uses the two words. A speculative mind might learn all ever so accurately, without faith or renewal.

The testimony is said to be "of Christ" here, "of God" in chapter 2: 1; because it is, not another testimony, but another way of looking at the same. Here it is personal to Christ. Christ's testimony confirmed in you is the testimony of God brought to you. You give a different name to a thing from the different feeling you have about it. In chapter 2: 1 he did not bring what was human, because it was the testimony of God; and he determined not to know anything among them but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Words are used, but really with the power of them. He did not come with man's wisdom and man's speech to bring God's testimony; but it was the testimony of Christ all the same. The great thing is to see why he uses a word, not that it is a different thing necessarily, but why that particular word comes in. It is God's testimony, not man's.

It is striking, I think, that the apostle addresses them here as "sanctified," enriched with gift, etc., and also says they shall be confirmed to the end, that they may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ; but then he goes on to blame them for everything. They had got testimony to their place in Christ by the gifts, etc. They had the Holy Ghost in consequence of their faith in Christ, and then he reckons on God's faithfulness; so that there is a point of departure from which he can deal with them. Many were to be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus; how be so blameable now?

203 Verses 8, 9 are exceedingly important. He had the hope that they were saints in a general way; then he casts them on God's faithfulness; so that they would be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is one of the blankest cases of the perseverance of the saints (not happily, but commonly so-called); for, at that time they were going on exceedingly ill, yet there he introduces that they would be not safe but blameless. This he connects with the faithfulness of God. Jesus Christ will confirm you to the end, and God is faithful by whom ye were called.

"Fellowship of his Son,"* which follows just after, means having a part together, and with Christ (koinonia) and in the blessings that are with Him. Partaking (metokee) is not communion (koinonia), which last is a closer thing. I partake of a thing, and in that measure have it in common with another. It is more in the character of communication. For instance in Hebrews 2: 14 we have the difference in an important case. "Forasmuch, then, as the children were partakers of [kekoinoneken] flesh and blood [because we all had it, it is all in common], he also himself likewise took part [metesken], of the same." Some misused it to teach that He took sinful flesh, which is nowhere said; but Christ did take flesh and blood. In Luke 5 the two words are used in a general way. "They beckoned to their partners" [metokois], v. 7, while [koinonoi], v. 10, shews they had common share, with nothing very definite for distinction. Words are used sometimes in a less, sometimes in a more, definite sense. We use a great number of words which have merely a different shade of meaning without an intention of making a difference. You might say, They both live in the same place, or in the same locality, but you do not mean another thought. Locality is the more general term. So going shares or partnership might have a shade of difference.

{*["Communion with his Son," in the original Morrish edition.]}

The first thing we come to is definite: "I beseech you that ye all speak the same thing," etc. (v. 10-12). Then we have the character of the preaching of the gospel, that what is foolishness to man is what God has taken to put down flesh, the foolishness of preaching, and the shame of the cross to bring everything to nought by it. It is hard to keep steadily before your mind that, if you want to do God's work, you must have what the world will not have; and it is so, that no flesh should glory in His presence. It pleased God. when in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Otherwise it would have been man's wisdom, that is, in the power of his mind.

204 I do not believe that a single thought of God ever enters into man's mind by intellect. It is always by conscience, not by intellect. There is faith, and there is love; but conscience is the topknot, as you call it. And in that way all the philosophy of man goes at once. The fact is, God is not in His place at all if my mind sets to work to judge about Him. It is when I say, "I am a poor sinner, and I believe in God," that God has His right place, even if my heart is wrong; still the conscience is that which directly owns the claims of God. There is no knowledge of God in intellect.

Responsibility comes in thus. God is revealed, and the moment there is a revelation, it is revealed that I may receive ideas which my mind of itself cannot take up; but if I have received an idea, I am responsible to be found in the right place by it. If I have the idea that you are my child, I am responsible to act as your father; but the mind is incapable of forming an idea of God, and that is where the philosophers have all gone wrong. They say the mind can form an idea without man's conscience, but it cannot: though it does not follow that God cannot reveal it to him. It is the supposition that the power within us is the measure of all that we can be apprehensive of. This I deny altogether; it is a total mistake. Suppose a poor old woman, and a strong man gives her his arm, that would not be power in her.

If there comes a revelation of God, there is the responsibility to receive it, but it does not follow that my mind could have formed the idea. In these days it is well to be clear as to this. The worst kind of infidelity says, "Man can have no idea beyond his senses, and a few original deductions which he may draw." I reply, All true; but that leaves you as ignorant of God as an animal. Do not pretend that there is nothing outside of yourself, and here comes in revelation. Like the woman in John 4, conscience has to be reached from without: "If thou knewest the gift of God." The woman says in effect, "What of that?" And then how does Christ deal with her? "Go, call thy husband, and come hither," and this arrests her. Real intelligence of God is in the conscience. I do not say the heart may not be drawn.

205 As to the distinction between "conscience" and "heart," the affections are in the heart, and conscience is my responsibility for right and wrong. You may have natural feelings moved like the women of Jerusalem beating their breasts because some one was going to be put to death; but what detects the work of God is when these two go together. You may meet with natural conscience alone, which is much like Judas, who went and hanged himself. God is light and love, and if He reveals Himself, you need have both. Where the light comes and deals with the conscience, the love attracts the heart, and both are moved. Thus Peter went to Christ and said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Why did he go to Christ at all? So I say, "I am a guilty sinner," when the light comes in; and where the work is of God, it is accompanied by the attraction of love. There may be much of natural feeling which is of no value. Just as in a time of the cholera raging, there is excitement enough in the terror of the moment; but the cholera goes, and all that goes too.

The heart is used for all sorts of feeling. What is described in the prodigal son is that he began to be in want. That proves nothing but that the soul was originally made to be fed. He had not yet come to himself; but the effect of beginning to be in want, when God had not revealed Himself, was that he went farther and farther away. So it is with every man who goes thoroughly into the world until he gets tired of it. Coming to himself may follow a remorse.

The conscience may be reached by Satan. Man commits murder, and it has passed into a proverb, "Murder will out." That is conscience. Man got it at the fall, and carries it with him. Adam had no knowledge of good and evil, but was subject to God's authority, and for that reason the thing imposed upon him in the garden was neither good nor evil in itself except by the command. Now we have the sense of wrong. If a child only six months old slaps his mother, he knows it is wrong. Conscience may be defined as my own mind judging of good and evil as God does. That is why it is such a totally false thing to make it a law. A law is a thing imposed upon a person, whereas the essence of conscience is that I discern between good and evil in myself, and that becomes a law to me. Law is imposed by a lawgiver, as God does. In the garden Adam was going against subjection to God: "thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife."

206 As to the difference between wisdom and understanding (v. 19) in English, wisdom is the attempt to use what a man has learnt, but you could hardly call it that in Greek. We may say that the understanding of the prudent is more the character of discernment, whereas wisdom is acquaintance with truth more. In the Hebrew a great many more words are used for wisdom than we have in English. In Isaiah 29 (verse 14 quoted here), the prophet is taking up the case of Christ's coming. He had taken up Sennacherib and that leads him on, and he launches out into the Assyrian of the last day. That is how the prophets speak, and that is what Peter means by "of no private interpretation." You cannot take up a few words without the connection. In Isaiah 33 the whole scheme is developed. Verse 20 is a quotation from Isaiah 33: 18, which follows, "Thine eye shall see the king in his beauty": sinners are afraid, and then he says, Where is the wisdom of man? Here they were 'counting up the towers' and so on; but to what purpose after all?

The "foolishness of preaching" (v. 21) is more the way of doing it, the means, but it also takes in the thing preached: you cannot separate them here. The "power of God" (v. 24) is not exactly the same as "kept by the power of God." In the latter it is more absolutely in Himself, and Christ is the one in whom it is all deposited; but when you speak of "Christ the power of God," it is more the means by which it is brought out. In the one case it is "unto salvation" because righteousness of God is revealed in it: there is power of God in it to save us.

The expressions "foolishness of God," and "weakness of God" (v. 27) are used merely to put the thing in the strongest way. For instance, death is weakness: "crucified in weakness"; yet everything of man was set aside by it, and in that sense the weakness of God. It is the setting up of God absolutely. The weakness of God was the gospel, that is, as man would speak of it; and foolishness as man looks at it. And God chose that - took it on purpose, though to man it was merely some one hanging on a gibbet, and yet God was glorified in it. As to "things which are not" (v. 28), out of death is a thing which is not, but the apostle takes it as an extreme case in the whole scene of God in Christendom. God has brought to nought all of heathenism and Judaism.

At the end of our chapter we get the fuller expression of what a Christian is: "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," v. 30. Not wisdom in the mind being acted upon and so I am wise about God, but "of him," that is of God, "are ye in Christ Jesus." I am of God, and I have my wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption of God, all in Christ. I am of God in Christ, and have all there of God in Christ. It comes from Him; it is not my thinking about Him. And so man is totally set aside, flesh is put down. The world by wisdom was not to know God, but I am in Christ as a new being, a new creature, created again; and I have wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption all in Christ. These verses are a remarkably complete statement of what a Christian is, with full redemption itself at the end, body and all.

207 Here it is the measure and character and fulness of sanctification; it is not legal nor outward, but what is in Christ. It is practical: sanctification always is, except in Hebrews. We have the nature and the quality of it. If we look at Christ we see what sanctification is. People talk of its being imputed, but that is absurd. Think of the absurdity of talking about imputed redemption! But in Christ all these things are real to me. I say, what wisdom I have! Am I a Platonist? No, Christ is my wisdom. Righteousness is imputed; the term is applicable, but you do not get it in this passage. What sanctification I have! Christ and redemption too when it is all complete in glory. It was all accomplished, but is not yet in its full effect.

As to the order of the words, I take it that wisdom is separated somewhat because that is what the apostle has been talking about. This was not man's wisdom: God had chosen the foolish things of the world, and so on; and then he brings out that Christ is made unto us wisdom, laying a little more emphasis on wisdom. There is a question of different text here, I know, and very likely it may be taken as, "who is made unto us wisdom of God"; but that only gives an emphatic character to it, and there is no real difference. Redemption comes in at the end as the full complete thing. The difference between ek and apo (v. 30) is that, when we say we are "of God," it is positive life; the other is 'from,' on God's part; whereas we derive our life and nature from God by the Spirit's quickening power. In John 3 it is ek: " that which is born of the flesh is flesh," etc.

208 1 Corinthians 2.

In chapter 2 we have the apostle's use of what precedes, and it is remarkable how he sets man aside altogether, and then takes the ground, that when he came to this wise people he knew nothing but the cross, and not only this, but that, looked at as a man, he was in weakness himself, and in fear, and in much trembling. He has only the foolishness of the cross, and his speech and preaching are not with man's wisdom, that their faith might stand in the power of God.

In the first five verses we have Paul coming to sinners - his way with these wise ones. There was neither excellency of speech nor wisdom to man's eye. It is not strictly the cross of Christ but Jesus Christ, the positive fact of preaching Christ; and then he takes Christ in the lowest and most degraded way, Christ and Him crucified. The preaching of the cross is not exactly the same thing, but the point is that he was not reasoning philosophy with them but preaching Christ and then, if you take up Christ, it is in this way, as crucified man.

It is difficult for us, used as we are to look upon the cross as redemption, to feel what the effect was on a number of philosophers, what it was to go and say, There was a man gibbeted in  - ; trust him. To man it was the grossest folly that could be. And see, it is Jesus Christ, His Person here, He crucified. He adds, "which none of the princes of this world knew," or "they would not have crucified the Lord of glory," v. 8. Because He was that, you get His Person, and not merely the fact of the cross. And it is a very strong thing to put before man; it is what wrote folly on their wisdom and on the grandeur of this world.

The moment man is a sinner, it is another thing altogether; and, the infinite love of God coming in and speaking to man as man, what comes of all grandeur and of all wisdom and of all else? The whole of man in flesh is swept away by it. All that flesh could glory in is there totally put an end to. There is no kind of fleshly glory in the cross whatever. It was God's wisdom to do this: no dignity, no heroism, but shame, reproach, ignominy, and death; it is all of man brought down to where nothing could be found - no, not a stone to put his foot on, to keep it out of the water. None but slaves were put upon the cross, and this is what God takes up to bring the world to nothing, first to nothing in judgment, and to nothing too, when we know He is in glory.

209 Then it brings forth God, man put out and God brought in. The moment I get that side, I have the Lord of glory, divine righteousness, divine wisdom. "We speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery." First, he brings the cross to man in every shape and way, and when he has done that, he says, I have crucified you, and am coming to tell you what God is in doing so.

"Them that are perfect" in verse 6 are those that are brought by the cross into this new condition with God; it really is in resurrection if you come to examine it. They are grown men in that condition. What the apostle is looking at here is a person who had the flesh put down with death written on all; all brought into God's presence and all the world put an end to; there is a new state of things altogether; the beginning of the new creation; what the Holy Ghost reveals and the Lord of glory. It is that the person is brought into the state that the cross brings into. You do not begin expounding blessedness and glory to a person who wants his conscience reached; but the contrast here is the world and the man who has been brought out of the flesh into God's place of blessing in the new creation. "Perfect" is in contrast with carnal and babes in chapter 3: 1; it is the full-grown man. Judaism was flesh in that sense of the word: "as unto babes in Christ" is another thing. You have three things, carnal men, natural, and spiritual men. You may meet a person you cannot concur with because, though having the Holy Ghost, his practical state is "carnal," yet not "natural."

In Galatians the apostle says, "the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all"; but here he is talking of Christianity in so low a state that he could not talk with them of certain things. As to knowledge they were "perfect," but in practical state he could not deal with them as such. I believe there are real Christians who are not perfect in this sense. If one does not know the forgiveness of his sins, he has not the consciousness of his new standing and is not perfect. The apostle is here speaking of their standing, he is taking up the question of those who had God's wisdom instead of man's. When he came to sinners, he preached Christ crucified; and when he had people in a Christian state, he speaks of all the fruits in glory. When he says, "Ye are carnal," it is the particular state of certain Christians who ought to be up to the measure of their standing, but are not.

210 "The wisdom of God in a mystery" (v. 7) is all that is unveiled of His counsels in Christ; everything that God has done in Christ. If they had seen all the glory of God in Christ, they would not have hung Him on the cross. They crucified the Lord of glory, but they would not have done it, had they known. Verses 9 and 10 are in contrast with the Jewish state of things, "As it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." There you get the Jew, the prophet declaring that it had not entered into man's heart; "but God hath revealed these things unto us." In the Old Testament these things were not revealed, but now they are. He is speaking of the whole Christian condition and not of the state of the individual, and he takes up the Christian therefore in his full character, and not in his gradual progress, or in his faulty want of development. Verse 9 is often quoted as of present application to the Christian, but the apostle is quoting it to shew what is not the Christian state; for to us God has revealed these things by His Spirit.

In verse 10, etc., you get three distinct steps: the Spirit of God revealing, whether to Paul or others; then the Spirit of God communicating what was revealed; and last, the receiving by the Spirit. The Holy Ghost in us searches all things; there is nothing hid. The prophets searched "what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify"; having the Spirit they began searching out. It is the Spirit in us who searches. There is a power of the Holy Ghost to give all the counsels of God. You find elsewhere that the Spirit of God is identified with the person He dwells in. He makes intercession for the saints to God; Rom. 8. I have not the word only, but the Spirit within me, and the mind of the Spirit according to God.

As to man, what man knows the things passing in his mind? Only the spirit of the man knows; now we have the Spirit of God, and He knows the things of God, and therefore we know them. Paul then goes on to unfold this. It was revelation to Paul and communication by Paul in the words of the Spirit, and the reception spiritually by spiritual men. To this we may add having the mind of Christ, which should be common to all Christians. There is what I have somewhere lately called the intelligent and the intelligible. The intelligent is capacity without a thought, but add the intelligible and you have the thought as well as the mind. So we have revelation first; then the words were adequate; and then the third thing that through the Spirit I receive it. I know people talk about inspiration, and of Shakespeare being inspired and so on; it is all very well, but did such men have a revelation - a positive new thing from God? The first thing is revelation; what is called inspiration is not so clear. It is possible I may have a revelation from God and never say a word about it. Paul had a revelation and told us nothing about it. Inspiration is an ambiguous word altogether, and people may be deceived by it; but when it comes to a positive revelation, men know they have no place at all in that. Then the Holy Ghost forms the communication too. It is like a fountain, the water is the same, and it comes out as it went in.

211 I do not think "comparing" in verse 13 is right at all. It is "communicating" spiritual by spiritual; he has the Holy Ghost's words and communicates the Holy Ghost's words, and that whether he be writing or preaching. There may be things which I am quite sure of, but which I may put in a way that is not the Holy Ghost's way. When Paul was preaching, it was not "comparing" at all. "We speak not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." In speaking I speak as from God, or else I ought to hold my tongue. "If any man speak; as oracles of God." This does not mean according to scripture, but as from God; of course it will be according to scripture, but that is not the thing there. This strikes at everything that is of man. "He himself is judged of no man," in verse 15, is man as man in contrast with the Holy Ghost.

In the last verse we have the same contrast with the Old Testament: "For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" and in answer to the challenge of the prophet it is, "but we have the mind of Christ." If I have Christ's mind, I have the thoughts that are in it and all that is included. We have not the divine mind abstractedly, but we have the Holy Ghost dwelling in us; and then comes all the revelation of the mystery.

212 I must bring the cross to a poor sinner whoever he is. A person's cleverness will not answer in the day of judgment; the cross is the answer of divine wisdom. Suppose he had made all the telegraphs in the country, when he is dead, what becomes of them to him? God will give you, not cleverness in your mind, but the Holy Ghost, and the truth of God, and the mind of Christ. John says, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." And there is no part of God's counsels that is not now brought into light. As to this the intelligent and the intelligible go together; with us creatures, you cannot get the capacity without the thought.

1 Corinthians 3.

Chapter 2 speaks of preaching Christ crucified to them, and chapter 3 deals with Christians. In chapter 3 it is his second visit to them. The carnal state was not going on while he was there. I do not think he had been twice to Corinth when he wrote this epistle. He wrote this from Ephesus, and the second from Macedonia, when he had sent Titus with the first. Although he says, "This is the third time I am coming to you," he does not say he had been. He had meant to come by Macedonia unto Corinth, but they were in such a state that he would not go. I do not think that he had been there more than once. In verse I he says, I "could not speak unto you as unto spiritual," and still he could not. "I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able." "Hitherto" gives the time all the way along, he could not bring these things before them.

God had said, "I have much people in this city," but God makes communication to hearts ready to receive them. It was so with Mary Magdalene, her heart clings thoroughly to Christ: the disciples go home, but she stays, and she communicates to the eleven our highest privileges at this moment, and that is because she was thinking about Christ. "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." Such is the message He gives her; it is the first time we have so full a statement. It was the personal affection of her heart set on Him through the attractive power of grace. So with the woman in the city that was a sinner. So with Mary that sat at His feet and heard His word. She comes and anoints Him for His burial. You will always find the apprehension of the mind of Christ flows from personal attachment to Himself. These people at Corinth were fond of their show-gifts and of themselves, therefore they could not be carried forward. "He that planteth and he that watereth" (v. 8) are merely instruments in God's hands - ministers of what God gave; they may be and are distinct in their labours, but are only ministers. One plants and another waters, and everyone shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. But they were all one as instruments in God's hand who gave the increase; yet the Lord owned their labour to each.

213 Then we come to another important truth, though it is only the outside now; he goes farther in the second epistle. We have the outward house here. There is a difference between Christ's building and man's building, even where the men were God's ministers. In these days it is a very important distinction where church questions have come in from Rome to brethren, if you please, on all hands. Christ says, "Upon this rock will I build my church": there I have Christ's building. Of course Satan cannot prevail against that, but it is not all built yet, for it is going on; and therefore Peter, who alludes to it (1 Pet. 2: 4, 5), does not give anybody at work; and so Paul says, "groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." There it is Christ building, but here it is man working; and directly we see responsibility we have possible failure. "Let every man take heed how he buildeth." That never could be said of what Christ is building. But what has been done by the system of popery and all church doctrine is to identify with Christ's building, that which is connected with man's building. Against His work the gates of hell shall not prevail; whereas, when it is the thing set up on earth, we have "let every man take heed how he buildeth," where he does not say the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

In Ephesians 2: 22 it is not man's building; there is nothing of man in Ephesians, but just the counsels of God. In chapter 3 we have the apostle as the instrument of the communication, but it is God's counsels and work to bring us into Christ, and so on. The church is the house as well as the body. In what Paul began to build there is wood, hay, and stubble, and that is wider than the body. The house built by Paul supposes wood, hay, and stubble built in, and there are both doctrines and professors; for if a man professes, he professes something.

214 In the apostle's days the house built by man may have been co-extensive with the body, but we read of false brethren creeping in very early. At first "the Lord added," and there it was co-extensive. When the three thousand were added, they were for certain all real; they were co-extensive as a fact, though not the same idea. Then there was the trusting of God's building in the world to man's responsibility. It had been the same with the law, the same with the priesthood, the same with the government. God set up everything first in man's responsibility, and all fails; but all will be accomplished in the Second Man in power - in rule and priesthood in Melchisedec, the true son of David.

A man may build with doctrines. We are not going to learn doctrines in the great day: they are used now, and you cannot separate these things. A good man may be a good builder, and all be well; but a good man may be a bad builder, and be saved, while his works are burnt up. The bad who corrupts is burnt up - he himself is destroyed. It is an amazing thing to see that there is a church-building going on upon earth which is not Christ's building. Whenever there is anything for man to do, there comes the question of his doing it properly Philip brought in Simon Magus, and there was man's building along with the good work which Christ was doing.

The "day" (v. 13) has always to do with judgment. It is the day that tries the work; it is simply and entirely judgment. The day shall be revealed in fire which shall try people's work; that will no doubt happen when Christ is revealed. But the object in speaking of His revelation in contrast with having the Spirit and gifts now (chap. 1: 8), is totally different from this, where it is expressly judgment. I may think of both, and of my appearing in glory too. The work might be tested any day, but, as stewards of the mystery of Christ, when that day comes, God will make manifest the counsels of their hearts.

In verse 16, we have "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?" Here it is a collective thing - "ye are." The temple is the habitation in which God dwells. In Ephesians 2 the apostle says, "groweth unto a holy temple." In Ephesians it is a thing of God's work and therefore perfect, whereas here it is a present thing - what is actually on earth. When discriminating so, there are certain things you must take into account. Language in scripture is used about people fitly, and you cannot take them otherwise. If you did, it would be misapplied truth. There is meat in due season as well as good meat. If I gave meat to a babe six months old, I should choke it.

215 Though wood, hay, and stubble are built in it, it continues the temple of God. Our Lord said, "Ye have made my Father's house a den of thieves"; but suppose I should go and say, as a general thing, "My Father's house is a den of thieves," it would be very inaccurate. Until God judge a system, it remains in the responsibility in which He originally set it. Apostasy has not yet come in; it may be commencing a little now, perhaps, the spirit of it is at work; but positive apostasy is the giving up the name of Christ. In 1 Timothy he says, "Some shall depart from the faith"; and so they did. I think it took place immediately: but that is a different thing; it is only "some," a matter of individuality.

We must not confound building with wood, hay, and stubble, and defiling the temple. In the former, the man builds upon the foundation, whatever he builds with, and he himself is saved, though building (it may be) with foolish doctrine. The other was positively seeking to corrupt the temple of God itself with false doctrine. A Christian may introduce bad doctrine, and still be saying there is no Saviour but Christ. If he teaches perfection in the flesh, that must be burnt up. Going to convert the world is wood, hay, and stubble, although we ought to have done it. But the man who is seeking to defile brings in fatal errors, and he is not a Christian. I do not know of any Christian who has done this, though it is possible that a person may propagate what he has learned and been deceived into, and thus become an instrument of Satan for defiling the temple; to "defile," and to "corrupt," and to "destroy," are the same here. But the Gnostics were defilers; Socinians are such. A Christian may be snared into it, it is true, and he then becomes an agent of Satan in the flesh.

1 Corinthians 4.

This chapter is a remarkably beautiful working of the apostle's heart, but with no particular subject in it. "Ye are full, ye are rich; ye have reigned as kings without us." This, in a sense, is written in irony, but all is of exceeding interest; v. 8-13.

216 "I know nothing by myself" (v. 4), means I know nothing against myself as an accusation. It is an old English form which was familiar enough two hundred years ago; you will find it in Bishop Hall's writings, though quite obsolete now. "Yet am I not hereby justified," means that that does not clear me, for the Lord judges or examines me. "Then shall every man have praise of God" (v. 5) does not mean that every man will have praise, but that the praise would be of God. When God makes manifest the counsels of the heart, some will get praise; this indeed will be worth something, but now it is all a mere nothing.

"Who maketh thee to differ?" (v. 7) is, If anyone has more gift than another, where does it come from? It all came from God. One was saying, I am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos, but the apostle says to such, It is all yours; and if one is greater than another, who made him to differ? Just as John says, "A man can receive nothing except it be given him from above."

From verse 14, though he bears everything, he lets them know he has power and warns them. Some said he was not coming, but he was, and he would shew the value of their speech. He does assert his power, though very gently, and indeed he was afterwards afraid he had said too much. "My ways in Christ" (v. 17) are the ways in which he conducted himself among the saints, as "I teach everywhere in every church." "The kingdom of God," v. 20. He preached the kingdom of God, as elsewhere he says, "Ye all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God." He was the minister of the kingdom of God, the minister of the new covenant, and the minister of the church.

1 Corinthians 5.

Now we come to their faults and to discipline. "Commonly reported" means that it was a generally known thing. The first thing we may note is the apostolic power of delivering to Satan. He had judged that, because he could bind on earth: it was apostolic power. Its object, he states, was for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Properly there is no such thing now. If a person is now put out from fellowship, he is not delivered to Satan, though in result he might possibly come under Satan. I know nothing that is a denial of this, though there be no gift of such power. If a person is excluded, it is not delivery to Satan. That made me say he might come under Satan; he is liable to it. To be thrown out into Satan's world is not delivering him or committing him to it. I know of nobody but the apostle who had the power. If there is anybody now to do it, all well; but I do not know how. The church is not commanded to do it here. He says, I have judged already - to deliver such an one to Satan. This was his own act; he did not tell them to do so. He does tell them to put such an one out.

217 They had not been instructed as to exclusion and discipline; but still in mind and heart they ought to have been broken down: at the least they should have been humble and mourning, as we see in verse 2. If the state of the assembly is so infirm, or so divided, that they cannot act, it is bad indeed. The difficulty is, the tendency to produce division. If the power of the Spirit of God is not acting on our consciences, one takes up one thought, and another another. That is what he means by "having a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled," 2 Cor. 10: 6. But here there was power to bring the matter on; he himself could come in in power, but he was afraid, lest Satan should make a split between him and them, and that is what he means when he says, he is not ignorant of Satan's devices. Then he tells them to purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. You are not a new lump if you do not purge out the old leaven. God had made an unleavened thing, and they would lose their character by not acting upon it. You are not a new lump at all, if you do not put it away. "As ye are unleavened" is their standing, and you give your character up if you do not act.

If they were not united in the assembly, they should humble themselves. I have often said in preaching to sinners even, that a man who has been brought up in a dirty house does not feel that it is dirty; and so if half the assembly be as bad as the bad one, the assembly must be cast on the Lord and mourn, and therefore in verse 2 he does not say how it is to be done, but till "he be taken away from among you." They ought to have been before God about it, for they had not got directions what to do. But when they did get them, they acted. If there is a case of flagrant sin, and the assembly does not act, what then? Practically it is no assembly at all, if its will goes with the offence. If any sided with the evil-doer after the testimony of the Spirit of God had reached the conscience of the body, then he treated them as the evil-doer. The duty is all plain; if there is a wicked person, the assembly must put him out; and a person so put out is not looked at as a brother, and they cannot admonish him as a brother, and I could not have fellowship with him as a brother. Before action I should consult with the brethren only, but should call the assembly together to act. If one had a case like this, say, or that could not be mentioned to women, it should of course be done in a way not to be offensive. But if it is an assembly, the Lord is there, and you must prove yourselves clear in the matter. If the assembly will not put the evil out when it is a case of gross sin, I should have no more to say to it: they would not prove themselves clear.

218 Leaven is the thing that defiles and corrupts; and others were involved in it because they would not judge it. Suppose you commit a sin, and I treat it as all very well, and keep your company just the same; why, of course I should be known by the company I keep. The proverb is common enough. The leaven was there; and the apostle speaks to their consciences about it. If such a person left, you cannot put a man out if he is out, or has gone out deliberately; but I should announce that he is out. That is hardly putting out, it is his going out. I should say he has left under the charge of such a sin, and gone out of the way, and is outside until he clear himself. If a man has gone out of this room, I cannot put him out, but he is out. As to inquiry, a few brothers may engage in that, but you cannot have a judgment on an individual unless the assembly does it. It is very right that one, or two, or three should inquire into the facts; but any wise godly brethren may do that, and the conscience of the assembly must thereupon be brought into action. If only some act and put him out, the rest may say they did not do it, and their conscience is not clear.

You must take each case in detail by itself; if one go away so, he has left the assembly; and if he leaves it under a charge against him, he must clear the charge before he comes back. He cannot come back without the case being judged by the assembly. It may be investigated by brethren, but not judged. Further, it should be named, if it be a case of sin and guilt. If a charge of fornication, say so; it is uncleanness; and if it was a public scandal, I should not be in any hurry to receive back. It is not a nice principle to talk about the honour of the assembly being involved; but the Lord's honour should come in. Yet, for the good of the individual, it should be done if the soul is really restored; though it be a strong case of public scandal, let him in again; never mind what people say. Here is one: A man overwhelmed with sorrow, and the apostle tells them to receive him, though it was such a scandal that its like was not even named among the Gentiles. A man may confess his fault, but this does not say his soul is restored. If it is a matter that nobody knows, and the man consults you and confesses all the fault, and is restored, you must judge whether it is a case for the assembly to deal with or not. If it is a matter between two brethren, the two might settle it. The "old leaven" is the leaven of the old nature; the "leaven of malice and wickedness" may be a more active expression. I am not to keep the feast with the old nature at work.

219 When a man is put out from the assembly, he nevertheless belongs to the house. It is like a naughty child turned out of the drawing-room; he belongs to the family still. Though the church cannot commit to Satan, to put away abides a positive duty. We have to obey. It is a commandment of the Lord. If you speak of delivery to Satan, it is a question of power. So far as the child's present position is concerned, he is outside the sitting-room; and until he behaves aright, he cannot be let in again.

Christ is sacrificed for us, and we are keeping the feast. That leads to the fact that unleavened bread was connected with the sacrifice by which redemption was wrought. No leaven was allowed in the house at all. Redemption is not an unholy thing. I must have sinlessness along with redemption. In the type you have bitter herbs, unleavened bread, and the passover meat. Here we are keeping the passover, and we must not have leaven, for sin and Christ cannot go together. Intercourse in the main would cease between you and a person so put out. I might invite him to my house for conversation, to see if he were restored; but even that is a delicate thing to do. In my intercourse with him, it would be with the fullest sense that he had put himself at a distance. It would be really ungracious to him to let him feel at ease with me in the place he occupies. You must not weaken the action of the assembly.

220 Two might be put away together for the same thing, and one might be restored without the other, and received before the other, or dealt with differently. In withdrawing from another, 2 Thess. 3: 6, I should treat him coolly. If he complained, I should say, It is quite right; there is my authority in scripture, and I must do so. Here in 1 Cor. 5: 11, it says, "no, not to eat." I would not dine with such an one; I would give him to eat if he were hungry, but not eat with him. Take a wife whose husband is put out. It may seem awkward, but her action is not keeping company with him as a case of will; it is one of subjection to authority.

Matthew 18 is another thing; it is only an individual direction. If the church acted, it would be on another scripture. Refusal to make good a wrong after all these pains might be a ground for the church to put him out. Do you ask if such a brother might not keep the whole thing in his own bosom. That depends on the case. "Thou shalt not suffer sin upon thy brother." If it were merely the idea of a wrong, or he thought the brother was all right after some personal matter, he might say, I forgive you; but otherwise he would be doing him harm by not taking it up. Charity is a keen discerner in all such things. If it is merely personal, I have a title to forgive.

Verse 11 is not a list of those who are to be put out. There is no such list. This would leave a thief or a murderer in communion. How to know a covetous man may be hard; there are cases which are plain enough, but prudence in a family is so close on covetousness, that you can make no line, nor can you act on your own conscience with respect to a man that may be covetous. If a case arise, and the assembly is spiritual, the Lord will make it clear. You will find that where a congregation of saints is spiritual, what is false and hypocritical cannot last there any length of time at all. But you cannot put out any man until he has done something to act upon. He will deaden the meeting of course, but so does all that is wrong. After he is out, the assembly cannot deal with him, though perhaps an individual might in mercy. When he is humbled, we should seek to restore. I do not think there is the power to restore that there ought to be amongst us. If there were more spiritual power, there would be more actual power over the conscience.

It is sometimes a question, How long is the assembly to go on treating as a brother one whom they have admonished? Samuel mourned for Saul to the day of his death. Some have been under rebuke, or outside for years. Such cases have arisen sometimes when young persons have been thrust forward into preaching, and had the flattery of women, etc. There ought to be an anxious desire for restoration of those put away. There must be holiness, but still a yearning of heart over such, a spirit that would induce brokenness on the offender's part. I am not conscious of any unfaithfulness as to dealing with evil, nor generally am I aware of hardness towards evil-doers.

221 Verse 5 shews that the ultimate end of discipline should be restoration. You deal with him as a member of Christ, and discipline him as such while he is within, and you put him outside that he might be broken down and brought in again. "Spiritual" has a double character. If I say that man is very spiritual, it may mean he has spiritual apprehension of divine things, or it may be spoken of the assembly. There is a dealing with things and with the conscience of the assembly. The assembly is the first thing to prove themselves clear in the matter. "Them that sin rebuke before all" might be done sometimes when people are put out, instead of doing so. "Rebuke" is convict as well as reprove; convict is before all.

1 Corinthians 6.

We come now to details of laxity as to going to law with unbelievers, to doing wrong instead of bearing it; and to the question of meats. Also he turns back to the great snare at Corinth, that is, its corruption through the flesh; and with that we get the individual as the temple of God.

It is very remarkable how, in the New Testament, the highest and most wonderful things of Christ are very often brought in and are approximated to ordinary life. Here they are said to be going to judge angels. The Spirit of God brings in the glories of another world and throws their light right into the commonest things here below. There is no other way of judging them like that. If he is telling a servant not to purloin, he gives the whole scope of Christianity for the motive in Titus 2: 9-14. And here these Corinthians were for squabbling at law: "Why," says he, "you are going to judge the world, yea, angels!" So again, in contrast with fornication, he says, Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. It is the revelation of such motives brought to bear on everyday conduct that is so wonderful. Flesh is there, and you have to apply these elevated things to judge it. Chapter 12 in the second epistle is most striking that way, in the beginning Paul being caught up to the third heaven, and at the end bewailing the uncleanness among them. Here our very bodies are members of Christ being indwelt by the Holy Ghost.

222 The saints are to judge the world and the angels, when Christ comes again; in one sense all through the millennium, but in the main when He comes. Do not you know that? he says. They had, no doubt, been taught by him. Corinth was a dreadful place. When they wanted to say a man was living in luxury and debauchery, they called it Corinthianising. It was a proverb, "Everybody cannot go to Corinth." And by these things the church was infected. There always is the tendency to be affected by the atmosphere which surrounds us. The habits of the world have a kind of power that must be felt if there is not a spiritual power to resist them.

In verse 5 he speaks to their shame; the smallest - that is, in spiritual power - ought to be able to judge the things that pertain to this life. And he tells them they ought rather to suffer wrong than go to law before the unbelievers. They were in a terrible state, they came behind in no gift, and they came forward in no grace. His object is to avoid suits between brethren. The Lord says, we are not to resist evil. It is a question of grace, though righteousness is in it. If I can keep Christ's character, I would rather do so than keep my cloak. It is more sorrowful for the heart to lose Christ's character than to lose the cloak.

The Old Testament saints will be associated with Christ in the judgment of the world. But the apostle is from time to time writing about the resurrection and the rapture, and he thinks only of those to whom he is writing. He does say, "that they without us shall not be made perfect," and our Lord speaks of Abraham and others sitting down in the kingdom of God. But Paul is writing to certain persons for a certain purpose and to suit them, so that, while other dogmas may be behind, but very few passages refer directly to them. You will find truth in scripture connected at one end with God, and at the other end with man; but if you cut these ends off, you will find you have got a dry stick instead of a plant. And as it is connected with man, in order to get at the mind of scripture you must put yourself in the place of the people the apostle is addressing and in that way look at it.

223 I believe the saints of the Old Testament will be there because I see "thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them," etc. (Rev. 20: 4). You gather it from passages in that kind of way. No doubt they will be raised and will not be made perfect without us but with us. The "saints of the high places" in Daniel 7 are the slain remnant under the beast. To be on the thrones of judgment, I suspect, is the lowest part of the glory. So in Laodicea the overcomer is to sit upon the throne. No saint will miss that.

Mark here in verse 11, "and such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Sanctification is before justification; and when they come together, it is so habitually. You are sanctified to the blood of sprinkling; 1 Pet. 1: 2. Now I think scripture speaks as plainly as possible of progressive sanctification; but still, when you have sanctification and justification spoken of together as two things, sanctification comes first. The reason is that, if you put that last, you would have the man with a perfect title to heaven and yet unfit for it. But again you never find fitness for heaven connected with progressive sanctification. There is plenty of scripture about sanctification as to the fact, "growing up to him in all things," "purify himself even as he is pure," these all shew progress when I am a Christian, but are not connected at all with fitness for heaven. On the contrary you get "giving thanks to the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," speaking of all Christians together. Then there is the poor thief who went straight to paradise; of course he was fit for it. Scripture is plain enough on progressive sanctification too: that is likeness to Christ here.

A man is set apart to God, like a stone in a quarry, and the Spirit of God takes him out; he is quickened by the Holy Ghost and put into the value of Christ's work. "Sanctified by blood" is in Hebrews; which is merely that now this covenant is brought in, for He died for the nation, and the blood of the covenant was shed, and God lays the ground for the people to come in under it; but if they did not, that lay with them. But 'sanctified to blood' (1 Peter 1: 2) is by the Spirit of God. Sanctification of the Spirit is not in Hebrews at all, except that we have a glimpse of it in "follow after holiness." Having been washed in the passage we are considering is the development of the truth, speaking of the filth they were in. It is application of the word: "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you"; and he gives the character of that as being sanctified and justified. If "sanctified by God the Father" in Jude is right, the meaning is He did it in His counsels in grace.* You get no work without the whole Trinity. In the miracles of Christ He says, "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." "My Father worketh hitherto and I do work." Then "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils." So we are God's children, and have the life of Christ, and it is the Spirit of God we are quickened by.

{*See New Translation, "beloved in God the Father."}

224 Instead of the Trinity being some out of the way doctrine, it runs through the whole of the scriptures. Communion is with the Father, and with the Son, and with the Holy Ghost. Again in prayer "through him" - Christ - "we have access by one Spirit unto the Father." You first get it where it is so beautiful to me in the end of Matthew 3. There Christ is taking His place among the remnant and is baptised by John the Baptist - not that He needed repentance, of course. But then immediately you get heaven opened, and the Holy Ghost comes down, and the Father owns Him as the Son. And there I get my place as a Christian sealed with the Holy Ghost. I too am a son. Heaven is opened to me, and the Father owns me: and in all this I get the first full revelation of the Trinity, where Christ first takes our place in grace coming to fulfil righteousness: the first time heaven is opened: and here I get the place of a man in the counsels of God the first time the Son takes His place as a man. It is all the more striking because the next thing is that He takes the other side of our place: He is led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

Christ at His baptism says 'us'; but though others came acknowledging their sins, He had none to acknowledge, He came fulfilling righteousness; He was taking His place with the excellent of the earth, and that runs all through, Christ taking His place with His disciples. It is here that the question is raised whether He was a good Jew. "Doth not your master pay tribute?" they mean, to the temple service. And Christ says, "Of whom do the kings of the earth take tribute, of their own children or of strangers?" and when they say of strangers, He says, Then are the sons free. That is, they could not claim it of Him: "nevertheless, that we offend them not," He tells Peter to go to the sea and cast in a hook for a fish and in its mouth he should find a piece of money which he was to pay "for me and thee." He commands all the creation of God, and that very thing in which He shews divine knowledge and then divine power was the very thing in which He ranks Peter with Himself.

225 "Ye are washed" is the aorist middle in Greek, ("you have washed yourselves") constantly used in that way in a passive sense in the New Testament. What is commonly called passive in Hebrew is used as a reflective verb in the same way. As to "in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God," the Greek preposition en is constantly used thus; but "by" would be better in both cases. When it is anything of power, we have en as is well known, not for instrumental meaning, but 'in virtue of.' You cannot take a word in one language as answering exactly to another in another language: you will make all sorts of confusion if you do. From the different relationships of words, it would have conveyed a different thought to a Greek from its circumstances, though it is the same word that is used in different positions. You get Paul passing over where he talks of honour and dishonour, from en to dia; that shows "by" is not quite identical; dia is the instrument, but en is not exactly that, but more intimate.

By all things lawful, not all expedient (v. 12), he means that there is no difference to him, but he will not allow anything to have power over him. The moment it governs, lust has power over him if it is only eating something nice. There are a number of details here next: meats for the belly, and the body not for fornication but for the Lord; also the Lord for the body. He has taken up the body as well as the soul, though He has not yet redeemed it out of its present state. It is for the Lord therefore and not for its own lusts. And what the Lord has done is, He has made it the temple of the Holy Ghost. It awaits its redemption in the sense of taking it into glory; my soul has the liberty of grace, and my body waits for the liberty of the glory, and all creation waits. Yet the body now belongs to the Lord, and He takes it for Himself, and the Holy Ghost dwells in it as a temple. "And in your spirits which are God's" in the last verse is a clause left out in all the best manuscripts.

226 When he says "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," it is with the thought of authority. It is the Lord Himself you are joined to; the person is none less than the Lord Himself. But one could not intelligently say "members of the Lord," because then you lose the thought of lordship. Jesus is the personal name: He was raised individually, and if God raised Him up, He will also raise up all His members; Rom. 8: 11. On the other hand, "God shall destroy both it and them," means there will be an end of them. Its present state is all destroyed. The whole topic is clear and shews the absurdity of the thoughts of annihilationists. Man is redeemed, the spirit returns to Him who gave it: God having breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life, man became a living soul. But then these are distinct things, the spirit (it is plain) being that higher part in which we are in some sort of connection with God. In 1 Thessalonians 5: 23, the spirit is that by which we are connected with God. God formed man's body out of the dust of the earth - not so the animals - and then breathed into man, and so he became alive. Notice the way of doing it too, God taking counsel about it: He had finished the whole creation and pronounced it good, but He did not say so of man. He finished with the animals, and then He says, "Let us make man," and so on. Man might be at enmity to God, but still there is a relationship to Him, be it bad or good. Hence misery is final, supposing it to be misery, because man has a nature to be so. And thence too the poet says, "we are his offspring." Take the bad part of a man and you see it, the mind of the flesh is enmity against God: even when wicked and bad, he has to do with God. In ordinary language the two words - soul and spirit - are used for one another.

"From all filthiness of flesh and spirit," is simply contrasting body and spirit. I get my spirit sanctified in an amazing way when I love God. But then clearly the soul, if you come to make the difference, is the lower part: there is the dividing apart of soul and spirit, the word of God can come in and make the difference between the two. In one sense I have a soul like an animal, though very much higher in character. As I said to the annihilationists, any stupid child in the streets knows that, if you stick a man, and all his blood runs from his body, he will die just like a pig. There is that animal life. The first proposition in logic is 'man is an animal.' But if he becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus, of course his identity is preserved, - as to who, but not as to what he was before. If you say what he was before, it is not the same. The soul is morally changed because I love God instead of hating Him.

227 In the case of dying the connection of soul and body is lost for the time, but it is not so when the body is changed, for the links go with the body. That was just the difficulty of the Sadducees, in supposing seven men with one wife, when they get into resurrection. In the flesh we have the devil's sin, that is, pride against God, and the spirit's sins in our bodies. In chapter 2: 14 of this epistle, we have seen that it is the natural man, the man without the Holy Ghost. A man is not a man without body, soul, and spirit. They may be separated for a little, as when he dies. Sometimes it is called, inner man and outer man, soul and body.

Spirit and soul are never separated; one is the higher part of the other, so to speak. The word of God is the only thing that can distinguish them. Philosophers were wrong, as Aristotle. To them it was merely mind and the animal soul, which loves, for instance, one's children. I have a mind that thinks about children, and so on: that is all right so far; and philosophers recognised that there was this in man, but they went no farther than this intellect. We know there is a link between man and God, and that is responsibility too, though now man has got into enmity. The "dividing asunder" in Hebrews 4 is that which just gives the difference between the two, for it cuts them into two. Heathens saw the superiority to beasts, but I do not believe the intellect which they owned has anything to do with God. All philosophy is a perfect delusion, intellect has nothing to do with God at all. God may act upon it: that is another thing.

It is not, of course, as with a stone that God acts upon man, but it is through his conscience. It is not the activity of man's intellect at all. A man of considerable intellectual powers is all the more likely to go wrong. God may take a chosen vessel and fit it for Him to act in and by, but never for the vessel to act. Wherever the vessel acts, it shuts God out. That is what Paul insists on so much in the opening of this epistle. And faith is never in the intellect; and, what is more, the intellect never knows a truth. Intellect knows consequences, but these are not truth. That is, truth is not the object of intellect, but of testimony. This is where the difference lies. You tell me something and I believe you, but the thing that receives truth (on, I believe, a testimony) is not intellect. "He that receiveth his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true."

228 The very thing by which man proves there must be a God is a proof that he cannot know God. Take this world: there is evidence of skill, there must have been a designer, some one must have made it. So with a watch (the common illustration), some one must have made it. So to the infidel geographer they brought once a globe; and when he asked, who made that? "Nobody" was the reply. What do you mean? I ask who made that globe? "Nobody"; and of course, he was confounded. I am not capable of conceiving of such a thing existing without a cause; but if I see it there, I must get a Former of it. I am so constituted that I cannot think of such a thing without a cause. This is exactly what it amounts to. God must have wrought: without a cause you cannot think it out. I cannot conceive of anything existing without finally a causing cause. But a cause uncaused is above me! The thing that proves He must be proves I cannot tell what He is. Logic says, If so-and-so is true, then so-and-so must be; but this does not say that it is, which is a very different thing to my soul. If I say "must be," that is a mere inference. The moment I get a testimony that it is, how different! I get a divine testimony, and set to my seal that God is true. This is faith, divine faith. One thing flows from another, and I cannot help inferring. That is the constitution of man, and he must think according to what he is, he cannot think otherwise.

Intellect never discovered anything in divine things; it may deduce correct conclusions, but it never can go above itself. That is another way of looking at it. If intellect pretends to go above itself, it is an absurdity on the face of it. If it pretends to rise to God, He is not the true God at all, but the mere conclusion of my mind. God can act on me, as physic acts on man; but that is not what I am. God has given us receptivity so far as that goes. It is as simple as ABC. Here is God, and if I bring Him in, it closes reasoning; and if I leave Him out, everything is false. I may have the farthings, but no pounds in the account. Nine-tenths of our ideas come from relationship, not from intellect; just as a child knows its father. Relationship is never known by reason: mind is fond of a kind of metaphysical reasoning about this, but it is all folly. The moment relationship is formed, all moral duty flows from it, and from it alone. Duty has nothing to do with intellect. This it is that makes us totally dependent. Man at the outset tried to get out of dependence on God, and really got into dependence on the devil and his own lusts. "By every word of God shall man live" was dependence and obedience, and that was where Christ was: it is the proper place of every intelligent creature, who ought to be both dependent and obedient.

229 Then we have here that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. He acts on the soul and on the heart - Christ dwells in our hearts by faith - but the body is His temple, and therefore it is to be used accordingly. A great deal of mischief springs from not recognising this. The body is only in its right place when it is a vessel which I am just using for God. The body of the Christian is a member of Christ, because he is His, and I am this, and my body is part of Him. It is a temple of God, because the Holy Ghost dwells there. My body is His temple; it is simple statement: but the Holy Ghost is to guide me. "Ye are not your own." We have the two great leading principles of Christian condition: the body the temple; and I am bought with a price; and for both reasons we must glorify God bodily, because it is purchased, and is possessed by the Holy Ghost dwelling in it. This gives a great distinctness to the reality of the personal presence of the Holy Ghost. Too often people talk about the Spirit working in their hearts, with the thought only of a mere influence. Even that does produce a certain state of heart in such, it is true; but that my body is His temple gives reality and personality clearly and in power.

Well, then, I am not to go and abuse the temple of God. This is peculiar to saints since redemption. "He that is joined to the Lord" is a real thing. If I am joined to the Lord, I get all the fulness of Him that dwells in me; which shews the great difference between life and union. People say we are united by faith, and again by life; but neither is true; we are united in life, but the union is by the Holy Ghost. The Old Testament saints might be united in heart and spirit, but this was no union as in the New Testament saints.

230 Persons dwelling together is not a body. There could not be a body until Christ was at the right hand of God: and you must get the head before you get the body. You have a divine Son, the Son of God, quickening whom He will, but no body formed until the Holy Spirit is given. A person cannot be said to be a member of Christ until he be sealed. Take the apostle for three days and nights. The saints were not the body of Christ until the day of Pentecost. There may be souls in that state now, quickened but not having received the gospel of their salvation; and so doubting and fearing. But we should not judge of souls because they say, "I doubt," and "I do not know": so many think it is presumption to say, "I am a child of God." They will tell you, "I am afraid to talk in that way. I have a humble hope things will be all right; and sometimes I feel happy." Now suppose I hear at their prayers, one saying, "Father," when speaking to God, and another saying, "Be merciful to me a sinner," then I learn the difference.

Though one call upon God as Father, it is far happier for a soul to see clearly; but when a soul cries Abba Father, he has just the same title to the Lord's table as I have. The principle is very simple. The Lord's supper has the character of the one body, inasmuch as "ye are partakers of that one loaf." If one calls God Father, he is a member of Christ, being sealed with the Holy Ghost. We are not always judges; but the principle is simple. The man that is sealed with the Holy Ghost is a member of the body of Christ, and the Lord's supper is a sign of the unity of the body. As a member of the body, that is his place. Intelligence is not the test of communion. I do not bring my degree of knowledge of what I have, but I come because I am a member of Christ; and if another comes, of course it is the same thing. The consciousness that God is his Father is upon the testimony of the Holy Ghost. He must have faith in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, not merely in His Person; he receives the Holy Ghost, and is, of course, member of the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 7.

The apostle turns to marriage in this chapter, and then the general truth of staying wherein you are called. It is a beautiful passage of scripture, as to the holiness of marriage. We must deal with every subject from God.

231 In verse 12, "To the rest speak I, not the Lord," is very precious, because the modern infidel speaks of inspiration as if it were the highest expression of the inner life. Now I find the apostle making a difference here, which is instructive. He says, "As I have received mercy of the Lord to be found faithful," as a man, I give you this experience; and to the rest speak I, not the Lord. Scripture therefore meets everything, repudiating the whole system of those men who deny inspiration, carefully distinguished between Paul's best thoughts and the Lord's commands. On this subject Paul will not give us a command, and he is inspired to tell us that. And very precious that is in itself. We have his spiritual judgment, and him clearly telling us that that is not the command of the Lord. He is inspired to make that difference. Not all that is in scripture is inspired, for you get the devil's words and wicked men's words, but the writer who gives them is inspired to make the record.

Verse 14. "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean, but now are they holy." It is in contrast with the Jews; if a Jew had married a Gentile wife, he had to send her off, and her children off too, or he profaned himself. If the Jew were to be holy, they must all go. The Christian system being gracious, it is just the opposite, and the Christian, instead of being profaned by the unbeliever, sanctified him or her, and the children too. They are "sanctified," just in the sense opposite to that in which a Jew was profaned.

The other leading thought of the chapter is, that I am to leave what I cannot abide in with God. Christ being rejected, and the power of evil having come in, though marriage is all lawful, and so on, yet let even those that have wives, be as though they had none (v. 29-31), even using this world in everything as not a possession of mine, as not belonging to me. And so in verse 23. Do not be slaves of men if you can help it; yet stay where you are if you can, with God. A servant in most cases in the New Testament was a slave; masters might be heathen, and so on. Be free if possible; that was to be preferred, but not to be an object for the heart to be set on.

232 1 Corinthians 8.

Here we come to things offered to idols. There are two distinct directions about that. They had to own the idol was nothing, and yet own it was something to the consciences of men. Looked at it in itself, as an idol, it was nothing; and the meat offered to it was what God created. But then the consciences of men got into connection with demons about it. He says at first, "We know that an idol is nothing in the world"; and then again, "As touching things offered to idols, we know, for we all have knowledge." But knowledge only puffs up, and the man who knew all this, might go with a clear conscience himself and eat this meat, but would stumble his brother who had a weak conscience.

In verse 6 the word "in" should be "for": "Of whom are all things and we for him." I believe that is the right force of eis. And in the same passage, the different uses of the words "God" and "Lord" are seen very clearly. It is not the divine nature as such, but the place that the divine Persons hold in what men call the economy of grace. The Father rested in simple Godhead, but the Son has become a man and taken the place of Lord in His manhood. Then when I speak specifically of God, I speak of the Father. As to Christ, "he shall call his name Jesus" - Jehovah the Saviour - for He shall save His people from their sins; but the place He has now taken is that of Lord. "God hath made him whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ." It is not that He ceases to be Jehovah, but He has taken the place of Lord, while the Father rests in simple abstract Godhead. I notice it, because in Christ as Lord I get the grace administered. I am a child with the Father, but if I am looking for administration, I go to the Lord: "Lord Jesus receive my spirit." "Lord, we have heard by many of this man," and so on. "To us there is but one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ." It does not say what the nature of that Lord is. He is God and He is man both, but you have the place, the leading place He has taken. "All power," He said, "is given to me in heaven and on earth; go ye therefore, and disciple all nations." Defiling the conscience (v. 7), means that, if a man has a conscience about anything as evil, he must follow his conscience, or he defiles it. Mark here, there is no building up on knowing evil. If I think I ought to eat herbs, I must eat them or my conscience is defiled. I must depart from iniquity; but I cannot build up on the negative.

233 In verse 11, "shall the weak brother perish?" is the tendency of my eating so far as I can go, because I am leading him to sin against his conscience. It is not that the Lord will not step in and save him, but that is what I am doing. We have the same truth in other forms elsewhere, "for if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die" (Rom. 8: 13): that is the end of living after the flesh. It is nothing about eternal death or eternal life either. He is dead already, and the end of those things is death. Death is the judgment of God. If a man lives in those things, he shall die. God has shewn the end of certain things to be death, and if I drag my brother into those things, and their end is death, then, though I do not believe from other texts that God will leave him there, yet I am making my brother perish.

It is a great thing never to twist a single text of scripture to a doctrine. God is wiser than we are, and He has made no mistakes. I see people afraid of certain texts about certain doctrines, and I feel, therefore, that doctrine is not a settled thing with them. It is the same in effect in Romans: "Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died" - destroy my brother for a bit of meat! The moment I see that the end of these things is death, and I am making my brother do one of them, it is plain at once that I am destroying my brother, and God's act to him would be in spite of me. It is quite true, that the moment I look at a believer in Christ, there is no "if," nor can be, as to his security; he is accepted in the Beloved, and there is no "if anything"; he is sitting in the heavenly places in Christ, and the whole matter is settled; but that is not all that God has chosen to do about him. He has chosen to put him through the wilderness when he has redeemed Him, and then we have "ifs" and "whens" without end: "If ye hold fast," in Hebrews; "If ye continue," in Colossians, and so on. But what we have along with it is, absolute dependence upon Another, and infallible faithfulness in Another. As I have sometimes said, I may be standing with my child on the top of a rocky precipice, and he is apt to run about foolishly, and I say to him, "If you tumble over, you will be smashed to atoms"; but I have not the slightest idea of leaving my hold of him, or of letting him fall. Now we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. This shews we need to be kept; but on our side it is dependence on the power that does keep. You cannot confuse that with acceptance; but it is constant dependence upon God keeps my soul in a right state towards Him.

234 The cautions in God's word make me think of God's perfect love and faithfulness in keeping me; that occupies me in my proper place of dependence. It is the confusion of this with acceptance that makes all the difficulty. I could not say to you now, "If I were to go to Belfast," for I am here; and so is my standing before God absolute. "Who will confirm you to the end" proves that I want confirming. God puts me in a place where the manna will not be wanting one single morning, and so I live by every word of God, and this brings one back to a blessed sense of dependence continually. Redemption brings one into the wilderness, and then what do I find? That God has been thinking of the nap of my coat all the way, nor has my foot swollen along the road, while He leads me there to humble me, and prove me, to know what is in my heart; and again, "that thou mightest know that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." (Also Deut. 8: 15, 16.) It is not merely that I am safe in Christ - accepted - but I am kept by the power of God in dependence upon Him; and there it is that I get "ifs" and "ifs," but none upon the faithfulness of God or a doubt about it. It is only as regards myself that I find the constant "if" that keeps me in dependence. On His side, "I know my sheep and am known of mine, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." Well, then, the hand must be there to keep me. It makes the perfect faithfulness of God receive us, but then we are dependent upon that faithfulness

1 Corinthians 9.

In verse 18 of this chapter we find the word "abuse" again; but the Greek means that I use outright for myself. It would not have been abusing his power in the gospel, but he did not use that power as something to which he had title of possession; he only thought about it as a thing he could use for the sake of the gospel. There is really no thought of "abusing" in it. It would not be "abusing," to take a salary, or whatever you call it. "Abuse" is a bad word, but it is difficult to give the sense in one word; no single English word suits. As to the other passage - "Using this world and not abusing it" - you hear it quoted by people who are up to their neck in it; and it is, perhaps, more important to notice it there than here. It is using this world as not having it in possession; simply handling it therefore, and that not as property.

235 The general subject here is ministry. False teachers had gone to Corinth, Judaising and seeking their own, and, by way of getting a great credit, took nothing. Paul, finding it out, would not take anything either; not that he had not the title. He was an apostle, and the Lord had so ordained, that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel; but he would not use the power. Whatever it was, Paul would not take it, and the assembly as an assembly has nothing to do with it; community and fellowship in the act is all very nice, yet if they do it together, it is not as an assembly, though in fellowship. If I go to preach and teach, it is as sent of the Lord, though, of course, it is always happy to do it in fellowship.

An assembly would be to blame if they knew an evangelist labouring, and did not assist him. They would be losing one of their privileges. The Philippians were very forward to do it, and so it was now with some. Perhaps it might be to help some other gift, and in another place. I think that is a most happy thing to find, and would not only have blessing on the one side, but on the other. Locality makes no difference. An evangelist is a servant of Christ, not of the assembly. In Philippians, "now at the last your care of me" is a beautiful expression of the delicacy of the feeling of the apostle; they had left him a long while, or he says so, and then adds, "but ye lacked opportunity." If things were right in an assembly, all this would be done happily. In many places there are collections at times for brothers at work at home and abroad, which is all very right too. I did not mean that the assembly should not together assist, but that it should not have a control of the preacher in any way; he is responsible to the Lord, and not the assembly's servant. On the other hand, if they knew any reason for not sending to him, they would be bound not to help him.

If a preacher gives up his trade for the Lord's sake, of course he may "live of the gospel" by being maintained and fed, getting food, raiment, and what he wanted. He may, if he have energy, work like Paul all night, and so support his house as to prevent selfish people, like some at Corinth, from saying, He is doing it for his pay. Not many have energy enough to do the two things, and do them well. If you have a man preaching, supply him while he preaches; he that ploughs should plough in the hope of getting the fruit of his ploughing; so Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 that he must work, or else he will not get his wages. There is a question of translation whether it is "first labouring," or "first partaking." It is a mere comparison like the other; if a man strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned unless he strive lawfully. Only he must first labour to be a partaker. The verses before shew that he is to endure hardness as a good soldier, and he is not to entangle himself with the affairs of this life. We have something of the same kind in verse 24 of our chapter: "know ye not that they which run in a race, run all, but one receiveth the prize?" Even what Christ has sent me, I do not take up, for His sake. I glory in this that I have given up everything I had a title too, for the gospel's sake. It is a very strong expression, Better for me to die than for me to do anything that would hinder the gospel. He was ashamed of the Corinthians.

236 Paul was not under yoke to anyone in his service, only to the Lord, of course. He was free in that sense; it is what he calls willingly and unwillingly in this chapter. He did it not for his own will, but still he was free from man. Peter did not send him. That was what they charged against him; he had not seen the apostle; he did not come from Jerusalem, and so on. In verse 19 we find what "free" is: "Though I be free from all, yet have I made myself servant unto all." In 2 Corinthians 11 he says no one shall stop him of his boasting, and he will do as he had done, that he might cut off occasion from others, "that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we."

In verses 20, 21, he sought to win Jews, not to Judaise. Judaising was very common. In itself Judaism was God's dealing with human nature, to see if good could be got out of flesh. God dealt with Adam and then with the Jew (promise coming in between), but Judaism was God taking up man on his responsibility, and giving him a rule or law, and with it all appliances to help, a priesthood and temple, every kind of help to a man as man, to see if any good could be got from him. It was the orderly essaying and proving whether man could be on terms with God. He could not please God; but yet it is the constant tendency of human nature to go back and try again, for it does not bow and own; there is no good in it; and so it is always talking about keeping the law, but never does it. Really man's responsibility is not in question at all. There is such a thing; but Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost. "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." But that is it which has been brought into the light and condemned, and I have therefore now a right to say I am dead. "Through the law I am dead to the law, that I might live unto God." I am dead and finished as a child of Adam. Because this is not apprehended, there are always some remains of Judaism. "When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." And the result is, we discover we are lost. Take the whole system of setting up law in any form, and the moving of men's hearts by it: it all owns man still - alive in the flesh. You get it grossly in a self-righteous person, and in a mixed shape in those who try to put law and grace together; but in each and all it is just human nature thinking it can be something. There is something terrible in putting a man under law after grace has come in; it is setting him to responsibility after flesh has been proved unable to meet it.

237 After the second word "law" in verse 20, there is a clause left out, which is, "not being myself under law." It is recognised as in the text by all who have examined it. He puts subjection to Christ in the place of being under law. All that he means by "to them that are under the law, as under law," is some such thing as that he would not eat pork, if sitting at table with a Jew. Timothy was circumcised on some such principle. He had no right to be circumcised. It was an arbitrary act (for his father was a Greek), unless he wished himself to be a Jew. Paul yielded to the Jewish Christians in that case, and did it to please them; but notice that the moment he got into a scrape about it, not one of those he sought to please shewed his face to help him. In dealing with Jews he adapted himself to them, but directly that the Jews made the law necessary, he withstood them. He would not give in about Titus, because they were making it necessary. But here in Paul's own case there was no necessity; it was his own adapting himself to them, and just what we all ought to do. His action at Jerusalem was a further case. The Spirit had told him not to go up, and he could not do anything right there, though nothing wrong either. It was merely to please himself, and under other people's advice, doing this and that after he had left all such things entirely.

238 There is no limit for the early primitive church but the death of the apostles. Peter speaks of his decease, pointing to a change. But what we have in principle for ourselves is, "that which is from the beginning." If it is not from the beginning, it has no claim of authority at all. "If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father." They had wanted at the council of Nice to establish the celibacy of the clergy, but one old bishop got up and told them they would only be putting a snare to their feet; that was about nine years before some tried at the first so-called general council to lay it down as a rule, but they were hindered, though the spirit of asceticism had come in. A century afterwards you find the strongest denouncement of these notions. Chrysostom has two treatises against them.

Alford's translation is not to be depended upon. It may be useful to a person who can judge for himself. He had an active mind in raising questions, but I never regarded his judgment in settling them. His was not a sober judgment, and not therefore one to be trusted. What I dread in these new translations is that there is a kind of conservatism of an old doctrine governing them; as, for instance, Alford retains, "Sin is the transgression of the law," 1 John 3: 4. Thus you find him keeping to the old thing because it is there. None of them knows scripture or has got truth from scripture, but they bring their thoughts to scripture. Some modern scholars have changed that text, and besides it is clear enough in other passages, as Romans 2: 12, "they that have sinned without law, shall also perish without law"; which is in contrast with them that have sinned under law. It is clear contrast there and that in the English translation itself. But they had a doctrine which was that the transgression of the law was sin, and so in John they put it, "sin is the transgression of the law"; but where their doctrine was not in question, they translated it as "lawless." In John it is positively contrary to scripture; for when it says "they that have sinned without law," how can this be if sin is the transgression of the law? And again, how then could sin by the commandment become exceedingly sinful? And again, "for until the law sin was in the world": how could that be if sin was but the transgression of the law?

239 "Sin is not imputed when there is no law," it is true. But this is not the word elsewhere rendered "impute"; it means the particular sin is not put to account. You are a sinner and lawless when you have no law, but I cannot say to you, Such and such a thing is forbidden. As if my child runs into the street, instead of doing its lessons, I cannot say in a particular sense, "You have been disobedient"; but if I have told him not to go out into the street, then it is not a general question of his idleness, but I say I am going to whip you for that particular thing. In Romans 5: 13, what the apostle is reasoning on is that death was a proof that sin was there before there was law. You cannot confine grace to the Jews, for then you make it narrower than sin; for death and sin were there, and all had sinned, and if you shut up grace to those under law and do not let in the Gentiles, you are making sin a more powerful thing than the grace of God. Death was reigning there before ever Moses' law came in, and that is the meaning of the expression "who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression," a quotation from Hosea 6: 7, "but they like men" - Adam - "have transgressed the covenant." These Gentiles never did that, the Jews did. They transgressed it, and Adam too transgressed the commandment he had; yet these Gentiles were under sin and death, though they had no law at all. You must now take up Christ as answering to Adam in headship, though first he adds more, that the law entered that the offence might abound, but where sin - not offence - abounded, grace did much more abound. The difference between "impute" in Romans 4 and 5, is that in chapter 4 it is reckoning a man to be something; in chapter 5 it is putting so much to his account. It occurs again in Philemon, "put that to my account."

In reading the verse in 1 John 3, "Sin is lawlessness," it would not have the same effect if you reversed the words as they stand as in our version; but as in the Greek with the two articles, it is a reciprocal proposition. 'A blow is sin'; but you could not say, 'sin is a blow.' But 'lawlessness is sin and 'sin is lawlessness '; and he who practises sin also practises lawlessness. It is kai (and) that is used to connect the sentence, which I think brings it back to an abstract proposition. In Romans 5: 5, Adam had a law and Moses had a law, and sin was in between and death too. I think you see at once that a law is in contemplation; not so lawlessness, which is expressed by an abstract word.

240 Sin, I believe, is a man having a will of his own. It so far takes in law that, the moment you have got a creature of God, there was some rule or will of God that that creature ought to obey, but if he does not, he is lawless. To sin, in Greek, is to err, to miss anything, as, not to hit when shooting at a mark, or to reel off when you ought to keep on; to leave a straight right path is the etymological meaning of this word. But it is a very different thing to bring in the thought of law. If I say, "them that have sinned without law," it makes me think of a law though they have had none. You cannot in the abstract sense think of a creature that has to say to God, without thinking of God's authority expressed somehow, and this would be a law to him, which also was true in the garden of Eden. But when a fruit was particularly forbidden, it was a legal covenant; "if you eat that, you shall die" - a positive rule. Well man eats it and gets a conscience, and so on. Afterwards Moses' law was a perfect rule for man in that state, for a child of Adam that had got away from God. There is no means in it of bringing him back to God, and therefore it says, "the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be": it has got a will of its own. That state we have brought out in our chapter where we were reading, in which Paul is said to be under law to Christ, and yet not himself under law. It is the abstract idea of being subject to the rule of Christ, and so on; yet he states at the same time that he is not under law, he will not hear of that in any way: but he adds "not without law to God," nor lawless therefore as regards God, and yet he is not under law, while he is rightly subject to Christ.

The mischief of maintaining law is that it sets up flesh, treating man as alive. Now the doctrine of Christianity is that man is not alive. The law has power over a man so long as he lives. Well, if I am alive, I am a responsible man in the flesh, and lost and condemned. But now we are delivered from the law, having died in that in which we were held, and that is where there is no allowance of sin; and he brings in a nature to which the power of Christ is added. He does not set about to leave the man alive and then bring the law to a man that will not bow to it. He did that once of old, but now in Christ we have a new life with power in it, and in that respect the Christian scheme is as plain as possible. It is not bringing a law to a nature that cannot be subject to it, but the bringing in a new nature that delights to do the will of God. You contrast the new nature with will, and then add the Holy Ghost for power.

241 In Romans 8: 10, "the body is dead because of sin." If my body is alive, in the scriptural sense of evil, it is flesh, but of course this body is a mere instrument. The Jesuits said a body ought to be a mere carcase and obey. "On account of sin" is the practice. The only source of life to the Christian that he owns is the Spirit. I hold my body dead, because if it is alive it will be a fountain of sin. Sin in the flesh is clear in scripture. You never get flesh alone unless merely as to the body, as "the life I live in the flesh." The "body of sin," in Romans, is taking it as a whole: as I might say the "body of heaven," the whole of it. In Colossians it is "body of the flesh": it is the idea of the whole thing going as one lump. I do not doubt there is an allusion to the body, but the thought is the whole thing. This body is looked at as the seat of sin, I have no doubt.

We get the two parts of the thing from being dead with Christ, dead and alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Then follows "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." In the Spirit of life I get power. Then comes the other side: "God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." The law could not do this; it might curse, but it could get nothing good out of me. Where I was, Christ came there to die, and there and then God condemned sin in the flesh. Christ was made sin for me, and that which was tormenting my mind God has condemned altogether, and there is an end of it for faith.

It is like "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself," only this goes farther. First, as to sins, the Lord bore them and put them away; then I find there is a tree of evil in me, what of that? It is all condemned upon the cross where Christ died, and you are consequently to reckon yourselves dead. I have done with it - sin in the flesh: that is, faith has. I know it is more difficult for us to lay hold of that, than to lay hold of the forgiveness of sins, because it contradicts our experience. If a man comes and tells me my debts are all paid, I believe that; but if he said, "You are dead to sin," I say, "How do you mean that; for I was in a passion this morning?" and in this way experience contradicts it. But it did die in Christ's death; it is all dead and gone, because I am in Christ, and Christ is my life. And when the flesh comes and shews its face to me, I say, You have had your day, and have been ended. I have a right to say this, knowing that Christ has died, and God condemned sin in the flesh there. I have a perfect title to do so, and also I have Christ as my power. Being a partaker, in verse 23, is the joy of seeing souls saved, and being saved himself.

242 Now we come to one of those verses people are afraid of looking in the face. "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air; but I keep my body under, and bring it into subjection, lest, that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway," v. 26, 27. The word "castaway" troubles some. People have tried to make out that a castaway is not a castaway. I see no difficulty in it at all. The apostle supposes a case: one is preaching to others, and perishes himself. Paul was perfectly well assured as to himself; but he says if he had been merely preaching, he would have been falsely assured; but if not merely beating the air, he was rightly assured.

The running to "obtain" is the general idea of the incorruptible crown of glory. He has salvation in his mind: "that I might be all means save some," and so on. He is not thinking only of the reward of service, but he takes it all here in the most general way. Scripture is plain enough: "Every man shall receive reward according to his own labour." "There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brother, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come, life everlasting." There is that which characterises the faith of the Christian, and makes eternal life the reward. There is the keeping of the body down, that is, the contrary to preaching. I am not merely a preacher, but a liver, "lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." You must run lawfully, as a Christian, not merely preach; or you may have all the sacraments, as they are called, and yet fall in the wilderness. There must be reality, whatever else there is.

243 Those who weaken the force of the word "castaway" do so right in the teeth of the passage. It has no reference to the quality of the preaching, for the apostle says, "So fight I, not as one that beateth the air, but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection." "I myself," is not my service, nor my preaching. To be a castaway is to be lost - to be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." What Paul means is, he is not only a believer, but is living like a believer, or he might be cast away as well as other people. I have not the most distant doubt that God will keep His people; they shall never perish. But suppose I say, "If such a person stayed in such a room, he will never have consumption." So if Paul himself had been preaching only, not living, he would have been a castaway; but he was not that, and he was stating how he was living that he might not be a castaway. The point is, that you must strive lawfully and according to the rules. Now the rule of Christ is, you must live as well as talk, or else be afraid of the consequences. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die."

In Revelation 22: 14 we read "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life." But I have no doubt it should be read, "Blessed are they that wash their robes," etc. I believe the book of life is final, and all the devils cannot blot a name out of it. Where it speaks of blotting out, it is like a registry of votes. If it is proved that a certain name has no right there, it is blotted out. Every professor's name is in the book of life: but if God wrote it, it will never be blotted out. A mere professor writes his name himself, but he has no right to be there, unless God has written his name, and it will be blotted out. In Revelation 22: 19 it should be "tree of life," not "book of life." God takes away no name that He has written. In chapter 13: 8, it should be, I doubt not, "written from the foundation of the world," and not "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world"; and such a name will not be blotted out. I suppose the book of life (chap. 20) is after the names are blotted out, for verse 15 is "whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Although they are there judged for their works, their names were not in the book. Blotting out is, because a man's name was there that had no right to be there. Moses had the same thought. He says, "blot me out."

244 "Life," and "living" in scripture, when God uses it, is not always the thought of mere life; as "Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee." It is divine favour also. This is one of those cases in which I do not see that those who make difficulties have in the least gained anything. I do not think that the idea of blotting out is all; there is the reality. God puts absolute principles, which lead to certain consequences, and if a cap fits, let a man wear it. People try to torture passages to make them consistent with doctrines, instead of taking the doctrine from the passages. Take "if ye live after the flesh ye shall die"; I am not going to weaken that. Again, "to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and incorruptibility, eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil." Then, says some one, a man is saved by his works; eternal life is dependent on patient continuance, etc. It is practical Christianity brought in at once. I resist altogether the attempts to enfeeble that pressure on the conscience which I see in scripture. "Work out your own salvation" is not temporal salvation; it is in contrast with Paul's working, as he might say: I was labouring for your salvation when I was with you, and now you must do it for yourselves, because I am here in prison; but you have not lost God by losing me: "God is working in you both to will and to do." You torture the scripture otherwise. In Philippians, salvation is always looked at as with glory at the end. It was not the mere salvation of Paul's body in chapter 1: 19. We always have that truth in that epistle founded on redemption. The cross has laid hold of me for the glory, but I have not yet laid hold of it, and what I ought to apprehend is that for which I have been apprehended. And God's way was when He laid hold of Paul to put him through the wilderness, and make him work out his salvation to the end. When I say God is keeping His people, I ask too, Why has He to keep them? Because they want keeping or they would fall.

245 You have the two things in John 10: "They shall never perish," inwardly, nor be "plucked out of my hand." But this is not to weaken the plain positive passages which are given as warning, and meant to be as warning. We have the "ifs" in Hebrews, and in Colossians 1, "if ye continue," and so on. Now I suppose I believe that God is keeping His saints, and still I say to you, "If you continue to the end you will be saved." A methodist thinks and will say the same, but he thinks such an one might be lost after all; while I am perfectly certain that he will never perish, that is, if he really has life at all.

Different states of soul need different treatment. We must give meat in due season. A passage which might help on one, might puff up another; that is a question of spiritual wisdom in dealing with souls. All that I feel anxious about is the maintenance of the positive dealing of scripture with conscience. Take that passage in Romans we referred to: "Who will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who, by patient continuance," etc. Well, a man says, There may then be good people, and if they work good, they will get glory, and honour, and peace. But I say to him, "You are wrong entirely; there is none good but God." There is plenty of scripture to meet such a case, but we need not weaken this sentence in Romans in order to do it. It is the necessity of God's nature, that there must be a certain life and character in a man for him to be with God. We have a scripture that God has given that nature, and that He will keep it to the end; but the latter does not enfeeble the fact that the nature is such as it is. You must have that life and walk in that life, or you will not be in heaven. Thus we have broad dealing with conscience, and that is what we must not weaken. We have it plain enough in scripture, unmitigated and unenfeebled. Consciences want it, they are slippery enough. If I use it to weaken a person's faith in God's fidelity, I use it wrongly; but I want to give it all its force as it stands, while giving meat in due season. Suppose I found a person slipping into sin, and I say to him, "Well, never mind, God is faithful"; though that is abstractly true, it is not what I should use to him then, but just the opposite. Yet if God did not keep me, I know I should be soon slipping off somewhere.

Notes of Readings on 1 Corinthians

J. N. Darby.

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246 1 Corinthians 10.

This chapter is a continuation of the same subject. All Israel were baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness." They were, as we may say, in the Christian profession, standing in this world. Paul is proving that a person might persist in the outward observance of Christianity, and yet be lost. But there may be such a thing as having the shield of faith down as a chastisement perhaps, but that would be the only case I can recognise of loss of assurance where it has been really known; that is, I mean where a man is given up to it, and to the fiery darts as a kind of chastisement.

I remember a person who was away from fellowship for fourteen years, and a high Calvinist spoke to him as a child of God, which became the means of bringing him in again. He had got puffed up, was a kind of prophet, Irvingite, and so on, and the devil had blown him over. Very solemn indeed! But I do not want a soul to lose his assurance; it may be the power for bringing him back. I do not say of a child that is naughty, he is not a child, neither do I wish him to think he is not. If you find a person in despair, you may feel it is the divine nature there. God reconciles absolutely His holiness and His faithfulness, and all else. We may be taking them apart, but He never does.

We have in this chapter certain truths typically presented - the keeping of Israel as a whole, or to the end, as well as the fall of these individuals. In Numbers 15 we have the security of God's purpose most beautifully set out. In Numbers 14 He says their carcases shall fall in the wilderness. He pronounces judgment on the whole nation, save two persons. The entire people refuse to go up and take possession of the land, and the Lord says, "doubtless ye shall not come into the land," save Joshua and Caleb. Then in chapter 15, "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land," etc., and goes on with His own intentions just as quietly as if nothing of chapter 14 had happened.

247 "Baptised unto Moses," is what we call being associated with him in these ordinances. "Baptised with the baptism of John," was objectively the thing to which they were brought: so it was baptised "unto" instead of "into." The Greek preposition eis refers to the point you are going to, unless hindered. I might say I am going to Rome, but robbers might come in and stop me, but eis has that force. Pros is "towards" with the accusative; with the dative it is rather "there," but with the accusative it is distinctly objective. The sickness is not unto (pros) death, but for the glory of God, that is, it was with that object in view. In Ephesians 4 ministers were given with a view to (eis) the work of the ministry, eis the edifying of the body, and pros the perfecting of the saints. The prominent thought is the perfecting of the saints, the more immediate point is eis: the former was, that is, an eternal thing, but the work of the ministry was a present thing, and what they were at then; the perfecting is a definite result in view.

In the middle of this chapter we go from the outward thing to the inward. We have had not merely those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, but those who were baptised to Moses, and did eat the same spiritual meat, and so on. These really partook of the privileges and yet were lost. You may have really Christ, and yet God be not well pleased with you. A person who is living after the flesh shall die. He therefore cannot have the real thing. This passage is not a warning against having a thing and in any way perishing, but against having the signs of the thing and then perishing. It is addressed to saints "with all those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus," however bad they might be at Corinth. It would be a very dangerous thing to say that people were outside warnings and dangers because they themselves are so bad.

We have here a kind of Sardis, and a terrible thing it is to have a name to live, and yet be responsible. "I gave her space to repent, and she repented not." The whole professing church will be cut off; they wax worse and worse, but still the responsibility is there, though they have left their first love. To the Thessalonians Paul had written, "Ye are not of the night that that day should overtake you as a thief." It will overtake the world so, and the Lord writes to Sardis, "lest I come as a thief," that is, treat you as the world. There will be a testing-time, and then some will be cut off. In the beginning of all, the Lord added daily to the church such as should be saved; but when we come as far as Jude, we see apostasy coming in, evil men creeping in unawares. In verse 8 fornication refers to the particular danger they were in. All their relatives around them went on in that kind of thing, and they themselves were therefore in danger of slipping into it. Fornication was not a type. These were the things that happened then in Israel, not the figures of things for us, but the judgments that came from them are our warnings.

248 As to their idolatry, I doubt if a single sacrifice, unless an official one, was offered to God all through the wilderness. In Acts 7: 42, Stephen says, "Have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them." The official ones probably were maintained, or might be; and at large what they did offer might be professedly to the Lord; for when they made the golden calf, Aaron made proclamation, "To-morrow is a feast to Jehovah." God had ordered them to bring the blood of every beast they slew to the tabernacle. or rather the beast itself.

In verse 11 the "ends of the world" is the completion of the ages. To me the world now is not under any dispensation, but the whole course of God's dealings with it are over until He comes to judgment. Man was under responsibility from Adam to Christ, and then our Lord says, "Now is the judgment of this world." Historically I see this: up to the flood no dealings of God, but a testimony in Enoch. We see a man turned out of paradise, and presently God comes in by a solemn act, and puts that world all aside. Then after the flood we see various ways of God with the world. He begins by putting it under Noah. He gave promises to Abraham, then law raising the question of righteousness, which promise did not. Law was brought in to test flesh, and see whether righteousness could be got from man for God. Then God sent prophets until there was no remedy, and then He says there is one thing yet I may still do: I will send My Son; and when they saw the Son, they said, "This is the heir, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours," and then, so far as responsibility went, God was turned out of the world. Then comes the cross, and atonement for sin, and a foundation for a new state of things altogether, and that was the completion of the ages. God is not now dealing with man to try if he is lost or not, and so in John's Gospel man is gone from chapter 1. The first three Gospels present Christ to man, and then He is rejected; but in John 1, "He came to his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." There we find God's power coming into the world, and the Jews all done with: only some receive Him who have been born of God, and so John's Gospel is thoroughly what men call Calvinistic.

249 As to invitations, it is not incorrect to say to an unconverted man, "Come to Jesus." We may go "as though God did beseech you by us . . . be reconciled to God." God is obliged to have ambassadors for Christ now that Christ is gone. Beseeching is, so to speak, more than saying, Come. Christ says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden," in the chapter where H. had already said, "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented," Matt. 11. Thereon He begins to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done, declaring woe unto them; and then comes, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." And then He says, "Come unto me," etc. He speaks of the judgment as already come upon them; then there is nothing for it, for no man knows the Son but the Father, neither knows any man the Father save the Son. He bows to His Father completely in rejection, and it is consequent upon that rejection, that, like Noah's dove, He finds there is no single place for Him to put His foot upon; and so now He says, If you want to get to heaven, come to Me outside the world. The gospel tests, and people will not receive the gospel any more than they could keep the law.

In 1 John 2: 13 we read, "I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning"; that is, they knew Christ had come into the world. They knew a great deal about Him, but no man can fathom the Son but the Father. "Son" is that being who was in the form of God, Christ, who "made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant" and so on; but if you ask how God can be a servant, you plunge into difficulty by getting into the reasonings of men.

250 Returning to our chapter, we have now identification with the table; the eaters are partakers of the altar. In eating of it, you identify yourself with the body of Christ, for "we are all partakers of that one bread." Someone once wrote to ask what was the proof that it was the body of Christ! And I found from another that it was understood only to speak of the unity of those who were actually partaking. But what the apostle is saying is, If you go and eat of these idolatrous altars, you identify yourself with them. As Israel after the flesh, if they ate of the altar, they identified themselves with it; so if you partake of the table of the Lord, you have a common part with others with it. It is not itself identity with the body, but that which is the sign of it. You cannot partake of Christ and of demons at the same time; this is, "cannot" morally. The peace-offering gives the understanding of it: some was burnt on the altar, but of the flesh the priest ate the part offered to God, and they themselves, the offerers, ate the rest.

The principle was that the eaters were identified with the altar. If it were a thanksgiving, it must be eaten on the same day, but two days were allowed in the case of a vow, because there was a stronger energy in it, and none might be eaten on the third day at all. And so, if they were at table at a feast, he says, Eat what is set before you, unless it is given you as having been offered at an idol's temple, and then eat not. Of course you could do the act of eating of idols' sacrifices, but you cannot eat to God and to the demon together. Then comes the question, whether it is only those who are eating who are identified; and the local church is spoken of as the body of Christ, but I must take in all Christians when I go out into the mystic body. The communion (koinonia) is merely the external act of partaking, but if it is of Christ, it is the whole body. I cannot call an assembly the body of Christ, except so far as it may represent the whole body. At the altar there is identification, I am in communion with it; you do not get communion with the Lord's table, but taking a part in it; 1 Cor. 10: 21.

251 There is a distinction: the Lord is the One who is over me. I do not think Christ is ever called the Lord of the assembly. He is the Lord of the individual, but not of the assembly. Head of the church implies union. Head of the body is not the same thought as the head of every man; that includes wicked men as well as good. The head of my body is head, and therein is union; but when I speak of head of every man, it is lordship over man. In Ephesians 5: 29, "Even as the Lord, the church," should be "Christ the church."

"He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit" is spoken of us, because He is a glorious person, and I by the Holy Ghost am one with Him who is such; but that is very different from the thought of Lord of the assembly as such. The thought destroyed the unity of the body, and this was the use that was made of it. He is Lord in the assembly. I suppose every Christian would own the title of authority in the Lord. Christ is generally the official name; it is not an absolute rule, but in most cases we have lost the the Christ in the English. There is a Greek rule, that if you have the article and the thing that governs the genitive, you have the article with the name, and there is a question then whether you say "the Christ," or "Christ." "The Christ" may contemplate the church too, as in "so also is the Christ." In "whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ," he takes the lowest character first, and says, "He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," that is, he that has faith in His person.

The thought that was put out as a difficulty is, that the unity is merely the unity of those who are actually partaking. The bearing of it all is to make independent churches, whereas the apostle is here looking at them in connection with the fact of their partaking at the table; but he adds it is the communion of the body of Christ; and then we have the whole body, while those who may be present stand as such for the time.

In chapter 12 you have two statements. Verse 12, "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ," literally the Christ. Then in verse 27, "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular," takes in the whole thing, and the character that belongs to them. In our chapter we have two things; for if I speak of Christ's body, there is His literal body and His mystical body. His literal body is broken, and His mystical body is a united one.

252 The "one bread," in verse 17, represents Christ; it is the loaf on the table. We all partake of it, and are therefore one body; "for we are all partakers of that one bread." Before it is broken, in a certain sense, it represents the body of Christ before it was broken; but it does not form a sacrament in that state, because we have not the figure. It is true I eat Christ as the living bread that came down from heaven, but I go back to do that after I have eaten of Him as broken. I cannot think of the body of Christ without bringing in the mystic body, and verse 16 identifies me with the thought of the body it belongs to. The communion of the blood is always identification with the blood of Christ as shed for us. I do not know another word so good for it as that. Israel had their character from that with which they are connected; so with us, it is with Christ, with His body and His blood. It is not the spiritual feeding of my soul, but it is in the sense that my hand is partaker of the life of my body. "Joint participation" does not express it, because that is rather the act of partaking, or might only go so far. I may partake and not be in communion with; but it is in the latter way we are identified with Christ as His body.

"Demons" refers to idols' temples as such, because it was to demons they offered, and not to God. It is monstrous to apply it to any professing Christianity. In verse 20 we have distinctly what is the meaning of "the cup of demons." If any tried to eat of the Lord's table, and also of the table of demons, that would be saying, "I can eat with a demon, and I can eat with you." This would be provoking the Lord to jealousy, as in verse 22.

The difficulty we started with seems all cleared to my mind by chapter 12: 27. The Corinthian church was not the body of Christ. It is a sheer attempt to make one meeting independent of another. That is not the apostle's mind through this chapter at all. But it is what was attempted by connecting the lordship of Christ with the assembly as such. Some said Christ was Lord, and they obeyed the Lord, and acted under obedience to the Lord in any one place, and nobody else had anything to say to them. At first I could not think what they were aiming at, insisting on His lordship in this way, though a man surely is not a Christian if he does not own the lordship of Christ. "Calling on the name of the Lord" is a sort of definition of a Christian. What we have been considering is ecclesiastically a less vigorous attempt at the same purpose. They asked what proof we had that the Lord's supper was an expression of the unity of the body. It was this that made the separation in  - . Now what brought me out of the Establishment was the unity of the body: otherwise I could have gone into some independent church or set up one for myself, perhaps. I do not think many would deny that there is one body in words; but the practice denies it.

253 I could not go to any loose table as the Lord's. People do and call it the Lord's, of course; but I do not call it so or I should be there. Many go with a good conscience, I doubt not; but they do not meet on the principle of the unity of the body. If all the Christians in any place come together, they would not be a church and members; there are no members of a church. The idea and the term are unknown to Scripture altogether. Members of Christ's body, and therefore members one of another, is right, and that only. There is not the most distant approach to the common idea.

"All things are lawful" (v. 23) is connected with what is sold in the shambles. The apostle alludes to the custom of selling carcases for food in the common way after the animal had been offered in an idol's temple. But suppose we were sitting at a table with a person just come out from idolatry, and he said, "That joint was offered to an idol." His conscience is not free, and for his sake I do not eat it. To me it is all common meat.

In Acts 15 the commands to abstain from blood, from things offered to idols, and from fornication, are obligatory on a Christian now. They are not from law, but from Noah. Not that I should think if I had eaten blood, that I was defiled by it, for it is not the things that go in that defile. The above three things are special: one is life, and belongs to God; then idols are the giving up of the true God altogether; and fornication is giving up the purity of man. They are the three things which form the standard elements of what I have to say to God in. The two are plain enough: the third may be less clear. If a man came to me and said, 'That rabbit was caught in a trap,' I could say, 'Well, I will not eat it, simply for his sake.' To me these three principles are the expression of man as belonging to God, and not to his own lusts. As to blood, it is the life, and clearly belongs to God, but I leave every man's conscience to himself.

254 1 Corinthians 11.

Here we have another instance of how the greatest truths are brought into connection with commonplace subjects. Here is a question, whether a woman is to have a covering on or not. The whole ordering of God is brought in to say whether a woman is to wear a cap on her head (v. 3-16). It was the custom there with women inspired by demons to have their hair flowing out wild, and this was not the order for a woman. They were to recognise the authority of man if they prayed or prophesied. Women did prophesy, for Philip had four daughters that did. The woman had her place for praying and prophesying, but not in the assembly. Men are to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. If a woman's husband were unconverted, it would not be right for her to pray with him if other men were there.

In nominal Christianity we have to take things as we find them. I have known a converted husband, when he went from home, tell his wife to pray with the household, including unconverted men; but I do not believe it was right. The woman's head was to be covered. The apostle shews by her hair that God had covered her, and her mind and will are put on the same ground. A woman ought to be covered at family prayers, or as one of Philip's daughters prophesying in her father's house. The principle applies to both praying and prophesying. The man is the head of the woman, and she puts a covering on her physical head to shew that there is authority over her. The apostle takes the state of the head of the body as a sign of the condition of the man or woman in respect of their moral head. The woman's head - the man - is her head really, and she must cover her own head in sign of her subjection; and so she says in effect, I have no head myself; the man is my head, and I am in subjection. The man could not do that, or there would be no visible head. A woman's gift ought to be confined to women, or to her own family.

As to the difference between preaching and teaching (v. 4), in point of fact, all preaching is teaching now. At first they went and announced the fact - " Jesus is risen from the dead." I have not to do that so much now; I have rather to describe the efficacy of the effect; though I believe the more these things are set out as facts the better, although they are now all admitted. The more we make our preaching the history of a fact, the more powerful it will be. You do bring facts before people if you say, This was God's Son, and so on; otherwise it is teaching, except so far as we press the facts.

255 I do not accept a woman's going out to evangelise. I never saw a woman meddle in teaching and church matters, but she brought mischief upon herself and everyone else. If she sits down with a company before her to teach them, she has got out of her place altogether. We read of Tryphena and Tryphosa, who laboured in the Lord, and the beloved Persis too - each in her own place of service. You find all honour done to women in the Gospels; but the Lord never sent out a woman to preach; neither did a man ever go and anoint Christ for His burial. The women's prophesying was not preaching. There came an inspired teaching, to which they gave utterance. I believe it was in an extraordinary way, as Philip's daughters. Women can be used, as Mary Magdalene was sent by Christ to His disciples. If Christ sent a woman to carry a message, the best she could do would be to go and carry it. It was a mere message; it is no place of teaching; no matter what the message is, it is but a message. Suppose it was written down and was special instruction, the teaching then was in the message, not in Mary Magdalene's place. Scripture says, "I suffer not a woman to teach." She was not to teach at all. She can lead on those who are converted without setting up to be a teacher. Teaching is expounding to people put under you to receive certain doctrines.

The apostle is not speaking of wearing the sign of subjection at all times, but I believe it would be very comely. "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels," v. 10. She is therein a spectacle with all present to the angels, and angels ought not to see disorder among Christians. The whole subject is modesty, and order, and comeliness, and things in their right place. Therefore the woman ought to have power on her head on account of the angels, that is, the sign of subjection to her husband. Angels should learn something in the church.

As to the "image of God," in verse 7, "image" is something that represents another, and so a man represents God, though certainly he has failed to fill it up. The image of Jupiter was not necessarily like Jupiter, but it was made to represent him. So man keeps the place, though he has fallen in it - the same place in which God put him. He was made sinless, but beside that he stood as the centre of an immense system: no angel was that, no angel was the one single centre of a system all around him. Adam was. And indeed to be that is just what men are driving at in one form or other in the world, and in the church, and in Christendom. If Adam had remained, all his family would have been looking up to him. Here man is spoken of as "the image and glory of God" and in James "made after the similitude of God." But he is not in likeness now.

256 The first Adam was the image of him that was to come; the last Adam takes the place of the first: only the last Adam was in counsel before the first was in responsibility. The last Adam was first before God, and when the first has failed, the counsels are brought out in the last Adam. You get the first man put in responsibility after the counsel, and then the second Man was brought out in the accomplishment of counsel. That settles all Calvinism and Arminianism and such like systems. All the responsibility goes on until it has been thoroughly brought to an issue at the cross, and man will not have God at all: but in that cross God does a work that lays the foundation of everlasting glory; and then as soon as that is done, all these counsels are revealed, not accomplished yet, but revealed. Thus since the cross man's responsibility, as such, is over; it is not that he has not debts and sins, or that he was not responsible: all that is true, but God was rejected finally, and God comes and works His own work all alone by Himself. When that is done, He tells out His counsels and what He is going to do. At the beginning of Titus, we read "the acknowledging of the truth" - the gospel comes and man is responsible to own his ruin - "in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began, but hath in due time manifested His word through preaching which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour."

First, He begins with Adam, and that is all ruin. 2 Timothy 1: 9 gives us "who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel; whereunto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles." It was all in God's counsels settled in Christ, but when Christ came, it all came out to us. It is a mistake to think predestination in itself has anything to do with the counsels of God. If God came down now and chose fifteen of us who are here, it would be just the same as if He had done it before the world began. It would be just as arbitrary, as the world would call it, to take fifteen now, as to take fifteen before the world began. But He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

257 "Incorruptibility" refers to the body. "Mortal" is never applied to anything but the body. The corruptible mortal is that which goes to dust; incorruptible and mortal alike have only to do with the body. So we see in 1 Corinthians 15. It is not necessary that the body should go to corruption: the incorruptibility of the body is brought to light by the gospel. We do not find it in the Old Testament, having little hints here and there and that is all; eternal life is mentioned twice in the Old Testament; "life for evermore" in Psalm 133, and "some to everlasting life" in Daniel 12: 3. You may perhaps spell it out, and some of them did, the Pharisees for instance. Hezekiah says "the living shall praise thee" in contrast with the dead in Isaiah 38. When we are raised and changed, the "incorruptible" will be made apparent; when the dead are raised in incorruption, they will not corrupt any more. Immortality may refer to the soul; there is no difficulty about it.

At verse 17 we have the assembly, and in terrible disorder. "Heresies" and "sects" are the same. It is no use taking up words in an exclusive way; as, for instance, to distinguish worship and homage. We use "worship" now for worshipping God; but when our version was made, it was not at all so. It says "they worshipped God and the king" in the same sentence, and so in the church of England marriage service the man says, "with my body I thee worship." It did not mean worshipping God at all. Here we have three words, heresies, divisions, and sects. Schism is a positive division; heretic is merely a man being at the head of a school of doctrine, as that of the Epicureans. There were many schools of doctrines, or heresies. In modern language the word has come to mean false doctrine. If we were all breaking bread together, I might make a party and yet no schism, but it might go on to that. "Damnable heresies" means bad doctrine. We are to reject a party school in the church: "a man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition reject." Have no more to do with him.

258 In our chapter the apostle says, "First of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you." I do not suppose they had openly divided, but they were making parties; and he says there must be heresies among you, though no division yet, but that came from the setting up of these schools. Heresies and sects are not exactly the same. There are only two words in this text; "divisions" is the word schismata (v. 18), and the word heresies (hairesis) (v. 19), is often translated "sects."

In verse 18 "the" church would not do at all. It is not the church, but in that character of meeting, whenever the church met as such, not restricted to the breaking of bread on the Lord's day (for so the first day of the week was called): when the assembly met together the apostle taught the people. They might not have broken bread whenever they came together. If notice was given that the assembly would meet for a particular purpose, it would still be the assembly, though all did not come; it is the assembly when they come together as such. A reading meeting would not be such though all were there, because that is not the character of the meeting. A meeting for prayer is an assembly, but hardly the assembly of the place. Meetings are meetings of the assembly if it is understood that they meet as such, but the meeting must be accepted by the assembly. What I look for is the consciousness of meeting together in the Lord's name as one.

It will be observed that Paul received his instruction concerning the Lord's supper by revelation. The church and the unity of the body was the very thing entrusted to Paul. It is the local assembly here - the saints at Corinth, but what is wanted for action is that the whole assembly should come together for the purpose and with the intention of coming as such. Sometimes the Lord's supper is taken in a private house when a person is sick, and if it is done in unity, it is all well and very nice, but when a person is sick, I might not do it for other reasons. In the early church they used to send out a piece of bread dipped in the wine, to shew that they were one. If I were ill for two or three weeks, I should bow to the chastening. A few might go to an isolated one, and break bread with him, if it is done in the spirit of unity; but if done in a party feeling, it would be wrong. It need not be named first if there is confidence; but if there is distrust, it should be named. We have no rule as to breaking bread oftener than every Lord's day. But I took the Lord's supper with the young men who were reading with me, every day for a whole year. So the early church did.

259 The words "take, eat" (v. 24) should be omitted: I suppose he expresses what is weighing on his mind, and "take, eat" does not come into his mind. To "be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (v. 27) is disrespect to it. Suppose I spat upon my mother's picture, in spirit I should be spitting upon my mother; it would be doing scorn to my mother, and so it would be in this case; to be guilty of it means to be guilty in the way you are dealing with the body and blood of Christ. Some leave out the word "unworthily" in verse 29, but it has been used before, and the sense is all right: it is in verse 27, and therefore it means so eating and drinking, that is, unworthily. The eater and drinker in verse 29 is the same as in verse 27. "Not discerning the Lord's body" is that a person takes it as his own or common bread and wine, perhaps drinks and gets tipsy. Carousing would not be discerning the Lord's body. It has nothing to do with being unworthy to eat or drink, but is the manner of doing it: in Christ, he is worthy; out of Christ, he is unworthy, which is another thing.

There is another principle at the end of the chapter which is not without its importance, and that is the government of God over His saints. "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep; for if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world." It is nothing difficult, but very important. We are chastened that we should not be condemned. "Come not together unto condemnation" (v. 34), is to judgment, it is your own fault that you should have to be accused and judged. The word "condemned" (v. 32) is distinctly in contrast with "judged" as well as in contrast with "chastened." "Condemned" is right in verse 32; but he eats and drinks judgment, or fault, or crime; for it is the thing a man is accused of to himself. "Condemnation" is not right in verse 34; "If any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together unto condemnation," judgment or fault. Our word "crime" is from the Greek word: it is the judgment that is passed, but it comes to be used also for the fault itself.

260 They were told to "tarry one for another," because each had been eating his own supper before his neighbour's came, making a pic-nic, as it were, as they pleased. I do not know that they became actually drunk, but some were what one calls carousing. It is all readily understood, if you remember that they were taking a meal before the Supper. It is "the table of the Lord" in chapter 10, and "the supper of the Lord" in our chapter. We must keep each in its own connection. In chapter 10 it is the table of the Lord in contrast with the table of demons. There is no thought of that here, but the apostle is on another point, and with those who had nothing to do with demons. There was that which represented the body of Christ, and they were carousing, and getting tipsy or very near it; it was now the abuse of what was on the table.

In general the weakness and sickness would fall upon those doing wrong, but God might take away one righteous man to chastise the assembly, though it was not the case here: this applies only to the persons, the individuals who were guilty of the disorder. I think that the assembly ought to have judged it, and restored order: there was guilt in the assembly too. If an assembly is in a bad state, the Lord can combine the two, and wake up the conscience of the assembly. If the Lord take anyone so, it may be to his glory: in such a case he would be a martyr. When God deals in this way with individuals, we are outside of all dispensations.

There are two principles in Job, chapters 33 and 36. In chapter 33 God deals with men "in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man." There God stops him. Then, in chapter 36, we have more; not that God only deals with man in His own sovereign way, but "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous, but with kings are they on the throne, yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted." There we have the special fact, beyond the general care of God; just as in the case of Laban and Jacob, God is also always looking at the righteous, blessing them, as a rule. "As kings are they on a throne"; that is, figuratively. They are righteous people that God owns, and that God also chastens. We find it more distinctly when there is a particular government of God, as in Ezekiel 18; and sometimes the sins of the fathers were visited on the children. Then, in the church of God, we have it definitely and little known. The apostle can tell them why this chastening came, "and if he have committed sins, they shall pray for him, and they shall be forgiven him," that is, unless it is a "sin unto death." Only, observe, the assembly ought to know why they are in such and such a condition. I do not doubt there are now quantities of discipline and sorrows that come upon the saints as discipline; I do not say all: you may find a man born blind who neither sinned, nor his parents; or, again, "this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God"; or God may unite both. He might have chastened Lazarus, and yet used it for His own glory.

261 Discipline may be to check a tendency. Paul had a thorn in the flesh, that he might not be puffed up. The order is, we are chastened for a fault, but there may be much more. Paul meets with a messenger from Satan to buffet him. If a godly person were taken aside from an assembly, the assembly ought to inquire why it was so. It might be because they did not give heed to him; but that becomes a question of spiritual discernment. In Job the righteous are in contrast to believers. The value of the Book of Job is, that you get the great principles of God in connection with man. God was using everything for the purpose of helping the righteous man, and Satan was bringing in all that he could against him; and that before there was either law or gospel. As I observed just now, all sickness need not be discipline. Suppose God saw some evil among the saints: He will take means, in various ways, to arouse them to a sense of it. In nature you find a quantity of hidden caloric constantly, that comes out the moment there is something to call it out. It is a wonderful thing, when we think of God, that God not merely has saved us, but never withdraws His eyes from us. In a way it is as wonderful as is the salvation. Those who did not bow were cut off - "shall perish by the sword" - "Hypocrites in heart," "cry not when he bindeth them," goes further still. Notice, it was not the devil who began with Job, but God set Satan at work. The devil did not know what God was doing. "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" It was a great conflict between God and Satan, with a man between them. Satan's object, of course, is all mischief, but God allows him.

There is a difference between chastening and scourging. Chastening is a general word (as, for instance, the education of children) and the same word is used for "teaching," and a certain correction and discipline, and even punishing too; but when you come to scourging, it is the positive action and punishment. As a general rule, if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged of the Lord. All will come out at the judgment-seat of Christ; it will make no difference, whether we have been chastened for it or not. It will all appear. I cannot know as I am known. I cannot give account of myself to God, if I do not give account of everything. And that, I believe, is a great blessing.

262 None of my sins will come up in that day as a question of judgment on myself. As to imputation, "He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel," when they were iniquitous and perverse all the while. But at that day I shall see all God's ways to me, and His dealings with me all through. If I look back now, I can see faults before I was converted, and nothing else; and after that, faults that I have to be humbled for, and I say, How could I do so? Yet it does not rest on my conscience as though it was there. And then I shall see the goodness of God, with a blessed sense of how He has brought me through all, and what God has been to me in it all, with no question of judgment, or thought of it, for I have not then a nature that sins, even as to my body; I am a new creature.

There should be fear of one kind in connection with the government of the Father, but it is not servile dread; "Blessed is the man that feareth always." "Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear," 1 Pet. 1: 17. And that is connected with the Father, and he continues as to the cost of redemption for motive: you know what it cost to redeem you out of your sins, and now, upon that ground, you think of your Father upon whom you call. There is no fear of God when I am going to meet Him, but now is the time to walk in His fear. If a Christian sins, it brings down a dealing of God with him, unless he confess it at once, and then God has no pleasure in afflicting. We find plenty about it in James 5: 14-16, and in 1 John 5: 16: such as, "God shall give him life for them that sin not unto death," and so on. I remember once saying to a person, "If you do not bow and break off that particular thing, you will not get well of your affliction." And three days before he died, he said, "I would not bow to the will of God; now it is too late." I have no doubt he went to heaven.

263 I could not say that, according as we love Christ here, we shall enjoy Him hereafter. Reward is for our labour: as to our place, we all get the same glory as Christ, "when he shall appear, we" - that is, all Christians - "shall appear with him in glory." And Paul cannot have anything better than that; but when you come to labour, it is a very different thing, and reward is accordingly. The Thessalonians will be Paul's crown, but they will not be ours; that is clear. We know not how this will be accomplished, but in glory Paul will have them as his crown, yet he will not take away Christ's crown; for it was all grace that did it, though Christ is pleased to reward the labour when it is faithfully done, owning, not me, but the grace of God that is in me. The reward has nothing to do with motive, and never is the motive for action in scripture; it is the encouragement in the service, when the person gets into trial by the motive.

Well, it is a great thing to see that there is this present government of God. There are cases where evil is the fruit of sin, believing or not believing; evil is in the world, but much is positive discipline, where, if there were faith to deal with God about it, the discipline would be removed. James 5 can be acted upon where there is faith to do it. I have known it acted on, and the use of oil also, in two cases where they asked for it themselves. In one case the doctor had said nothing could be done for her, and she had better go home to die. She recovered, and was walking about that week, and taking care of the poor. She had three daughters after that. In the other case I remember, the one prayed for was out in the street, and at a place where there was a very broad crossing; but a boy had placed a barrow across the path, and she stumbled against it. Her own brother who was passing ran to help her, and found it was his own sister, whom he supposed to be dying at home. Another case was that of J - , who was ordered not to speak or stir by the doctor; but he rode over to a place some twenty-five miles. When the brethren went in, he was vomiting blood, but he rode back the twenty-five miles; afterwards he walked fifteen miles. It was a prayer-meeting in his case, but he was not anointed with oil. He was twice married afterwards. Other cases I have had myself, having laid my hands on a baby once. Such things have generally been at the beginning of an awakening: there is an energy of faith that brings in God more directly. It is a question of faith very much, but this necessarily in the sick person. Some have professed to have the faith constantly, but I do not put much confidence in that. I believe God would answer the prayer of anybody that cried to Him.

264 Discipline would not go on after the prayer of faith. James refers to a case of discipline distinctly. Paul was sick, and the Lord had mercy upon him, but we do not know that he was prayed for at that time. He could perhaps have raised himself, but the apostles never wrought a miracle for their own comfort. Paul left Trophimus at Miletum sick. The words, "And if he committed sins," shew that James refers to discipline. And the forgiveness is a question of present government, as the church can also forgive. I do not think we lay to heart enough the fact of government in that way. There is many a case, I am satisfied, which is real chastening, and all the doctors are of no use. It may sometimes be without any specific sin. I used, at one time, to be ill every year, and I laid it to this, that I did not keep close enough to the Lord in service. But you must take care that such a thought as that does not become legal. We read, "Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." This is not always for discipline; it may be for instruction. The Lord can combine the two. When Paul had a thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, it made him contemptible in his preaching, and was discipline, lest he should be puffed up; and so it was his glory and his discipline. The Lord can unite these things, but we cannot. Yet in His hands it may be our honour and our discipline at the same time.

Paul did not fail in asking the Lord to take away his thorn, though he may have failed in spiritual discernment: it is not the granting of a thing that proves whether it is right or wrong. Our Lord asked that the cup might pass away, and it did not, though the asking was in perfect submission, and He had His answer in resurrection. Yet "for this cause came I unto this hour." A person losing his mind may be in discipline; for "Affliction does not spring out of the dust" in any way. Take Job: he had elephantiasis, or whatever you call it; and when he had a house, there were plenty of winds to blow it down, and plenty of people to sweep away his cattle; but it was a particular use of these by Satan, and all within God's limits.

To return to our chapter: - we come now to spiritual manifestation. This is all the true order of the church. You do not get a hint that there were any elders, nor a suggestion to make them; either there were none or they disappear from view. And it was the Lord's goodness to give us here divine instruction how to go on, and give it in a way that suits us now. There may have been elders, but if so, seeing that they are not mentioned here, it is all the more strong for us now. In the action of the assembly the conscience of the assembly must be cleared: elders by authority could not do that. They could not put out. I remember a terrible hubbub in Geneva on this. I said only engineers can make a good road, but, when made, all the carters in the country can use it, and their elders - wise and godly brethren - were of immense value; but the action in actual discipline, publicly, must be made by the assembly; for the assembly has to clear itself, and no other way will do. As he says, "You have proved yourselves clear in this matter." Suppose the elders had put a person out rightly, this would not clear the conscience of the assembly. It would only lead ultimately to sorrow that they had to put him out. A brothers' meeting can only deliberate and take counsel, and perhaps the matter will be better weighed there than with a whole body of people.

265 The first thing here in chapter 12 is to distinguish the Holy Ghost from demons. The Corinthians were very fond of gifts, and so were liable perhaps to be ensnared by satanic manifestations; but no demon would say "Lord." If any spirit said "Lord," that was by the Holy Ghost. The point here was to distinguish between a good spirit and a bad one. It should be "no one can say." Sometimes the use of "man" is mischievous. It may be spirit, angel, devil, or anything else; it is merely a being, and "man" in English is wrong. Evil spirits are at work now, and in the same way exactly. When the apostle was preaching, there came one and said, These men shew us the way of salvation. Now, apart from experience, you would not expect a demon to say that. How were they to distinguish? Mormonites used to go and preach the Lord's coming and baptise, and then when they had so laid hold of people, they would preach other things altogether. False doctrine may not always be the direct action of an evil spirit, but often it is. There is more the action of Satan in certain cases than people suspect. I do not doubt that in Irvingism there was much of it. And then if they were treated as Satan they would have no power at all. I was told at -  - they had a great deal more charity than I had; I really have no charity for the devil. When asked in Somersetshire to meet certain people, I would not go. Prince (of the Agapemone) stated publicly in the town of Bridgewater, that they could not preach or do anything because of the brethren who were there. And I believe he said the truth. So in W - 's case, I said that I would not go near, unless the Lord led me there, and then He would give me strength. S. wanted me to go, and I said no. H. came and I went with him, and the first night, I said, "I cannot say, but I think it is of the devil." W had stopped them from breaking bread; he said that "whenever there was any evil and nobody knew it, they were all contaminated, and they ought not to break bread, as they were all of one body," and so he stopped them. His wife could hardly contain herself against me. The next night I thought over it and cried over it before the Lord, and the following day I said it was the devil. The whole thing passed, and they have gone on happily there ever since. I believe he was puffed up, and that his wife was the real secret of it, and the devil was there. He had been much used, five hundred being converted in one year: it is said nine hundred, but an opponent said there were not more than five hundred. All are going on happily now, though they were very angry with me then. "Anathema Jesus" was the utterance of a man. The spirit said it, but by the man's mouth, of course. Anathema is a curse. It is never used in a good sense in the New Testament. The anathema among the heathen was a thing devoted to the gods and was killed. "Anathema maranatha" is a curse on him when the Lord comes.

266 We have then "gifts," "administrations," and "operations"; the Spirit, the Lord, and God. There are diversities of gifts, but one Spirit. If they were demons, they were diversities of spirits; you might have a legion of spirits in a person, or "seven demons." But here it is one Spirit. "Administrations" were by one Lord, so that anyone in any service is the Lord's servant. We have the unity of the Spirit in contrast with these demons; next various administrations, but one Lord; and then these operations, which were a secondary and narrower thing, but one God. One God worketh everything; it was divine, one Spirit giving gifts; one Lord with administrations under Him: and then it is God that is working everything. "The administrations" may be wider than "the gifts," if we take in elders; but in Romans 12 they all run together.

267 The manifestation of the Spirit was not given to every man. If I work a miracle, or speak with a tongue, that is a manifestation of the Spirit, but it does not say that a manifestation was given to every man. The point was, that these Corinthians who were fond of gifts were using them wrongly, speaking with tongues that were of no use to anybody; but the apostle says the tongues were given you to profit with. If it is not to profit, you are not to use it, whether the Holy Ghost is there or not, that is, in the gift. The order and moral rule of the Spirit is paramount to mere power by Him. There may be power, but a person is not to use it else; "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." I may have a real moving of the Spirit, and am yet to hold my tongue for all that. If three have spoken, and I have five prophecies to tell, I must hold my tongue. The church suffers both from presumption and unused gifts - it varies in places. I believe there are many gifts repressed. The principle here is distinctly stated, that power is not to guide us. The rule for my using it is that it profits those to whom I speak. If one spoke not to profit, the others are to judge; and if they tell him of it, to do it as gently as they can. It is not the prophets only who are to judge. It leaves it open to those who had the capacity to do it.

In the Old Testament prophets, the relation between power and exercise of gift may have been different, though there is something like it in "while I was musing the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue." We now have the Holy Ghost, but then a man was like a tube or a pipe to carry a thing, and they began to search "what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." But now all that the Holy Ghost gives He gives to the person who receives it, and that makes a difference in the nature of the thing. As to ourselves, whatever the Holy Ghost reveals to any of us, of course we have it in the word, but the Corinthians received it for themselves When God shone into Paul's heart to make him an apostle, He shone into his heart the things he was to be an apostle about, and we have them in the written word - words, as we were seeing, given by the Spirit for the purpose. So I now drink for myself, and then communicate it; rivers of living water flow from me. So God shined into Paul's heart for him to give out. He had it to use in the consciousness of the possession of the thing itself for himself.

268 In John 3 we read, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen"; but it is Christ who is speaking there who says, "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." It was Christ telling them heavenly things, and that a man must be born again, or else he could not have them. The point was that man, as a man, was gone and done with, and Christ had brought in what was heavenly. The "lifting up" was the cross, not the ascension. "We have heard out of the law," they said, "that Christ abideth for ever, and how sayest thou, the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?" John 12: 34. And in John 8: 28, "When ye have lifted up the Son of man." Clearly it is Christ rejected from the earth, and not yet in heaven. But a Christ rejected from the earth is a total breach between God and this world. It was alone between God and Christ. The whole question of sin was settled when Christ was lifted up from the earth before He went to heaven. Everything in this world was shut out; even the disciples were shut out. He said to them "ye cannot follow me" now; and then God is glorified as the consequence of the cross. We have it in the tabernacle; when a man went into the court, he met the altar first. The first thing we meet is the cross. Christ was lifted up in view of the world; but He is neither on earth nor in heaven, and the grand question is, when man turns Christ out of the world, can He do such a work that God can take Him to heaven? "I will draw all men unto me" is in contrast with the Jews who rejected Christ. He will draw all men unto Himself. In John 3 it is not merely that man is a sinner, but "we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" He brings down heavenly things which no one receives at all; and so in the next chapter He goes to Samaria, and grace comes out in God giving from Himself without expecting anything of man. "God giveth not the Spirit by measure" is there spoken of the Lord. I believe it is an abstract principle that the Holy Ghost comes, and is not a mere influence of which you may have more or less.

269 Remark in our chapter that we have an intimation of the deity of the Holy Ghost as well as of His personality. "It is the same God which worketh all in all," and then "all these worketh that one and self-same Spirit." And then you have what is more often practically lost sight of, the personality of the Holy Ghost. "He divideth to every man severally as He will." You cannot say this of an influence, for it is He worketh and He wills; which is the most distinct expression of the action of a person. I think the place in which we find the Holy Ghost in scripture is striking, I mean as acting in us. In the order of God's dealings - He is not the object, but as a divine power, He is the agent. The Father and Son are objects, but the Holy Ghost is the agent, and so is more mixed up with things in us, because acting in us; so that there is a natural liability to lose sight of His personality. The Father and Son are objects of faith. "We have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ"; through Christ "we have access by one Spirit unto the Father"; so that the Spirit is working in us. The Father sent the Son, and He went back to God; but the Holy Ghost's being in us is mixed up with the workings of our minds.

We have three things in Romans 8: 27, He that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit; then the Holy Ghost Himself also; and that in us, for our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. This is not a mere influence, which is a very common idea. You find persons when you speak of "the Spirit of Christ" take it as a term of Christ's character. It may include that, but also very much more. Scripture is plain enough: only we are apt to get confounded in our minds. The Spirit is life, and He is the spring and power, and power of life in us. It is from Him the life comes; "the body is dead . . . but the Spirit is life"; it is the Holy Ghost in us. He is the power of the life, and characterises it, and righteousness is the effect.

In chapter 8 of Romans we read of Him both as working in life in us, and also a distinct Person. First as a nature and character; and then (for we cannot separate a spring from its stream) after verse 14, we have Him as a Person in us and with us: "the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit," and there He is distinct. The Spirit is life, and then He bears witness, which separates the two. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" is the indwelling of the Spirit, but it is characteristic there. An unsealed soul is not Christ's in the sense of being a Christian, as God owns a Christian to be. It is not that he does not belong to Him, for He belonged to Him before, but I cannot call a person a Christian who is not sealed. He may really be Christ's in the sense that God is bringing him into it all; but he has not got into Christian place and standing. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba Father." And "if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his," refers to that. It is a person who is not an unbeliever. There was no verse in Scripture so difficult as that to me for years, until I saw that the whole chapter refers to the Christian position as such. It is not merely life: we receive the Spirit as life, and as a Person. The two are true.

270 In Romans 8: 14 He is a distinct person from us; in verses 12, 13, it is transitional. Chapter 7 closes with "Who shall deliver me?" and we get the deliverance up to the resurrection of the body in chapter 8: 1-11. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" comes first, then the body is dead; as I said it is spring and stream; neither one is the other; the spring is not the stream, nor the stream the spring: yet if you stop the spring, there is no stream at all; but beside that, there is a divine Person who makes my body a temple; the same Holy Ghost, but in a distinct character. In "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit," it is the flesh contrasted with the Spirit, as you have in Galatians. He is the Spirit of life; we are in the Spirit; the Spirit of God dwells in us; and then we have the same Spirit in His formative character; then, "if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin"; and then, "the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead." The Spirit is first, the opposite of the flesh; next, He is formative of the new man; and then I find Him raising up the body into glory.

The Spirit dwells in me. He is called the Spirit of Christ, because He expresses Christ in me. The opening of Romans 8 is closely connected with chapter 7: "The law of the Spirit of life," etc., sums up chapter 7 with the character of the deliverance. By the body being dead is meant that there is no life, it has no life, but is a corpse, and the Spirit is life. As to the words - " is none of his," though I may be sure that God is working, yet I cannot say such an one is His until he is sealed. I cannot say till then, as an absolute fact, that he belongs to Christ. Then he would know it himself, for God has given to us the earnest of the Spirit. The man is wrought by God for it, but that is not the same thing as his being in the place.

271 "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" means that where the Spirit is, the man is free. Redemption sets a man at liberty, and then, when he has the Holy Ghost, he knows the liberty and enjoys it. A person is sealed when he can say, Abba Father: only there are some who say, "Father" in prayer, and yet have unbelieving thoughts about themselves. It may be such an one from bad teaching is afraid of acknowledging what he is, but he has the Spirit of adoption. He has liberty too with God, and there is the important place to have it. He has a consciousness that God is his Father; it would be much better to be able to tell other people so. A man in Romans 7 has not that liberty, which in type comes in with Israel, before they had crossed the Red Sea. It precedes sometimes the first part of Romans 5, though not always, but it is modified if it come after. It is connected with our dying with Christ, not with Christ's dying for our sins. The fact in Romans 5 that I am forgiven, when I know that, modifies it. Forgiveness is not death with Christ, but the knowledge of forgiveness brings in a character of love and mercy and non-imputation; which greatly modifies the remainder. The deliverance by the doctrine of the death is in chapter 5, whilst chapter 7 comes in to shew the bearing of the doctrine of death on law; but the knowledge of forgiveness modifies the power of the law. Chapter 7 might be a person who has the Holy Ghost, but only in a certain sense. In that chapter he takes the thing in itself completely, in its full actual character, and this does not touch the question of forgiveness at all. The sealing comes upon the knowledge of the work by which we are forgiven, not upon the knowledge that we are dead. But one may be in a legal state though knowing forgiveness. The full character of Romans 6 is Jordan, not the Red Sea. The Red Sea is that Christ died and rose, Jordan is my dying and being risen with Christ; but when I look back with clearness, I see that I died and rose with Christ, and then I get Jordan. We get the consciousness consequent upon Jordan.

272 Marah throws in the bitters of the way. Circumcision is not in the wilderness, which so far complicates it; they have to drink death in the wilderness - the bitter water - for they have been saved through it; and they have to get it applied; but when I have the full consciousness of liberty, I must go through Jordan, and then circumcision comes; the reproach of Egypt was never rolled away until then. It was not, of course, that they were not out of Egypt, for they were, and in the wilderness; and there we have the two parts of the Christian life: the going through the world as a wilderness, and that distinguished from sitting in heavenly places, or the land. We must have death and resurrection for both; but if it is in Christ only, I am but in the wilderness; but if I get Jordan, then I have the realisation of my having myself died and risen. Then I get circumcision, and never till then. Those who had only a place in the wilderness, and its character, were not circumcised, and therefore they had nothing heavenly, unless it is said that any one tasted of it from Eshcol. I think we have something of this in John 3.

We must have Christ's resurrection even to get the earthly blessings of Israel, and therefore, in Acts 13 Paul says, God raised Christ "up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption"; and "I will give unto you the sure mercies of David," Isa. 55. Israel could not have them without death and resurrection, and therefore the sure mercies of David are proof of resurrection; there was nothing sure till that. If they trusted to a living man, all failed. Then only I have them so, and a master of Israel ought to have known that. Therefore when I have heavenly things brought in, I have the cross to bring them in. I do not merely have the death and resurrection of Christ as that which delivers me from Egypt - " by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit," which is true - but I have also all things brought to me, as risen with Christ, through the Jordan.

Circumcision, in the end of Romans 2, is looked at as a real thing, and all is the work of the Spirit, when you come to the actual application of it. I have forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from flesh; and not only practically mortify my members, but I say, I am dead; for I have died with Christ, and that is Jordan; then we have liberty, and what is heavenly. Romans 3 to 5 I link with the Red Sea, and chapter 6 with Jordan. I am dead, only I am looking back: first, I must have Christ entirely alone - lifted up; then I must, so to say, put myself in Christ by faith. I died then, and then I myself am actually dead also, across the Jordan; and then I get into this heavenly standing: not merely am brought into a wilderness, for there it is that flesh is tested, but into the land where I am fighting, so the Lord's host in Canaan, and have nothing to do with flesh, but am risen, and only that, and therefore I am simply the vessel of God's power against God's enemies. Notice, that the beginning of the wilderness is a little picture of grace, which stands by itself entirely: for the things Israel were chastened for afterwards, they then had blessing about If they wanted flesh, quails were sent at even; but afterwards; in Numbers 11, the Lord smote them with a very great plague for the same murmuring for flesh.

273 Strictly speaking, Jordan is connected with Ephesians only. Colossians may be in advance of Romans, introducing resurrection; but it is only partial in Colossians. You are there risen with Christ, but not sitting in the heavenly places; you are risen, but still on earth, and that is more like the Red Sea than Jordan. If ye be risen, seek the things above. It does not say you are sitting in the midst of them. In Romans you are not risen; in Ephesians, both risen and seated; in Colossians it is rather between the two. You do not get the Holy Ghost in Colossians at all, save once the "love of the Spirit." We have death with Christ in Romans, resurrection with Christ in Colossians, and sitting in heavenly places added in Ephesians. Not that it is all the apostle is teaching; he takes much for granted also, as "in Christ," for instance: such an one had title to everything, and he speaks so in Romans. You are alive in Christ, but he does not there speak of with Christ. With Christ I have come out of death, which is different from receiving life. If I have come out of death, and am risen with Christ, that is very different from simply receiving life. If I look at Christ as having given life, it is a divine person quickening me; but if, as risen with Him, I look at Him as the one who has gone into death, and with whom I have risen, then I have gone through death; and so it is that risen with Christ is so much more than life through Him simply.

In Romans 7 the experience is that of a man quickened but not dead. In the early part of the chapter we have the doctrine that we have died, and so we cannot have the two husbands; and the law cannot have power over us, because we have died. It will be seen therefore that chapter 7 is the application of the doctrine of chapter 6 to the question of law, and there the experience is given of a man that is under law who cannot say he is dead. There it is not "risen with Christ," but married to another who has risen. You cannot have law and Christ together. Then the figure is changed; for it is we that have died, though it is the same in principle. And in the end of the chapter we have the experience of a man that is under law, and not delivered; he has the life given, but he is not dead and risen. It is the fullest expression of a man under law, and having life. And as such we are delivered by finding out, not merely that Christ died for our sins, but also that we have died with Christ. And this is the doctrine of chapter 6.

274 In Ephesians the principle of the body is brought in. We are in sins, and Christ dies, and in the coming down to that, He put away all our sins, and then God comes and raises us all up together, and this involves union in one body. In Colossians it is only just brought to the edge of what is called "one body" (Col. 3: 15), but in Ephesians the body is the great subject - Jews and Gentiles all one body - and then "quickened together with Christ," and "raised up together" (that second "together" is Jew and Gentile), sitting in Christ, but not with Him.

1 Corinthians 12.

Turning to 1 Corinthians 12 we have both the manifestation of the Spirit and miraculous gifts. The apostle was speaking in contrast with demons, etc., but it is a manifestation of the Spirit in power: so in chapter 14, if all prophesied, they were convinced of all, and judged of all, and thus the secrets of his heart were made manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he worshipped God, and reported that God was in them of a truth. It is more the outward manifestation that is in his mind here. It applies in principle to what remains now. There is the word of wisdom, etc. Speaking by "two or three, and that by course," applies now. I never did speak, if three had spoken. Simply reading a chapter is not speaking. Ordinarily we call prophecy the foretelling future events, but this is not the meaning of the word. It is "forth-telling," not "foretelling." We have this prophecy spoken of in verse 10, for edification, exhortation, and comfort, but not as inspiration of some new revelation. The word is used both in a general way, and as a direct gift. We have not it in the special way.

275 The baptism of the Spirit (v. 13) was on the day of Pentecost, and when an individual believes, he is sealed and anointed. "In [or by] one Spirit" is "in the power of." A person says by one Spirit he was baptised, instead of saying in the power of one Spirit: it may become equivocal. You have been baptised by the Holy Ghost coming. By the coming and power of the Holy Ghost we have all been made one body, and if I have the Holy Ghost, I am brought in, and am united by it. By being sealed, I am joined to the Lord. God puts a testimony of salvation on a man, and we cannot really say what he is until then, even though I may feel sure he is being wrought in by God. Yet he has not his place along with Christ in this world until then. We cannot say a person is saved until God has put His seal upon him. It is baptism into one body, and drinking of one Spirit. They are shades of thought. It reads, "For by one Spirit," and "for as the body" (v. 12, 13); but the word "for," in more than half the cases, is not a connection with what has gone immediately before, but rather a reference back to some great principle.

The body (v. 12) is for eternity, though a person when he dies passes out of the body, as manifested in time; he ceases to be part of that which was formed of God, by the Holy Ghost down here, but in result the whole will be Christ's body. If a person dies, he is like any one on furlough, and forms no actual part of the regiment in active service. We must recollect that the Holy Ghost has come down to earth. Christ, as God, created everything, but that was not His actual existence as when He came, but still He had been working, and had created everything. And so as to the Holy Ghost Christ said, "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come." Now, every direct action of God on the creature is by the Spirit: yet He came on the day of Pentecost. Our Lord says, "When he is come," and so on. Of course, when He forms the body, He forms it where He is; but as God He does not give up the person that dies, neither his body, for He has got it all in His hands, and under His eye, to be raised. Even the body is not given up, but it ceases to be in that corporation which the Holy Ghost has formed on earth. If one die, he belongs to the body, and is held to belong to Christ. His body is in the dust, and his spirit is with Christ.

276 When you get to the "nots" and the "onlys," it is a dangerous thing. If you say, "He is not of the body," naturally you conclude that he did not belong to it at all. If you say, "belongs only down here," you exclude the body for Christ in eternity. If I say, That is in Scripture, I bring my text, and there it is: if I say, "not," then I must know the whole of the scripture to say so. In our knowledge, negatives are universals, and affirmatives only are particular.

In Ephesians 1, we may notice, Christ is head in title, and not yet: in God's counsels the church is Christ's body, neither present, future, nor past, for it is all in counsel; but here, in Corinthians, it is the actual thing in accomplishment, distinct quite from Ephesians, which is purpose and counsel. And here, too, it is the nature of the thing. Then we have the dependence of the members down here; and it is important to see that all this is down here, because when I read, "He set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets," and so on (v. 28-30), then all this is not in heaven. The apostle says, "in the assembly" (v. 28), so not "in the body," because it is a matter of historical fact. The body is a figure; and he is stating the fact of the realisation of this in the assembly; so that it would not suit so well to say, "He set some in the body."

Verse 25 - "The members should have the same care" - proves that all the saints ought to have a care one for another; and that would include every member of the body on earth. "The same care," he says: it is not simply his taking a care for them, but I ought to care for you in the sense of love, and interest and heart being there; it is not "taking care of," but a different idea. We are all one body: my hand is interested in my eye, and my eye in my hand. All are dependent one on another, in spite of themselves, though it ought to be in love.

"Now ye are the body of Christ," v. 27. The local assembly stands as a whole body. You cannot say that the assembly in Corinth was the whole body of Christ, but it was its local expression. You could say the same of any place. It is all that expresses the truth of the assembly there. A wise masterbuilder would not know what to do with a ruined house. So, if Paul came down, I do not know to whom he would write now. There is a danger of losing, in a local assembly, the truth of the whole body, and so of having only the representation instead of the reality. I fully recognise that in the principle of meeting this is the only thing that God owns; but in our owning the local thing, I dread losing the whole thing. At Corinth the one answers to the other.

277 We get an exact list of gifts. The apostle's object was to give the manifestations in the church. Barnabas was an apostle too beside Paul and the twelve. There are different words rendered "gift," and they have shades of meaning. "Gifts" (charisma) (v. 4) is the giving when there is need strictly, and "gift" (dorea) (Eph. 4: 7) is the freedom of the gift, and so on. We should look for such gifts as will edify, and desire them. Here they were vain of their tongues; but if you were to talk Chinese, nobody would understand you. You had better seek what will edify; if you prophesy, you will help others. So, if a man desire the office of a bishop, it is a good work.

In our chapter it is power by the Holy Ghost come down; in Ephesians 4 we have Christ as the Head coming for His body. There Christ gives from on high. Here the Holy Ghost comes down, and is distributing. There is capacity as well as gift. In the parable in Matthew 25 our Lord gives to every man according to his several ability. God had formed the vessel for the purpose. In Luke a great deal more is thrown on man's responsibility; in the talents it is more God's grace. In Luke, therefore, you find ten cities and five cities in reward; while in Matthew both are alike, and here "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." It is responsibility, and reward according to labour, in Luke.

Some of these gifts have been called sign-gifts, because it is said they were a sign to unbelievers. They were for the inauguration of Christianity, but there is no intimation of their continuance. The church continues, if you take the secret wisdom of God; if you take the revealed statement of God, there is no intimation of remaining here. You will never find the church contemplated as remaining, so as to put off the coming of the Lord. In the parables with reference to it, though we have "After a long time," yet the servants to whom the talents were entrusted are the same as those who are judged; the virgins who slept are they who are roused and so on. So with the seven churches, all was existing then, and yet it has been all going on.

278 As to the signs, we read, "confirming the word with signs following," as a promise. Moses wrought miracles, and Elijah too, in the midst of apostate Israel. But not so the other prophets. Isaiah and Jeremiah worked no miracles, nor John Baptist. When God is introducing something new, you have them - wherever the thing was to be made good in testimony for our poor hearts to sanction the truth. I see no restoration of miracles, or of anything indeed. There will be miracles at the end on the devil's part: power, and signs, and lying wonders. There was no statement to the church that it must lose them at a certain time, nor that they must go on for a certain time. Some ask as to the continuance of apostles and elders. This was what they said to me in Switzerland: "How can you think of God setting up a church with elders and apostles, and yet making no provision for their continuance?" I said, It is so, because God did not mean the church to continue. We see this to be the way God used miracles. Of course, He could work a miracle at any time.

It is to be noticed, that, in verse 26, the apostle does not say (though it would be right to say it) that if one member suffer, all the members do suffer with it. God has tempered the body, that it should be so; and I trust it is in measure the case. The realisation of it is diminished by divisions and distances, and all that kind of thing; but do you suppose that, if there is a great work of blessing going on in India or Canada, there is not a blessing, too, in Ireland? Of course there is, as far as living energy goes. The thing is true, though spoiled in a measure. In an assembly where a brother is not walking in the Lord, if the gathering is spiritual, they will feel it, and there will be an immediate consciousness that something is grieving the Spirit. But if my soul is deadened, as you may sometimes see, of course it is not felt so distinctly. If a person cuts my hand, I do not merely say, "Why did you cut my hand?" but my whole body feels it. If an individual were chastened, the assembly feels it in a measure; if they were insensible to it, they would be all the more hardened. The suffering here is any kind of trial, but it applies to chastisement, because we have all one life. It is, by there being one Spirit in it all, that it is so, and it always has a certain effect, though the body may be so divided as to feel it but little. We can be awakened by the work of the Spirit and the word of prayer. If any can apply the word, let them apply it. When there is sin in an assembly, if they judge it, they prove themselves clear; but if they do not, things will get worse, or the Lord deal with them. "Leaven" would apply to both the sin and their refusing to judge it. The thing the apostle wants in 2 Corinthians is to bring them all into obedience: he says, "When your obedience is fulfilled." Our own condition is of first importance. We are never independent of the state we are in, or of the Lord's judgment of it.

279 "Now ye are body of Christ" (v. 27) is an important principle. The local assembly stands as the body of Christ, for it acts for the whole body, and is recognised as the whole body in a certain sense in its acting. If a person is put out at Belfast, he is put out from the whole body. Suffering affects the whole, though it takes place locally, and action is of the same character in that sense; and then, in verse 24, God hath done "this," that there should not be a schism in the body; that is, given such provision, though it is seen in individuals in various places. Verse 24 includes all persons who may be exceedingly valuable and yet not appear at all. It does not bring in a question of a schism. There could be no schism in the body itself; but, taking the whole thing, he says God may put honour on one person, and there may be another very quiet with a little gracious word of counsel to the rest, without outward honour put upon him.

In "covet earnestly the best gifts," the emphasis is on "best," gifts that edify. The desire should be in the individual and in the assembly. Suppose I felt the assembly wanted teaching, I might earnestly desire to be able to unfold Scripture to them. Gifts belong to the whole body of course, though they may be used locally. Take the highest gift, and apostle, he was not an apostle merely in a particular place. An evangelist is the servant of Christ, not of the assembly; but wherever he may be, he is of the church himself. If there is no assembly gathered where he is, then he is alone; but if there is an assembly, he is of it. And the first thing in him is to gather to Christ. Say that I go to Galatia, and the Lord converts fifty, they are gathered to Christ, not to the assembly I had come from. An evangelist would be for the edifying of the body of Christ, inasmuch as he brings the souls in and 'adds them. How could you build up a church without people, without bricks (or scripturally I should say, "stones")? I should in this connection be jealous of two things exceedingly: of a person separating himself in spirit from the saints; or of the assembly thinking his work was their affair. I think it is of great importance that the workman should be clearly Christ's servant; but if he works in any spirit of separation from the saints, I could not go with it. An evangelist may not necessarily gather to anything that was there but to Christ, with a full knowledge of redemption; and having Christ and a full knowledge of redemption, they could not go on with anything else.

280 Now-a-days the great thought commonly even among Christians is the conversion of souls to go to heaven; then (in Paul's time) there was no thought of anything but the church, and converts went in as a matter of course. One is thankful where there is now any better sense; one hears of souls converted all over England and small gatherings springing up. Bringing converts to a full knowledge of redemption does not always bring them unto the ground of Christ: anybody that has a pastor's heart and power should look after such. Paul himself was more than an evangelist merely, but he gets Timotheus, Silas, etc., to go and visit these places where he had laboured, and see how they were going on. Paul wanted Apollos to go to Corinth (1 Cor. 16: 12); but from a beautiful feeling Apollos would not go, for they were saying, "I of Paul, and I of Apollos." Paul had no jealousy, and wished him to go; but Apollos feared the effect of it, and would not. In the time of a revival I said to S. in Kingstown, What are you going to do with all these converts? He said, The Lord will take care of them. The result was that it all died out. I do not think this was the case with our brethren in France; when they were blessed, they stayed and gathered the converts to the table. The nearest local assembly may be a long way off. I think there is responsibility on all the church of God.

This does not really confound gifts with assemblies. The assembly would not act collectively merely, though it would have fellowship with labourers. When Paul laid hands on any to give him a gift, he was glad to have the testimony of the elders with his own. As to elders themselves, the apostles chose elders, but it is not said that hands were laid on them, yet I believe it was so. He says, "Lay hands suddenly on no man," but does not state that it refers to elders. Remember all this is very different from "gift."

281 I do not want to leave the thought as to the care of souls that are converted. If you look at a pastor, you see in his very expression a difference from an evangelist. An evangelist will say, "O Lord, look at these poor sinners"; and a true pastor will say, "O Lord, look at these poor sheep." There is this point too: the character of revival preaching does not tend so much to gather together perhaps, though having a measure of excitement in it; and souls so converted have no thought of being gathered, and it is very difficult in a revival work to bring souls into a condition to receive further teaching. I remember an expression of one who "wanted a sermon to pull him up." There is dear  -  whose preaching is exciting, but finds the converts who get a taste for worship go elsewhere, and those remain who want the exciting preaching. But there is a kind of looking after people that I should not give in to. You cannot follow into ways which cultivate a thing that is not according to God. It is an anxious thing when souls are brought in; an evangelist will not be careless about his converts, but then his special work occupies him. I believe there is many a gift that is not developed from want of devotedness.

1 Corinthians 13.

In the beginning of chapter 12 the apostle supposes all manner of gifts, but no grace. (This is of moment, too, in the opening of Hebrews 6.) A person may have the faith here spoken of without reality. He is talking of faith to remove mountains, not of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ's person. We find power and grace constantly distinguished. We find the power and not the grace in the Old Testament, in such an one as Balaam for instance, but not exactly such instances in the New Testament: there we find Judas rather.

We have a blessed description of love in this chapter. "God is love." It is sovereign goodness, coming out of itself. It goes beyond "The love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." It is the same love, but here it is in its different characters. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity (love), it profiteth me nothing." It is not a definition, but the way love works. But what we find here is divine love in the world; which is such a different thing from law. It is what is above all the evil that is round it, and therefore can feel for all the evil; love is affected, but never touched in itself by it. That is what I see in its working. So we see Christ going through this world. Love is a sovereign thing. There are two kinds of love, both divine: a downward love which is sovereign in its nature - God really - which is in our hearts in a certain sense through the Holy Ghost; and then I find another which goes upward, and there is a holy affection to which I am subject. We find an analogy to it in husband and wife. Thus, where divine love is working in my heart towards others, it goes downwards; but when I get the state of my soul, I must look up and I am subject. In "walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and given Himself for us," we have divine love. This is the giving up of myself altogether; and then I get to God, who is the object. And therefore it is said that we are light, but it is never said that we are love, because love is sovereign, and we cannot say we are that.

282 In our chapter we have love in the character of the Spirit of Christ working us. I must have a power that is above all the evil that is around me, and yet walk in graciousness through it all; and this is the reason the love of the law would not do for this world. If I love my neighbour as myself, it is not enough for a world of evil; there I must have a love that can go on, and be superior to all the evil, and this is what Christ was. It can feel all the evil too. Having no self in it, it has no self roused by all the evil that is around, and therefore it can feel for the people that are there. It "suffereth long," that is downward; it "seeketh not her own" - downward too. It is not merely that it delights in God, and in what is blessed here, but it is looking around in the midst of evil and selfishness .

"Rejoicing with the truth" (as it reads in the margin). It is in the truth, no doubt. The truth is there, and I rejoice with it, and take delight in it. Suppose the truth is being preached; my heart goes with it, and is delighted.

"Believeth all things" is not being suspicious: one believes readily. It "hopeth all things"; it does not mean ill, it does not think of evil. Evil tends to depress the soul, but God is above all that. I find constantly the danger of thinking the evil is greater than the good; but if I bring in God, He is greater than all opposed. Christ was here in the world with no thought of suspicion, and that is the spirit in which we are to walk through the world. If you are always suspecting people, who will trust you? I feel the great difficulty in seeing the evil, which is apt to get the upper hand of your mind; though it is no good deluding oneself that it is not there, because it is there. But love will go on in heaven when there is no evil to think about; prophecies will fail, tongues cease, and knowledge vanish away. "When that which is perfect is come" (v. 10) means the time of glory, when everything is perfect, and these partial things will have ceased. Knowledge now is in degree, "we know in part"; all that kind of learning will pass away. Learning is a proof of ignorance, and this will not be then. Even in divine things we learn, and all that is testimony to ignorance. It gives a great idea of the littleness of man in that way. All these partial instruments of communicating will be done with when I know as I am known: which is, I believe, God's way of knowing; it is not knowing in part; it is not so much the measure as the manner of God's knowing. God can create ideas. I know so far as things are knowable to be known. Now we see "darkly" what we do not see clearly. It is just as I see through a window, instead of seeing the object at once. It is an extraordinary expression; we do not see clearly, but in a mystery, not like plain open things. It is an enigma, though I do not like that word, because it does not suit divine things.

283 "Faith, hope, and charity," or love, are not put accidentally here. They are the three things that are characteristic of the Christian state now, "putting on the breastplate of faith and charity [the same word], and for a helmet the hope of salvation," 1 Thess. 5: 8. Some ten times in the New Testament faith, hope, and love are put together. They are positive elements, faith and hope referring to the present state I am in, and charity to the present and eternal state. Faith lays hold of an object, and hope desires it. The word "charity" is an ecclesiastical word. Love is really what God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and this never fails. When we possess a thing, we have done with faith and hope as to it: they have passed into positive fruition, as we say. There will be love in heaven, but we shall not have faith there, because there will be sight; and we shall not have hope there, because we have got possession. "Now abideth" shews the three as present things, but charity never fails.

284 1 Corinthians 14.

In this chapter the apostle is referring to these tongues which shall cease; the Corinthians were vain of them; and he says they are not to use them save conditionally.

Verse 3 is the way in which prophecy works, rather than a definition of prophecy. It is speaking unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. It can be now, of course, in that way; knowledge and doctrine abide, though the giving forth of revelation does not, because all is revealed (that is, in the word). We speak of revelation in a lower sense, when anyone gets something he had not before; but then that is only what is already in the word. It is not so much here a question as to the character of the prophecy, but he contrasts the prophesying with tongues, when no one understood them; and it is as regards those who are within, not those who are without.

In "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also" (v. 15), suppose I was praying, and did not understand what I was saying, what good would there be in that? In "my spirit prayeth," it is just as it might be in a groan that could not be uttered. The tongues, in a sense, superseded the confusion of tongues. Instead of grace confining itself to Israel, the gift of tongues opened it up to all nations. We see a specimen of it in Acts 2; it reversed Babel, as it were. Only on the day of Pentecost it was all plain and simple; but now the Corinthians were abusing it. The moment it was given, it was for all the nations in carrying the gospel to them.

The saying Amen, in verse 16, is general, I think; it would include the Lord's supper too. But if some prayed in Dutch or Persian, nobody here, at least, could say, Amen. A very wonderful thing were the tongues. There is little difference between "when ye come together in the church," in chapter 11: 18, and "the whole church be come together into some place," in chapter 14: 23. It may be more emphatic in chapter 14, that is all. The way the difference at all comes about is in chapter 11; it is the character of their coming together, in assembly; here is the whole assembly come together. The one is a character; the other is a thing. The "unlearned" persons (v. 23) are those not taught in the word. This is true of an unbeliever, but we have the unbelievers named also. The word is "idiotes," and a person not instructed in an art was called such; a private person. It makes two classes, the untaught in the things of God, and the actual unbeliever. There were no catechumens at that time. When the catechumen was first invented, they were allowed to hear the first exhortations; and when the church part came on, they were all sent out. That is the origin of the word mass, from 'Ite: missa est.'*

{*The formula of dismissal by the officiating minister.}

285 In thinking of the one who was "convinced of all, and judged of all" (v. 24), we must remember how instruction was obtained; Peter and John were not taught as Rabbis were. They had not rabbinical instruction, though this was much esteemed of course. How many poor people now will say, If a man is not a clergyman, how can he know anything about it? That would be the feeling. Such a one, convinced and judged, will "worship." Because he finds God working thus, and falls down and owns Him. The presence of God acts upon his spirit, and bows it; and his conscience is reached. The secrets of his heart are told out to himself. God's presence finds it all out to himself, without his speaking to others. It is the power of the Spirit of God on a man's conscience.

In verse 25 "God is in you" is collective. Ev is used for "among" and "in," when the noun is collective. "In you" is perhaps better, because it looks at the assembly as a whole. Verse 26 does not imply a censure, nor that the things were all looked out ready. He speaks of a revelation, and this could not be a cut and dried thing. But they were abusing the power of the Holy Ghost: there was no order. Verse 30 is merely the general spirit of subjection. But now there is no revelation. I do not think one was to wait* till another had done; order is before power. God is never the author of confusion. Verse 32 teaches that the moral power is superior to mere power. The "tongue" is subject to me, as we said before. Whatever I might have in power, if it were spiritual wisdom not to speak, I should not speak. The moral judgment of the prophet is superior to mere power, however real and mighty. Verse 34 is the tenor of the law, if not a particular law. The apostle is peremptory about it in Timothy. "I suffer not a woman to teach," he says. I think it is a little out of place for a woman even to raise a hymn; but I do not object, if she do it modestly. If three women were on a desert island, I do not see why they should not break bread together, if they did it privately. A man and his wife being alone, I see no objection to their breaking bread, if they themselves feel free and are disposed.

{*? 'speak.'}

286 Chapters 12 and 14 are separated by a chapter on love. Charity comes in, by the bye, in the middle, to teach them how to use their gifts. He brings in love too, as the root of all right action, as of everything else; and then he goes on to the order and exercise of gift. We have the doctrine in chapter 12, and the exercise of gifts in chapter 14. There is no law as to the order of the morning meeting. If a person had a word to say before the breaking of bread, I should not object; but I enjoy prominence given to the breaking of bread on the Lord's day morning.

1 Corinthians 15.

The apostle now speaks of resurrection. His keeping it till the last, in this way, is remarkable. We have a great truth brought out in the chapter, in the total identification of Christ with men - saints, but man as man, because he says, if men do not rise, Christ is not risen. I have not the least objection to verse 22 as it stands in the English Version, for all the wicked will be raised, as well as the righteous. As in Adam everybody in Adam dies, so in Christ all in Christ will be made alive. Verse 21 is more general; it is merely the fact that resurrection comes by man. You could only say "in Christ" of the wicked, if you take it in the power of Christ. The whole account is the resurrection of the saints. When you take in resurrection of the dead, it is abstract, and it is resurrection that is insisted on.

The destruction of death, if you take it for the wicked, will be the second death. The wages of sin is death in general, but strictly the first death; though wrath of God from heaven is revealed along with the gospel. I know of no scripture that speaks of Christ bearing the second death. He bore what brings us into it. It is a great thing to keep to Scripture. "The lake of fire," "the second death," is not annihilation.

You must recollect that all that is behind death is fully brought out on either side by the gospel. The Pharisees spelled out something of resurrection, but life and incorruptibility are brought to light by the gospel. In the Old Testament eternal life is mentioned but twice, and both times in connection with the millennium; and in the judgment on Adam there is no judgment beyond death - "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return" - that is all. Of course, when God was driving out the man, the woman was to have sorrow in her conception, and so on; and plenty more comes out in the other scriptures; but as for the present state, death of the body was what was imposed on him as the consequence. There were other intimations in the Old Testament, whence the Pharisees had gathered the truth, but it was a matter of spiritual apprehension. All the Old Testament saints will be in the resurrection, though I do not know that they are included in this scripture. "They without us shall not be made perfect."

287 The resurrection of Christ from among the dead is the testimony to God's acceptance of those that are raised. It is merely a question of time. If the dead are raised altogether, then they are all to come together into judgment. But God takes Christ out - the seal of His perfect acceptance - from the rest of the dead; and when the time comes, we shall be taken out from the dead in just the same manner. God does raise the wicked, and Christ will judge the wicked, and then He will give all up to God.

There is a passage in Philippians 3 as to the resurrection, which makes it simple about the body: "Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." It is wonderful what revelations we have of the plans of God, compared with the darkness of man! Romans 8: 11 also refers to resurrection - "shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

In our chapter two things are evident: one that is always our portion in spirit, that is, the time when the dispensation and ordering of things will cease; and the other, the actual having to say to God, "He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet." There is the whole system of dispensed power which comes in by-and-by; and then you get God all in all, when all mediatorial provision to bring it about is complete, and He will render up the kingdom to God. In one sense we reign for ever and ever, but all the governmental system that brings the thing about will be closed.

288 The apostle John does not give dispensations, but deals more immediately with natures; what he does is evidently the bringing out the manifestation of God. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." "If we walk in the light, as God is in the light," and so on; it is the revelation of God's nature.

But here it is all a system of counsels and power, which is, in a certain sense, provisional, and so only for a time. The object is, that God - not the Father - may be all in all. And there comes a blessed fact with it, that the Lord Jesus never gives up His manhood; "then shall the Son also himself be subject." You have the sonship in John most fully. Christ was God, and came to be a servant, presently to take the government, and all authority and power is put down, and then He takes the place of subjection, and all as man. It is not that He is not God, for He is God all the time. His divinity comes out in John at every step. He is never as a mere man in John's Gospel; yet He never goes out of the place of a person that receives everything. He has taken the form of a servant, and says, "I have glorified thee on earth," and now "glorify thou me." He does not say, I glorify Myself. And again, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him; if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." In John 17 He speaks as Son of God; "Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over ail flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."

It is beautiful to see Him God, but man, all through that Gospel! That is just what Satan tried to get Him out of down here; but no, if Satan says "Give up your place as a servant," He says, "That is where I am now come." Nor does He ever cease to be the firstborn among many brethren, and that is a wonderful thing to us. But you never find the glory of His person touched, however much He comes amongst us, and at His baptism by John, He quite takes His place as a man. Of course, there was no need for Himself to be baptised with the baptism of repentance; but in grace He takes the place with those who did need it; whereon immediately heaven is opened to Him, and the Holy Ghost comes down, and He is sealed and anointed by the Holy Ghost. If the Father owns Him as His Son, there also He takes His place with us.

289 When heaven is opened to Stephen, at once we see the difference. Stephen has an object in heaven which he is looking at, and which forms him into the same image. But when heaven is opened to Christ, heaven is looking down at Him, not He at an object there. And so the glory of His Person is always secured. In the transfiguration He was in exactly the same glory as Moses and Elias, and they were as He; but, the moment the glory comes out and the Father's voice is heard, Moses and Elias are gone. Even where His saints are in the same place with Him, the glory of His Person is completely secured. It was so at the transfiguration, as well as at His baptism. And the nearer we are to Christ, the more we shall see the glory of His Person. It is blessed to see this. He still remains the firstborn among many brethren. If it were only an angel, there would not be much in it.

Psalm 8 will be made good at the beginning of the millennium. His enemies will be made His footstool according to Psalm 110, but the same general sense. He is sitting at His Father's right hand now, but when His Father makes His enemies His footstool, then He begins to trample them down. In Psalm 8 He gets this power, and is set over the works of His hand. He has three distinct titles to this place over all things: He created them in Colossians, and therefore is Head over all things; then, in Colossians and Hebrews, He takes it as Son, because, if He is Son, He is heir; and then there is a third title, as Son of man He takes it to Himself, but in the way of doing it, He takes it in redemption: God reconciles everything by Him. The full result of Psalm 8 Will not be reached until death is destroyed. God puts all things under His feet as Son of man at the beginning of the millennium, and then He begins to put them down, and, when all is done, He gives the kingdom up. The kingdom of heaven is going on now; not the kingdom of the Son of man, though He is King, and entitled to take the kingdom at any time. He is ready to judge both quick and dead; only He is sitting there till the moment, known to God, when He is to take the kingdom manifestly, and in actual execution. Now it is all a provisional state. He is sitting on the Father's throne, and has not taken His own at all; still the kingdom belongs to Him; only it is going on as in the parables of Matthew 13, a kingdom without a king, in patience, not power. This is not a kingdom in the literal sense, but the shape the kingdom takes before the King takes His power, though He is King.

290 The destruction of death will not be until the great white throne. The taking of the kingdom will be a total change in the order of things; but the great difference will be, that (instead of a rejected Christ, and the Holy Ghost giving power to go against the stream) when the Lord comes, the stream is in the way of righteousness: power and glory, and everything, are in the way of righteousness. Now people have to make sacrifices; if they follow Christ, they have their cross. Only He is excepted who did put all things under Him: otherwise it is all without exception. We have it in Psalm 8, and quoted in three places - Ephesians 1: 22, Hebrews 2, and this chapter. It is more developed in Hebrews 2; it says, we see not yet all things put under Him. Half the psalm is fulfilled, but not yet the other half. He is crowned with glory and honour, but we do not see everything put under His feet, and there He sits on the Father's throne. In Ephesians He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body. In Psalm 2 we have Him as Son of God and King of Israel down in the earth: only He is rejected, and then we have the state His rejection leaves the Jews in, until Psalm 8, when we have everything put under Him. We find the Messiah's glory and title set aside for a time, when those who followed with Him are in trial and difficulty; and then Jehovah's name is excellent in all the earth, when the Son of man is set over everything, and this is seen in Psalm 8.

That gives the whole scheme of God's ways in Christ, not the church, but as to the earth. In the end of John 1 Christ is owned according to Psalm 2, "the Son of God and King of Israel." And Christ says, You shall see greater things than these - the Son of man on the throne. And then, in John 2, we have the millennium settled among the Jews on earth, the water of purifying turned into the joy of earth at the marriage, and with a scourge of small cords He purges the temple. Those are the two sides of the millennial character, and that is why it is called the third day. You cannot make anything of those days in John, if you do not see it is the remnant up to Nathaniel. The history, in fact, has many days; but the days taken notice of are John Baptist's ministry, Christ's, and then the third day. It is just the same at the end of John: this is the third time that Jesus shewed Himself, and that third time is the millennium. It is meant to be mysterious, and it is so. The first time He sent His disciples for a haul (Luke 5: 6), the net brake; but now, when the Lord comes back again, the net did not break, although there were so many fishes (153). It is purposely mysterious, I do not doubt. There had been the revelation to Thomas before; and He had shewn Himself eight days before that. This was the third time, when He gathers them at the end. Paul's ministry is entirely left out here, but we have Peter and John's ministries: - Peter's, to feed the sheep; and, as for John, the Lord says, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me"; and this is what John did; he goes watching over the church until Christ come.

291 In our Lord's speaking with Peter (John 21), two words are used: phileo (I am attached) is more intimate, agapao (I love) is more general. Peter says, I love you with the intimacy of a friend. It is curious, that, though the verb phileo is used, the noun from it is never used in the Greek. The Lord uses the general word first, and probes his heart; and then again, "Lovest thou me?" and the third time He says, "Affectionest thou me?" "I not only love you," says Peter, "but have affection for you." I think there is great instruction there. The Lord never reproaches Peter, but goes to detect the root that had produced the fault: and Peter is not really restored until he had judged the root. I do not mean that he may not have confessed it honestly, but he is in danger of the same again. The moment he had been put to the test, he did not know the Lord at all, and nothing but divine knowledge could have said that he loved Him. Divine knowledge could say all things; and then, when the Lord has completely humbled him, He puts entire confidence in him: "Feed my sheep." The very thing Christ loves most on this earth He trusts to this man. It was a complete destruction of Peter's self-confidence, and then he knew what the resource for a poor sheep was: since he had judged himself thoroughly, he knew where to take the sheep. The Lord never can trust anybody that trusts himself. It is not that a person is not sincere. Peter was perfectly sincere, but he did not know himself.

Then the Lord, we may say, leaps over to His coming. Then there was another thing as to Peter I may mention - He puts an end to his will. Peter had declared he would follow Him to prison and to death - the thing he could not do. If only a servant girl asks him, "Are you one of them?" he is afraid, and begins to curse and swear. The Lord now says, "When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he signifying by what death he should glorify God." 'When your will is gone, you will follow Me.' The very thing he said he would do, and could not, because he trusted the flesh, that thing, when he had no confidence of his own, was what he would do, and really did so. It was a thorough breaking down of the flesh, and then Christ trusts all to him, both His sheep and His lambs. There is a difference there: first, "Feed my lambs"; then, "Shepherd my sheep"; and then, "Feed my sheep." "Shepherd," in that way, is sometimes important; the elders are called on to shepherd the flock; the Greek word means not to feed merely, but to care for and watch over them. We have no ascension here; all passes over to Christ's coming: we have nothing of Paul, but only Peter and John; Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, and John's ministry going on till the Lord came.

292 To return to our chapter. It may be remarked that the baptism for the dead, in verse 29, means, that you take your part with the dead, and for the dead, whether it be Christ, or anybody else. It is a very old thought. Doddridge had it two hundred years ago; he says, Here's a man who has fallen in the ranks, and another steps forward in his stead; what is the good of that, if nobody rises?

"I die daily" (v. 31) is an outward thing. The difference of the glories is, I believe, between the heavenly and the earthly. "So also is the resurrection of the dead" - the state of the resurrection is more glorious than the state down here.

All that is told of the first resurrection is testimony against the entire idea of taking people to judgment in the way the evangelical system does. "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ" - be manifested there - that must be, but the saints are in glory before they arrive there: therefore the idea of a judgment, whether they are to have the place or not, is altogether too low. The real power of redemption has been lost sight of, and the resurrection itself is the fruit of that redemption. Just as Christ Himself was taken from among the dead (besides, He "could not be holden of it") by the glory of the Father owning Him in righteousness as Son, so the saints will be taken out too. But there the resurrection was putting the seal of acceptance publicly upon Christ's whole work; and everything is settled. Whereas, also, if the saints alone are raised, and taken out from among the wicked dead presently, it too is a positive testimony to their acceptance.

293 In Mark Christ told them, after the transfiguration, to tell no man until after He should be risen "from among the dead." The disciples were wondering what this rising from the dead should mean; that was what astonished them. Every Pharisee in the country believed there would be a resurrection; but a rising out from among the dead they could not make anything of. The whole idea of a judgment to come to settle a person's case seems to me to upset all Christianity. Paul has been eighteen hundred years in heaven, and you are going to take him out to judge whether he is to be there or not! It is absurd upon the face of it. People fancy that the testimony to the fulness of redemption weakens morality: nay, but the fulness is in Christ, and being in Christ I also see that Christ is in me. Then if Christ is in you, let us never see anything but Christ in your ways every day. All duties flow from the place we are in already. You could not have the duties of children to me if you are not my children, nor could you, if you slaved yourselves to death, become my children. But if you were my children, you would have the duty of living as such. A woman cannot act as the wife of a man, if she is not his wife, and so on. But then the duty is there if the relation is. Are you sure of being saved for ever? asks one. Well, is that my child? Yes; then he is my child for ever. God gives a ground for all action, but it is not duties and conditional promises: you cannot have a duty without first putting a person in the place it belongs to. And then God gives a new nature that delights in the duty, whereon He sets you to do it.

But I was alluding to the fact that we are raised in glory, and surely, if we are there, the question of judging whether we are to be there is all nonsense. And so the first resurrection is not merely a notion about some high-flown thing. "Some have not the knowledge of God"; for this denying the resurrection was connected really with a moral state; there was no real knowledge of God. A Christian might have fallen into such a state, but the knowledge of God is that revelation of God to the soul which is estimated by the new nature, and is the spring of all acquaintance with truth. A saint may fall into such a state, for the flesh in the saint is as bad as in the sinner, or worse. Paul here states the fact, "some have not the knowledge of God," just as we were saying, the other day, a man asleep is, as regards others, just the same as a dead man. Some needed the exhortation, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead." Such are thinking after the flesh, instead of thinking after Christ, though before God not really in the flesh.

294 The knowledge of God is immensely important; if I have not light, I do not know what light is; the knowledge of a being flows from partaking of the nature of that being. An animal does not know what a man is, though there may be greater men, and stronger men, and wiser, than myself. Hence "he that loveth not, knoweth not God." If God is love, and I have got His nature, then I know He is, and what He is. But there are some people who have not the knowledge of God. As I said, you must have the nature of a being to know that being; and now I know what God is, because I have been made partaker of the divine nature, or else I had not the knowledge of God. "We" walk in the light, as God is in the light, and that was the difference between Israel and Christians. God was behind a veil to them, but now He has come out in Christ, and that veil is rent, and we come in. And so now the wrath of God is revealed from heaven; that is not the government of God sending the people to Babylon, or elsewhere, but wrath in full, or else there must be no "ungodliness." And the death that rent the veil, and let God out, put away the evil that kept us outside. Of old they might have learned at least some of God's ways: for "He shewed his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel"; that is, if they were spiritual. Moses says, "Shew me thy way, that I may know thee." That was something of it, but the Christian, properly speaking, knows God. Galatians 4: 8 gives you, "When ye knew not God," and then, "After that ye have known God." There is a moral estimate of what God is. If I find a ritualist, I say, You do not know God, you could not, as long as you bow down your head like a bulrush, as Isaiah says (chap. 58: 5), and think God can be worshipped by all these mummeries; you do not know God really.

295 Those in 2 Peter 3, who were "entangled" and "overcome," had known Christ in a superficial way; there was no real change of life, no vital change, only an outward change through the knowledge brought to them, but, as the old saying is, "A washed sow is no sheep." It takes a new nature really to know God. Knowing Christ may be a little different from knowing God; knowing God is knowing His nature, whereas Christ has come, and there might, in another way, be such and such a knowledge of Him. Without knowledge of God, you may get your feelings moved about the truth. Look at Balaam. He can say, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his"; but there was no change as to his life, or anything. There may be such now, with no real knowledge of Christ. The outward manifestation of Christ may have come to a person, without any knowledge of what was inside. "When they knew God," in Romans 1, was the knowledge of God as in Noah, the preacher of righteousness; but they turned that into idolatry. They knew there was only one God in Noah's time, and they gave that up for idols. In one sense you may know everything, if you merely take the acquaintance with it. In Romans Paul is convicting the Gentiles on two grounds - their knowledge of God as in Noah, and on the ground of the creation-glory of God. The starting-point of the Gentiles was the knowledge of God, and they did not like to retain Him in their knowledge; that is the way they lost it, because the human mind, in a moral sense, cannot hold it. It is ginosko in Greek, in "After that ye have known God." It is the word constantly used in such a connection. The word epiginosko is more, it is consciously to know. He says of the Corinthians, they were ignorant of God; I think the knowing of God, in Romans, is a little more, because they had knowledge, for they started from a point, and it was abandoned.

Now we have another very important thing, "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit," etc. (v. 45-48). As we were like Adam, we shall be like Christ. There are many important things here. "The second Man" is the first truth; that is, we have no acceptance of the first man at all; we have acceptance of people, of course, but that is in the second Man, not in the first. God's thought is to bring in a second Adam, and the first is set aside; and as the first Adam was a head and centre, the second Adam is looked at as a head Man, and in a far higher way. In many places people think there is a great deal going on towards perfecting man, but, instead of that, Christ sets him on one side. Christ was "the last Adam" before He rose as to His Person, but not as to His state. Adam was so in the garden, in his person, in paradise, but was not exactly head of a race until he was outside; and this has its importance. So Christ was not Head of a race really until He had died and risen, because He died. Christ comes among men down here, and men will not have Him, but in His death their system is totally closed. Another man is set up: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Man rejected Christ, and that finished man's history. When Christ has risen, He begins a new state altogether, but it is in the last Adam. He is the last Adam; there could be no other after Him. "Adam," in contrast with "man," is looked at more as the head of a race.

296 Then notice the enormous difference between the two Adams. The first was a living soul, the second a life-giving Spirit. This is the very thing those who deny the immortality of the soul insist on, for they say animals were living souls, and so they were. But we know that after death comes judgment (Heb. 9: 8), and that single text shews that after death the whole question comes in of judgment for what a man did when he was alive. These people talk of Hebrew and Greek about it (that is, one of their chief people, and one may say several), but he only proved that he knew nothing about the language, and could not even look out words in his dictionary; and yet it raises a cloud of dust. God had quickened Christ, but Christ is a quickener both of soul and body, and that is the way there is a spiritual body. Christ was born of a woman, "made of a woman," it says, "made under the law." "Made" is not the thing, but it is a word that signifies, "to begin to be," and that was not before; because "under the law" would not do. I could say, He became a man, but I could not say, became of a woman. "Became," in English, supposes a person to exist already, and then to become something, which is not the case here. And "was made" does not do, because it looks as if He was made what He was not before. Christ was always a quickening Spirit - He quickened from Adam. It is the contrast between the first Adam and last; the one received life, the other gives life; and then we shall be like Him who is from heaven.

297 As to soul and spirit, spirit is the upper part, and life was communicated to the body through it. Soul, when you make the difference, is that which you have in common with the beasts. The word is used in the Hebrew for everything; conscience, soul, spirit, and heart. Heart thus is really a figure, for else it is a piece of my flesh connected with the circulation of the blood. Take "if our heart condemn us not," there it is in the sense of conscience: "Love God with all thy heart," there it is the affections.

The "earth," in verse 47, is the ground the man is made of. I think we have to recollect that, in divine things, the force of words is known by the meaning of the thing. It is not so in human science, but the opposite. Our Lord asks, "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my words." Nicodemus shews what this is when he asks, "How can a man be born again?" It is of the first importance to lay hold of what the Lord is speaking, though we might learn Greek too; it is all well in its place. "We have borne the image of the earthy, and shall also bear the image of the heavenly."

When we learn that "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump," we shall be changed. The last trump, among the Romans, was the signal for all to start from the camp. They sounded one trumpet, and pulled down their tents; then a second, and put themselves in order; and when the last was sounded, they all started. It is the same idea in 1 Thessalonians 4; it is there the military technical shout when they were all called into the rank again from standing at ease (originally it was the sound given to the rowers to pull together). We have three there: the Lord first; then the archangel carrying it on; and then the trump of God that completes all. "Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory; O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Yes, "the strength of sin is the law." It is astonishing the way people cling to the law for morality. I know nothing that shews more the perversity of man's mind than this. It is clear enough. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace." To put under law is to bring in sin, for you cannot keep it, and so it is "the strength of sin." The motions of sin were by the law. Law addresses itself to a nature, and forbids the sin, without changing the nature, or anything else; and it enfeebles the whole spirit of a man, by bringing his conscience into bondage. Indeed sin takes occasion by the commandment. If in this table, now, I had a drawer, and something in it, and I said, "Nobody is to know what is there," why, there are lots of heads in this room would be curious to know what it was directly. And the law is "the strength of sin," by binding the soul down to guilt: not that this is a fault in the law, but because of what my nature is, law does provoke. And then, besides, it ties the guilt down on the conscience. Law gives no life, no power, no object, but it provokes the lust, is the occasion of sin, and fixes my guilt upon me. Christ gives me an object, and life, and power, and delivers me from all that was against me. The law tells me to love God, and I ask, Why so? I have no nature that does. It states the duty, without acting on the person's heart one atom, but the sin that is committed it ties down upon the conscience. And it is very useful to tie sins down upon the conscience, but that is all it is useful for. Where Paul says, "Touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless," in Philippians 3, it was outwardly true: but he says in Romans 7, "We know that the law is spiritual," which is another thing. In Philippians he alludes to sins; so with the ruler, who says, "All these things have I kept from my youth up." But the Lord tests him with, "Go and sell all that thou hast," and that will not do for man.

298 The moment of the rapture (v. 54) is not in the scope of the prophets, and Paul merely states the fact without time. In Isaiah 25 we have the Gentiles brought in, and the Jews restored, and he puts the fact of the resurrection in without the precise order of events. The testimony of the Lord's coming is striking, for it is when He comes the first resurrection takes place. I say this, because it is considered to be a kind of bit of superior knowledge. 1 Thessalonians 4 gives it. There are two classes taken up, and they will be setting on the thrones of judgment, but it does not say exactly when.

299 1 Corinthians 16.

We have in verse 8 an important principle as to work. There are many adversaries, but a great and effectual door is opened to me, and so I will stay. It is a very different thing to have the door closed, and to have many adversaries. We shall soon find out when the door is closed. I think it requires patience; and you may find amazing opposition. I remember only two people coming, for eight weeks at one place where everything was against me, but at the end of that time forty or fifty came in, and several were converted. At another place, where all was for me, even the clergyman, it all came to nothing. The highest leading is direct leading by the Spirit of God. I do not say we have that now as Paul had it; but there is being guided by His eye, while, too, it is a great mercy to be held in by bit and bridle. Take the fact that Paul and Silas were going to Bithynia (Acts 16), "but the Spirit suffered them not." Then they were called over to Macedonia; and this was positive direct guidance as to where they were to work: and Paul went afterwards to Ephesus, and stayed there a couple of years, and all Asia heard the word of God. I believe the Lord might now put it upon a person's heart to go to a particular place. I remember once going to Cork, and could not tell why I went, and there was great blessing. It is better for evangelists to go two and two, but it is difficult to get enough for it. We lean but little on the power of the Spirit of God. We have a network of railways, and use them, but Paul did his work on foot, and did a great deal more work too than we do. I use a railroad, of course, but if one can go on foot, it would be a deal better.

In verse 15 I see the Lord providing spiritual authority: "they addicted themselves"; it is the word for appointing officers to a regiment. It is not an official authority, but an action on the conscience of the person - it is a moral authority, and not official. They were not teaching, but they were serving the saints, and acquired a just and happy influence over them: and wherever an assembly is going on well, and there is a number there, there will be something of this kind. In Switzerland we were very much opposed about ministry, but they failed in their scheme. To get something we had not, they chose elders, saying Luther sanctioned them. One of them came to me, and said, "I am an elder."

300 I said, "Suppose I am unruly; what will you do?"

"Why, I will come and visit you."

"Well, you are here now: what have you to say to me?"

"Why, I am an elder."

"Who made you an elder?"

"I was chosen an elder."

"But I did not choose you."

And, quite confused, he had to own,  "I cannot be an elder to one who did not choose me."

"And do you think unruly people will own you, even if they did choose you? Not they."

Notes of Readings on 2 Corinthians

J. N. Darby.

<26027E> 301

2 Corinthians 1.

Paul was at Ephesus, intending to go to Corinth, but they were in such a bad state there that he could not go, but he wrote a letter, and then went up from Ephesus to Troas, in hope to meet Titus with an answer to his letter. He went into Macedonia, met Titus, and wrote them the second letter, now that his heart could open out more upon blessing. He could go farther on in the truth now, though they were still babes, yet he could lead them on.

Paul could go much nearer to Ephesian truth here, and we have the basis of that in a verse or two, though he does not enter into it as the unfolding of God's counsels. As regards the person of the Christian, it is, "If one died for all, then were all dead"; that is Ephesian truth as a basis in the individual. "Bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus" is Roman truth, which is much beyond the first epistle; but his mouth is opened and enlarged. In Ephesians he gives the counsels of God, but here he can take the foundation in Christians. And here there was another thing had happened which gave occasion to this; he had gone through the terrible persecutions at Ephesus when the town clerk dismissed the assembly (and he seems, indeed, to have gone farther than we have details of in Acts), so that he despaired of his life. He had been through this which had brought him to the point of all that he sets out in the second epistle - that life was in God who raised the dead, and the flesh was dead. That is Roman truth - dead with Christ; but there are two ways in which men are looked at - as living in sins, or living to sin, if you please; and on the other hand as dead in sins. It is the same state, but in two different aspects. If I look at a man living in his lusts and pleasures, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, then he is both living in sins and dead to God. I may take him up on either side, and say, You are a living man in sins, and you must die: or I may take him up as dead in sins, and say, Life is God's gift; and without it you cannot enjoy Him, or know Him, for you are dead. Death is brought to a living man in sin, and the new creature to a man that is dead. If the man is dead, as in Ephesians, we have all the counsels of God, a totally new creation of everything else, and of the man too, and that is here in Corinthians, not merely "he is a new creature" but there is (that is, the whole thing is) a new creation. You have the man practically realising death, and also as already dead, and the new creation brought in.

302 What I have indicated is the main thought of the epistle, and then we hear afterwards about collections of money. It is addressed more specifically to the saints. In the first epistle there is instruction for the whole of professing Christendom, and governmental directions how to get on. Here he is thinking of the saints, and opens his heart: it is to the saints which are in all Achaia, where Corinth was situated. The word "saints" looks at them as to their standing. Sanctified of the Spirit is always assumed to be a real thing, although there may be a false person amongst those so spoken of. I do not think the word "saint" is ever used, except upon the supposition that they are really so. Sanctified by the truth is like it, but not sanctified by blood as in Hebrews 10. It is not the individual himself sanctified by the Holy Ghost in such cases. See in Hebrews, "hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing." There was positive apostasy from that kind of sanctification, and yet he there speaks to them as sanctified. The true value of the sacrifice is not only to fit them for God, but to set them apart for God. It is like the word calling: "many are called, but few are chosen."

The apostle addresses them here as the "church of God"; in Romans there is no recognised church: there was a church assembled there, but he was dealing about individual justification; he had never been at Rome so as to recognise the church. In Thessalonians it is "the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father." They had just come out of idolatry, and there was but one God, and He was God the Father. Here it is ecclesiastical rather, the church of God; he is dealing with God's assembly in the world. For the same reason he says to Timothy, "the church of the living God," and tells him how he ought to behave himself there: he adds "living," in contrast with dumb and dead idols.

We get hold of the starting-point of this epistle in seeing that God had comforted Paul by the coming of Titus, after all his troubles at Ephesus, and about Corinth too. When he reached Macedonia, "without were fightings, within were fears"; and then comes Titus, and that is where he is in this epistle. He had gone through all at Ephesus, and at the same time had the pressure of the Corinthian state on his heart, and not only their state, but sorrow that he had ever written the first epistle at all, because he was afraid he had alienated the Corinthians from him. And he was now "joyed" by the coming of Titus.

303 He sets out God as "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." (Read also v. 5-7.) Then, in verse 8, he begins with the circumstances we were referring to in Asia, but says "we had the sentence of death in ourselves"; he was almost put to death, but God did not allow him to be killed, and this met a man who held himself to be dead already. The sentence of death was written on him, and he held himself dead in himself, so that his confidence was not in any life he had as a man, but it was in God who raiseth the dead. It was the carrying out of Romans 6: 11: "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin," that was counting himself so. We have three things: God sees us as dead; ye are dead; live it. Faith says, I reckon myself dead; Paul was doing so, and is made to carry it out. In Romans he applies it to sin, but here it is to everything. His confidence is in God, and God did deliver him, and did not allow him to be killed, though he feared it. Verse 11 refers to the part all the saints had in the power of deliverance that was with him. It is a remarkable expression, "The gift bestowed upon us through the prayers of many persons." This was at Ephesus.

The country called Asia in Scripture is proconsular Asia, the south-western corner of Asia Minor. I do not know that all Icaria was taken in. Then above that was Bithynia, and Cappadocia, and Galatia, and Armenia, and so on. I do not know that it was quite down to the sea in the south, but near the south-western corner. I would take in Lydia too. When he says, "All they that be in Asia," that is the portion spoken of. Ephesus was a great centre then, where was the temple of Artemis or Diana, "that all the world worshipped," one of the seven wonders of the world.

As to the general use of the Greek word in verse 4, "encouragement" is better than "comfort"; but it is the word for "exhort, and comfort, and encourage": it means to stir up our hearts.

304 "The sufferings of Christ abound in us" (v. 5) means sufferings the same in character; as in Colossians he says, "I fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ." The Head had suffered, and Paul was suffering too for the elect's sake, and doing so in the sphere that was given him. And you can see by their prayers they were all interested in what Paul had from God; they enjoyed it too, though the thing was bestowed upon him: just as we do now when praying for a brother in his labour. "Filling up that which is behind" signifies that there was more to be done. The Head had done His part, of course: Paul's was not atonement. I think this was confined to the apostle Paul. Peter and the rest never suffered for the church, though they suffered for Christ's sake, but Paul suffered from the Jews, which Peter never did. Paul was a minister of the gospel to the whole creation which is under heaven, and a minister of the church to complete the word of God; and this is not said of anybody else, it is Paul especially. I do not say that we ought not to suffer, for we ought; but a dispensation was committed to Paul, and we could not say this. We may have our share in the privilege, as some great banker takes up a large loan, and other people take up bits of it. All that take under him have their share.

The gift bestowed in verse 11 was his life spared, though I do not doubt it was all that he had as an apostle included.

Then Paul gives what I was saying about his journey round the Aegean sea. "In this confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that you might have a second benefit, and to pass by you into Macedonia, and to come again out of Macedonia unto you, and of you to be brought on my way toward Judea," v. 15, 16. Paul thought to have gone up the west side of the Aegean to Macedonia, and then to have come down the west side again, whereas he did not do so, but came down the east side of the Archipelago again. He says it was to spare them that he did not go to Corinth; if he had gone, it must have been "with a rod." But when Titus came, he heard it was all right, or at least in the main. Now here we have an instance of what we see in Paul: the instant he touches a certain string, off he goes on that string. His mind was so full of Christ, that, if he touches that, he goes away into it all; it is so here. He mentions Christ, and away he is into a whole range of truth in Him. This would not, however, have been so appropriate in the first epistle. "Our word," he says, "was not yea and nay; for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us was not yea and nay, but yea is in him; for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen, unto the glory of God by us," v. 19, 20.

305 Paul says it was not lightness, nor was it uncertainty, but it was to spare them he came not as yet unto Corinth, and he wrote to them instead of going. He says, "not yea and nay," not changing, not the lightness of a mere foolish human mind. In 1 Corinthians 16: 5 he says, "I will come unto you when I shall pass through Macedonia"; this was that they might have a second benefit; and in verse 7 he adds, "for I will not see you now by the way," only he did not tell them why just then. He had intended to go by Corinth into Macedonia, and come back again by them, but he says, I will not do that now, so he says in chapter 16. He had intended, and then did not go. And here he asks, "Did I use lightness?" No, it was another thing.

In verse 20 "the promises" are all made to Christ, and not directly to the church. There are promises by the way, such as, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee"; but all the promises in chief are to Christ. There never was a promise to a man, that is, a sinner, because the first thing that was said for faith to hang upon was a judgment passed upon the serpent; but it was Christ (the Seed of the woman) who was to bruise the serpent's head. There was no promise to fallen Adam, and had he been unfallen, he would not have wanted a promise. It was a revelation of the last Adam to which his faith could cling, but it was no promise to himself. In judging the serpent God says, "Thou shalt bruise his heel" (the heel of the woman's Seed); but "the Seed of the woman shall bruise thy head." The Seed of the woman is Christ, not Adam. The promise in Christ, in Ephesians 3, is everything that God has promised, eternal life, and especially the Spirit, "that ye might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." And then everything else is thus involved in Christ. Promise is an abstract idea, which takes a form as may be needed - bruising the serpent's head; promise of eternal life given is in Christ Jesus before the world began. and so on. There is no promise to the Gentiles. There is a revelation made to the Gentiles about them, as, "Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people"; or, "The promise is unto you and your children, and to them that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call": but all is in Christ. There is to the ten tribes; and many statements are made about them in the abundance of revelation. "Afar off," both in Acts and Ephesians 2, leaves it open. The apostle seizes the word "whosoever" in Acts 2, and gives it to Gentiles, or anybody else. He often takes up a word, and gives it a larger application than it had originally. The apostle does not himself apply it to the Gentiles in Acts 2, but, while it is quite true that Peter had the Jews and the ten tribes in his mind then, yet in the mind of the Spirit of God it embraces Gentiles also.

306 In Galatians the promises to Abraham were to Christ and to Christ only: that is the whole of the apostle's argument. There were two classes of promises and all go with Abraham. Abraham is the beginning of promise. If we go back a little, there were no dealings of God before the flood. He turned man out of the garden, if that can be called a dealing, but nothing between that and the flood. Then when God brings in the new world, in Noah He brings in government to restrain man; there is the power of the sword. After this, that it might be understood all was pure grace, God begins with promise. In the flood judgment came in; and thereupon the devil comes in and says, I govern the world, and men take up their idols. Well, God divided the world into nations and Abraham becomes the root of God's ways, and we find promises, election, and calling.

Abraham is the root of the olive tree: the promises are given to him; he is the elect and called one. And God gives the principle of all divine life, faith. Notice that, because people say, Had not God Himself settled all these things already? I say, Yes, because when He settled them, He called me out of them, to go out by faith: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy fathers, unto a land that I will shew thee." - I had formed this world into nations, it has gone to idolatry and taken the devil for its god, and now you must come out and belong to Me. Well, he left his country and kindred, but not his father's house, and therefore he did not get to Canaan then, but after his father's death he went to Canaan. And Abraham was the first person who was the head of a family; Adam was the head of an evil race, man. We find plenty of saints, but no heads; but Abraham was to be father of the faithful. And it is then that God calls out this distinct person to be a stranger and sojourner.

307 There were two classes of promises; that a great nation should spring from him and his seed, to be as the stars of heaven (that is not "thy seed," or one). But in Genesis 12, God says, "in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed," that is not Israel. Then we find that promise confirmed in chapter 22. It is never said, "to thee" and thy seed, "to Abraham," but "in thee." But when Isaac had been offered up and been received in resurrection, then he says in Galatians, "to Abraham and to his seed were the promises made." Genesis 12 gave it to Abraham, and Genesis 22 confirmed it, to the Seed. The promise is made to Abraham personally in chapter 12, and confirmed to the seed, Isaac, in chapter 22, and that is a figure in which Christ had died and risen. That was confirmed to Christ (but not in Christ), and the law which came later on could not disannul or add to it. Hence therefore you cannot bring in the law now; law cannot be tacked on to promise. Then you see there was only one Seed, and that is Christ, and then he adds, If I am in Christ, I have the promise That is the way he brings the Gentile in. The Jews were the natural seed, but he says, the promise of the blessing was to the one person, Christ. Very well, I am in Christ, then I have the promise; "If ye be in Christ, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to promise."

It is not a promise to the Gentiles, but one confirmed to Christ and then to the Gentiles in Christ, through the Spirit. Genesis 15 is specific to the Jews, and in Genesis 22 is promise to the seed. The stars of heaven are the Jews only, as Moses says, "Behold ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude," Deut. 1. It is a great thing to see what the Lord is pointing out in a passage. And He takes two illustrations of a great number - what we see in the heavens, and what lies on the sea-shore.

Some people think that the law was added to recover Israel afterwards. But this was not a thought common to Paul. What he says is, You cannot add the law. And we find another thing (which is what such would say still more); that is, they add grace to the law, and try to get out that way. This is exactly what they had at Sinai; they broke the law then and there, and God spared them by grace and put them back under law. The first time Moses went up the mount, he did not put a covering over his face, and it is then he finds the people round the calf, and that they had broken the law fundamentally before they had it, that is, before they had it in full; though they had undertaken to be obedient to the Lord, they had gone aside from Him already. Still God spares them in His government, and in answer to Moses says, "Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book"; but He brings them back under law, and it was the ministration of death and condemnation mingled with forbearance, which is not absolute law, but law mixed with grace.

308 The first time the law was given on the tables of stone, it never reached them at all. Moses broke them. You could not put the law by the side of the golden calf. Moses did not know what to do with the tables. He had not asked God about it, at least I always thought so, it was his righteous indignation. "And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing, and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount." God could not break His law, of course, but man could not have it. They never did have pure law, therefore; but when he went up the second time, God shews Himself in His proclamation before him: "The Lord God, merciful and gracious, and longsuffering," etc., and the people who were spared are put back under law, though grace accompanies its application to them.

Moses put the veil on whenever he came out: that was to keep the glory on. There is no veil on the glory now; the glory could not come out then, for glory with law is death and condemnation. Now, the veil is entirely off in Christ, because the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, after He has been on the cross, is the proof of salvation. And therefore now I can look at it and be changed into the same image. The veil is off the glory and on their hearts - Israel's - and not on the glory; but when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil that is on their heart shall go also. All the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, is promised, everything about Christ that was told in the Old Testament; but there is added here another thing, it is only through the Holy Ghost. "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." That brings in an immense element. In Exodus 24 the covenant was sanctioned by death; if it is law, it is death and condemnation; if characterised by death, it is salvation. The blood was to confirm the covenant; but if it is a covenant of law, it confirms it to condemn me: if it is a covenant of grace it confirms it to save me.

309 Well, all these promises of God are yea and amen, to God's glory; but it is "by us"; we are brought in, and then He shews how it is. "He which establisheth us with you in Christ and hath anointed us, is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." It is this security we get established in Christ by God who seals us with the Spirit. The sealing is an additional thing which is by the anointing. "Unction" is the same as "anointing"; it is exceedingly beautiful, and an additional instance of the way in which Christ has associated us with Himself. It is Christ's own anointing is the testimony to our being baptised by the Holy Ghost: "Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost; and I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." The way that we get the Holy Ghost brought into us is that Christ received it. He is the Lamb of God that takes away sin; and the other element in John's testimony to Him is, that He baptised with the Holy Ghost.

There is another thing to be remembered here: Christ received the Holy Ghost, consequent upon His work being finished. "Being by the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now hear and see." Christ being perfect, God puts His seal upon Him: "Jesus of Nazareth anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power." Then comes in redemption, and consequent upon that He receives of the Father the Holy Ghost for us. This makes it a heavenly thing for us, for it unites us with Him while He is there, and that is the reason we have assurance. Christ is gone, and the question is, "Is His blood accepted?" The Jews cannot tell this till He come out; but we do not wait for that, because the Holy Ghost has come out, and having come He unites me with Christ who is there. We have a figure of it in Leviticus 9. Moses and Aaron went in, and came out and blessed the people, and so God testified His acceptance of the sacrifice. But we do not wait for that. While Christ has gone in as a heavenly Lord, the Holy Ghost has come out, Christ gone up on high receives the promise of the Father and sends Him down. God puts us into Christ, and gives the Holy Ghost, and the consciousness of being in Christ, and that is the sealing. And I have the earnest of the Spirit in my heart, which, to complete it, means that I am going to have the glory.

310 Baptism of the Spirit and anointing agree in substance, except that one thinks of anointing as more of active continuance. Sealing and anointing are coincident again in a sense, but that sealing is personal, and anointing has a more general bearing. When anointed I can say God has put His seal upon me for the day of redemption. And there is more; for not only does the Holy Ghost seal me and give me title, but He is the earnest of the inheritance too, and in me as such. Sealing is prominent among us, because we want security, and to be sure of it, and we have that by this one fact, that the Holy Ghost is given to us in this way, consequent upon Christ's sitting at the right hand of God. In the Old Testament the leper was washed with water, sprinkled with blood, and anointed with oil. In the case of the priests, the oil and the blood were mingled. It was put on the tip of the right ear, and thumb of right hand, and great toe of right foot. The blood of Christ is applied to all our thoughts, acts, and walk; and then the anointing oil follows, the Spirit to sanctify all my thoughts, acts and walk; and then beside the oil was poured on his head, the whole man as such anointed.

The sprinkling of the blood in 1 Peter 1: 2 is used with reference to salvation. There is never re-sprinkling of the blood. There is the sprinkling of the blood of the covenant (the covenant sealed), and the leper sprinkled, and the priest sprinkled; but there is no re-sprinkling. In Numbers 19 when a man had to be restored, the ashes were put into running water, and then he was sprinkled with it. The Spirit of God brought to remembrance what the blood had done in putting away sin long ago. For a ground of communion, the blood was always there before God, seven times sprinkled. The ashes were brought, to say, Sin was dealt with long ago: how came you to defile yourself, forgetting that you were purged? Leviticus is the book of the offerings, but we have this in Numbers as it applied to our path and journeyings.

311 In "sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood," we are sanctified to the obedience and blood-sprinkling of Christ; and Christ's obedience is not what we are apt to think of as obedience, but in its nature quite different from legal obedience, because the law of God meets a will of mine and says, You must not do this or that. But Christ says, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." And in Christ's obedience the will of the Father was His motive. Suppose my child was anxious to run out and see the judges come in, and I say, Sit down and do your lesson; and he then does so cheerfully. This is all well, but Christ never obeyed in that way. He had no will of His own to be first stopped. I have a will, and it is obedience, when it is checked, to stop. The only apparent case of anything of the kind in Christ was when wrath was coming in, and in itself He could not desire that; yet He adds, "not my will but thine be done." In ourselves we never ought to do anything, except because it is positively God's will. In the passage, the object is put first, and the blood sprinkling next.

"Sanctify and cleanse it," in Ephesians 5: 26, is when evil has come in, you must have it judged; you must have cleansing then. Christ was sanctified, He set Himself apart; but Adam had not thought of that in the garden. It is absolute as regards the person, and progressive as regards the state. The moment I have a new nature, I am absolutely set apart to God. In Ephesians the order of it is as if I were to say, "he cured me of that fault, having beaten me."

"Having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost" means having received it for us. Christ received the Holy Ghost a second time. It was anointing in glory. The baptism of the Holy Ghost took place at Pentecost; then in Acts 11 it is only an analogy to shew that God would have the Gentiles as well as the Jews: nor do you get baptism spoken of there. They do not say in Acts 19, "we have not heard whether there is any Holy Ghost": for every Jew knew that; but it is "whether the Holy Ghost yet is," pointing to a coming of the Spirit, the time of which they were ignorant.

The Spirit Himself is the earnest, the pledge of the possession. Sealing is the act of giving the Spirit. I put a seal on a document, and that is the same idea. The anointing was putting oil on a man's head, and it is the general fact that the oil is put there, but the sealing is the effect on the individual. If I say at a coronation, "The queen is anointed," it is a simple fact, but that fact secures her there as queen. The anointing is a great deal more than the sealing.

312 John says, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things," and yet he is going on teaching them still. The babe in Christ, having this anointing, knows his security, but that does not hinder the apostle from teaching him all the while. The promises of God are in Christ to God's glory, and "by us," and the way they are by us is that God has fixed us firm in Christ, and has also given us the anointing, and has sealed us; and this same Holy Ghost, who is the seal, is the earnest of the things I am sealed for. The earnest shews the present relationship settled, and gives the enjoyment of God's love, and I know my relationship with the Father as a child; but I have not an atom of the inheritance, only the earnest yet.

The Holy Spirit will never leave the heirs. We have a testimony that we shall not lose the Holy Spirit in Acts 1 where it says that through the Holy Spirit Christ gave commandments to His apostles, after His resurrection. He had not lost the Holy Spirit as a man by rising; and that brought me to a very blessed and happy thought, because now it is something like the steam in an engine, where half the force is lost in making the engine go, but when I get to heaven there will be no such difficulty to contend with.

2 Corinthians 2.

To return to our chapter: now Paul tells them to restore the poor man dealt with in the first epistle. He says, "I determined this with myself that I would not come again to you in heaviness; for if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me?" and so on. He takes the greatest pains in linking up the Corinthians with his own heart (v. 3-5). "But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part all of you, that I may not overcharge you": because if he had said, You are all bad, this would overcharge them, for he saw that they were grieved as well as himself. In not having dominion over their faith, he wanted them, with himself, to act in restoration; "Forgive him and comfort him, lest such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow."

313 "I wrote," in verse 3, refers to the first epistle, and so in verse 9, I have no doubt. I do not believe much of what they say in these modern times about aorists. I think it is nonsense the way they have attempted to connect the English and Greek tenses. Verse 6 does not imply that they were not unanimous, it should read "the many." He was afraid about some at the end of the epistle, that they had not repented properly themselves; those that did not repent he would have treated as the man himself. If all are not agreed in matters of discipline, they must wait, not as allowing evil; but if they wait, their way will be made clear, or else there is not power enough to set things right. The effect of spiritual power is to make all those who are spiritual act together against the evil. The Greek word for many in verse 6 does not give countenance to a majority acting. The effect of the Spirit of God there is to give God's view of the case, and to put out the disobedient with those who go with the disobedience. He tells them lower down, "Ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter."

There is little power among us to restore, because there is want of spirituality and of that love which cares for the members of Christ. There is righteousness, and evil is not allowed. I have not observed any particular defect as to that, but I think the failure is the want of love to the members of Christ and looking after such. The effect at Corinth is given in chapter 7: 11: "For behold this self-same thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea what vehement desire, yea what zeal, yea what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." And when that was so, then he is anxious they should care for this man. He has been down himself, but he was a member of Christ and washed in His blood, and they are to take care of him. If the body of Christ and the love of Christ were there, the person, if a Christian, would be miserable until he were received in again.

In this case it was a man broken down with overmuch sorrow. There is no restoration properly, and they were in no state to restore until they hated themselves for their own part in all this. And it is so with us all as principle, though we may have a clearer judgment than another as to how to act. I have no gift myself, I avow, in discipline. I see another thing, that where the general state of any gathering is weak, a person may be left out as a proof of their weakness; for if there were more spiritual power, he would be humbled and brought in. At Corinth Paul had no occasion to write this, until the man were broken down about it himself; nor is it any good to attempt to restore a man until his own soul is really restored. And as to putting out, that may be done as mere bold righteousness. This man, when Paul writes this, was grieving over his sin, and you may say restored in soul, but he was not officially restored. To know when a soul is restored requires spiritual power. Peter bows to the rebuke of the Lord, but he does not say, "I love thee more than anybody else."

314 What we need to do is to take the sin of another upon ourselves (like the priest eating the sin-offering). If there were power, though we cannot always hinder sins, yet they would be checked. The Corinthians would not act as priests until Paul forced them to it. The assembly should make the sin their own before God; and that is where I have seen a real pastor: wherever there was an evil, he would lay it on himself, because he had not looked after such an one enough, or else not rightly. "Lest Satan should get an advantage of us" means that Satan was trying to make a division between the Corinthians and the apostle. Paul himself had been sorry he had written his first letter, and that though it was an inspired one; his own heart had got below its level. It is beautiful to see him urging both righteousness and grace; and in the end Satan did not get an advantage - they were of one mind in the Lord. "In the person of Christ" means as if He were there to do it with authority. It is not limited merely to "in the sight of Christ."

We see what exercise of heart it had been to Paul: he came to Troas, and was so full of care for them, that when he did not find Titus there from them, he could not stay, but goes on to Macedonia to meet him. And another thing, he is able to thank God for it all, "which always leadeth us about in triumph in Christ." He might have said, "If I had had but a little more faith, I might have stayed at Troas, and preached the gospel there," but he comforts himself that he is led about in triumph everywhere. It is the thought of captives led in a triumphal procession; He was Christ's prisoner. He was feeling about the saints, having left Troas when an open door was there. "Well, God leads me about in triumph wherever I go." We see a heart that has been beaten about, and it is over-full here. It is deeply instructive, and beautiful too. "A sweet-savour in them that perish" is an allusion to an old practice after victories, of burning incense to the gods, and then sometimes they killed some of the people. The gospel was a sweet savour anyway, but it was for death if it were rejected.

315 If a person preaches, and sees no results, it may be the Lord exercising his faith and patience, especially if he thinks he has a kind of right to convert everybody. Sometimes a person may have a gift, but he does not go to the right place - goes where the door is shut, instead of open. When the Moravians first went out to Greenland, they were there thirteen years without a soul; they were arranging to go away, but thought they would try one year more, and then, as they were reading the account of Christ's sufferings, some one came and listened, and said, "Read those words again," and it resulted in his conversion, the truth burst out, and numbers were brought in. You do have to look for guidance in work; you may be forbidden to preach in Asia, and be sent to Macedonia instead, and if you follow the leading, and go to Macedonia, you will get the working of God directly. Paul says God makes manifest the savour of His knowledge by us, for we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ. He did not distinguish between saints and others, but "God led me about in triumph, because I do not know what best to do." Of course, his was not simply evangelical work and gift, but he was an apostle and teacher. If a person is an evangelist, he will be saying, These poor souls are all perishing; he must not blame another labourer, or undertake another's work - he will take up the work before him in love to souls. Paul had been at Troas before, going down to Ephesus. Originally he had the dream there, and was called over to Macedonia. I do not know if he preached there, but he had been there. He had stayed at Ephesus, and now he was going back.

The only way to obtain guidance in work is by living close to the Lord. We shall not have, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul" now, but the Lord will send by laying it on one's heart to go, and then that may be by circumstances, or otherwise. I may be led to preach, and find the way opened up by a circumstance of some kind; led by an outward thing, like a horse or a mule, that has no understanding. That is what people call providences, but it is a bit or a bridle. To what degree we have the guidance definitely is another question, but there is such a thing as an entrance here, and a dream to go there; of course, there was nothing in the word of God directly telling me to come to Belfast. In the absence of guidance, do nothing, but be a testimony where you are. "Preach the gospel to every creature" is a general truth, only we get guidance in doing it; an open door is guidance in itself, in a certain sense. If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light; and if I do not find my whole body full of light, well, I say to myself, "Your eye is not single," it is no use to say it is, for it is not. I may find that out as one effect of my doubt.

316 There may be direct guidance, I cannot call it into question: when it is given, it is not fanaticism. We get right impressions by living with Christ. John did not go and get a place near Christ in order to know His secrets; but he had a place near Christ, and then the secrets were given to him. Only you cannot go properly to Christ, as John, to ask, unless you are living near Him. Only "trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own understanding." You must live near the Lord, or you cannot reckon rightly on being guided. God's mercy may come in at any time, but "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him." I should be filled with the knowledge of His will, and all spiritual understanding.

In verse 17 Paul turns back to himself: "We are not as the many which corrupt the word of God" (that is, adulterate it, or make a trade of it), it is but to suit yourself to your customers. Paul might say, "I come now from God, and I speak in God's behalf, in the sight of God." You cannot have a more simple statement of what carrying the word of God is. The gospel of God is the good news God has sent, but the gospel of Christ is more the subject of the good news. The gospel of the kingdom is the subject again; it is not the source of the kingdom. To me it is a very solemn statement about the gospel here.

317 2 Corinthians 3.

"Do we begin again to commend ourselves?" the apostle had just said. "We are not as many which corrupt the word of God"; but later on he ought to be commended by them. It did look very like commending himself, and yet there was no need, or ought not to be. It is all beautiful in a way, for there is a great deal of heart in it. "Ye are our epistle," he adds. It is beautifully simple. You are my letter of recommendation. It shews how careful he was in dealing with them. It is not like the Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is the freshest of all the epistles: a very different kind of feeling runs through it.

"Written in our hearts" still brings in that he loved them. It is all as if a person said, "Who is this Paul? Where is his letter of commendation? What kind of a man is he? He did not come from Jerusalem." Well, he says, Look at the Corinthians: that is the kind of man he is. He has been blessed to all these souls, and, more than that, they are walking well. And one of the first things he brings in is, "Ye are in our hearts," and he gives a reason, which he could not give in the first epistle, "Ye are my epistle, because ye are Christ's epistle"; they were a recommendation of Christ. That is, the saints are Christ's letter of recommendation to the world - a great deal to say; and he does not say they ought to be, but that is the place you are in, to recommend Christ to the world.

It gives you a statement of what a gathering is - the epistle of Christ - though it is true of individuals. Ye are declared to be "written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God": that is how it was. "Not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart," Christ engraven by the Spirit of God on the people's hearts; that is what the church is; and that, too, while they were going on so badly. He would not say, "That is the epistle of Christ," though it was true in a sense, but, "Ye are."

"Not in tables of stone." This is work written on a man's heart within; the law was a claim on a man's outside. It is a comparison of opposition; instead of getting claims from man in flesh outside him, it is Christ engraven, in the power of the Spirit, inside him. The law, written on stone, is death and condemnation, and Christ, engraven on the heart, is the ministration of righteousness. God used law to test flesh: "I had not known sin but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." But to get good, God does not go outside a man to claim good from what is bad, but God brings a new nature that produces the good. Man takes up flesh, but it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. But, instead of that, God gives a new nature that delights in what is holy, and writes Christ in a man's heart. And this is what makes them "the epistle." We have it in another figure at the end of the chapter, "We are changed into the same image"; and in the middle of the chapter he states what does it - "the Spirit giveth life," v. 6. Verses 7-16 are a parenthesis. "Now the Lord is that Spirit," v. 17.

318 It says "letter," instead of "law," because it is general; if one take the letter of the gospel, it would kill people. So Scripture says, "Greet one another with a holy kiss." And if I meet a brother in Germany or France, I always kiss him, but when I come back to England it seems so dreadfully cold; yet the spirit of that instruction is clear, and I can act on it here as well as in France. The letter always kills. Take a particular instance: If you brought a particular lamb to the priest, which had a black spot on it, you brought a curse on yourself. I have brought a lamb without a spot, and I get a blessing. The spirit here is the mind of the Holy Spirit in the letter. If you had the letter which in the main was the letter of the law, yet the Lord is the spirit even of that, because, if it say you must have a lamb without blemish, in Him I have that. There is often a difficulty to distinguish between the spirit of a Christian and the Spirit of God, and consequently whether it should have a large or small S, because the Spirit is so connected with what is put into our hearts.

"Able ministers" (v. 6) is qualified or capable. It is one of the most absolute statements you can find. It is the activity of our minds that hinders. God uses the vessel to act on and in; and that sweeps away human understanding. It is just in the measure in which we are conscious of being mere vessels, and put confidence in nothing within us, that we are fitted to serve. God works in us to will and to do. It is not that we are mere pipes to carry something, but He acts in us and on us, and we have to take care that we give out purely what we have, taking care first, of course, what we take in. What we have to give out is really a revelation - a revelation that fits in with a certain consciousness in the human heart that there is a God, and so on; but there is a certain nature that wants God, a very important thing in its place, for there are atheists in the world. Well, the moment we see all this is revelation, it is not our thought. We never obtain anything, the moment we begin to spin thoughts out of our minds; all is spoilt then. It is the word of God we need, and this discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. There we have God's thoughts brought to us, just as Christ Himself was sent out from God.

319 There are many such scriptures as, "I hate thoughts, but thy law do I love"; "When his (that is, man's) breath goeth forth, they perish." "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity." In fact, men thinking are just like a spider spinning a web out of its own body, and thoughts are of no more worth. It is immensely important to be clear as to this. He adds, "What hast thou, that thou didst not receive?" This is very distinct; and again, "not to think anything as of ourselves." Of course, if God acts in my mind, I think; but then they are thoughts He has given me."

"New testament" (v. 6) is the "new covenant," which we find also in Jeremiah 31; it is new in contrast with the old. It is characterised by the forgiveness of sins, and a man no more teaching his neighbour. Then the prophet says, that they shall no more say, "Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them." The two chief points are the knowledge of God as Jehovah, and the forgiveness of sins. God's part of that covenant has been done, and Israel would not take it up: so we now are getting the blessings of it, without its being made with us. Our Lord says at the supper, "This is the new covenant in my blood"; and here Paul calls it the same, saying he is an able minister of it. How could he minister it before it was made? The foundation has been laid, and we have the ministry of it. Christ shed His blood, and then the grace was proposed to the Jews; but they would not have it. Peter, in Acts 3, told them Christ would come back if they would have Him, but they would not. God gives the blessings to others, and announces them by His ministers. But the covenant is not made with anybody. It cannot, in any sense, be a new covenant with us, because we have no old one. "This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel," God says. "After those days," it is said, He puts His law in their hearts, He forgives their sins, makes them know Himself: that is the new covenant, and a very important one too.

320 We are under no covenant, though we have the blessings of it (unless you take in a way the covenant confirmed to Christ). First, there was a covenant made with Israel at Sinai, on condition of obedience - "If ye obey my voice," and they said, "Yes." Well we know how they failed. Finally Christ dies, and in dying lays the foundation of a new covenant which was, "I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them"; and "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more," and "They shall all know me." Now that will be made good to them, but meanwhile we are getting the benefits, the ground of the whole having been laid in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the spared Jews will be righteous, but not necessarily those that are born afterwards. As for Gentiles, they never had a covenant. In Isaiah and Jeremiah "my people" is Israel, and has nothing to do with Gentiles. The "blood of the new covenant was shed for many," which is not Israel only.

A covenant does not always suppose two parties. In Galatians it is only one. A covenant means any term on which God takes me into relation to Himself. The argument in Galatians is: a mediator is not of one; but God is one. Now the law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator, and if you have a mediator, you must have two parties. But here you have only one. So now all depends on the sovereignty of God only, and therefore it is infallible.

Again, being all of grace, on a foundation of the counsels of God, it takes the character of an everlasting covenant; Hebrews 13. Under the old covenant God was testing man, and that word "old" signifies it was ready to vanish away; then we read of a new covenant - new, because another was before it; and it is everlasting because, without testing, it was settled in the counsels of God Himself. David says clearly enough, "Who hath made an everlasting covenant with me, ordered in all things and sure," because it was all of grace. In Hebrews we read, "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle." Nazarenes had no right to come to the altar of the Jews, when the Jews had an altar; and now we have an altar whereof Jews have no right to eat. It is the simple but thorough contrast between Judaism and Christianity, the old thing and the new.

321 Then we have another contrast: death and condemnation characterised the law in contrast with the gospel, which is the ministration of righteousness and of the Spirit. It is the presence of the Holy Ghost, righteousness being established. The law claimed righteousness and could not get it; now, I have righteousness made out for me, and established. A righteousness being established, the Holy Ghost can come and minister righteousness. In Galatians it is characterised by the Spirit: "He that ministereth to you the Spirit," and so on. Indeed the whole blessing now is stamped with the presence of the Holy Ghost. It is what characterises the thing - the ministration of the gospel. It is the presence of the Holy Ghost, and divine righteousness, instead of condemnation and death. The law required righteousness and no lust. This must be death to a man; it is so in his natural condition. "When the law came, sin revived and I died." The old covenant was confined to the law. Only the second time it was under half grace. Moses says, "Blot me out." "No," God says, 'I shall not: everybody shall answer for himself.' That is the law in principle; yet grace is introduced. God tells Moses to lead the people, but His angel shall go first. The contrast here is, if that which is done away took place in glory, much more that which remains is glorious.

Verse 13 is a very important one, because his argument runs from that to the word "veil." It is "that the children of Israel should not look"; for "could" is not right either; it is about half-way between. The use of the Greek word differs: but here in verse 13 it is not "so that they could not," nor "that they could not," but "so that they should not," as nearly as one can say it. In the words "look to the end," the apostle took the law as so many commandments about sheep and bullocks, without ever looking beyond. Christ is really the end of it all. Moses put a veil over his face, because they could not bear to look at his face. There is no veil now; but they were afraid of the glory. The law being a ministration of death and condemnation, they could not look at that. If you connect the least glimpse of the glory of God with the law, then a man cannot look at it; just as they had before said to Moses when God spake out of the fire, "You go and speak to God for us, lest we die." The apostle takes the law absolutely here as law - death and condemnation; but the way in which it worked in Israel then was that it hindered their looking to the end of that which was abolished. So Moses put on the veil in order that they might not see the glory itself. That was before he went in to the Lord. The veil was not put on in order to hinder, but it was put on to the hindrance of their looking. "It came to pass when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come nigh him. And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him, and Moses talked with them. And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face."

322 The reason they were afraid to look at Moses was because the glory was there. They could not look to the end; they did not know when they offered a sacrifice that this was typical of Christ. The "end" is clearly God's purpose in it, and this was what they could not look to. It was a glory which came requiring righteousness, and this too they could not meet. In Christ Himself you have the explanation of all these images of the law. The veil is now done away, but it is on their (Israel's) hearts still. When Moses was turned to the Lord, the veil was taken off, and so it shall be with their hearts when they are turned to the Lord. "It shall turn" (v. 16) refers to Israel's heart when this is turned to the Lord. There was no glory the first time on Moses' face because he had not been in such close intercourse with God. The whole thing is a beautiful picture of grace and law, for Moses was under grace. God says to him, "Thou hast found grace in my sight."

"The Lord is that [the] spirit" (v. 17), means that the Lord is the spirit of the Old Testament, I believe: the Lord was the real spirit of all those ordinances. It is a beautiful expression to me of what the gospel is in contrast to law. Thus the glory itself is the proof that I am saved.

"As in a glass" (v. 18) is better left out; "we all with open face, looking on the glory of the Lord." There is no veil now on the glory of Christ, nor is there on our hearts when we believe. There is no idea of reflection in the passage: the Greek means 'looking into a mirror' sometimes, but not necessarily. I do not like the idea of Christ being a reflection. People talk of our mirroring Christ from this verse: it is all absurd; how can our mirroring the Lord change us? I look with perfect liberty, for "where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty," and I see (I do not mirror) "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," and the effect of seeing is that I am "changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord." The reason is plain. If the law looks for righteousness in man, man has it not, and so is afraid of the glory; the moment there is the least glory shewn out, man shrinks from it. But now the glory of God is shewn in the face of Jesus Christ, and what is that from? It is the effect of His having glorified God, and therefore God has glorified Him, and every ray of that glory is the proof that my sins are gone. "From glory to glory" means that I make progress. "Changed" is the same word as "transformed" in the Gospels.

323 "Into the same image" is a strong expression. If I have a good picture of a man, I say, "It is his very image." And such is the intended effect of this looking at the glory. We see it in Stephen when he is stoned, as he looks up and sees the glory of God and Jesus. Christ had said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"; and the view of Jesus in the glory of God draws from Stephen the prayer, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." And again, on the cross Christ says, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"; and Stephen says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." He is changed into Christ's image. He did not say, "for they know not what they do," for this would not be true then.

2 Corinthians 4.

Paul comes now to the ministration of it. He says "we faint not." We are right out in the light. But then there is another thing, and that is - he explains how he gives out the word of God as purely as he took it in; he did not handle it deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commended himself "to every man's conscience in the sight of God." The consequence is, there is no veil, and not only no veil on the face of Jesus Christ, but Paul put no veil on by want of faithfulness on his part; so that really, if any were lost, it was not through any fault of Paul's. The veil, if any, would be one on their own hearts. "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world hath blinded the eyes of them that believe not." "Are lost" is characteristic. It has nothing to do with time at all; it is "the ones that perish." There is no veil on the glory, and if my gospel comes out in all its glory, the devil has put a veil on the hearts of them that believe not. This would be true now if the gospel was preached as clearly and powerfully as Paul did.

324 A man now, if he does not actually refuse a message, may hear it and be instructed, and come again and again. If it is actually hid to him, it is all over. I can say that of the thing I preach, but not of my own preaching. I should say just as much of what I preach that, if a soul does not believe, he will be condemned. There is a difference, of course, between coming and hearing, and positively rejecting.

"The manifestation of the truth" is here in connection with the word of God. I have no doubt Paul did it practically too. There is another thing in the preaching that makes a difference; there was then a great deal more preaching of the person of the Lord and less about being saved than there is now. I do not mean that there is anything wrong now, but there was a claim put in by God to submission by men to this Son of God; and if that claim were rejected, there was no hope for them. It was not the cry to "poor sinners" (they were that of course), but it. was "Here is Christ: now submit to Him." And if they said, "We will not bow," it was all over.

I think the more we get back to the old manner of preaching the better, especially as in Acts - preaching Jesus and the resurrection, though all the world now acknowledges Christ risen from the dead. I am satisfied, the more we insist on the fact, the more real power there would be to set people free. I know we are so accustomed to these things that they have lost their edge; but suppose I were to say to Jews, "There is a man in the glory of God," they would stop their ears and stone me. Ask anyone, "Do you believe there is a man at the right hand of God, because He died for our sins?" It is the insisting on the fact that is important. Suppose you were sitting down and talking to some man, and then found out it was the Son of God! The habit of hearing is so deadening. Yet by calling yourselves Christians you already say that you are in a world that cast out the Son of God.

325 Well, Paul could say, "not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully." He faithfully declared his message and that is the first point we have. Here is the full glory without a veil; no veil on it at all so that if it were hidden to any, it would be to such as were lost, being blinded by the devil. For Paul did not preach himself, "but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." "For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts." There we have a very important thing in the character of the gospel compared with the prophets, for even in the communication the Holy Ghost shines into Paul's heart and gives him the sense of the value of all this for himself first, but also in such a way that he would give it out to others. He says, "when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood," and so on. We find there a revelation of Christ to himself, and for himself, but he was also to give it out, just as here "God shined into our hearts," not "to give" exactly, but for the shining out of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

There is more power when I say in me, than to me, and it was in him, for his own soul as well as for others. In John 7 a man comes to Christ and drinks and then "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." The man does not thirst for rivers, but he thirsts to drink, and the draught taken becomes rivers. "In me" in the passage from Galatians does not refer to the church, but to God's Son. In the Acts you find Paul preached that Jesus was the Son of God, and this is what Peter never did. We meet with all sorts of notions of that kind if you look for them, such as that Paul did not know anything about the church until he was in prison at Rome. The old Latin quotation is to the point, "He reads scripture well who brings back a meaning from it instead of carrying one to it."

We now come to the instrument; we have had already the fact of the ministry. "We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake; for God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels"; the treasure and the instrument. God caused the "light to shine out of darkness" (v. 6). God did so in Genesis 1. He who did the one, now does the other. Saul was in this darkness, and God said, as it were, "Let there be light," and there was light. Not that in Genesis it was the beginning of light, as I believe, but still so God says to Saul's heart. In Genesis it says "darkness was upon the face of the deep"; it does not say that darkness was everywhere. The face of the deep was without form and void, it was chaos; there it was all dark, and God said, "Let there be light, and it was light." Scripture does not tell us when God made the light, though "all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made"; whatever it was He created it.

326 All geology is left in the background when you see the difference between the first and second verses of Genesis 1. The first gives us, that the things that were made "were not made of things that do appear" - "in the beginning": there it was. "And the earth was without form and void"; it was all chaos and darkness. And then He makes this earth as we have it. And, just as by His own fiat and power God made the light, so He acted in Paul's heart. Universal creation is in verse 1. Then follows specific forming of this world which had fallen into a state of chaos - Scripture does not say how - and of darkness. In verse 3 He begins this form of earth which we have now, with fishes, animals, and so on. All that we find in the chapter is this earth as we have it now, except in verse I the fact of universal creation by God. Verse 3 resembles God's dealings with a soul to bring it out of darkness as a general idea, but I could not take it in detail. It looks as if all creation were made in analogy with spiritual things; trees as kings and empires; and grass for people, and so on; but I could not take it more in detail, and it is only an image: there is no doctrine as to it.

There might have been millions and millions of years between those two verses. In Genesis 1: 1, 2, I suppose geological times all came in there. Philosophers, who have examined the matter most accurately, have made twenty-six or twenty-seven catastrophes occur, and give the difference by the strata containing various shells and other fossils. But all that, if so, would come between those two verses, there is plenty of room for it all. For my part I do not believe nine-tenths of what they say about time. For instance, one of the greatest infidels in London made borings in the Nile and brought up a piece of burnt brick, from a depth of twenty-eight feet, proving that man's hand had formed the brick, and by this he made out that so many thousands of years had elapsed since it was deposited, long before the time of Adam. But there were no burnt bricks in Egypt till the time of the Romans, and when told so of course he had not a word to say. And you constantly find such things.

327 "Hath shined in our hearts to shine out." The light is put in a vessel that it may shine out. Paul was in open enmity at the time, but it was the revelation of the glory of the Lord to him - "shined into our hearts." In verses 4-6 it is Christ's person that is presented, and in a certain sense that is as high as you can go. Paul's gospel here is confined to that, but I do not say that is everything, for at the end of chapter 5 we have more, "God reconciling," and so on. But here he is speaking of the glory; and redemption was not accomplished and brought down to man until Christ went into the glory. It is clear that no man can eat bread come down from heaven, unless as he eats the flesh and blood in that way: "except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you"; but when we know that - here "eaten" - all His life becomes the very thing that takes possession of our affections.

He was the invisible God; His coming down was the testimony of love, and there I see God in another character. It was not God sitting in righteousness and holiness, for that was law, but God come down in love. True, that was of no avail, because of man's wickedness and therefore Paul goes on "we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." That is, we have Him on the cross for the embassy; but when I have the embassy I say "God was in Christ reconciling"; that is the message.

In John 17 there are two glories, so to speak; the glory as God and the glory as Man, and it is the latter He gives to us. In John you will always find Christ's oneness with the Father and yet He receives everything, and so it is He says, "Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." It is a glorious thing being God and being one with the Father; but then, all that He has as man we have. There is His unity with the Father, and we cannot have that; but as it is displayed in man, we have it all. He goes up on high into the glory He had with the Father before the world was; He will come again and we shall see Him as He is. I do not believe the world will ever see Him as He is; flesh and blood would be struck down blind if they were, as Paul was.

328 The treasure is the light of the knowledge of the love of God; and it is in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. He puts this amazing glory in the vessel in order that all the power may be of God. There is no fitness between the vessel and the thing that is put into it, and there you will find God and the vessel both brought in. "We are troubled on every side," that is the vessel; "yet not distressed," because God was there; "we are perplexed," see no way out; "but not in despair," for there was a way out after all, for God was there; "persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." The vessel is all broken and dealt with, but still God is there all the while. Into such an earthen vessel all this glory is put, and so in that sense we can now rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. The vessel is made nothing of; but it is sustained by another power, which is neither the treasure nor the vessel, and so the man is dependent.

Then you come to the way the vessel is dealt with. A thing with a will is not a vessel: a person is acting for himself if he has a will; he must not think or will anything for himself, and therefore it says, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." That is obedience, of course. Christ was obedient unto death; that is not a man's will, and I am always to bear about in my body His dying; that is, Christ's dying or being put to death. There are two Greek words used in verses 10 and 11, for "dying" and "death." The first is the fact of death, just the matter of fact, and the other is rather the moral character of it, or includes that here. The fact in Christ becomes the moral character of us. As we have it in Peter, "Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." Christ did actually die, and Peter had just been speaking to them not to suffer for evil doing, but, if it were God's will, for well doing. Christ had once suffered for sins: arm yourselves, therefore, with the same mind. This would be carrying about the dying Christ had died; and this dying of Christ I apply to myself, so that the body never stirs, and the will of the body never moves.

329 We have, then, these two things: first, Paul, as a faithful man, never allows the vessel to have, for one instant, a will or a thought of its own. Just as much as Christ died, and completely died, so Paul was carrying this about constantly, and says, "Now you are as dead as Christ was." And, though Paul was very faithful in that, the Lord helped him by sending him through circumstances, so that he despaired of his life. It was not a chastening, but he was having the sentence of death written in himself. He held himself practically for a dead man, and the Lord says, "Well, now I must bring death right on to you, and so you will be a dead man." In his case, it was making it good by the trials he went through, and with this object, that nothing but the life of Christ could come out. The Lord says, "I must make this thorough, that he may realise it fully in himself"; and then Paul sums it up by saying, "So then, death worketh in us, but life in you"; that is, Paul was so entirely a dead man, that nothing but the life of Christ wrought in him towards the Corinthians. Wonderful description! If the vessel thinks or acts, it is spoilt. There is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to come out, and if the vessel is anything, by so much the light is hindered; but if the vessel is kept dead, nothing but the life of Christ is there to come out. It ought to have been the same in them as in himself, but it was not; of them he says, "life in you." Death was working in him, and so nothing but Christ's life worked out in them. Death and life are both taken morally in this verse.

Read verses 10-12. There would be no "so then," if it had been death in the Corinthians already. There was nothing but the vessel seen. It is a wonderful thing to say for anybody, but it is said of Paul. It did work among them, but it was in them. What was it that wrought that way but the power of the life of Christ in Paul, to effect all this humiliation in them. They had all the engraving of Christ in their hearts, but it was all filled up with mud, and nobody could read it; and now the mud was all cleaned out, it could be read. The treasure was, as we have seen, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It "shined" into Paul's heart. But the vessel is in danger of working, and so he applies Christ's death to the vessel, and then there is nothing but Christ's death to come out. But it was death to him as a man.

330 Paul may have been at work as a tentmaker at this time; he was doing so habitually there. He was very willing to receive from Philippi, but he would not receive anything from the Corinthians, because they were fond of their money. He went on working both at Ephesus and at Corinth. We know he worked, and we know he read too, for he asks for his books in the end of Timothy. Then, "we having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believe, and therefore I have spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak, knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us, also by Jesus, and shall present us with you" (v. 13, 14); that is, 'I do not mind death, I have faith in my Lord.'

The next verse in Psalm 116 is, "I was greatly afflicted; I said in my haste, All men are liars." Everybody was against him, and in the pressure of it he said, "All men are liars." It should be, "I said in my anguish or distress," in the sense of the pressure upon him; and then it may apply to the Lord; but, certainly, I should not apply it to Him if it were, "I said in my haste." In the Psalms, except in a very few, you must always first take the remnant in, but sometimes Christ will quote a passage which does not at all apply to Himself in its next clause. Thus, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit," is followed by, "Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth" (Psalm 31: 5), but this would not do. It was necessary to bring Christ in if any blessing were to be given to the remnant. We find the remnant in Psalms 1 and 2 as an introduction. In Psalm 1 they come with judgment; in Psalm 2 with the King in Zion, and they are called upon to trust Him. In some of the Psalms we have direct prophecy of Christ, but in spirit He is connected with them all.

Verse 13 of our chapter, already quoted, is the great principle that, though the whole power of the pressure was upon him, even as to life, yet Paul went on preaching just the same. He tells the Thessalonians he was "bold in our God," despite what had gone before, "to preach the gospel of God with much contention." This is not an authority for preaching, but it is the going on in spite of the opposition of man, and it is an encouragement against the opposition of man.

331 This chapter is a wonderful picture, for we have the whole glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and this put into a vessel, and for all that it is such a thing, that if the vessel is not absolutely dead, it will so far be spoiled. And that is not all: there is the positive power of God beside; you must have the vessel made nothing of, so as not to spoil the treasure, and then, when you have done that, some other power must come in and act. It is a wonderful description of ministry in its sphere and operation in creatures like us; and, looking death in the face, to continue still. Verses 10, 11, have both the same end: only he puts "mortal flesh," when he is actually delivered to death. The effect of that is, that Paul becomes a vessel of absolute life to others. All was for God's glory, but as its object, it is for the elect's sake, the church. "All things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might, through the thanksgiving of many, redound to the glory of God." There we have the truth of the church, that everything was for their sakes - all this even in Paul.

Then it had another effect. He says, "For which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day." There was a power sustaining him, and the inward man was renewed. And then he tells us the bearing of the next world upon him: "Our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Thus I am going to get all the glory, and this practically acts to perfect the man while he is not looking at the things which are seen, but at the things that are not seen. The vessel would be linked with this world, and the new man and the Spirit are linked with the other. Now he puts all the glory into the vessel, and the vessel is made nothing of - it goes through the process of annihilating, and then he finds the result. Paul's testimony is wonderfully complete in this chapter, and its effect in us is carried out in its fullest way.

The difference between the Old Testament and the New is this: the Spirit gave them no communion and left them to "search" what He signified; but whatever He reveals to me belongs to me, and so "all things are for your sakes"; only then, Paul laid it by, as it were, and speaks of "what I have committed unto him against that day" - all his own happiness for the other world. And now he says, Work away through this world and get there. This is all applicable to the saints at large now in their measure. He himself has broken all links with the present world, and now says, "The life I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." That is what we should seek to realise in our service; we ought to be always in immediate contact with Christ, and to bring out nothing else but according to divine wisdom and guidance in dealing with others. And it should be recollectively so; it is not merely in the main that Christ is the object, but there is another thing, the not being distracted, and also the having our object recollectively: constantly carrying it about with you. If, for instance, I am ministering, I should be consciously ministering direct from Christ to the people. The apostle expresses it when he says, "Whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we are sober, it is for your cause"; if he was out of sobriety of thinking, it is to God; or if he was in sobriety, it was for them. It shews what a serious thing ministry is, blessed indeed, but most serious.

332 In Philippians, Paul said, "I am in a strait betwixt two." To depart was far better, he says, but to stay was at least more needful for them. "Yet what I shall choose I wot not." It is worth my while to live, because I am working for Christ; and if I go to heaven, I cannot do that. To live is Christ, and dying is gain, and he does not know which to choose; it is better for the Philippians he should stay, and so he says he shall.

2 Corinthians 5.

We have had the subject of ministry, and the vessel for it, and he has spoken of the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, and now we have the purpose of God as to the servant, the glory of God by us, and next the way that all this bears upon the responsible state; and then, lastly, we have the love of Christ constraining him. We have the whole scope of this in the new creation, just touching on Ephesian ground, and then the whole basis of it in Christ Himself. First, we have the counsels of God in bringing us to that weight of glory; then he takes it up and contemplates it on the responsible side; and then comes the love of Christ constraining him. All link with this world is broken by the death of Christ; and at the end of chapter 5 the ground and basis of all that in the gospel of Christ's death. It is not then the gospel of the glory; incarnation and death are the two great facts.

333 In the opening of the chapter, he says, "we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven; if so be, that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life," v. 1-4. He has this death, and now he says the thought of God goes beyond all that, and I have a "building of God, a house not made with hands"; but I am not tired and weary, wishing to be unclothed, and done with all the trouble; but what I am looking for is, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. That is, the power of life comes and swallows me up entirely, so that all that is mortal is lost in life.

Verse 3 is supposing that these are Christians: there is no thought about losing the reward. "Naked" is simply what Adam was before God clothed him. It is quite true that all those at the great while throne are naked of Christ, though each has got his body; this is not mortality swallowed up of life, but, on the contrary, it is going into the second death.

Verse 3 brought in the idea of death. I am groaning and burdened, but then I have seen such power in Christ, that I am not weary and seeking to get out of it all. See verses 1-5. Then from this he begins the responsible side down to the end of verse 12; verses 12, 13, are transitional: and that introduces to the new creation; but it is not now responsibility, which is Romans ground. Then we have the love of Christ constrains us, and hence the committing the ministry of reconciliation to him.

As to the difference between the gospel of the glory and the gospel of the humiliation, the latter is pure grace in God, manifested in Christ here. John's writings shew God revealing Himself in Christ to man in His life down here. What we have habitually in Paul is man manifested in righteousness before God. The gospel of humiliation is perfect grace; it is God coming down here to man where he is, visiting him in his condition as such a one on earth. The gospel of the glory takes this treasure and unfolds it. In Philippians 2 we have the whole line from the time when Christ was in the form of God till He was on the cross, when, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death. There is the manifestation of God down here among men as sinners. Well, I say, here is God come right down to me in love, and if I cannot trust anybody in the world, I must trust God now. The woman that was a sinner loved much; she did not know her sins were forgiven, nor could she have explained it theologically, but she trusted Christ, and loved much; and that is the bearing of the humiliation. But in the gospel of the glory man is looked at as the old man totally set aside, yet man is in glory in virtue of the complete work that redeems us and justifies us, and gives us a place in the glory. The glory is the testimony to the efficacy of the work; the humiliation is the testimony to the greatness of the love. Of course it is all the same gospel.

334 I must have faith in Christ as a sacrifice. If I do not eat the flesh and blood, I cannot properly eat the bread come down from heaven, because I must come to God as a sinner. Death is due to the sinner; regrets will not do. We find the women weeping after Christ as He goes to the cross, but He tells them to go and weep for themselves, for judgment is coming on them. If I realise that the work of Christ for the sinner is death, then I can freely look at all the blessedness of the grace of God and enjoy it.

The gospel is both the gospel of the glory of Christ, and the gospel of the grace of God. It was grace to put the best robe on a man, and to bring him into the house. After all it is not that Christ is in glory merely, but in the riches of His grace God visits me as a sinner. If one sees a poor vile sinner, then it would be the riches of the grace that would be made conspicuous. The person of Christ comes out greatly in all that; it is not simply, Here is forgiveness for you, but "God was in Christ reconciling," and this is His person.

Then we have another thing. After saying, not for that we would be unclothed, "but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life," he says, "now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God." God has wrought all us Christians for the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He has not given it to us yet, but He has wrought us for it, and given us also the earnest of the Spirit. We have not it yet; God has wrought us for it and given us the earnest. This it is that gives me confidence. He calls it "our house," not my house. Thus I have two truths certain. I am wrought for it, and I know it now while here, for God has given me the Holy Ghost. Now, supposing death comes: well, it is "I am always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord," though "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord": such is the certainty of being clothed with glory.

335 Then comes in the sad fact of death and judgment; but by getting Christ in the glory I have all I can possibly need to meet that - "willing rather" ("pleased rather," is the word) "to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." I am looking for the mortal to be swallowed up of life; but if I die, I must wait a while with Christ. As to the judgment, does it take away my confidence? Not at all; it stimulates my zeal, for I have not to think about myself, but only about other people as to that. They are all dead in sins, and so he says, "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men," for we must all be manifested at the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." The judgment takes effect upon them; yet Christians too shall "be manifested," and I am manifested. It refers to all. We shall "receive the things done." If Paul has built with wood, hay, and stubble, he will suffer loss; that is only an illustration. The wicked will receive the bad, and if I have gone on very poorly, I shall have the effect of that. It has all nothing to do with righteousness for me: this Christ is already. The wood, hay, and stubble are to be burned up, though that scripture has its own special connection. So he says, "Wherefore we labour (or are zealous) that, whether present or absent, we may be acceptable to him."

We are on the responsible side here: Paul says, "Whether I am dead or alive, we are all going to come before Christ." First, we have the purpose, and then the responsibility, but it does not destroy Paul's confidence - "accepted" is no question of judgment. "Therefore we labour," is what Paul is bent upon doing. We have a complete thing - security and confidence - and we gladly labour because of it - not to get it. "The terror of the Lord" is the fact itself. He says, "we persuade men." The thing the judgment sets Paul to do is to persuade men - other people who have reason to be afraid. The love of Christ constrained him. Paul, then, in the view of this, judged everything as a present thing, as it will be judged in the day of judgment. Paul and everybody must be judged, and that makes him persuade other people, for he himself must be manifested too. He adds, "We are made manifest unto God, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences." It is all out before God, and I trust it is so before you. They might have charged him with being beside himself, and he says, If I am out of myself, I am with God; or if I am in myself it is for your good; that is the difference between the two states. It is wonderful how Paul did keep himself dead; and most humbling to us. Mark, it is not a question of gifts at all; but there was not one bit of flesh living: practically he was always bearing about in his body the dying of Jesus.

336 Now we go farther than responsibility into the unconsciousness of the state that people are in, which was learnt in grace; but the effect of the fulness of grace was to make him say that not merely the people had sinned, but also there was a day of judgment. "We thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead." What is the use of his going down thus into death, if men were not all there in that horrible pit? The epistle to the Romans takes up the conduct of men, and there is Christ's work. The Ephesians takes up the state of men, and then there is a new creation. And that is here: "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh, yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more; therefore, if any man be in Christ, it is a new creation." We have done with man altogether. I do not know anything on the world's side of Christ's grave except this, that they are all dead in sins. Christ coming down into the world was Christ's coming to men in this life to confirm the promises made unto the fathers; but He there tested man, and the cross shews there was no ground to go upon. Now we know a dying Christ, for men would not have Him, and so everything is gone, and God does not own this world at all. That is the way Peter meets the Jews as to the very fact: God hath exalted Him whom ye by hands of lawless men have crucified and slain, and that is where you are with God.

In interpreting "If one died for all, then were all dead," if people would get God's mind, they would not say absurd things. As for all dying with Christ, I deny it altogether, and do not admit that we must get God's mind through the Greek. It is a total departure from the apostle's argument, and contradicts the next verse. The theory is that people live and die; but "they which live" are those who are not left in that state. The next sentence is demonstrative of it: "He died for all, that they which live"; that is not all. The aorist gives the historical fact, but it does not say that the historical fact is the consequence of Christ's having died. Why did Christ go down there? It was because they were all in the pit; and then the point is that some live (not all), and if they live, they are to live to Him that died for them and rose again. If it were translated, "then all died," it would be historical. There is no consequence in it, and "then" is not time, but "consequently"; the Greek in this verse for then is ara, which is nowhere time. It is not consequence, though it may be a fact. The proper force of ara is illative in later Greek. (That is, it introduces an inference).

337 Again the whole object of the apostle too is lost by the change. Responsibility is not where I am, but what I have done. If He died, then indeed that is their state. The thing we do not find in Scripture is substitution for all. On the great day of atonement, there were two things in the sin-offering of the people - the Lord's lot and the people's lot. The Lord's lot was killed, because it met the whole character of God; God was completely glorified in Christ, and the gospel goes out to the whole world. Then with the people's lot, the sins of the people were confessed on its head; that is the scapegoat; in that I find Christ for His people, and in the other atonement, Godward. That, of course, was for those whose sins he confessed. In Romans 3 we hear of the "righteousness of God unto all, and upon them all that believe." It goes out toward all, and is upon believers. Many a one will say that Christ bore the sins of the world; but if so, how can God ever impute them? He could not, nor does Scripture ever say so. Then the Calvinist only takes the blood upon the mercy-seat; really he denies the propitiation. We have the satisfaction to God's glory, and then the gospel goes out and says, "We beseech you to be reconciled to God: come in." When they come I can say, I have something else to tell you; Christ bore all your sins, and it is impossible God can ever impute them or any one of them. An evangelist would not be right in saying, "Christ bore all your sins." If he makes it personal, God of course knows His own elect from all eternity, but we can only know them as they are shewn out in life.

338 Well, Christ died, "that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again." Death has come in, and the whole world is the wrong side of the cross now, except believers. Christ was not crucified in the world, but lifted up from the world, and this is distinctly the ground Scripture takes. As Messiah He came to the Jews; but if we find Him lifted up from the earth, the world has rejected Him, and all God's counsels come out, and we find propitiation for the race of Adam. But the world is gone - "the world seeth me no more." Every eye shall see Him when He comes in judgment, but as to dealing with the world as such to reconcile it, it is all over. The devil is the prince of this world, and he is judged. I grant all the privileges as a nation that the Jews had; but it is no use talking now about a poor Jew, for he has lusts in his nature, just like a Gentile, and by nature he is a child of wrath, even as others. The very thing that comes out is, I have no good in me at all. I am lost already, I have sinned, and I have sin in me. This, for faith, cuts down the state of probation altogether. A state of probation is estimated by the day of judgment, and then we could not tell till the day of judgment what the result of probation would be. The testing of man now is by the presentation of the gospel, and he sees the condition he is in before God by the gospel. But "if any man be in Christ - a new creation." It is one short absolute sentence. It brings in the new heavens and the new earth - everything to be made new.

If we trace the presentation of the gospel in the Acts, I do not think we find anything there strictly of the glory, though all recognise Christ in the glory. They are all to the Jews in Acts; even in chapter 13 it is so; but Paul there does not go beyond Peter. At Athens it is only his defence at Areopagus. We never find, in Peter's preaching, even that Jesus is the Son of God: but Paul preached this as soon as he began. The burden in Acts is, that the Jews rejected Christ whom God raised up. Peter says in Acts 5: 30, "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a tree"; but we do not find grace coming down in its completeness. The facts are there, of course, but the point is that the Jews had rejected the One whom God raised up. It is not even that He is the Son of God. When Peter says, it is really "servant" in that passage. See Acts 3: 13, 26; 4: 27, 30.

339 The first thing a sinner needs is, that Christ died for him; to preach Christ in the glory involves this, but where the gospel is preached, no matter how far you go, if there is a real work it attaches you to the place where the Man you preach is. Suppose John the Baptist says, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," this goes right on to the new heavens and the new earth. All that His disciples reached is, "we have found the Messiah." If you preach the greatest glory, you will find souls saying, in the sense of contrast, "Why, I am all in my sins," and in that way the glory works in the place the sinner is in; it attaches itself to the condition of the man, and then reaches his conscience; it gets hold of persons where they are. If it reaches a man, he finds out his own sinfulness, and so it touches the conscience. It is striking in Acts 10, though you get the Gentiles there, it is remission of sins that is preached for "whosoever believeth in him." Peter says, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree: him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it was he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness that through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive the remission of sins. While Peter yet spake these words the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." He testifies of Christ in full, and thereon preaches remission of sins, and then the Holy Ghost fell on those who heard. It is because there was a dealing with the Jews all through the Acts that we do not find the full and positive glory there. It is only in the last verses of the Acts that the Jews are given up. So we have no gospel of the glory actually preached, nor of the grace either in the strict sense of the term as we have been speaking of it. Even Stephen preached Jesus and the resurrection, not more.

340 In John 15 we have witnesses. "When the Comforter is come, whom I shall send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness because ye have been with me from the beginning"; and He says, "He shall receive of mine and shew it unto you." Well, the apostles had to add the exaltation of Christ, ascension too, to the repentance and remission of sins which were to be preached in His name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem; Luke 24: 47. But that is the furthest we find in the Gospels and even in the history in the Acts.

It is remarkable how we think to get something all settled and complete for a long while, and then find it is only provisional; if you take it as settling things in the world, it soon proves very provisional. Until Stephen is killed we have the fact of the Jews having rejected the person whom God has exalted. Christ intercedes for the Jews on the cross and the Holy Ghost comes in with the testimony. "And now brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers," and so on. Grace begins at Jerusalem, and they are called to repentance; then in chapter 3 after the fact of the establishment of the church amongst the Jews (though it is striking how provisional it all is), and having told them too in chapter 2 that they had by wicked hands crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth (judgment accordingly), next in chapter 3 he says, Repent and be converted, and then Christ shall come back again. In chapter 2 it is more individual testimony, and in chapter 3 it is wider in the character of testimony. In verse 26 it is not "raised up" in the sense of from the dead, His Son Jesus, but as Moses had said, "A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you," v. 22.

It is quite true God knew the Jews would not repent; and we have the church begun to be formed in chapter 2. Then, when Stephen is put to death, the offer to the Jews is over. Christ had interceded for them; Peter said, Repent and Christ will return. They would not, and it was all over. They had had the law, the prophets, the Messiah, and now the Holy Spirit. They had broken the first, stoned the second, killed Christ, and resisted the Holy Ghost. Stephen goes to heaven, and then there was an end to Christ's coming back for that time to the earth. God goes on with the Jews, but looked at as a people, it was over for them now, and the church goes on forming. God gathers in by the gospel message into the church "such as shall be saved," instead of gathering together the nation. It is the salvation of the soul, but it is the preserving those of Israel. They all thought that, if God did not spare a remnant, they would be as Sodom and Gomorrah, and that is what the Lord says to them. At the last, when the end comes, all Israel will be saved and all the wicked will be cut off. All the grace is displayed here, though all is provisional.

341 In the Acts the gospel is not developed as in the epistles, though it is the same truth so far as it goes. Death and resurrection embrace the whole thing if you regard it as to foundation. Death is the end of the old thing, and resurrection is the beginning of the new. Besides being atonement and the putting away of sins, it is the end of the world as such, and the beginning of the new creation. Satan has no more power, and neither has sin. Death is put away, so that, looked at as to the establishment of the thing, resurrection is the basis of it all. As for the church, there is much developed of blessing in various ways. When Paul states what the gospel was which he preached, it is Christ's death and resurrection. It is evident that, when a person is raised, he is brought into a new place, and that, though all the result may not be before him yet. And again it says Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection. If I were preaching among nominal Christians, I should bring out the whole scheme of what God's intentions are.

The church is relationship to the risen Christ; 'children' means relationship to the Father. They are both immense privileges. In Ephesians 1 the mystery is not exactly introduced, but God puts us in a place and as it were says, I can tell you My mind: and that is how the church comes in. Saints were children and heirs, but differed nothing from a servant; but when the Son comes out, they get the place of children. Then, being in this blessed place, He says, "I will unfold to you all that I am going to do." We might have children without glory, but not the church without Christ in glory. The basis of all is laid in resurrection. When we see Christ's place is that of Son naturally, then He takes manhood to bring us into such a place, but there is nothing to do with the church in that; as we have in John, "My Father and your Father, my God and your God." There is not a word of the church as such. We are with Christ a glorified Man, members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, and there we have the mystery.

342 To look again at the gospel of the humiliation, as it is called; it gives a character which the gospel of the glory does not. The gospel of the humiliation is God in grace, whereas the gospel of the glory is man in glory - fruit of grace, of course. Romans 5 and 8 are very like to the two. In chapter 5 we have the grace of God on to our joying in God, and higher things than in chapter 8, though we do not have the man as high. In chapter 5 it is more the revelation of what God is and of our joy in Him. But if we take people then in chapter 8, we have them higher up in Christ. They are the two passages which give the blessings that belong to Christians. In chapter 8 we have that fact of the gospel that the man is in Christ before God, but we have a great deal more of God in the first part of chapter 5. In a certain sense it is a lower part of the work, for it is only meeting the sinner's need by Christ "delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification." "Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God; and not only so, but we glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." There I have what led him to say in our chapter (2 Cor. 5) that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them"; but in the second part of Romans 5 we have what led him to say, "for he hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." In the gospel of the humiliation we have God in Christ, and in the gospel of the glory we have man in Christ. The latter is a glorious result of the other, no doubt, but it is a different aspect of the gospel.

Notice the omission of the "you" in verse 20 of our chapter. "Did beseech by us": there is the verb only without the pronoun: he is saying how he preaches to the world, begging them to be reconciled. What he says is, "when I preach the gospel, this is what I do": of course it means to the world. If he is an ambassador, he is an ambassador to somebody. It would be confined to the apostles to go as absolute ambassadors. There are not now ambassadors in quite the same way, but in some degree.

343 2 Corinthians 6.

"Workers together with him." "With him" is not exactly right; the "with" is there, but not the "him." I believe the idea is that of workers with one another; they are companions or journeymen, because they work together. "We then as co-workers beseech that ye [Corinthians] receive not the grace of God in vain." They had all received it; but whether they had all received it in their hearts is another question. He looks at them as Christians, but he had become uneasy about them because they were going on so badly. It is no use trying to weaken these particular statements which we often find in Scripture. It is not bearing fruit merely, for if they did receive it in vain, they were not quickened at all. It is not that I have received grace to no purpose, if I am saved by it. I have received the gospel to a very great purpose if I am going to heaven. The grace of God comes to people, and then, as in Hebrews 6, they have tasted the good word of God; and in such cases as theirs it was not possible to save them after, because they had "fallen away." In the parable of the sower, it says "received the word." A man may receive a tract and tear it up, and throw it away; or if he reads it, he may treat the truth the same.

Isaiah 49 comes in here, because there we have their sin before Jehovah, and next against His Christ. "Listen, O isles, unto me, and hearken, ye people, from afar; Jehovah hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name, and he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me, and said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." And then Messiah says, "I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain, yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah and my work with my God; and now, saith Jehovah that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength." Then in verses 7 and 8 we come to the Redeemer of Israel, and God owning Messiah in resurrection glory, though Israel has rejected Him, and now is the accepted time when Christ has been heard though rejected. It is Christ who has been heard in an accepted time, and Isaiah applies it to the Jews at the end; but we come in between, and by the Holy Ghost come down we believe, though without seeing, and get heavenly things; they will believe and see and get earthly things. We have the better thing now. "I have heard thee" - Christ. Christ used the acceptable time in His ministry, though, if in Christ, we are accepted, of course.

344 In our chapter we must link together verses 1 and 3. Paul had the ministry of reconciliation, and he would give no offence lest it should be blamed. There were three things that came from God in Christ: God was reconciling; was not imputing trespasses; and did commit this ministry to Paul. Christ had to die first, of course, and this rest follows; but the agents should walk so that no slur could be put upon the ministry. He is here stating what his ministry was and what he went through in it. He stood there to represent God, and had to conduct himself so that nobody should have anything to say. But he had the devil against him and all things. An ungodly walk would bring reproach against the testimony of course, but here it is of ministry he is speaking.

It is better to leave out the "yets" in verses 8-10. Some looked on him as a deceiver, and some looked on him as true; "unknown and well-known; as dying, yet behold we live"; for a kind of 'yet' comes in here. It is the Holy Ghost in verse 6 and the power of God in verse 7. God acts by the Holy Ghost, but the Holy Ghost was a direct manifestation of power and grace, yet He might be directing and guiding without apparent power. People have gone all wrong about the Holy Spirit; and we have not the signs now. In Galatians he appeals to all Christians, "received ye the Spirit?" etc. Instead of persons looking whether they have the Holy Ghost as they do now, he speaks to them as having the Holy Ghost; he is not speaking of tongues, but of what ought to be found now. I have no doubt Paul displayed the Holy Ghost in a way that we do not (I do not mean with signs); but we have grieved Him so that there are different degrees of the consciousness of the presence of God. For instance, in a gathering there is a solemnity at a time when not a word is uttered, and at another time they hold their tongues only because they have nothing to say. I have no doubt the presence of the Holy Ghost was much more sensible than it is now. At the present time how could you ask a number of persons, "How did you receive the Holy Ghost?" when they do not know whether they have the Spirit or not? I can shew you books by bishops and others who say that at first the church had the Holy Ghost; but now we have not, and so we have to go to college; and all that kind of thing.

345 The recompense in verse 13 refers to himself. There is a great deal in that condition of the apostle, which is very instructive. He represented God as he ought to do; his vessel was all smashed - all that would be reckoned in a man - and consequently the power of God could come out in him. The vessel is all done with, and God is there. That was so in Paul, and he approved himself as given here. This has nothing to do with signs, but is what should be now. "Confirming the word with signs following" was at the first, and was all provisional. Then the church lost power, when it gave up waiting for God's Son from heaven, though that, I believe, was ordered in God's wisdom. The church was never looked at as continuing; we assume a false thing, in such a way, looking at it. Then, people say, the church was only set up for thirty years or so. Of course God knew about it, but He does not put it out as to continue, but to go and meet Christ and come back. They all slumbered and slept, but they ought not to have done thus. The fact is stated, yet it is sin. The church did go to sleep, but there is no pre-arrangement for its continuance; it is the same virgins who do go out to meet their Lord when they awake. "If that evil servant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming," shews just the same; and it is the same servant who is punished. There is no arrangement made for continuing the church.

If you say, Then are we not right to help ourselves as best we can? I reply, Very well, go and make apostles, then. People say that the church is competent like every other society: it all sounds plausible. I know of no prohibition against carrying about the mass, and the "Corpus Christi," or whatever you call it. Some do make elders; but why do they not make apostles too? That is what I said once, and they felt the folly of it; but they could make only an imitation of elders. We have certain things which guide us as to practices; there are young widows as well as old widows; and all such directions are available for the present time. What is said about bishops would be guidance for those who have it on their hearts to exercise oversight. It was this that broke them down at Geneva. When I went there, three brethren would not speak to each other. They were called pastors, and I asked who made these three pastors. They had chosen them and would have them. "Oh," I said, "you assumed the power to make them, and now you must take the consequences." Yet we find ample provision for godly men, but appointments must fail. Suppose it said, There must be order among you here, whom are you going to put in authority? In 1 Peter 5 the elders are not ordained. It is a more general use of the term there. I see no elders among the Jews; elders might be known very well without official appointments.

346 They were not straitened in Paul's heart (v. 12). Paul's affections were as large, and full, and free as could be. The same thought is in what our Lord says, "how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" Then come verses 14-16, etc., giving the relative position of believers, and as the temple of the living God. Unbelievers, as amongst them, are not alluded to here, though there might have been such. The coming out is from the world. It would embrace anything where you have to act in common. The "unclean thing" was the heathen world then, no doubt, but it is much more than that now. You could not apply this to Protestantism and Romanism; for we are perfectly warranted in treating Protestantism as the world. Popery is a different thing. In Sardis Protestants are treated as the world, for we find there, "I will come on thee as a thief," which is what it was said He would do to the world in writing to Thessalonica; but He says He will overtake them so. They have the responsibility of Christians, and are treated as the church in responsibility, and yet they are dealt with as the world.

Verse 14. It is a new subject altogether; but if a Christian gets into the world, the heart gets narrowed, and then into deeper sin. The "world" is a great system, which the devil has built up round man, to give men their sphere of enjoyment. We have a beautiful expression at the end of the chapter: "I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." That is added here to what is quoted from Isaiah. Lord and Almighty are the two Old Testament names of God. He was "Almighty" to Abraham, and "Lord" to Israel; and now He says "Father" to you, and ye are My sons and daughters. Isaiah could say, "doubtless thou art our father," and it may be in that general way that He will be as father to the remnant. "Belial" is a word that means wickedness. The separation applies to everything. Not to those who are married; we have instruction elsewhere about such, not to leave the one the other: "for what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?"

347 2 Timothy 3 would apply to Protestantism now; and to more that is not Protestantism - wherever we find the form of godliness, but the power denied, and from all such we are to turn away. It is not merely open wickedness, it is more; it is a form of godliness. I think people ought to have a great tenderness towards Protestantism; they do own the word of God. They may be the more guilty, having the more light, and not acting up to it: but they systematically, at least, own God's authority in His word, while many others put the church in its place. Romanists say positively, quoting from Augustine, they would not receive the gospel if the church had not given it to them. They say you must have the church to authenticate the words, and that is denying the direct authority of God over the conscience, unless somebody else comes in to give authority. The priest will ask you, How do you know it is the word of God? and in that way they always take infidel ground. Such is their principle. There is an utter denial both of the truth of the word and of its authority; and beside that, they have put in the Apocrypha - have corrupted the word of God. If any will not believe the word of God, unless the church says it, it is not the word they believe as such, but the church. It is under the power of Satan, I doubt not, that there is brought in not merely a denial of authority in the word, but also the setting up of the right of private judgment. Now this is meddling with God's rights. If I send a message to my servant, and you will not let him have it, you are not meddling with the servant's rights so much as with mine. And God has sent this message to those who call themselves Christians; but if you will not let them have it, that is meddling with God's rights, and not merely with man's. In a certain sense, man has no right to the word of God; he is a vile sinner, and has not a right to anything. But if I set up and judge the word of God, this is open infidelity. I take the ground that the word of God judges us, not we it: otherwise it is clear that there is no owning the word of God as His word. The moment it is said, I must judge, I am in the place of authority, and in the place of the word. I have nothing to do with judging.

348 If I were asked how I know it is the word of God, I should reply as I once did to a priest: I asked him, if I took a knife, and gave him an awful gash in his arm, how would he know that this was a knife I had. He could not say the same of the Maccabees: no one dare say that. And I will tell you why: because the writer himself, at the end of the book, says, "If I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired; but if slovenly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto." And again, he says something like this: It is not good to be always drinking wine, but to drink sometimes a little water.

As to teaching children the word of God, I have often said that it is like coals in a grate where there is no fire; but it is known that coals make a fire, and if a fire is wanted, the coals are not thrown out, but they lie there all ready. So with the knowledge of the word of God in people and children too, though we know very well that educational knowledge of the word is not faith. And in using the word of God, we should try to deal by it, and not reason about it. I remember once a man in a coach saying to me, "You use that book, but I do not own it." I said, "That is all very well, my friend; but I have a well-tempered sword, and it would be no use for an opponent to say whether he owned it or not." The point for us is not the rejecting of the word, but using it. I told him, "I believe God loves me perfectly; but supposing there is no God at all, you have done heaps of things that your conscience condemns." He owned that, and said he was very unhappy.

2 Corinthians 7.

In this chapter, he applies the promises to the Corinthians themselves: "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." First, rescue them out from the mass, and then purify them fit for God. The point here is, their being set apart to a holy God, and then in detail purify everything. We also find in Leviticus, "Be ye holy, for I am holy: sanctify yourselves, for I am Jehovah that has sanctified you: for Jehovah your God is holy," and such like words. That is, when they have been brought out of Egypt.

349 "To die and live with you," is not to die to sin first. Scripture never says we have to die to sin. "I die daily" is a dying in an outward sense every day. Paul's life was not worth sixpence, as men speak. Then we have a beautiful expression, "God that comforteth them that are cast down." God lets us be cast down that we may be comforted of Him. It is not a cold dead thing. People speak of the apostles as if they were like vultures soaring above the heads of others, and pouncing down when they were obliged to do it; but it is not so. "Though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent though I did repent." Paul said he "did repent," and when writing an inspired letter! The power of the Holy Ghost makes him write it, and then, when he looks at his own heart, Titus was so long coming, that he thought the Corinthians would not have him; and that was his sorrow. Such is the human side of Paul, and is very instructive.

There is a thing that strikes me very much in Paul, that we may find at the bottom of our own hearts, too, perhaps, but there is a kind of character in it - a claim that he feels upon the affections of the people, and that of the strongest kind. "Ye have not many fathers, but in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." There is a kind of claim of relationship, which in the state of the church we cannot have in the same kind of way now.

Sorrow led to repentance (v. 9). There is more in repentance than a certain feeling, for when the Jews asked, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Peter says, "Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." They were already pricked in their hearts. Sorrow before God led to judgment of the sin. One man had done the act, but they had all gone in heart with it; and now they sorrow, not the man only. Conversion, repentance, being born again, and faith, all go together; and yet I must believe in order to get it, and still they all go together. "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus"; to be a child you must believe. A blow and pain are identical as to time, though I must give the blow, in order to the pain. Where there is not that settled estimate of the will and mind that looks back and judges everything under grace in the power of the word, there is repentance and judgment of self all one's life.

350 Verse 11 is the effect of their repentance (v. 10). All the outward things in which repentance shewed itself prove its reality. In verse 8, "repent" is another word in Greek meaning "regret"; so in verse 10 it is, "worketh repentance to salvation not to be regretted." It is not connected with a judgment of the evil, and is sometimes used for remorse. When he says, "Repentance not to be repented of," you get a very different idea from the expression "Repentance not to be regretted." The gifts and calling of God are without change of mind. In the passage "It repented God that he had made man upon the earth," it is not the change of mind in God, but when the thing changes, God does not like it; not because God changes, but because He Himself does not change. The Greek for repentance in chapter 7: 9 is used for change of mind; you would not find that with Judas; it is remorse there, regret.

It is very beautiful to see the way in which Paul's heart was in them all: even natural affection is beautiful in such a world as this; but all this work had tended to check their love towards him; they had gone to the other side, so to speak. Moses was trained in all the habits of a court, and then when he had been forty years in the desert, and God would send to the court for His people, he said, "I cannot speak" - he quite fell over on the other side; that is how we change. But Paul had written, that his care for them might appear, and he heartily rejoiced in the joy of Titus, and was glad to say he had confidence in them in all things.

2 Corinthians 8 and 9.

We now come to what Paul is ill at ease in, and that is getting money from them. He would not take any for himself, but he would for others. He told them about Macedonia, and takes occasion of the forwardness of others; he knows the forwardness of their mind; had boasted Achaia was ready a year ago; he goes all round about the bush with it, as it were, but thought it better to send somebody, lest his boasting should be in vain, and he be ashamed of it in the presence of the Macedonians, who were coming with him. The man Paul, as the instrument comes out in all that.

351 It would be very sad that there should be any poor among us, and for them not to be cared for. The laying by here was for the poor at Jerusalem. 1 Corinthians 16 did not contemplate anything but the poor. Here every man was to lay by, but "God loveth a cheerful giver"; and again, that it "might be ready as a matter of bounty and not of covetousness." And then the administration of it abounds with many thanksgivings unto God.

We see, all through, beautiful heart exercises; and then he says all this wonderful work of grace, "the experiment of this ministration," glorifies God, and calls out "their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you" (chap. 9: 14): blessed exercises of heart on both sides, one towards the other.

They would be making "themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." We find three things in Luke just before it. The first is the grace of God towards us, in three parables of chapter 15. In the first and second we have the absolute grace that seeks: Christ the Good Shepherd, and the Holy Ghost lighting up the light of truth. Nothing at all is done by the persons, who are the mere objects of the saving grace. The great subject is, grace is God's joy; the shepherd is happy, the woman is happy, and the father is happy. It is God's happiness to have souls back, and He is saying here, "I am going to save sinners, whether you Pharisees like it or not." In the third parable, we have the prodigal's reception by the father when he comes back: first, the working of sin, next the working of grace, and then the father's reception. We have the whole series of gracious dealings, till the man has on the best robe, and is at the father's table. That is, grace in chapter 15 has come, and visited man, and takes him out of Judaism and all else (for God will not have the Pharisee); and then we find that man is a steward out of place in chapter 16. In the Jews, the whole thing was tried under the best of circumstances. Man, Adam, was a steward, having the Master's goods under his hand, but he is turned off because he is unfaithful; and then comes this question: How can I - if I have these goods under my hand as steward, and am turned out of place - how can I take the mammon of unrighteousness, and use it to advantage? I do not use it for myself now, but with a view to the future. The steward might have taken the whole of the £100 to spend it, but if so, that would not do for the future, and therefore, while he can, he uses it to make friends then and there; that is the aim of it. Just while I am here, I have the mammon of unrighteousness, and, as we have it in 1 Timothy 6: 17, I am not to trust in the uncertain riches, but so use them as to lay up in store a good foundation against the time to come. I turn this mammon of unrighteousness into friends, that, when it fail, I may be received into everlasting habitations. I am put out of all that man has as man, that I may yet have it for a time; but by use of it I get reception into everlasting habitation. I use this world for the future. "They shall receive you" is a mere form for "you shall be received." Suppose it is now a person under grace; we find him acting in grace with things here, in view of the future; it is his preference, he would rather look out for the future. "When it fail" is when all this scene is gone, and the life ends: that is, when stewardship is over.

352 Then, in the third case, our Lord draws the veil, and says, "Now look into the everlasting habitations." The poor man Lazarus died, and was carried by the angels into the bosom of Abraham. Here is a rich man using all for himself now, and you see the result; then do not use the world for your present enjoyment, but use it in view of another world. "Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, but thou art tormented." If we do not use this world's things in grace, after all we cannot keep them; and therefore, He says, you have the privilege of turning them into friends available for the future. It shews how the other world belies the whole of the present. God's blessing on a Jew was marked by the possession of such things, but the Lord shews the other world to tell him how all these things are changed.

2 Corinthians 10.

In this chapter we have the character of Paul's ministry, "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." I suppose Paul was some poor-looking man instead of being a fine commanding person - "in presence am base among you." In verse 5 I have put "reasonings" for "imaginations." The word has the force of both. In verse 6 "when your obedience is fulfilled," means he waited for them to go with him in all. There is the greatest grace in this, for he comes with authority behind, and has what I may call a rod for them, if needed.

353 In chapter 10, we have a clue to all these difficulties with these false people, and also to what his thorn in the flesh was. "We will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us," v. 13. These people had come and acted as if they were originally authorised, where God had not give them any measure. Paul had had all the difficulty, and persecution, and danger; and then it was all very comfortable for them to step in and try and spoil his work. He had not gone outside his measure. All very right in a good spirit that apostles should water what Paul planted, but that is if it is done in a right spirit. These were coming without being asked, and that to spoil the thing. Paul did not boast of things without (that is, outside) "our measure," things of other men's labour. "Enlarged by you" (v. 15) simply means, they were to help hum to go on to other places.

It all shews how the apostles went through the same kind of difficulties that we do. Suppose we saw all the churches of the country giving up justification by faith, how we should feel it! We should think it was all no use. But God met this at Corinth, and would now. Here were people drunk at the Lord's supper, and puffed up about wickedness, and so on. All these things were there, but power by the Spirit of God met them. Now people try to take an advantage of it in this way; they say, All these churches are just as bad as the Established Church, or anything else now. It is a great mistake, for now we find all is the world, and not the church at all. We have no church to appeal to, no grace or life to appeal to. It is not a question of more or less outward wickedness; they are not out from the world to walk in the Spirit, so that the exercise of the power of the Spirit may come in.

2 Corinthians 11.

"As a chaste virgin" (v. 2) is individual. It is the whole, but it must be individual. Verse 4 refers to false teachers who might preach another Jesus or another gospel, but it was not another. Here he feared they might "be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ"; in Galatians it was not so much corrupting the gospel as presenting another, which was not another, for there could not be another. Paul says, "though I be rude in speech" (v. 6), and "in speech contemptible"; he was behind no one and he pleads hard with them. Poor Paul! he had a heart in these people and could not give them up. "I did not take your money; is that the wrong I did you? I did not do any other, I am sure."

354 Verse 15 is very solemn. You may even get Satan's power at work in the form of ministers of righteousness: Satan can ape in that way. Of course, he can never be really Christ. It is not that everybody who is ignorant and preaches below the full truth is Satan's agent, but there are those that bring in a working of Satan. It is people here; but there always will be some doctrine at the bottom of it. It appears these false teachers were pretty impudent, for he says, "If a man bring you into bondage; if a man devour you; if a man take of you; if a man exalt himself; if a man smite you on the face." It is wonderful what people will suffer from what is false - very much more than they will endure from what is true. That which is false pleases the flesh. Take any system: it is surprising with what rapidity people learn a system. And you will always find Satan's teaching is always learned a great deal more rapidly than God's.

It is in verse 16 he begins to talk about himself. "If they boast, I must boast too, so much so that you have made me make myself a fool about it." In the two last verses of the former chapter he was ready to glory, "but he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord, for not he that commendeth himself is approved but whom the Lord commendeth." Yet, he adds, "I must glory: you have forced me to it"; and the Lord has allowed it for our instruction. "I speak as concerning reproach," he says (for some had said "his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible") "as though we had been weak; howbeit whereinsoever any is bold, I speak foolishly, I am bold also; are they Hebrews? so am I," and so on. We have here a wonderful picture of Paul's life, telling what it really was. Paul does not boast of being a Hebrew, but no one had any advantage over him in that respect.

"The care of all the churches" (v. 28) is not the taking care of them, but care for them as now for Corinth. It is wonderful to see the power of the apostle, the way in which he could take up all the highest doctrines and yet go into detail about all these other things. We see a flexibility of power that is astonishing, a generalising power and an individualising power that he is never tired in using. In us the tendency is to get weary when we see one or two gatherings going wrong. Verse 29 is sympathy with the saints.

355 Paul gloried in what he had gone through, he required power to go through all these things; it was not in his own power he went, and the sustaining is wonderful. Suppose a man preaching in this town was flogged for it, and he goes and preaches all the same at a neighbouring one! So he says, "But even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as ye know at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention." Nothing broke him down: he was not cowed a bit after having his feet in the stocks. How naturally the apostle writes! After a kind of conversation in verse 31, he comes out with something he had quite forgotten, but that now occurred to him. It made little of himself to have escaped in such a way, but he did not mind that; it was what he was glorying in.

2 Corinthians 12.

Here Paul says, "I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord"; and then we come to infirmities and persecutions, a kind of honour on one side; but the Lord is able to unite what is in one sense honourable with discipline in the flesh on the other side. It was Paul's honour in that he was suffering for Christ, but along with that it was discipline to the flesh. We have another aspect here to these infirmities, for they are the same though looked at in a different way.

Verse 2 should read, "I know a man," not "I knew"; he knew him while he wrote. The fourteen years ago is when it happened. "I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago caught up." The term "in Christ" is important, because that takes him out of himself; for he says, in himself he will not glory, but of such a one he will glory. The sense is, a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up. For it really was Paul; but he will not allow it was himself, because whether in the body or out of the body he cannot tell. He had not a consciousness of human perceptions; he perceived these things now, but then he did not know how he knew or saw it all. There is consciousness of the body and so he could not say whether in or out. His perceptions were gone from him; and when he got back, he could not tell about them; he did not receive them humanly, neither could he communicate them humanly. The church he had by revelation as he says. We have it as a thing we are accustomed to, but to have had it all come in fresh - a revelation - a thing we have never known nor heard of before, is an amazing thing: and especially so to him, a strong Jew.

356 The third heaven here is in a different character from paradise. The third heaven is going on high - a degree of exaltation; paradise is rather the character of the thing. Our Lord went to paradise, but paradise is the character. The word "paradise" means nothing but a Persian garden; there they had beautiful gardens. The third heaven is hardly the heaven of heavens. There are the sky, the created heavens, the starry heavens, and then the heaven where the throne of God is placed, though this again is a figure no doubt. "Heaven itself" in Hebrews 9 means the reality, and not the figure. We see the same thing in Ezekiel, where he saw the covering of the cherubim and above that the throne of God or the figure of it. These have not exactly to be atoned for; but wherever any creature has been, it has to be cleansed.

We have also the tabernacle for a type. The camp is the world; the court gives the first heavens; the holy place the second; and the most holy, where the ark was, the third, with the throne of God. The brazen altar was not in the world, because Christ was lifted up out of the world. Then the holy, and the most holy; the expression "heaven of heavens" is used, I take it in rather a general way. "Rejoice, ye heavens," is in contrast with earth and that you find constantly; only we have in the tabernacle something more specific, and the Jews constantly used it so, and spoke of three heavens. It was very natural, if God had said Moses was to make all these things after the pattern of things in the heavens, that they should call them so, the three heavens, because there were the three places. The tabernacle represents three things: Christ Himself; the church because God dwells in it; and the creation or created heavens. Christ Himself, for the veil is His flesh - through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; next, as we have seen, we get, as shewn in creation, the three heavens; and then we have "but Christ as Son over his own house, whose house are we." It is not His body there, because we have it as the dwelling-place of God. We never find the temple in Hebrews, because the temple is the permanent thing, the millennium, while in Hebrews the saints are looked at as strangers and pilgrims in the wilderness.

357 The thief was not in the "body." The very thing the Lord taught the thief was that he was to be in paradise before the "body" was formed. It is not into His kingdom, but "Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom." He had learned as a Jew that a Christ should come, and there Christ hung upon the cross. He owns Him there as Lord, and the Lord says, 'I cannot wait for that kingdom, but you shall be in paradise to-day.' That is, it is the happiness of soul meanwhile. That is the character of Luke all through in grace. We have no "abomination of desolation" in Luke 21, but we have Titus's army, and Jerusalem trodden down of the Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. All is referred on to the kingdom. Our Lord said at the passover, "I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God." He looks at the present things: they are always brought in, though they are carried on. In these things Paul's ministry and Luke run together a good deal.

It is when Paul speaks of paradise that he speaks of hearing things he could not utter: that is where blessedness is. The paradise of God, and my Father's house are very different ideas. We have not the Father in Revelation except "having his Father's name written in their foreheads" (chap. 14), after the opening chapters. There is brightness and blessedness there, but not fellowship with the Father exactly: we have not that in the Revelation. We have all that is descriptive of glory and blessedness, and beauty, and so on - golden street and glass, and all the pictures of things, which, if we compare scripture with scripture, we get to understand. We have the capital of God's dominion where He has the garden of His delights; but this is a different idea from the relationship of the Son with the Father; and we are going into all that. One is secured delight with God and the other is with my Father; and this is the highest way of blessing.

The "place" John speaks of in chapter 14 is a place in these mansions; as if He said, 'Do not you fancy I am going off to leave you in the lurch,' as men speak. "I am going to prepare a place for you. It is not only a place for the high priest, but for the priests, for all of you, and I am going to get it ready for you." As regards locality, this is not brought into question, but it is the Father's house; and the place of it we really know nothing about. We say going up to heaven, but then that to Australia would be going down, and yet it is all quite right; it is only language adapted to our thoughts and feelings as men. There is no place with God in a sense, and no time either, but we speak as men. God is "I am," the self-existing One. Yet all these things are real, when you come to the moral relationship - very real indeed.

358 The "not lawful" in verse 4, means not morally possible. It is not that the things were not capable of being uttered, but that they were unutterable in their character. It is not like "cannot be uttered," but a thing that morally cannot be done. I say, such a thing cannot be, without meaning to say that the thing is not physically possible, but that it is a thing not to be done or thought of. I do not know any one word good for it. In Romans it is the denial of the utterableness of the groans. Then we have the glories of the man in Christ in the third heavens. We are not to be taken up there for unutterable revelations, but for unutterable glory we shall be. We are sitting in heavenly places in Christ; the man in Christ, is in Christ where He is.

Satan accuses the brethren before the throne. We have Satan in the opening of Job coming among the sons of God, where the government of God is carried on. "Spiritual wickedness in heavenly places" is in contrast with earthly things. Joshua wrestled with flesh and blood, we do not; but it is where our blessings are, and this does not say anything, except that they are not on earth. We shall rise into the air, and meet the Lord there first; we shall be in the Father's house, and we shall be free of all the heavens then; the Father's house is the highest thought we can have.

The government of Israel was carried on at the altar of incense, and that rather belonged to the most holy, though it stood outside, and the effect of the sin of the priesthood was that, after the death of Nadab and Abihu, they could not go inside, had it not been that the priest would have gone in and out continually as in the millennium. The incense belonged to the inner place. God spoke to Moses from the cherubim, but Moses was distinct from all the rest, for he found grace in God's sight.

There was nothing in the government of God in Israel that corresponded to the church of God. God governs us now according to the relationship in which we are placed; Israel was governed according to what a man ought to be, for although God was in heaven, in a certain sense, He governed on earth. Although what they had were shadows of things in the heavens, yet it was real government by them by earthly means. God gave distinct law, which goes to the extent of what a man ought to be and no farther: but we are brought into the light to God, as His own children, with fitness for the heavenly places. There may be something of likeness in the individuals because saints in Israel had to go and suffer like us; but this was exceptional, while with us it is the reality. Israel's calling was a very different thing from the exercises of individual faith. But God had to deal with the individuals on what was really higher ground than that of the calling within which they were. Individually Abraham must go higher up to get with God, even as a figure he is not in the plain but on the mountain.

359 Discipline is government. We ought to walk in the light as God is in the light. We have two things, the veil rent, and our calling into God's presence without a veil; and also we have a Father who is holy: "Holy Father, keep them in thine own name." And then we have a third thing, and that is "the Lord" in the general administration of things - the general idea of the Lord's disciplining. The whole place of the Christian is a different thing from Israel's. God may shew His government as He did in bringing in the flood, and if He need He will. Righteousness does exalt a nation, though the direct government of God is over. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him, but direct government with laws leading to certain results is over, though what a man sows he reaps. God does not let the reins out of His hand. He takes His people of old and deals with them as a nation, but now His children have the fullest revelation of His dealings with them, and that as children, and He does not even say "not a sparrow falls to the ground without (God, but) your Father"; as one who has to you the place and tenderness of a Father, and not a thing can happen to you without His care.

Well, we are in Christ; we have not these visions and revelations of course (they were special to Paul), but we have this association above, and the place of a Christian in which we can glory. All that was revealed to Paul belongs to us. We are not made the vessel of its revelation as he was, but all things are ours, just as much as they were Paul's, and it is "a man in Christ," and of such an one will I glory. If I look at myself "in Christ," I can glory, not talking of revelation now, but if I say "myself," I cannot glory except in my infirmities; "for though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool, for I will say the truth; but now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me" - revelations, of course, were neither seen nor heard - "and lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure." Now we have the vessel again - we have had it before - we have the immense revelations that he had, so that he could not tell them, and then the vessel in which the revelations were, and which had to be put down.

360 And another thing we have in passing; we see here a proof that no extent of divine communication ever corrects the flesh, even where it is real; but the flesh is a judged thing, and a hopelessly bad thing. If we take the flesh by itself, it is lawless, so that God has to bring in the flood upon it. If you take it under law, then it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Then if we take flesh in the presence of Christ (that is, God come in grace), it crucified Christ; or, if we bring in the Holy Ghost, men resist Him; and then, if we put flesh in the third heaven, he will be puffed up; and if there were a fourth heaven, and he be put there, he would be more puffed up still. Such is its character; all the effect of the abounding of grace and glory is only to shew its character out. Here the Lord had to put Paul in danger, and gave him a remedy; the flesh is not exactly corrected here. Morally all the Lord could do was to keep the flesh down for him. Paul was a man, and he must be dealt with as a man in his responsibility. The time was not come to give him glory instead of flesh, and so he is dealt with as he is.

It is a great point - man's real condition. All would own that flesh is bad in a general sense, but because they think so, men would correct and improve it. We are bound to do good to every man, whoever it is, even as man; but the pretension of men is, that at bottom there is something good in a man, and so ultimately you may make anything out of him. And so they are working education for one great thing. Of course, everybody has to learn something, but the common idea of education now is an infidel idea. They give everybody votes, and then it follows that they must be educated in order to know how to use their vote. The whole thing is nonsense - a mere question of the passions of the flesh. In some states they compel education. God has committed children to parents, and the parent is bound to care for his child. No state can come in between God and the parent. If the state come in, you will have to leave the state. It is from no resistance of the power that I say so, for that would be wrong directly; but it is the word of God that gives the state its authority, and therefore I submit or go. If you were compelled to be a soldier, if it is against your conscience, you must be shot, or something else: that is all.

361 But we have not got quite to the end of the thorn in the flesh. It is called the "messenger of Satan," because it was an instrument of Satan; just as in Job's case, when Satan brought sickness and disease on Job, the Lord let Satan loose at him; so it was Satan's messenger here to buffet Paul. It is an additional proof, that no grace ever mends the flesh. Put the flesh down; everything is useful for that. It was putting down the flesh, making Paul contemptible; it was a sort of counterpoise to the abundance of revelation. He besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from him; but the flesh must be put down. "You must trust My grace, and the character of My grace is that My strength is made perfect in weakness. If it is My strength, it is not in man's power that it is made good." Of course it was all through death: Christ was crucified through weakness, and that He might destroy him that had the power of death; and the character of Christ's strength working in us is the putting down of all our strength, and then His power can work - "Most gladly, therefore, will I glory in infirmity, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." We have the man in Christ first, then we have from the "in Christ" abundance of revelation, which might puff up the flesh, and then flesh is made totally nothing of, a hindrance put upon it, and Christ's power brought out. Only in the case of Paul, all this was for Christ's sake, though it was a thorn in the flesh, so that it was his glory in the other aspect of it, and he was suffering for Christ. All this is very instructive as to any ministry, because the power of ministry is in putting the man down that Christ's power may be there. God's power is a very different thing from man's. Man may take a vessel and do what he likes, but he cannot fit the vessel with any conscious power in itself. God cannot use the vessel until its qualities be mere qualities, and this connection with man's will and energy be broken.

362 Men are found constantly trusting in means. Now I quite admit certain things, and all things are lawful to me, and I am thankful for any facility in my way, but trusting in such things will not do. The Holy Ghost is acting, and when He works, all else must fall into low place. The apostles went on foot, and we go by rail; but ten thousand times more was done then, because the Holy Ghost was carrying on things everywhere. "Your faith to Godward is spread abroad." That is better than any railroad; the power of the Spirit of Christ was what he reckoned on and trusted to, and that really did the work. We go looking at what are facilities for the body, human things, and things which we are thankful for; and they get trusted, instead of the power of God. In Paul's day these things were not known, and yet immensely more was done, because the Holy Ghost wrought. We see it clearly enough. Instead of three thousand souls converted by one sermon, it takes more like three thousand sermons for the conversion of one soul. Yet God is working now remarkably through mercy; He comes in and acts sovereignly. Take printing again, it is all very well; God can use such things as well as anything else. All things are lawful, but it is the trusting to these immense facilities that is our error. Here was a little handful of Thessalonians converted, and all the world is really preaching the gospel by telling what had happened there: "from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad, so that we need not to speak anything." All the world was talking about it. "Why, there is such a people started at Thessalonica, they have given up all their idols, and they are waiting for God's Son from heaven." The world itself spread it - there was such a power in the testimony.

Some use placards. I leave every conscience free to judge for itself, but I should not use them. I doubt very much that more work is really done by it, but I leave every conscience free. I would trust God for it all, and meet people as God brings them. I would not announce even a gospel meeting, except among the saints, and I should be glad of their fellowship in it. I was in Edinburgh once, and there was a certain person who asked me to go on with his meetings. I did not, but I got to know some of the people with him, and talked to them about the Lord's coming. They considered it quite a wild thing, but yet thought I ought to lecture about it, but I would not have any bills. They wanted them to be put in the shop windows, but I would not have any. Well, we had the meetings on the Lord's coming - a set of lectures - and this man who had been very violent came. We had twenty people from different congregations - just the people I wanted - and it set the Lord's coming as a thing on its legs again; and then some of them set up a kind of society for having lectures every year.

363 I find these things going, and it is a very serious question. I see a great deal of work doing, and work that I delight in abstractedly, missionary work, tracts distributed, and so on; but I see, too, that the world and the church are mixed up together, and the manner of doing these things is of the first importance in doing them. Am I to do good, or seem to destroy my good by mixing with the world? There was a dear old man - an Independent secretary for the Irish schools - and he asked me if I would be on his committee. I said, 'I cannot go with an accredited religion through the world.' 'Oh,' said he, 'we must be accredited with the world.' 'But I will not be so,' said I; 'and look! here come all these people with their guineas. Why, even Peter himself could not be a member of your society, for he says, Silver and gold have I none.' It is very often the question whether the way of doing a particular thing is right. By the manner you may do a great good, or a great deal of evil. Am I to accept the evil in order to do good, or am I to trust the Lord? What God is now doing is separating the precious from the vile; and this is not a matter about which I have no feeling. It is often pressed upon my spirit, Am I to put water in the wine that people may drink it? At first, I did not care where I went - into a church or elsewhere - to preach the gospel, or into a Methodist chapel, and so on. I have no principle that directly hinders me, but one day, at Plymouth, they brought me short up, for I had in the vestry to write down who ordained me, and this brought me to a point. There was the question straight out: Am I to accept that, in order to get an opportunity to preach to five thousand people? Spiritual means, of course, can be used, such as saints going round to houses in the way of positive love to make the preaching known. The means are all in our power.

364 It was that verse in Jeremiah 15: 19, 20, that laid hold on me, "If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me; and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth; let them return unto thee, but return not thou unto them. And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall; and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee? for I am with thee to save thee, and to deliver thee, saith Jehovah. And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible." Jeremiah is in exactly that position. Jerusalem is looked at as a blessed thing and as a wicked thing, and so is the church now in a sense. And after speaking of all that conflict in Jeremiah's spirit, the Lord says to him, "If thou separate the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth." At the first beginning that sentence laid hold of me. An infidel might say of the church, 'Down with it! Down with it!' and I could not say, "The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are ye." So, then, what am I to do? Separate the precious from the vile. And then comes the question, What means am I to use for doing that which I desired to do? and can I associate myself with worldly means for a divine thing?

I know that preachers come by rail, preach, and are away again; but I doubt that more work is done. I doubt that this great employment of means to carry things through has any real power in it. Some ask how would I compel them to come in; but this is compelling them to come in to heaven, not to come in to the preaching. The question is, are the means I am employing, such that I am not mixed up with the spirit of the world and the mere world's instrumentality? Though I quite believe God is using means, many means that I could not use, it does not move me. Take the handbills; it does not follow that these people would not have been converted if there had been no handbills. Yet I have not the most distant idea of even convincing other people about it, or of binding their consciences. We have to go on with the Lord. I see God working in all kinds of ways. One gave it me as a reason for staying in the Establishment, that he was useful there, and that he had such numbers of people to hear him there, that he would never get elsewhere. And that might be quite true as to fact. I am delighted when good is done; but what I see, even as a fact, is that where there is earnestness and faith, God blesses the earnestness and faith. But there is a quantity where there is a flood; and if the earnestness is great, it is like a river swollen, that carries down a quantity of mud with it, and there is a bar made outside. After a revivalist sermon, for instance, you find the greatest difficulty in the world to get the people to go on without excitement. Still I rejoice that many are converted. God may use all sorts of means that I could not use; but He can do what He pleases - I must do what is right. If I cannot do what others do, I should be very wrong in condemning them for using such and such means. It is not merely placards that I speak of; but it is a large question that one has to be exercised in - what means can I use? I can suppose one who has not had his conscience awakened, going on with this and that - take a clergyman saying that children are converted in baptism; or any one kept excusing plenty of inconsistencies, and worse, where numbers are converted by the preaching; but that justifies nothing. Take women again, who are going about preaching, but I do not believe it is right, however many conversions there may be.

365 2 Corinthians 13.

If we take chapter 12 as a whole, we have the third heavens at the beginning, and the grossest, vilest sins a Christian can fall into at the end; but between those two, we have where the real power is to avoid the sins, and that is to have the flesh put down, and the power of Christ resting on him. Then Paul refers to the persons who had sinned - "I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other, that if I come again I will not spare." He was afraid, lest there were debates, envyings, and strifes, and so on among them, and he would not spare them.

Then follow some verses in chapter 13. "Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith, prove your own selves." Most are familiar with what the real truth of it is; that the beginning of verse 3 is connected with verse 4: "Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, examine yourselves," and so on. The last part of verse 3 with verse 4 is a parenthesis. The apostle had already shewn that these false teachers had been calling him in question; he had been giving the proofs of his ministry, and at last he says if you are looking for proof of Christ speaking in me, examine yourselves, as much as to say, "You foolish people, you are calling me in question; look then at yourselves." He adds, "Except ye be reprobates." A reprobate is one cast out as good for nothing; a figure from reprobate silver. He means, "If you are Christians, Christ has spoken by me, and it is by my means you are Christians."

366 "We shall live with him by the power of God toward you" (v. 4) is, I take it, like saying life works in you, the power of God manifested towards them; but Paul was dead as a man; yet, by the power of God that wrought in him, he lived with Christ. That helps to introduce "examine yourselves," because he did not doubt they were living. He says in one place, "I protest by your rejoicing I die daily." But if dead here, he had life in Christ which is much more solid, I am sure. This examination could not be to pacify themselves. It is not my examination of my spiritual state which gives me peace, but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I ought not to get peace in looking at myself, though I trust there are signs of grace there; but really, unless a man has the Spirit of Christ, he is not competent to examine himself; and if he has the Spirit of Christ, there is no sense in doing it. One was insisting on this examination, and I asked, Are you competent to judge without the Spirit? It is a blessed thing when souls are brought to find out that there is no good in themselves, that is, in their flesh; and then they do not look for any; they find that Christ appears in the presence of God for them, and then all is settled. Nobody ever gets clear about it until he knows there is no good in him, and then he looks at Christ.

"Though we be as reprobates" (v. 7), is as though he said, "you may consider me good for nothing, but I hope you will be all right." It is a kind of taunting speech, not bitter, but yet taunting in a way - "what are you all about?" "Wish your perfection" (v. 9) is, he wishes everything complete in them; not so much looking at them as full-grown men, but with everything complete.

In the benediction "Lord Jesus" is title; Jesus is a name. We are accustomed to take Jesus Christ as a name, which it is not. The communion of the Holy Ghost is the power of the Holy Ghost in us.

What Death is to the Christian

2 Corinthians 5

J. N. Darby.

<26039E> 367

The hope of the believer is not death. It is "not to be unclothed, but clothed upon that mortality may be swallowed up of life." He need not be unclothed, that is, of himself. The purpose of God is nothing less than that we should be conformed to the image of Christ; Romans 8. Our proper hope is to see Him as He is, and be like Him. It is the power of divine life conforming us to Christ the Head that we hope for; and this is what He has wrought us for. Being in utter ruin, we can now only look to what are God's thoughts and purposes about us, and therefore hope comes in as a very necessary help; but hope is not all our joy now, and when we get to heaven, there will be no hope left. Our proper joy is not hope at all, though now, seeing there is nothing satisfying here, one of our greatest joys is hope. What He has brought us into now is not subject of hope at all. We do not hope for the divine nature or the love of God. The divine joy of the believer is having these, while rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.

We have a hope in death, but death is not our hope. There is that in it which is more than hope - the possession of life; and that death does not touch, but set free. There are some things we should be at home in. We should be at home in God's love; and at the judgment seat of Christ, being like Him, we may be at home. True, we are at home, too, in conflict here, temptation, etc.; the promise is "to him that overcometh." But, in spite of conflict, our hearts should be at home where God has put us. We cannot be at home where no water is. So far as the Spirit of God animates and fills us, we find no water here. When death comes in, it breaks every possible thought of nature; it is a terrible thing in this way: every thought of man gone - not a single thing to trust in - everything in nature broken down.

Another point is, it is the power of Satan which none can control. God has the power of life, but if He had called in question Satan's power in death, He would have annulled His own sentence. Death must come in, breaking every tie of nature, and bringing in every terror connected with Satan. The sentence must be executed by God Himself, and therefore it is the judgment of God. There is judgment after it. "It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment." What can this judgment be? If I die and God brings me into judgment, I must be condemned for the sin that brought me there. "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (I am not now speaking of deliverance.) In every sense death is a terrible thing. Besides the natural dread that even an animal has, there is a terror in it, because all ties are broken by it; everything, however loving, is gone, when death takes it. The power of Satan ushering into judgment, it can bring nothing but condemnation for sin. It is also what God has put as a stamp on man, and no skill of man can avert it. It comes with bitter mockery amidst all the progress of which man boasts. In all this we see what death is in itself, as the wages of sin. But there is another way to look at it. The way God has taken it up and entirely delivered us (those who believe); and now, if there is a bright spot in a man's (a Christian's) life, it is at his death. It brings in a bright gleam of the future, entirely by Christ. "If one died for all, then were all dead," etc.; "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death . . . and deliver them who through fear of death," etc. This blessed truth is simple in itself, familiar to us that the Son of God, of whom it is said that it was not possible He should be holden of death, did come down into it, has gone under it and is risen. The second Adam came into the very place of the first Adam.

368 Then we were under sin, judgment, wrath, condemnation, and He has been under it all - He was made sin. Had God not measured the sin? Yes. Did He not know the consequences of it? Yes; and He "spared not his own Son," etc. Did Christ not know all that was involved in it? Yes; and He came in the full love of His heart to accomplish the purpose of God - to drink the cup; but such was His agony at the thought of what the cup was, that He sweat great drops of blood. It was the thought of sin, death, and judgment that made Him shrink from the cup, but He went through it with God. The power of death was gone, in a sense, when those who came to meet Him saw Him, "They went back and fell on their faces." He had nothing to do but to go away then, but He did not: He offered Himself up. His disciples might go away, because He stood in the gap. Thus He takes the cup as judgment, suffering the penalty of sin. It is not now Satan (as in the agony in the garden), but God. When on the cross He cries, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He drank the cup thoroughly on the cross, then He died. His body went down to the grave. Was it the power of Satan when He said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit?" No. He gave up His spirit, waiting for the resurrection. He went down unto death, took up the whole thing - sin, Satan's power, wrath, etc. He was made sin for us. "He died unto sin once." We have thus seen what death was for Christ. Now see what it is for us. In nature it is everlasting wrath: but there is not a bit of the wrath, not a bit of the sin remaining for the believer. Is God going to judge the sin He has put away? No; there is not a trace of it remaining. "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" - "condemned sin in the flesh." The strength of it all is in this - that He was "made sin," because He had no sin of His own. He suffered for it once, the just for the unjust (1 Peter 3: 4). "Condemned sin in the flesh." God has done it once for all, and now He lives, and there is no more about the sin. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin," having nothing more to say to it, and apart from the question of sin altogether, to take us into glory.

369 Looked at as to nature, He had no sin, but I had sin, and that is put away; sin is entirely put away, abolished for ever. He has come up from under the consequences of death, after sin is put away. The life He took up is in the "power of an endless life." I have new life in Him, life born of the Spirit, and "the life that I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God," etc. Then what about the old man practically? As I have this new life, the old man is reckoned dead. I am dead. What is dead? The old man; I am baptized unto Christ's death. The "corn of wheat" must die. Death ended all connection with it, for dying is unto that by which I was held. The law has killed me. The effect of the law, if we see its value, is that it has killed me, and I have life in Christ. Scripture does not speak of our dying to sin, or of our dying to ourselves: but we "are dead," and are to reckon ourselves dead. "Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though alive in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" The old man is an antagonist in its will; but I am dead to it. I have done with that which hindered my going to God. Has not a man done with that to which he has died? Literally, when death comes, I shall have done with what is mortal. Mortality is to be "swallowed up of life." The old nature is a thorn I shall be glad to get rid of: it is mortal, corrupt, and now by sin under the power of Satan. But then it will be gone, this corruption and mortality. The mortal body having died, I shall have nothing more to do with death or the old nature.

370 What of the new nature? Is this done with? No; it is getting home, where the affections will have full play. In death we have done with the old nature, the first Adam, and get a great deal more of the Second. This is "far better." I shall have got rid of mortality when I die. "Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord." Who is this person? The new man. I am absent from the body, present with the Lord. Leaving this wretched, poor mortal, to be with Christ, is positive gain. It will be better still to be in the glory with Him, complete in all with Christ: but now it is "gain" to die.

What was Christ's own thought about dying? What He said to the thief shews: "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise"; and to His disciples He said, "If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because I go to my Father." In Christ there was the perfect consciousness of gain. Was Stephen less happy in his measure when he died? Hear him saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The fact of death is leaving the old man entirely behind, and going to be with Christ. There is positive gain in having done, in measures, by faith now, or in fact by-and-by, with the mortal.

Then there is the dying daily. But there is not a single thing in which death can come, but it is positive gain, and for the life of the spirit. The sorrow which comes in, by the breaking of natural ties, is for blessing, reducing the flesh, etc. If there is will in the sorrow, it is bad: but trial is to be felt. Peter did not like the thought of the cross; his flesh was not broken down to the point of the revelation he had from God. Then there must be a process gone through to break it down, either with God in secret or through discipline.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL. 5.]

Galatians

J. N. Darby.

<27001E> 1

It may interest your readers* to have brought before them the great principles which constitute the bases of the doctrine of the Epistle to the Galatians. It is upon the face of it elementary, the churches of Galatia being in imminent danger of adding Judaism to Christianity in such a way as to destroy the nature of Christianity itself. Nor was theirs the only age in which liability to do so had existed, and has had to be watched against.

{*Originally sent to "The Present Testimony."}

The law is a testing of human nature, to see whether it can produce righteousness for God, and a perfect rule of righteousness for that nature in all it owes to God and to a man's neighbour. So that it claims subjection, and that man should fulfil its requirements under penalty moreover of judgment. The authority of God, the subjection of man to His commandments, and a perfect rule of conduct for man in his present state as a child of Adam are all involved in this system. But man, conscious he ought to fulfil it, his own conscience telling him it is right, and not suspecting his own weakness and the depth of his ruin, and seeing that keeping it would be righteousness for him before God, readily takes it up as the way of having that righteousness, and enjoying divine favour, of being right when judgment comes. When unawakened, observance of its outward claims satisfies the natural conscience; if understood spiritually, it leads to the discovery of that law in our members which hinders all success in the attempt. But God having established the law, it was a very difficult and delicate thing to shew that, as a system, it was passed away, not because it was not in its right place, and useful too for its own real purpose, but to make way for a system of grace purposed and promised long before the law was established; and that by the discovery that it was death and condemnation to be under it, that the mind of the flesh (the nature the law dealt with) was not subject to it, and could not be, and that we escape its curse as under it, not by the destruction of its authority, but by dying as so under it, and that by the body of Christ in whom we then found ourselves in a new life beyond its condemnation. The cross makes all things clear. But the credit of the flesh (that is, of himself) is dear to the natural man, and till he had discovered that in him (that is, in his flesh) there was no good thing, he was loth to give up a rule he knew to be right, in the humbling confession that he was such a sinner that it could be only his condemnation, the law of sin so strong in his members, himself so disposed to evil, that the law, weak through the flesh, could only condemn him. Judaising teachers, proud in their own conceits, zealous of the law as the credit of their nation, could not bear to have it set aside as necessary for the way of righteousness and life with God; and the ministry which judged the flesh in Jew and Gentile, and freed the latter from all subjection to the Jewish system, was intolerable to them. Man always clings to the law, speciously alleging God's claims and holiness, till he experimentally finds (in the discovery of the true character of the flesh) his true state, that as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.

2 Hence Paul, both as to his own ministry and the place the law held, was in perpetual conflict with these Judaising teachers. The more intimate we are with his writings, the more we shall find how he was harassed by it, and how his writings continually bear on the point that you cannot mix the two systems, law and grace. This lay at the root of all his doctrine, and in all its highest developments, as well as in its first elements. The counsels of God, in the second Man, were formed before the world was, or man was responsible at all, and revealed only after that second Man was come, and had accomplished the work on which the bringing all these counsels into effect was founded. The apostle's doctrine, fully unfolded, brought out the ground and scope of these counsels in their full development in Christ, and, as to us, in a new and heavenly position of man in and with Him; while the true state of the first man, responsible for his walk, of which the law was the perfect rule, gave occasion for insisting on the first elements of the truth, and the necessity of setting aside the first man, and thus for the application of the law, which could reach him only as long as he lived, in order to substitute grace and divine righteousness, not because the law was wrong, but because being right it was death and condemnation to man under it. Christ met this responsibility for us on the cross, magnifying the law by bearing its curse, but bringing us, dead to sin and alive in Him, into connection withal with another - Himself raised from the dead. In His death God had condemned sin in the flesh, and brought in what was divine in righteousness and life in place of man, when Christ was for sin a sacrifice for sin on the cross. These elements the Epistle to the Galatians fully instructs us in, without going into the counsels whose accomplishment is based on the cross. These are found elsewhere, most fully in the Ephesians.

3 The first part of the Epistle to the Galatians is occupied with the independence of Paul's ministry. It was neither of nor by man. From the apostles he received nothing. The revelations he received, and his apostolic authority were immediately from the Lord. But on this part it is not my object now to dwell. At the end of chapter 2 the apostle gives, in earnest and burning words, the whole bearing of the law on the gospel, and how they were related one to another; but of this at the close. I will now shew how he sets the law and the gospel over against one another.

Up to the flood, save the testimony of godly men and prophets, God did not interfere after the history of man's perverseness was complete, in Adam and Cain. That issued in the judgment of the flood. After that, God began anew to deal with man, to unfold His ways to him in the state in which he was. And they were carried on till the full proof of man's irreclaimable state was given in the rejection of Christ. The first of these dealings, after scattering men into nations and tongues and languages, was His taking Abraham out of them all for Himself, and making him the stock and root of a new family on the earth, God's family fleshy or spiritual: the former Israel; the latter the one seed, Christ. Leaving aside for the moment Israel, the seed according to the flesh, to whom the promises will surely be accomplished in grace, we find the promise made to Abram in chapter 12, and confirmed to the seed in chapter 22. This referred to all nations who were to be blessed in the Seed, the one Seed, typified by Isaac, offered up and raised in figure. On this the apostle insists. The blessing came by promise. This, confirmed as it was to Isaac, could not be disannulled, and (what is more directly to the point) could not be added to. The law could not be annexed to it as a condition. To that there were two parties; but God was only one. The accomplishment of this conditional promise depended on the fidelity of both, and hence had no stability. God's promise depended on Himself alone. His faithfulness was its security, and it could not fail. But the law, coming four hundred and thirty years after, could not invalidate or be added to the confirmed promise. The law is not against the promises of God, but merely came in by the bye till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made, bringing in transgression but not righteousness. The law was not of faith; its blessing was by those who were under it themselves doing it. Promise, and faith in the promise and promised One, went together. The law brought a curse; Christ, the promised Seed, was made a curse for those under it, and when Christianity or faith came they were no longer under it at all. The law was an intermediate added thing whose place ceased when the promised Seed came. The law and grace are contrasted, as the law and promise, faith and the Seed are, first for justification. A man under the law was a debtor himself to do the whole of it; and a Christian taking this ground was fallen from grace: Christ had become of none effect to him. A man who looked to the law frustrated the grace of God: if righteousness came by it, Christ was dead in vain.

4 But the contrast is applied to godly walk. The Spirit is opposed to the flesh. They are contrary one to the other in their nature. We are to walk after the Spirit, having the things of the Spirit before us, to do its works, to produce its fruits; but if we are led of the Spirit, we are not under law. Life and power and a heavenly object characterise the Spirit, in contrast with the law which deals with flesh, and in vain, instead of taking us out of it. Thus, as to godly walk as well as for righteousness, the law is contrasted with grace. On one side are grace, promise, faith, Christ, and the Spirit, and, I may add, a righteous standing before God; on the other, the law claiming obedience from the flesh, which does not render it, and out of which the law cannot deliver us. It gives no life. If there had been a law which could have given life, then, indeed, righteousness should have been by the law. It is this full contrast which makes the Galatians so striking.

The result is this. Being led of the Spirit we are not under law. What, then, is our state? We through the Spirit wait for the hope that belongs to it, that is, glory. How so? Being righteous in Christ, we have received the Spirit, and in the power of that we wait for what it so richly reveals. The contrast of the flesh and Spirit, and the power of the latter leaves the law functionless as to walk, whether in power or character. Law was a rule for flesh, a perfect one, but not for Spirit. This reveals heavenly things, Christ in glory, and changes us into His image. This was in no way the law's object.

5 How, then, is its real use and power stated in the epistle? Peter, when certain came from James, would no longer eat with the Gentiles. Paul withstood him to the face, the weakness of one yielding to the presence of Jews, the energetic faith of the other holding fast the truth of the gospel. Peter had left the law as the way of obtaining righteousness, and he was going back to it, building again what he had destroyed; he was then a transgressor in destroying it. Now Christ had led him to it. Christ then was the minister of sin. What was the effect of the law? Ah! we have, through grace, in the earnestness of a holy conscience, its true work. It wrought death. The law had killed Paul (that is, in his conscience before God). He had been alive without it once. But thereby he was dead to it; and this, that in another way, in another life, he might live to God, which the flesh could not do. Had it been simply given effect to in himself, it had been curse and condemnation as well as death, but it was in Christ, who had died under its curse for him, and he was crucified with Christ, being thus dead, dead to law, and to sin at the same time, having done with the old Adam, to which the law applied; he was, nevertheless, now alive. Yet not he (which would have been the flesh) but Christ lived in him.

The law, and condemnation, and the flesh, were gone (so to speak) together as to Paul's position before God, and replaced by Christ and the Spirit, on which last he largely insists in what follows - chapter 3. But there is more; there is the object before the soul. "The life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." This is the great point. That divine Person, who has so loved us and given Himself for us, whom we thus know in perfect grace, in love even unto death, is the sanctifying object of the whole life. We live by it. The law gave no object, any more than it gave life and strength. Here we have the most blessed one, where the heart is filled with love, and led out into confidence with an object that conforms it to itself. The principle of dealing, grace, life, power, object, are all contrasted with law, which afforded none of these, and could therefore no more produce godliness than it could righteousness before God.

6 The Epistle thus contrasts grace, promise, faith, Christ, the Spirit for righteousness and walk alike, with law and flesh. The law was useful as bringing death on us, that is, on the old man, condemnation being borne by Christ, in whom we have died to it and flesh. A new place, and life, and righteousness, beyond the cross, is that into which we have entered, with Christ in heaven before us. I have written at intervals, and interrupted, as well as weary, and not given in this paper, I fear, what was suggested to my mind. But I trust the great principles of the Epistle, on this point, will be sufficiently clear to be helpful to some in studying the Epistle itself.

Notes on the Epistle to the Ephesians

J. N. Darby.

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Ephesians 1.

The apostle seems here to dwell on the purposes of God with regard to us. He does not so much speak of the means which God has made use of in order to reconcile us with Himself (the satisfaction that has been made to His justice, though the Spirit dwells thereon likewise); but the subject is specially the blessedness in which God has placed us in His counsels of grace.

It is certainly a blessed thing for us fully to understand the means which God has made use of, in order to bring us to Himself; but God has made known to us these things, in order that we may be occupied with the things to which we are called. It is in the enjoyment of these things that we put on the character of the Christian, and that the soul grows. They enter into our very existence; and when the heart has laid hold of them, there is much more of the Christian and of testimony in us, so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, there results a much clearer and stronger point of attraction for the world.

Those who dwell in Spirit in heaven partake of its spirit, and go on increasing in the things which they find there. They are in relationship with God; they enjoy what God has given, and that is certainly most precious; but above all, they enjoy God Himself: and here is the exceeding grace of Him who desires that we should always dwell near Him, and that we should know His thoughts and His counsels. This is what we should desire and seek after, and thus we shall understand better what is well pleasing to the Lord, and what is worthy of Him. Such are the subjects of which the apostle speaks to us in the chapter which is before us.

Verses 1-3. In Jesus Christ, the Head of the body, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings. It is there God sets us; and we know it, beloved, we know it, but more in theory than in practice.

Verse 4. As I have already said, the apostle here not only speaks to us of the means, but of the source of our blessing in the unspeakable counsels of God, and of the end which God proposes to Himself; for it is said, "That ye may be holy and without blame before him in love." This is the thought of God about us: He wishes to have us before Him, and to have us there happy and for Himself.

8 There is only one thing in which God does not suffice for Himself, and that is, in His love. His love has need of other beings beside Himself, in order to make them happy. He desires to have before Him beings in harmony with what He is, and He sets us before Him "holy and without blame."* This is what He is Himself, He who is the Holy One, He who certainly is without blame; for it is impossible to find any fault in Him. He calls Himself the Holy One; He is love Well; He sets us holy and without blame before Him in love Precious and most important thought for us! He has resolved that the church should be such that He could take delight in her, and behold in her before Him the reproduction of Himself, the most perfect happiness possible. He sets before Him beings like to Himself in order to make them as happy as it is possible; He communicates to us His nature, and takes His delight in us. In order for that, He makes us "holy and without blame in love"; and these things are accomplished here below by the Spirit, though the effects are not fully shewn till above in the place of perfectness. So, where is our place even now below? Before Him; and this place is not a joy only, but the most precious thing that can be imagined, to be before Him!

{*The first of these words speaks of the character, the other rather of the conduct.}

We do not like to be before Him when we are not holy; but when the conscience is cleansed by the blood of Christ, we are truly happy before Him. In order that we may be happy before Him we must be holy, we must understand the tastes of the divine nature - our nature. We ourselves must find our happiness in being "holy and without blame in love." The apostle John shews in his first epistle (chap. 4: 13), that the divine nature is produced in the Christian: the Christian has received God's own Spirit; it is a man who loves, and God is in him and he in God. What is granted is nothing less than the communication of the divine nature, by which we dwell in God, and God in us, "that we might be holy and without blame before him in love."

What we shall be above ought to be our aim here below, not as a task imposed, but as being made partakers of the divine nature to the glory of God. Now if we would realise these things, our thoughts must be above, according to the nature of the grace which we have received. It is most strengthening for us to think of the things which are above - of their source, of Jesus, of the fulfilment of this purpose of God in glory.

9 Verses 5-7. The apostle has ever this adoption in view; God wills to have us for Himself before Him through Jesus, according to the good pleasure of His will, as His children. Now this is the glory of this grace which has placed us there. In these verses Paul speaks to us of the basis, of the means which God has employed, and on the certainty of which we can count. He speaks of it as a settled thing, as of a thing which we possess, and the possession of which, indeed, is necessary to us, in order that we may partake of all that of which he is about to speak to us.

This is the door by which we have come in; and having passed through the door, in Jesus, I have the certainty of being in the house. But it would be sorrowful to have Jesus only as the door, though it is precious to understand that. If we are not sure of a hearty welcome, and of the love of the Father, we depreciate the riches of His grace, for "we have redemption by his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace," v. 7. If in uncertainty we do not enjoy this grace, we do not really acknowledge it; and in order to do so we must give ourselves up entirely to God, to the power of the love of Him who tells us to come inside. Here we may remark, that the Spirit, whilst declaring to us very plainly what is the means of our salvation, does not reason upon it as elsewhere, making known to us its character and its sufficiency; but He speaks of it as of a privilege that we possess; He tells us what we have in Christ, before shewing what belongs to those who enjoy the effect of this redemption. We have redemption; and instructed in all things, we wait for the redemption of the body, in order to enjoy it. The only thing that we have to do is to contemplate the riches of the grace of God; this will be a means of drawing us close to Him.

We have seen in the preceding verses the purposes of God with regard to us, and the means which He employs to render us partakers of them, namely, redemption through Christ's blood, according to the riches of His grace. Now what we have before us is the portion we have now here below, the understanding of the mystery of God.

10 Verses 8, 9. God has given us of His grace in all wisdom and prudence. He is not content with only giving us this portion, by bringing us into it hereafter; but He wishes to give us now, here below, the knowledge of it in all wisdom and prudence, according to His good pleasure. We have not to do with a God who sets us before His justice, but with a God of grace who acts according to His own thoughts. God wills that the church should not be only such before Him, but that it should be also, here below, the depository of all His counsels; that it should have the understanding of the mystery of His will.

Verse 10 gives us the explanation of this mystery. God gathers together in one all things in Christ in the dispensation of the fulness of times. All that which preceded was preparatory; as the law, the prophets, etc. This verse speaks of the fulness of times, when God will arrange all things according to His mind, by setting Christ at the head of all things; and it is by being united to Him that we are made partakers of the inheritance. God acts of His own will to bring about what He wills. All shall be gathered together in one in Christ. It is by Him that all has been created, and by Him all is to be reconciled; and this is set forth here as the result of the counsels of God.

Verses 11, 12. There are two parts in this mystery:

1, all things shall be put under the headship of Christ;

2, the church, which is His body, will have part in the inheritance.

We shall be before God according to the perfection of His nature. Christ having been put to death, God and the sinner have met together. But here it is rather a question of the accomplishment of the mystery of the will of God for the glory of Christ. The church will have part in the inheritance. "in whom," it is said, "we have obtained an inheritance"; but the whole of the mystery is not the church only, and this is very simple if we receive the thoughts of the Bible; not, indeed, that we shall understand the whole extent of the glory, but we shall see that all things created are to be gathered together in one in Christ.

In the Epistle to the Colossians Christ is presented as Creator; the Person of Christ is in the prominent place rather than the counsels of God as to the church. Christ is the first-born of every creature, and the first-born from the dead; Head of His body, which is the church. But here, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, it is the privileges of the church in Him which we are given to know. In verse 6 it is said that what we possess already is to the praise of the glory of His grace; and in verse 12, where he is speaking of the glory to come that is before us, it is said - "that we should be to the praise of his glory" The church has a portion quite apart and most glorious. All things are to be gathered together in one in Christ. The church, being united to Him, is made partaker of the inheritance, that we should be to the praise of His glory. The glory of God is understood by its being seen in us; and the world will then see that we have been loved as Christ is loved.

11 Verse 12 might seem a difficulty, where it is said, "We who first hoped in Christ"; but he is here speaking of the Jews, who have believed before the revelation of Christ to the nation, at His second coming, and before the national call to the Jews at the end: such of the Jews as have believed, as have hoped beforehand, they are glorified with Him.

Verses 13, 14. Verse 13 is spoken to us; it is not only both Jews and Gentiles who will partake of this inheritance; but the church is given to know the will of God, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. This it is which distinguishes Christians who, having believed, are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Holy Spirit becomes a seal. We cannot receive the inheritance before Christ; the Spirit is given to us as earnest, whilst waiting for it. God sets His seal upon us, and this is a proof that a Gentile has part in the promises made to Abraham (for instance, Cornelius).

There is a difference between regeneration by the Spirit and the presence of the Spirit as a seal. A person must have believed, for God to be able to put His seal on him; the Spirit may act before this, as for instance, in breaking up the heart; but it is not as a seal. Sometimes the power of the Spirit produces fruits in us; at other times it humbles us, making us sensible of good and evil; but this is not joy. The fact is, that this work is even more precious than the joy itself, because there are sometimes things in us which are not judged before God on account of the very joy. When God has given us the enjoyment of the true object which we ought to enjoy, He begins to break up the heart in order that the work may be deeper. The Spirit makes us sensible of the things which are not according to God, and this knowledge of one's self is necessary, in order that we may know God. I do not say that, if we were to walk exactly as God would have us, this work could not be carried on without the loss of the joy; but it is not generally so with the Christian. It becomes needful for God to turn us toward Himself, and to work inwardly, that we may discover what our carelessness has prevented us from seeing. Often this exhilarating joy of a Christian is found in one who has not judged things that ought to be judged in the presence of God. The wants and the desires which the Holy Spirit produces by regeneration are not the seal of the Spirit, any more than the joy which flows from the affections being occupied with a new and divine object, nor even the fruits which the Holy Spirit may produce when He dwells in us. The seal is the Holy Spirit Himself, given to that faith which is in Him who is our righteousness, and is the answer to all our wants; and then we have peace and joy. It is the Spirit in us who is the seal.

12 We ought not to be surprised, if we find it is the intention of God to shew us ourselves; at such times we do not see God, because He is making us see ourselves. Many persons think that the full and unwavering assurance of our salvation tends to make us careless as to the state of our souls; but this is a mistake. The Holy Spirit has set His throne in our hearts, and if we will judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. It is He who makes us fully enjoy God, and who makes us judge what is not of God in us; who alone sets us in the truth, and gives us the assurance of what is accomplished for us. God in us, by His Spirit, judges the conduct and the heart; but this does not prevent this Spirit being the seal which God has set upon us, the witness of His perfect and unchangeable love towards us, the strength of a life of liberty, the Spirit of adoption. We partake of it with Jesus; God put His seal upon Jesus Himself when He was in this world, after His baptism by John.

The Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. And here, let [it] be observed, that the Word, in the New Testament, always employs the word us, when it speaks of Christians and of the things which concern them. The prophets saw that the things which were revealed to them were not for them, but for us (see 1 Peter 1: 11); the Holy Spirit always says us. The possession is not yet granted: the Spirit is the earnest of it. The possession of the inheritance depends on the redemption of our body. As to our souls, we are united to the Heir even now; this is why we groan, all the while that we have the promises, because of this body, the redemption of which is not yet accomplished; and this redemption will take place at the resurrection. This is the enigma of the Christian; the Spirit gives him the certainty of his personal redemption, and this Spirit is the earnest of the inheritance. We shall be to the praise of His glory. Whilst waiting, the Spirit makes us sympathise with the groans of the creation; He helps our infirmities; working in us, He takes knowledge of the misery with which we are outwardly bound up, and He intercedes for us. The Spirit becomes the fountain of thoughts, the subjects of which are in heaven; and on the earth, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; Romans 5: 5. The Spirit searches our hearts and presents our wants before God; Romans 8: 26, 27. In verse 5 of this chapter God gives us a picture of the portion of a Christian. That which is important for us is the description of the person to whom these things belong.

13 Verse 15. There are two things to observe: 1, Christ was the object of the faith; 2, the saints were the object of the love. Christ being the object of faith, all those who are in Christ become also the objects of our love. The Holy Spirit dwells in the body (the church) as well as in the body of each Christian (1 Cor. 3: 16; chap. 6: 19); and He knows all the members of the body: when we can mount up to the privileges of the Christian, we embrace all the body. The flesh does not understand these privileges; but the Holy Spirit understands them; and the consequence of this knowledge will be love towards all the saints.

Verse 16. It is a happy thing when our prayers are givings of thanks: we realise, then, the certainty of our privileges. If we think of the wretchedness of the saints, we are overwhelmed by it; but if we think of what Christ is for the saints, we give thanks; we realise what God will do and does, for them and in them. God cannot be unfaithful to the love we have for all the saints; 1 Cor. 1: 4. Paul could handle the sword of the Spirit; he would not have known how to deal with the Corinthians, if he had not begun by taking notice of the good which grace had wrought in them. How different is the Christian's way of acting, thinking, and judging, from the way of the world! There is not an expression more remarkable than that which Paul in this verse makes use of in speaking to the Corinthians. Paul was determined to act according to the Spirit of God. It is not that God can make light of sin, and not judge it: no, He will judge it severely in the saints, if there be evil among them; but it is important for the church to handle it as God handles it.

14 Verse 17. We find here two names attached to God:

1, He is called the God of our Lord Jesus Christ;

2, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The prayer of chapter 3 is in relationship with the second of these titles, that of Father that of the seventeenth and the following verses of this chapter, with that of God.

The apostle also presents before us God as the Father of glory, that is to say, as the source, morally and in power, of all true glory. At the same time he sets before us the Lord Jesus entering as man into relationship with God, a bond which causes all the affection of God to rest upon Him, as the object in whom all the divine thoughts centre: this is why Paul says, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory."

I can consider Christ as a glorified Man, whose right has been established by God over all things; this is what Peter does in his epistles; he looks at Christ as a Man whom God had regarded in this manner, having raised Him from the dead. John, on the contrary, sees Christ in the glory of His divine Person, one with the Father, and as the sent One. In our Epistle Christ is presented to us as the object of the counsels of God, in whom the power of God is displayed. It is precious for us to see what is our position in Christ, to see that we are placed, as being His body, in the same position as Himself. The counsels of God concerning Christ and His body, are what is contained in this Epistle.

The prayer which begins at this verse expresses the desire that we should enjoy the understanding which is given to us of the counsels of God, of the hope of His calling, of the riches of the glory of His inheritance in His saints, and the power which has placed us in this enjoyment.

Verses 18-23. The union of Christ with the church is a union so real, that the body must be there, in order for Christ to be complete. It is man in resurrection who occupies this place: and this doctrine is essentially practical; as it gives the whole power of God in a life of resurrection here below, which sets us above the flesh. If we do not realise this life, we walk as men; and the lively understanding of this life of resurrection brings death upon all that is not heavenly. The power of faith makes us walk according to heavenly places; and it is nothing less than the power of God (the same power which raised Christ from the dead, and set Him at the right hand of God) which works in us both to will and to do. In these days the church has not miracles for its portion, but the power of the Spirit in the invisible world.

15 Herein is the understanding of the mystery of Christ. All things will be gathered together in one in Him; and, being united to Him, we likewise enjoy this inheritance. God redeems and inherits all things in Christ, and God establishes Christ the heir over all things as Man; but the church is the body of Christ, united to Him in the enjoyment of this inheritance; therefore it is said, "the inheritance of God in the saints."

In Christ all is manifested - in Christ the Son, Heir of all things; it is on Him that all hangs. But in the counsels of God, it is in us also that these things are manifested - in us, the saints; with whom God surrounds Himself in order to enjoy the fulness of His glory; as it is written, "to the glory of God by us."

But there still remains one thing essentially necessary to our enjoyment of this glorious destiny which belongs to us in the counsels of God; it was not only needful to reveal to us the counsels of God, but also to raise us to the height of that which is given to us by placing us in a position, in a state whereby we are made capable of this enjoyment. Christ is the Heir of all things, and we are His co-heirs. In what way are we associated with Him so as to share in the inheritance of the glory? How did He Himself (the One who in grace partook of the consequences of sin on the cross) become raised to enjoy the glory? God raised Him from the dead, and set Him according to His merits, and according to the dignity of His Person, at His own right hand, in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. He has taken the Man who was dead, and has set Him at His right hand in the glory. Man, in the Person of Christ, is raised above all except the throne, by which He has been raised. And is He alone? - No. The same power which raised Christ, and set Him at the right hand of God; the excellent greatness of that power which raised the Man who was dead to the right hand of God, works with the same might in him who believes.

16 This is what raises us to the capacity and to the position where we can enjoy, and where we do enjoy, the glory of God in Christ. For if God has set Christ over all, by taking Him from among the dead, He has given Him also as Head to His body, which is the church. We partake in this glory as being the body, the members of Him who inherits it; we partake of it according to the same energy which has set Christ there; Christ thus exalted is Head over all things, and Head of His body, which is the church. The members have their part in the inheritance, by virtue of the working of the same power in them, which wrought in Christ when He was taken from among the dead and set at the right hand of God. The body is complement to the Head; it is in this sense its fulness. Christ fills all in all: this is His glory. It is He who divinely fills the whole universe - the church is the body of Him who does it.

This great and wonderful truth is unfolded practically and morally in chapter 2. But before going farther, let us here remark, that there are two things in which the operation of the Holy Spirit is manifested in the church - these are wisdom and power; but the one is manifested at the present time more than the other. It is said, that Christ is the wisdom and the power of God. If you take the most advanced Christians, you will find in them more of wisdom and knowledge of the ways and counsels of God than of power. In the beginning of the church, the great mass of believers were less enlightened than at present; but the power was greater, for the demons trembled. Though this power is precious, inasmuch as it is a testimony that Jesus, as Man, has conquered Satan; yet the most precious thing is wisdom and so much the more, as what we have now to do is to discern the evil and separate from it, and not to establish a new dispensation. However, God always gives that which suits the need of His church.

And it is the same thing that we see in Joseph; first, when persecuted by his brethren; afterwards, when in Egypt. That which characterised him was his wisdom, his knowledge of the thoughts of God. This is what is now given to us, even the thoughts of God. The position of the church is known by spiritual understanding; by wisdom I know what is my portion in Christ; my affections are drawn towards what God has presented to me for eternity. The church, in a special way, has need to understand this; she will then avoid the wiles of Satan. In Israel, when the enemies had the upper hand, it was knowing the thoughts of God which sustained those who were faithful. We see that the prophets of Judah, to whom God had entrusted His thoughts, did not perform a single miracle. Understanding of the thoughts of God will make us humble. It is a lowly position to know that we have nothing but what is in God. The effect spiritually will be to turn our hearts towards Him who is our portion; and this will draw the church away from all that is of the world; because God is about to take her up out of the world, this will force her to find her sources of joy and strength only in Him. Here, however, there is a character of power attached to such knowledge. It is the power of the resurrection which places us in the same position as Christ in heaven. That is our position, if we have spiritual intelligence: how power and wisdom are united! It is a work of power in us, and not our own wisdom.

17 Ephesians 2.

Verses 1-3. The Gentiles were by sin morally there where Christ actually and outwardly placed Himself for sin; they were dead in their trespasses and in their sins. There they were walking according to the course of this world, floating with the stream according to the powerful and universal influence of Satan, who penetrates everywhere and reigns over everything, like the air, which is his seat; they were walking according to this spirit which is now working in the children of disobedience, in those who still continue far off from the deliverance wrought by the Lord.

But was it only for the Gentiles? Far from it; the apostle tells us, "we also," Jews, we were walking in the same lusts; and by consequence, according to the moral truth of our nature, we were, says he, children of wrath - heirs by nature of the wrath of that God who could not mix Himself up with sin. All were children of wrath. It was their desert, according to their nature, which was opposed to God.

Verses 4-7. The apostle has shewn where all men were; he has done away with all distinction, by shewing what the nature was which was common to them all; and has reduced all men to the same ground, by bringing down the Jews through the lusts of the flesh to the same level morally as the Gentile, whom the Jew despised. Such was man in himself, Jew or Gentile. But God who is rich in mercy, when we (for all, Jew or Gentile, are now taken together) were dead in our trespasses and in our sins, has quickened us together with Christ. If the sin of their common nature united them all in the same position before God, His grace has set them with Christ, quickened together with Him, and thus together also as to one another. The resurrection unites in one for blessing those whom sin had really put far off from God. Thus God had raised up together, and made sit together in the heavenly places in Christ, believers from among either the Jews or the Gentiles. Thus the church enjoyed the fulness of blessedness in Christ, according to the power of the resurrection and the ascension by which God had set Christ at His right hand in heaven. Sin united sinners down here in one common misery; grace has raised them to one peculiar and common glory, according to the power which had raised up Christ to this glory from the grave.

18 But if children of wrath, if thieves and Mary Magdalenes are found in the same glory as that conferred on the Son of God as the reward of His service here below; if even we ourselves are found participating in it, it is in order that God may shew in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus. When angels and principalities see a poor sinner and the whole church in the same glory as the Son of God, they will understand, as much as it is possible for them to understand of, the exceeding riches of the grace which has set us there.

Verses 8, 9. All is the gift of God. It was not even through works that we had part in this glorious salvation, but by faith, and this again the gift of God, that no man might boast. The glory of such a grace must all turn back again to God. He will make us understand that we are, indeed, blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. What could we have more than to partake in the glory and the inheritance of Christ Himself, according to the power which has set Him there? So we see that the portion and position of the church are heavenly. It is inasmuch as dead and risen with Christ from the dead, that she enjoys all His privileges. It is there above that she enjoys them. She is heavenly by the very fact of her existence.

19 Verses 10, 11. The Spirit presents to us another aspect of this work in contrast with the thought of any labour on our part, in order to obtain this glory. We are, inasmuch as we partake of that, His work, created by God. The works of man are excluded from it; ourselves are His workmanship. Is it then that works are left, and by the Christian? No: they have their place; we are created for good works which God has before prepared (for all is of Him), that we should walk in them. They are not the works of the law, that the man which does them should live by them; but God, having created in us this new and heavenly nature, had before prepared works - a walk suitable to them. The consequence of this work of Christ is, not only that we are created anew for this heavenly position: but, moreover, it sets us here below in order to make manifest His power. These two great blessings flow from our being considered by God, as being really the body of Christ; that is to say, that we are possessors of the same glory there above, and that we are the dwelling of God here below. The church will be the fulness of Christ in glory, when all things will be subjected to Him; while waiting for it she ought to manifest the power of Christ in this world.

Such is then the order, the ensemble, and the effect of this work of power wrought out by grace, according to the rich mercy of God, which has set us in the heavenly places in Christ, as the body of Christ; the fulness of Him that filleth all in all; for it is no longer question of Jew or Gentile, but of spiritual blessings for those who are quickened and raised up together with Christ, according to the exceeding riches of that grace which has set the sinner in the same glory as the Son of God. What ought we not to be, since we have been made partakers of such privileges; and that according to this great love with which God has loved us?

Verse 12. The Israelites were as far off from God morally; but as to their position they were not without God in the world; God was there, the covenant was there, as also the promises; whilst the Gentiles had nothing. The Gentiles were far off from God: outside the pale of the Jews, there was no way for them to draw near to God in a way that would be pleasing to Him; they were altogether separated from Him. We see, however, through the history of the Jews, that in after times God intended to act otherwise; several signs, obscure certainly, shewed that God had another thought, as Rahab and others serve for examples.

20 Verses 13-16. The blood of Christ does away all difference between those who were far off and those who were nigh. It is evident that the Jews, having put to death the Messiah, had destroyed every link between themselves and God: the middle wall of partition was broken down. They were like the nations, and more guilty than they. All that had belonged to them was entirely destroyed, and set aside by the death of Christ. That which had made the distinction of the Jew consisted in the ordinances by excluding the Gentiles who had no part in them. Now there is no longer need to know whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, for we see in verse 15 that the end of God is to take Jews and Gentiles in order to make one body of both. He has broken down the middle wall of partition, and wishes to form not the commonwealth of Israel again, but a new body in His presence, taken from either by the cross. It is evident that he who approaches to God by the cross has done with the Jewish ground. The apostle insists upon this point, that God, having laid this foundation in Christ, means to have but one body before Him; and then he shews how this is accomplished here below. If I draw near to God through the blood of Christ, I am a member of His body.

Verse 17. God had made peace, through the blood of Christ, between Jews and Gentiles, by reconciling them both to Himself by the cross; it is a new thing, a new man in Christ, in Jesus Himself. The apostle says it is the cross which has done it, by breaking down the middle wall of partition; and this oneness was established in principle, the moment Christ died. It is the cross which has done it; all difference is destroyed. The uppermost thought with God was to gather together in one, one glorious body in His presence; but in order to do so He must make peace and break down the middle wall of partition; this is what was done by the cross of Christ. It is remarkable that it should be said that it is Christ who came to bring us peace, for it is not His spirit but Himself who brings us peace, this peace which is before God, which is accomplished. It is by Him that we have the enjoyment of it. Christ does not only produce good results in us; but He brings to us the good news of the peace which is made, and He brings it with Himself. "He came and preached peace to them which were afar off, and peace to them which were nigh."

21 Verse 18. In this verse we see what is the way in which we draw nigh to God, the order of the Spirit in the heart being the inverse of that of grace. The Father acts by the Son, the Son in us by the Spirit, and as we now have the Spirit, it is by the Son that we address the Father. I cannot pray to God without the truth of the Trinity being manifested; it is not an abstract doctrine, but enters into the practical relationships of every day. Now it is the Spirit which makes the unity, there where He works, being the bond of the oneness of the body. "Now therefore ye are no more strangers."

Verses 19, 20. It is necessary to observe that the prophets here spoken of are not the prophets of the Old Testament, but those of the New. Paul speaks of the apostles and prophets as forming the foundation. The question here is as to building upon it, not as to laying the foundation. The church is not built upon the prophets of the Old Testament; it is built since the death of the Lord Jesus, and the foundation on which it is built is Christ who was crucified. All the Jewish ordinances barred the way against those who were not of Israel; the Jews had cast themselves away by putting Christ to death. The veil was rent: till then, God's foundation had not been laid, the first stone of the church was not placed. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saw the promises afar off; they had believed and embraced them, and they will be in the heavenly glory; but the church had not then begun upon earth. It is upon earth that all has taken place: sin entered there, temptation also; the law too was given upon earth; Christ came into this world, the Holy Spirit also. By the Holy Spirit we can enter in within the veil; now that the foundation is laid (that is to say, since the death of Christ), the Holy Spirit, who makes us able to enter, has been given to us. If we leave that, all is confusion, the church has no distinctive feature, nothing which distinguishes it.

The word "prophets" of verse 20 has led many into a mistake. Here it is quite a new revelation that is spoken of, one which could not be spoken of before. It was a hidden mystery. God could not reveal the church during the Jewish dispensation; for the existence of the church then would have denied the special position of this people Israel. God could reveal that the Jews would be rejected and punished, and from the moment He brings out that, He turns back to the mercy which will cause the Jewish nation to return into blessing. This is what will take place when the Jewish people will be the royal people upon earth, when Israel will be restored by a new covenant. But this new man, this new revelation, is that those who now believe and belong to Christ become members of His body; and they are in the blessedness which belongs to it. Verse 19 expresses that we are in the house of God; and from verse 20 it is evident that, in order to begin to build, the corner stone must be laid. This is what we have seen before, and now we come to the results of it. Verse 21. We are not yet the temple of God; the church will be that holy temple in glory.

22 Verse 22 describes what we are now; we are the habitation, the tabernacle, where God dwells by His Spirit, as of old, in the midst of the camp of Israel; hereafter we shall be a glorious temple. Whilst waiting, we are the habitation, the dwelling of God. The blessedness of the church flows out of that nearness. If we have the consciousness that we are the habitation of God, how can we defile the tabernacle? There is not a blessing more important than this; it is even higher than those which relate to our inheritance in the glory.

When the apostle has spoken of God dwelling in us by the Spirit, he prays that we may be filled with all the fulness of God; and there are here two things to remark:

1, the glory to come, and the church having part in this glory;

2, the habitation of God in us being united to Christ, we are the habitation of God by the Spirit. It is our present position: we have what is most blessed in this position. If we grieve the Spirit, we dishonour God who dwells in us: God then cannot act. When Satan by means of error has got entrance into any part, the church is troubled on every side. It is this power of Satan which has invaded the church of Rome. How precious it is that we should be the habitation of God, and how solemn a thing it is to have such a God in the midst of us! From the moment that there was an Achan in the camp, God could not act, He could not go forward; Israel was beaten because God was there. It is the same with the church of God; and if we forget it, God does not forget it. It is a precious thing to remember that, though we are in wretchedness, God is with us; as it is said in Haggai 2: 4, when the Jews began to build, "Be of good courage, for I am with you": whatever be your state of ruin, I am with you; My Spirit is with you as in the day that I caused you to come up out of Egypt. There is nothing but faith which can reconcile these two things - wretchedness and the love of God.

23 Ephesians 3.

Verses 1-6. The apostle had set forth in the preceding chapters the hope of glory and the oneness of the body of Christ; he had presented the Spirit given as the seal and earnest of the glory, the Spirit as the centre of the oneness; and while we wait for this glory, he has presented the church, not only as the co-heir of this glory in hope, but as being the habitation of God by the Spirit during the present time. Paul, in these two chapters, shews us first the glory with Christ; and afterwards the church, the bride of Christ and habitation of God by the Spirit.

Now, introducing the Gentiles into the oneness of the body, the apostle says, "I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles." All that follows from verse I to the end of the chapter is in parenthesis, as is seen by chapter 4: 1, "I, therefore, the prisoner." What is said at the beginning of chapter 4 is connected with the end of chapter 2, where it is seen that we are the habitation of God, the dwelling of God; this is the calling of which it is said, "I beseech you . . . to walk worthy of the calling with which ye are called." In such a position we are always humble; and this it is which enables us to walk worthy of the calling revealed.

At the beginning of the chapter there are two things to observe: personal humility which leads us to walk in oneness; and the individual gifts. There is one body, one Spirit, and the gifts alone are different in the members of the body. Chapter 3 is an unfolding of this truth, that the Holy Spirit dwells in His habitation, which is the church. Paul says, "I, Paul, prisoner for you Gentiles," etc.; and the consequence was, that since, as to the church, Paul would not place the Jews above the Gentiles, by reason of the malice of this people he became prisoner for the love of the Gentiles; here is the testimony which Paul gives about it. "That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel." It is wonderful how slow Christians are to understand the largeness of the counsels of God; for Paul was obliged to say even to the Ephesians, who were certainly a blessed church, if they had the understanding of the ways of God as to him, Paul; "If so be ye have heard."

24 In general we are obliged to be much more occupied with the details of the Christian life than with the great principles of this life. God is patient; but it is sorrowful that the state of the church should be such. Because of the want of spirituality, the Spirit cannot go on to unfold the riches of the thoughts of Jesus; He is then forced to be occupied with the walk, that the gospel may not be dishonoured. The understanding of the counsels of God depends on the faithfulness of the walk, and what will be the consequence of this faithful walk? It will be a state of struggle with all, especially with all that Judaises. It is impossible but that, in the actual state in which the world is, opposition should not be shewn against the one who is faithful; and the fact of having more light excites opposition even with Christians. Paul is a striking example of it.

The apostle often repeats this; that the church has not been revealed in the Old Testament. Certainly, the prophets of the Old Testament confirm the blessed position of the church, inasmuch as this truth is based upon the blessing of God being extended even to the nations blessing which they (the prophets) had testified of. (Psalm 18: 49; Deut. 32: 43; Psalm 117.) There it is the Gentiles who are to rejoice with His people; but what the church is, is never spoken of. In the Colossians it is said of Christ, "Christ the hope of glory"; whilst that Christ whom the Jews expected was to be a Christ personally present - a Christ who was to bring in the glory (this will take place at the end) - so that a Christ who was only a hope when He was there was a thing which could not be understood. It was a mystery, of which the prophets had never said a word: they had spoken of a Christ who was to accomplish such or such things, but never of a Christ in us the hope of glory for the church. Christ as in us is the practical and actual point of this mystery.

In Romans 16: 26* the apostle teaches the same truth, that the church was a mystery, unknown before the death of Christ. God had always had the thought of the church; but it was hidden. Paul, in his communications to the Gentiles, rests upon what the prophets had said of the grace of God towards the Gentiles, and he quotes these prophets; Romans 15: 9-12. It is certain that a Christ promised, and who was to be rejected, is clearly revealed in the prophets; but we know that this was an enigma for the Jews - "We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever" - and the thought of a Christ who had other members, and those too among the Gentiles, would have been still more incomprehensible. The church is united to Christ; and if we wish to find it in the Old Testament, we must seek Christ Himself, and see it in Him. See, for example, Isaiah 50: 8: "He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall condemn me?" and Romans 8: 32, 33.

{*I do not doubt but that in this passage the "prophetic writings" are those of the New Testament; but the apostle constantly makes use of the writings of the Old Testament, to shew grace extending to the Gentiles.}

25 This challenge to all the world (because it is God who justifies us), which in Isaiah is spoken by Christ Himself, is in the Romans applied to the church. God only sees Christ; and these things are applied to us as being united to Christ. We are accepted in the Beloved. The thought of a people united to Christ by a spiritual life, or rather of a people united to Christ by one Spirit who was in Him and them, was never touched upon in the Old Testament. Christ Himself had not this position as Head of the body; and consequently the Spirit was not yet thus given.

The apostles and prophets, the foundation upon which the church is built, are not the prophets of old; for we see here it is things now revealed to these prophets that are spoken of, in contrast with the times past; they are then the prophets of the New Testament. In 1 Peter 1: 12 it is written, that the ancient prophets knew it was not for them that these things were written; and verse 6 of this chapter explains to us this mystery, namely, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs. It declares to us the good news, that the middle wall of partition was broken down by the death of Christ; that all that which had made the difference between Jews and Gentiles had disappeared, and that Jews and Gentiles were made one in Christ. We see the difficulty the apostle Peter had in admitting this truth (for example, with Cornelius); Paul was obliged to resist him at Antioch to the face. The ancient Jews had great difficulty in acknowledging this glorious truth, and the oneness of the church.

26 Verses 7, 8. The apostle, seeing the excellency of that which had been given to him, sees himself less than the least of all saints; and it ought to be the same with us. The sight of these excellent things lessens us in our own eyes; and this humility will be the consequence of the realisation of our privileges. What a glorious testimony that all distinction should be done away! Jew and Gentile - all that belongs to man falls when in the presence of the counsels of God in Christ. Paul, while contemplating these counsels, saw that he was nothing. The name Gentiles expresses that all was grace. The promise made when the first Adam had sinned is a promise made to the second Man: the last Adam will bruise the serpent's head.

The unsearchable riches of Christ are those riches of which we cannot fathom the depth, so immense are they; and the glory which God will give to Christ, according to what He is, and according to the worth of His work, this is the measure of these unsearchable riches. All has been done by Christ and for Christ; all has been created by Him and for Him: and the fact of having presented Christ to the Gentiles outside the limited revelation of the ancient prophets, brought out the riches of Christ as unsearchable; God can stand in presence of the power of sin, and in Christ, as Man, display the power of His grace for the manifestation of His glory.

Verses 9-11. These are the counsels of God in Christ, and the position of the church; never before had such wisdom been seen. Man might have been struck with wisdom in the creation; with the interposition of God in the deluge; Noah kept; Abraham called; the law given; other wonders accomplished; the government of God over His Jewish people. In all these, the wisdom of God was manifested; but here is a wisdom altogether different. A heavenly church was not even known to angels.

The Jewish people having rejected the Messiah, God's plan as to the earth was suspended; a new thought is brought in; a people whose position is after such sort that they have no place whatsoever save in heaven. Now God does not punish according to a rule distinctly revealed to man; there is no immediate government of God upon earth, though He still acts in providence; but there is a people, in suffering it may be, but heavenly, in the midst of the world. God's ways are of a new kind.

27 It is striking to see what is now the position of the church set in sight of heaven; it is in the heavenly places she bears witness; her conflicts (Eph. 6) are in the heavens; her blessings are there also (Eph. 1); and it is there again that she is seated (Eph. 2); the witness borne by the church in the heavenly places, gives importance to the present testimony of the church down here. I do not here speak in thought of the glory to come; but in thought of God's dwelling in the church by the Spirit.

Christ came - He was rejected; quite another wisdom was then manifested. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be heirs in the glory; but they have not been gathered together in one body in Christ like the Gentiles, according to the purpose of God before the world began. The fact of our election before the world was, adds nothing to the sovereignty of God; if God had elected us in time, His sovereignty would have been the same; but election before time - before the world was, shews that the church is NOT of the world, since she was before the foundation of the world in the counsels of God. Neither the position of the church, nor her life, hang upon anything in this world; the world is but the sphere through which she moves.

Verse 12. This verse is the practical consequence of what has preceded. This position being based upon the love and upon the work of Christ, we are before God with a good conscience; with a conscience perfected for ever. I am in Jesus, in the presence of God, by the faith that I have in Him - that is Jesus. Certainly, if I grieve the Spirit, the Spirit will be in me a Spirit of reproof; but Christ has finished all. The work which He has done, is perfectly finished according to the thoughts of God, and He is in God's presence according to the efficiency of these thoughts and of this work.

Verse 13. The apostle begins his address to the Gentiles by saying, "I desire that ye faint not. . . ." In how high a position were the Gentiles placed! Instead of being troubled in seeing the afflictions of Paul, they were to be strengthened by these means; for it was for their sake that Paul suffered as a witness of the privileges which God vouchsafed to them; because he thought of them. The effect of ignominy in the world is to discourage those who are following it more or less; but he who is faithful, like Moses, esteems that the reproach of Christ is better than all the treasures of Egypt, for it is our glory. God might have been pleased to be satisfied with Jews; but He wished also for Gentiles.

28 Verse 14. This prayer is addressed to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; it hangs on that intimate relationship between the Father and the Son into which we are brought. At the beginning of the epistle there is a prayer of quite a different character; and which is addressed to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 15. This verse includes the whole of intelligent creation, blessed before God; it embraces all the different races, Jews and Gentiles; not only God gathers the Jews in one as He did under the name of God, but, under the name of Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He gathers in one all the nations dispersed at Babel, and all the hosts of heaven. The Lord Jesus has received, as Man, power over all men; the angels even will be subjected to Him as Son of the Father; therefore it is said, "Let all the angels of God worship him!"

Verses 16, 17. It is more than glory that is spoken of here; it is the fulness of the riches of His glory. This is what the apostle desires for them, in contrast with a Messiah in the midst of the people: "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Christ, set in glory, brings the Gentiles into it, and this is how we have part in these riches; but in order to enjoy them, He must dwell in our hearts. The moment that God exalted Christ, the link with every family in heaven and on the earth was manifested and even formed, for it was new. The portion of the Gentiles, as well as the whole church, is to be united to Christ Himself, of whom every family is named (v. 15); He is the Head of the church, the manifest centre of the glory of God. The apostle desires that the efficacy of this power should be in us; not only that grace which comforts and which is most precious, but likewise that we should realise Christ exalted.

As Son of God, Christ is the first name in this family which the Spirit reveals to us, that Spirit by whom we are strengthened in the inner man; for our feeble hearts, though they are converted to God, would be incapable without His help of entering into this glory and the extent of these counsels; the trials of the flesh are not an obstacle to our realising these things; the more the apostle suffered as prisoner, the more he entered into this mystery of the glory of Christ. His imprisonment was the cause of this epistle, as well as those to the Colossians, Philippians, and others: it is thus that God provides for the needs of His church. We ought so to lay hold of Christ glorified, as that He should be there with us; His presence ought to be realised and acted on constantly in the heart.

29 Verse 18. The thought from the beginning of the epistle is not of Christ as making satisfaction to the justice of God; but that power, that flow of love for the accomplishing certain counsels of grace, of which He is the fulness for us. Then Paul desires that having understood the accomplishment of this thought in the Person of Christ, we should understand the power of this mighty love which has glorified Christ by linking His glory with the blessing of poor sinners. When we apprehend these things, we understand that all is love, and that we ought to live upon the love which has done all.

It is by entering into the love which is the source of it, that we understand the immeasurable expanse which is spoken of in verse 18; that love of God whose thought is to put all things in subjection to Christ, and to glorify the church with Him. When we have understood this love, we can, in a certain sense, measure the ways of God which have brought us in there where God displays Himself, for it is not told us of what he is describing the length, the breadth, the depth and height, but it is love which has introduced us and orders all things. The Spirit includes the whole church, which is very nigh to God in this glory; it is impossible that any of its members should be set aside.

Verse 19. What is said here is specially for us. The apostle desires that we should realise the love of Christ, which passes knowledge; and that we should be strengthened to understand this love and to be rooted in Him, in order that we may be filled with all the fulness of God. If I am placed in the midst of infinity, I am not at the end of this infinity; I am in infinity which I do not comprehend, which I do not measure, and I have no smaller measure than that: it is nothing less than the fulness of God. God fills all in all, and I am full of Him, and all this by the Spirit; whatever be my littleness, I am in this blessed position. The Jews had no idea of this relationship which is named in heaven and on earth; but as for us, we cannot go outside this wall of enclosure with which God has surrounded us, and which is God Himself; and this depends on the presence of the Spirit, making the church the habitation of God. God cannot be less than Himself; He does not cease to be Himself. The Spirit dwells in the church; she becomes the vessel of that which nothing can contain.

30 Verse 20. Sometimes when we ask that God would grant us more than we can ask or think, they are blessings outside us which we desire; but here it is blessings in us, it is the power of the Spirit in the church. This it is which sets the church in the height of her position, and makes us feel our littleness.

Verse 21. What is said here does not relate to the fulness of the glory to come. The hope hangs on it; nevertheless, it is not the hope here which is in question, but the realisation of the inner man, the habitation of God as a present, real thing. The essential thing exists already; and it is that which is most intimate and most exalted, namely, to be filled with the fulness of God; Christ who has finished all is there, the Spirit of Christ dwells in us. Paul sees in this verse all the extent of the counsels of God.

It is comforting for us, that this realisation of the inner man should be wrought out by a power which works in us in the midst of the weakness of the vessel, because it is the will of God. What we have to desire is to be strengthened in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we may seek the glory of Christ in the church, and that all glory should be attributed to Him, if so be we have understood that it belongs to Him. If it be asked, "Is the glory of Christ in the church?" we hardly know how to answer. God grant us to desire this glory!

Ephesians 4.

We have here the present and practical application of the principles which form the subject of this epistle. The beginning of this chapter joins on to the end of chapter 2, where is shewn to us what the calling of the Christian is. The apostle beseeches the Ephesians to walk worthy of this vocation. That which is its special mark is, the habitation of God on earth by the Spirit. The whole conduct of the Christian flows from the church being the habitation of the Spirit. When the Spirit is presented as the seal, this is more for the individual: it is not the church which is sealed, but she becomes the habitation of God, as does the individual also. The conduct of the Christian ought to flow out of the presence of God. There is a conduct which becomes this presence: not only ought I to obey God, but there is a manner of acting which flows out of this presence, and which is the expression of this dwelling of God in us. When God was in the temple there was something in particular which was suitable for that presence. We are His temple. The presence of the Spirit in us becomes power as much as motive. There are things which become the temple of God. The estimation that we form of one another depends on the same thing.

31 Verses 1-3. The apostle does not speak of obedience, but of the Spirit which leads to it; the practical effect of the presence of God by the Spirit, is humility. Love always makes itself nothing. To have bad thoughts about oneself is humiliation, but not humility. Humility is produced by the presence of God; we are occupied with God and not with ourselves; God is there to comfort us and to bless us; the pride of man being broken down there is gentleness. This making nothing of oneself produces patience and love. When we know ourselves to be nothing, we have the consciousness of the strength of God; and more than that, there is the activity of love.

Consciousness of the preciousness of the presence of God, gives us the energy of the Spirit of God, which makes us careful to keep the oneness of the Spirit, that is to say, the union of all the members of Christ as one temple in which God dwells in this world by His Spirit. The moment that I forsake this, the unity is broken. In the flesh we are two, in the Spirit we are one; and when, by the Spirit, we enjoy love, there is this desire to keep the oneness of the Spirit. The flesh is never peaceful, whereas in God all is peace and quietness.

It is remarkable how often God is called the God of peace. See Phil. 4: 9; 1 Thess. 5: 23; Heb. 13: 20. The bond of peace is indeed the result of being thus in the presence of God; it is on this account that the apostle adds, "There is one body and there is one Spirit." Oneness is a thing which is actually realised on earth, the outward unity of the body in one expresses what there is within. If this bond of peace is wanting, the oneness of the Spirit is not kept.

Verse 4. Paul turns back to the thought put forth in chapter 1, "The hope of glory." This same Spirit which has given the same hope, has given the oneness of the body; this outward unity which manifests the Spirit as well as oneness in the glory. There is but one body here below.

32 Verse 5. This verse describes the circumstances belonging to this oneness - all its interior and exterior relationships. It speaks of baptism as being the expression of the common faith.

Verse 6. The apostle adds, "in you all." One God and Father in us all; that is, His abode in us. "Through all," expresses the thought that He is everywhere in us all; He dwells there; He is there in His power, identifying Himself with His own. Spiritually He is in us, and as Ruler He is everywhere. They who are partakers of this oneness, are united to Christ as Christ is to the Father; thus the Father is in us all. (See John 14: 20.) What a bond in this new creation! God Himself dwelling in us, in a body of weakness and of death! This is why we groan, being of the present creation, while at the same time we have the firstfruits of the Spirit; we groan according to God, not only because of the misery which we feel as men, but according to God who will very soon deliver this world.

Verse 7. The apostle now comes to the members of this wonderful body; Christ is the power which unites this body to Himself, and He is also the energy in each one of its members. If I speak of the church as a body, there is more glory; the unity of the body connects itself with nearness to God rather than with our individuality. We ought to look upon the members of the body as in action for the good of this body; evangelisation produces also this same end by bringing souls to the Lord.

Verse 8. It is the same expression as is employed (Judges 5: 12) when Barak returned from delivering the captives of Israel, leading captive those who had led them captive. The people of God were captives of Satan; Christ has triumphed over Satan, and has led him captive, and has brought along with Him the church delivered from his chains. Satan was the master, and Christ gains the victory over the strong man and delivers the church. Having delivered it from the power of Satan, He can communicate to us this same power which gains the victory over Satan. God has set this power of victory in man, in order that it may energise. Christ had the title, and when He shall return, even those who are not converted will be delivered, because Satan will be bound; but now he is not so. The church is the place of the manifestation of the Spirit for the destruction of the power of Satan; and this shews the importance of the presence of the Spirit in the body, presence which delivers us from the power of Satan, and makes us grow up into all that which is of the Head, even Christ. In Psalm 68 these gifts are also spoken of in connection with the Jews, when Israel will be re-established in glory; but Paul here makes no mention of the second part of the verse, omitting, "Yea, for the rebellious also," because in the Ephesians all distinction is at an end, and has come to an end in the church. Now it is the whole connection in heaven and on earth; now it is gifts for men; the Jews were "the rebellious" (technical expression for the Jews); but hereafter they will be so no longer, and the Lord God will dwell among them.

33 Verse 9. This verse sets before us the glory of the Person of Christ, who has gone up on high in order that to faith there should be between God Himself and the power of death nothing which is not filled to faith with the power of redemption. The believer on earth is placed in this power of redemption, finding Christ everywhere. Christ having descended into hades, God has set Him at His right hand in order that He should fill all things. We see by this what will be the perfection of this work when all things will be reconciled by Christ. What an infinitely important position is that of the church, as the body and depository of the power of Christ! How little does she correspond to it!

Verse 10. We have seen how Christ has come, then ascended up again, and who will hereafter reconcile all things. In the meanwhile, inasmuch as He is head of the body, He gives these gifts for the accomplishment of this special part of the mystery, namely, the edifying of His body; and it is of this part especially that mention is here made. God has desired to make us know what is the final end, the union of all things in Christ, and that of the body with Him. This great end is the position of the church as the centre of the glory; and Christ now employs the power with which He is filled for the edifying of this body. The consequence of this is, that He speaks of its members which serve for the edifying of this body, and of its members, which make it move and act. It is not then miracles, testimony of power borne to the world, which are here spoken of, but the joints of the body, in order that it may grow up into Him.

34 Verse 11. Paul is not speaking of gifts, but of those who were themselves these gifts; he speaks of the gifts which edify the body, and not here of the Spirit distributing these gifts according to His will: Christ filling all things we are His members, partakers of this blessing. This is the difference between what is taught in 1 Corinthians 14 and in this chapter.

Verses 12, 13. There is a difficulty which connects itself with this, namely, the duration of these gifts; we might have thought they should have been continued till the perfecting of the body of Christ. In order to be able to apprehend the part of this passage in which this difficulty is, we must enter into the state of the church. The Lord did not return immediately; in the epistles He is always represented as about to return immediately; this is why Paul looked at all the saints in the presence of His coming. He looked at the perfecting of the body for the return of Christ as a thing to be accomplished in the present time. We know that this has not taken place; John 21: 22. But in truth the Lord cannot be untrue to the edification of His body; and here the question is not about the manifestation of the Spirit in power, but the communication of blessings on the part of the head by means of its members.

The apostles and the prophets served as foundation, we can perceive this; and the others remained for building up even after these had departed. The ministrations which have lasted are those of evangelists, pastors, and teachers. What is said in the first place in verse 12 is the general and proper end of the gifts. Then follows the manner in which this grace, which flows from the Head, for the perfecting of the saints, ought to act: it is by producing a ministry which is to work in building up the body: an evident proof that ministry is to last until we are all brought into the presence of Christ, and that this is brought about by the principle of the oneness of the body and by its edification as such. It is then important to see the end of this ministry.

Verse 13 speaks of the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God - in the which we have fellowship. Difference of views there may be; but as it was said to the Philippians, "God shall reveal even this unto you." There is, therefore, the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Ministry is the means to it, and this ministry always exists. If attention be paid to what is said about ministry, it will be seen that when the apostle speaks of the perfect man, he does not allude to the perfection which follows resurrection, but to the perfection of this knowledge. We have seen that this is connected with the basis which the Spirit has laid for all these truths; that is Christ fulfilling all things and dwelling in us here below. The Holy Spirit, who dwells in the church, makes each member to grow according to that which is in Christ and according to the measure of Christ. As there is unity in the body, there is also the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son. Here, the Spirit's thought is to make all the members grow according to the revelation of the glory of Christ; and this shews us what our desires ought to be, and what we ought to desire for our brethren. Christ has grace enough in Himself for this. We should desire that all Christians near us should be full of knowledge, even to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; and this knowledge of the revelation of the glory of Christ here below, naturally produces fruits. Such is the meaning of the word "perfection." The question is as to knowing Christ. Christ is altogether perfect as risen from the dead: the Christian is so when he has risen up to that position of Christ. Paul said, "Not that I have already attained." But he had attained to that spiritual joy, that knowledge which revealed to him the object set before him. When it is thus with the Christian, he is at peace, and he can grow as to practical conduct; he has the consciousness of being in that which is infinite, of being in the enjoyment of Christ before the Father, according to the accomplishment of all the counsels of God. As to his soul before God, he no longer travails, so to speak, as when he drew nigh to God, conscious in himself of his need of expiation. As to his soul, he has nothing to search after; all being accomplished, he finds himself set before God, in that fulness itself, even in reference to all the circumstances which may befall him; he knows that Christ has all power in heaven and in earth.

35 Verse 14. If I have nothing to seek, I rest in quietness; the place I am in is the fulness of the knowledge of God, sheltered from the deceivableness of men. The Christian, who possesses Christ, no longer seeks Him as one whom he has yet to find, though he seeks to grow in those things into which he has been brought; but in the church we see souls in a state very different from this, which is indeed sorrowful: generally, Christians need to be brought back to the position which has been purchased for them. A Christian is perhaps blessed with salvation, but he is occupied with the things of the earth; he has cares, and ministry must then be occupied with the sorrows which result thence. But where there are believers whose affections are full of Jesus, they can go onwards, and there is progress; because where souls are living they seek after fresh graces. If we walk in individual faithfulness, we are able to be occupied with the things which are before us; when this is not the case, we must be occupied with our own misery, and it is sorrowful to be occupied with things which are a loss in comparison of the knowledge of Christ. If we walk according to the knowledge that we have, we are lively, and the things which are before us attract us onward; we can, forgetting present things, be occupied with the grace that is in Christ.

36 Verses 15, 16. Each member acts in its place; each part has its place. This place may be a hidden one, but it is not the less important; the thought presented is that of the growth of the body. A soul which is lively builds up others; the Spirit acts in souls which turn not back; the gospel working produces inward blessing. We see as we have said, in the place where all fulness dwells all becomes grace, even trials; because they make us enjoy with intelligence the counsels of God. If an evil occurs, it becomes only the opportunity for manifesting the love of Jesus, and this serves to strengthen faith. But all consists in our growing up in the Head; this is the only true growth which is in the knowledge of Jesus; because this knowledge is that of grace. The Spirit acts by the word (through faith and understanding of the things of God), all the while it is my life which grows and communicates to me a developed manifestation of life.

But let us go back to what we have a right to expect from the children of God; I am here speaking of the oneness of faith and of the knowledge of Christ. If love dwells in us, and we think of the members of Christ, that will lead us to ask that they may grow according to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. But, alas! many are often more occupied with this present life than seeking the growth of souls. Love is of God, and it is always powerful. If we were in a healthy state, we should grow in God. Faithfulness in the walk is necessary, if we would not grieve the Spirit; there must be the hidden life, that is to say, the heart must abide in Jesus; in a word, Christ should be the end of all our life. There is enough love in Jesus to make His members grow.

37 If we had sufficient love, we should draw out of Jesus what would produce this growth in others; and we need it in the present time when there are so many things that dim the testimony of the saints. Our part really is to be separate from evil; we must see Christ so clearly as to be able to say, This or that is not of Christ; and if persons are overwhelmed by cares, it is impossible that Christ should be discerned by them so as to deliver them from things which are like Christ, but which still are not Himself. What we have to seek after is to be sufficiently spiritual as to be able to realise what Christ is; the effect of this will be subjects of intercession, which will doubtless cause sorrow of heart, because the faults and failures of the members of the body are borne there; but nevertheless, where love is in action, there will be always joy.

Verse 17. There is a principle here, which it is of importance to have a firm hold of: it is, that the whole conduct of the Christian flows from salvation, and is not in order that he may be saved: it is not that we do not gain something, or that Paul does not exhort us to run towards the mark (1 Cor. 9: 24); but the whole walk of the Christian ought to be the manifestation of a new life. The moment that we hear an exhortation as to conduct, and that we do not hear it as addressed to a saved person, the gospel is displaced. All must be addressed to me as a child of God; this is why the apostle says, "I beseech you," etc. It is because of this grace that I beseech you. The moment that I mix up an exhortation with the freeness of salvation, man is not in the position in which Christ has set him; it may have the appearance of piety, but the fact remains, that if I exhort, and at the same time admit a question about salvation, I deny, and I have not a right consciousness of, the state of ruin in which man is, any more than of salvation.

Verses 18, 19. This is the commentary and the centre of all that we have just said. Man is alienated from the life of God. In the times in which we live men would be ashamed to do what was then done openly; but this changes nothing as to the fact: whether a man is alienated from the life of God, or a heathen, it is the same thing.

38 Verses 20-23. This is the truth which is in Jesus; if we are saved, we are created anew. And the verse which follows explains to us this truth, namely Jesus, who is Himself the new Man.

Verse 24. Here is the truth of the new man in us. The question is not of changing what we were, but God has given us a new life, eternal life. We have seen the manner in which the church is united to Jesus; the truth which is in Jesus is the presence of this life in the Christian. We ought to put off the old man in us, and to put on the new man. This hidden life must manifest itself in all that the man puts on. The old man is in itself a captive, a slave of sin, and a prey to the lusts which lead him away. Moral discernment is wanting. But where the new man is, there is also spiritual intelligence. We are renewed; and this intelligence judges of things according to God. Man is free in the things of God; God is found there. We are capable of seeing things which are suitable for God. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." We then have the consciousness of the beauty of the things of God, and it is man who discerns them. The man who does not act by the power of the Spirit acts according to the flesh.

We are created according to God. God is formed in us. Christ was the image of the invisible God: He manifested in His ways the character of God. Also the Christian is a new creation. The apostle speaks, in this verse, of the power of God, which has produced that life in which we enjoy God. God has set His seal upon us; it is quite a new thing; the lusts of the old man are no longer in question, but the energy of the new man - that understanding which speaks according to truth.

Verse 25. In this verse is seen how everything hangs on our union with Christ. There is evidently no bond either of love or of the Spirit with one to whom I lie; but if I lie to my brother, it is as if I deceived myself. The power of the life of Christ is also power in all the details of the Christian's life. We are members one of another.

Verse 26. We see here in the acting of the new man that there may be such a thing as being angry (for example, Christ in the case of the man who had the withered hand, Mark 3: 5); it is then indignation against evil. (See 2 Cor. 7: 11.) If it is the anger of the new man on account of evil, then, as soon as the evil is removed, the soul returns to its rest; but if anger lasts, then there is bitterness, and the soul not being able to return into its rest, evil is shewn to be there; for this reason it is said, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

39 Verse 27. This verse shews us that we ought not to open the door to Satan. If it is the flesh that is acting, then the wicked one can touch us; but he cannot touch the new man, he cannot entice it; 1 John 5: 18. If I give way to a thought which is not of God, then I give place to Satan; if I give way to anger, the enemy is there: we are then hindered in service, troubled in prayer; and that is not to be wondered at. When our thoughts have been filled with present things, when we have been occupied with them not in their connection with God, we have given place to Satan; but if we have been occupied with our work with God before us, then this work in no way takes possession of our hearts as an object; our faculties are free; our affections are fresh; and, when we return to God, we are entirely God's, having only acted in order to fulfil His will. How much time we lose! This is why it is said, "Watch unto prayer." We should do whatever we do, for God.

Verse 28. It is interesting to see how God takes the most difficult materials in order to form something out of them. He takes the heart of man such as it is, in order to make of it a new thing by the life of the new Man, which He introduces there; it is the Spirit which worketh these things, because it is the Spirit of love which is there.

Verse 29. Here is seen the contrast between the old man and the new. It is one or the other which speaks; it is murmuring or giving of thanks. The matured Christian would only speak for edification; the new man, acting under the influence of the Spirit, will only take part in things which are for edification.

Verses 30, 31. It is precious for us to know that the Christian has been sealed for the day of redemption, for the day when his body will be raised. When Christ shall have accomplished all that for which He died, our body (for Christ has redeemed it) will be raised, which has not yet taken place. It is said that Christ has been made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; redemption is put the last. It is not here the price paid for the purchase that is spoken of, but the result of this purchase. There are two things to be remarked in what follows: the new man and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not created, He is an independent Being in us; we must not grieve Him. All that which accords not with the Holy Spirit is not suitable for the Christian. On the other hand, we see that we have full assurance: God has set His seal upon us; and this strengthens faith. We enter into the thoughts of God; we find there not only the motives of holiness, but also the power of holiness. That which assures me of redemption puts me on my guard not to grieve the Holy Spirit. If we are in the presence of our Father, His love prevents us from falling. It is thus that the Holy Spirit seals us for the day of redemption, and guards us from evil.

40 Verse 32. My foundation being what God has done for me, I have the consciousness of the goodness of God. If I am blessed myself (see 1 Pet. 3: 9), I can shew love to others; feeling that God has pardoned me takes away all bitterness from my life, from my manner of acting. Our Father, having forgiven us, desires that our hearts should be in freedom towards all, and that we should act in peace and love. It is sweet to be thus set with God, representing in ourselves the character of God.

Ephesians 5.

Verses 1, 2. The first verse hangs on the preceding chapter; as God has forgiven you, forgive one another. "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." The general principle is - Be ye followers of God, follow Him, walk in His steps, act on the same principles as He does. Inasmuch as we are the family of God, we ought to be like God our Father. There is something very sweet in this principle, and very different from that of the law; it produces in the heart quite other feelings; it is affection, it is the goodness of God which constrains us to walk. The apostle here introduces a principle which flows out of the last verse of the preceding chapter; that is to say, to walk in love, to imitate God, to follow Christ. If God is love, Christ is also the expression of this love toward us; we ought also to leave all for our brethren; 1 John 3: 16. The motives of this conduct are expressed in the first and second verses, which we have just read. We ought to imitate God according to the heart of a child; and the effect of this love of God in the heart of a Christian is, that he gives up himself to the needs of his brethren. This is what was seen in Christ. Having the life of Christ, the divine nature and the power of Christ, we ought to offer ourselves up to God; Rom. 12: 1. It should also be remarked, that that which descends from God in love re-ascends always to God in love and devotedness to Him. What a blessed thought; and why do we not thus live? for this is what we ought to be in our service for God.

41 Verse 3. Paul supposes the Christian in that atmosphere of God, in which there are no thoughts but those becoming saints. And we see here the place which money holds: the heart of man thinks that it is pleasanter to be rich than poor; but here it is said that covetousness should not be so much as named among us. We see also to what extent, when in the presence of God, the standard of morality is different from what it would be if we only had regard to men. The apostle considers these things according to the Spirit of God, according to the thoughts of God, according to Christ working in him, Paul. The consequence of this is, that it is according to what becomes saints that we ought to act; we are to be followers of God.

Verse 4. In the presence of Christ we shall find jesting unsuitable. It is not that he who walks in the light of God's countenance is not happy. There is not a cloud on the joy of him who is in the presence of God; but such a Christian feels what the things are which do not become him who is called to imitate God. That the world should find such things suitable is natural enough: but "as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool; this also is vanity," Eccl. 7: 6.

Verses 5-7. A covetous person shall not inherit the kingdom of God. The covetous person in 1 Corinthians 5, is placed, as to discipline, in the same position as fornicators, idolaters, etc.; but it is more difficult to act towards a covetous person, because with him the sin is more hidden than seen outside. All these things are the flesh; but for him who walks after the Spirit they are judged. The natural man would rather have two crown-pieces than one; but the new nature is delivered from such lust, it finds not in such things its enjoyment. The apostle says here "The kingdom of God and of Christ." He follows the thoughts which are according to God and to Christ. If I think of God, it is divine light; if of Christ, it is this power manifested in a man. How precious for us to be able to say, It is there where I am, associated with them; I am in the same atmosphere as God and Christ. It is, then, in this position that we judge all things. We ought not to associate with that which is not of God, because God is not there, and because we should no longer be in the atmosphere in which we are able to judge of things.

42 Verse 8. It is thence that you have come out, says the apostle. It is not said "in darkness," but that those who are now partakers of the divine nature had been darkness; but now ye are light. It is the nature of God, of which we have been made partakers, which makes us see all; and it is thus that we are light in the Lord. Just in so far as we are in Jesus, it is thus that we walk. He that followeth Me, Jesus says, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life; but he that walketh in the night stumbleth, because there is no light in him. The natural man has no light.

Verse 9. The nature of God and of Christ, when it is manifested in man here below, has for its character gentleness, meekness, practical righteousness, and truth. In the truth, each thought has its place before God: Christ was the truth. Each one of His acts answered to what He Himself was, and to what God Himself was; either He was manifesting God or He was, as man, truth before Him. Each of my actions ought to answer to what I am before God: it is the subjection of the inner man. I ought to consider others in all my relationships with them, according to this righteousness and this truth (that is, according to what one is before God), and there there is neither unrighteousness nor untruthfulness.

Verse 10. This verse is connected with what is said about light in verse 8; verse 9 is in parentheses. This is what we have to learn in our conduct. It is often said, that it is difficult to discover the will of God; but this is because we are not ready to meet with difficulties, and then we cannot find out His will. In this verse we have that moral state of soul which loves to please, which realises the spirit of the walk, and which realises the wishes of God in order to be acceptable to Him; it is thus that, as children, we shew real thoughtfulness about Him whom we desire to please. In verse 9 it is the fruits which are the natural productions of the life of God in us that are enumerated; but in verse 10 it is the manner in which God works in us, our eyes being turned upon another than ourselves. This work of God in us is thus carried on. A child, while observing his father, learns what is pleasing to him; he learns what are his ways; he knows what he would like in the circumstances which transpire. Thus we prove what is acceptable to the Lord.

43 Verse 11. The experience of righteousness in us produces an entire separation from evil; it produces fruits of light. Paul insists upon the necessity of having no fellowship with the works of darkness. A Christian cannot join himself with these things, but rather even convict them. Verse 12. By this verse is shewn to us to what an extent our evil nature will go.

Verse 13. This is the effect of light in Christ and in the Christian. We see nothing in the dark; but the light manifests all. The natural man would be ashamed to do in the light what he does in the dark - things which would be done openly among the heathen. Christianity has necessarily destroyed, up to a certain point, the grossness of sin even with those who are not yet converted. The Christian is in the light which manifests all. The light applies itself to every connection which he could form with this world.

Verse 14. The men of this world are dead, and the Christian who walks according to the spirit of this world is as if he were dead, slumbering amidst the dead, dreaming, it is true, sometimes about his wretched position; but as to action, he is there amongst the dead; he does not know what to do, and how should he know? The same may be said of all that, in the Christian, which morally can be called sleep. It is a most sorrowful state in contrast with that which is described to us above. Christ cannot enlighten a soul thus placing itself among the dead; He can work in order to awaken such, but He does not give light to them that are asleep, to those who do not awake from among the dead. Since the light makes all manifest, there is a needs-be that the Christian should awake, and Christ will give him light. It is Christ Himself who is the source, the expression, and the measure of light for the soul that is awake. What use is light to him who will walk in darkness?

Verse 15. In heaven there will be no "Take heed"; there we may give free way to perfect joy: there all is holy; but down here in this life, in the midst of evil, we must take heed, we must use wisdom. The man of the world, in order to avoid evil, must be skilled in the knowledge of the evil. The Christian has no need to think about evil; he must be wise without the knowledge of evil, as it is written, "Simple concerning evil, wise as to that which is good" (Rom. 16: 19), because full and divine knowledge of good in the midst of evil is what Christ gives. What He Himself was here contains no familiar acquaintance with evil; the child of God ought to possess that wisdom which is simple as a dove - spiritual wisdom.

44 Verse 16. This is likewise wisdom; it is to gain time in order to do good. The same expression is used in speaking of the magicians, the Chaldeans, in Daniel 2: 8; they gained time in order to conceal their inability, they had the prudence of this world. We need wisdom in order to be able to do good in spite of Satan, whose power makes the present time one of difficulty. If we have this wisdom for good, we shall escape the wiles of Satan; we shall leave his nets on one side and pass on; we shall do the good that God may give us to do; we shall have time for God. If we are in God's light, we shall walk in the simplicity of that which is good, and God will be with us. Let us think of God-as Father and on what Christ did, in order to do like unto Him. If sleep overtake us, we must awake, and Christ will give us light.

Verses 17, 18. Verse 16 had shewn us that we must redeem the time. The days are evil when God allows Satan to exercise his power, and they are so in general until Jesus return; but there are times when God permits the enemy to govern more directly, and others when He puts a check on him. The evil days are a chastisement, a humiliation for the church; but he who is faithful has his way pointed out; he ought to redeem the time, to seize the opportunity of doing good; Neh. 6: 3. This is why it is said (v. 17), "Be not unwise"; but there is also an energy, a force in the Spirit which is given to us, which is contrasted with the excitement by which the world thinks to produce faith - excitement which is evil - an evil course of life, the true character of which verse 18 shews us. When the Spirit descended upon the one hundred and twenty at Jerusalem, the world said, "They are full of new wine." The power of the Spirit in truth does put a man beyond the power of what is natural to himself; the words rise to his lips as a fruit of the Spirit's action, and he is the subject of a joy which flows over. In him who is full of the Holy Ghost there is what is not natural to man - something altogether extraordinary.

Verses 19, 20. It is quite another life, it is a joy outside of the world's range; it is a company apart, in which the world would have no pleasure, nor enjoyment. The Spirit is there in power. When Christians have life amongst them, occupying themselves with the things which are properly theirs, instead of hesitating in spiritual things, then the life grows; the consequence is, that we see things according to God, we are able to give thanks for all things; we live and we dwell there.

45 Verse 21. It is this spirit of gentleness which recognises Christ in a brother, and that spirit of submission which does not exalt itself; it is when Christians are united and mingle one with another that they realise these things, for individuality is often pride.

Verses 22-24. What is said in these verses is strong: for, as is often the case, the wife may have more wisdom than her husband, but the effect of this wisdom will be for the wife to leave to her husband the place that God has given to him; for if the grace of God acts in the heart, the order which God has established reigns always, and if the wife governs, God is not there. But if this particular wisdom of God is recognised, the order of God is maintained, and blessing is the consequence.

Verses 25, 26. There are always in the word positive directions, and it is never well for us not to follow them. We may remark here three things as to Christ and as to the church, which flow out of the love of Christ for the church: I, He has loved the church and given Himself for it; 2, that He might sanctify it by the word; 3, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, etc.

Verses 27, 28. Christ will present the church to Himself in glory. The order in which these things are placed gives such assurance. Christ does not sanctify the church before having redeemed it. No, it is when she belongs to Him that He devotes Himself to make her such as He would have her to be. We may remark here, it is not said that God loves the church; nor is mention made of that loving-kindness of God which seeks to save souls, though His goodness is acting towards all men in sending Christ to them. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life." But there is another thing which is not properly the goodness of God, either in the sense of providence, or in that of the love in His nature. God in His counsels desires to enter into a certain relationship with His own people; God desires to have children, and Christ a spouse. They are affections based upon a relationship which exists. If God has made us His children He cannot do less than love us as such; once this relationship established, He cannot fail in it. It is never said that Christ has loved the world, while we have seen that God has loved the world; John 3: 16. See also the character of the providential goodness of God; Jonah 4: 11. The goodness of God, which watches over all His works, is precious; we ought to act in the same way as following Him, we ought to love everybody; Matt. 5: 44-48.

46 But there is another thought besides that of this goodness of God; there is a love, the consequence of an established relationship. God having set us in this relationship, the affections of God and of Christ flow forth naturally towards us who are the objects of it. God loves His children with a love which will never deny itself. Christ has made Himself responsible for all the debts of His spouse; and more, the church being the spouse of Christ, she has lost her earthly citizenship and acquired a heavenly one. Christ has become the one responsible for all that His church has done and will do; the church, as the spouse of Christ, has lost her individuality, in order that she may pertain to Christ, her heavenly Bridegroom. Christ, as the anointed Man, felt a distaste for the world; He would none of this world; He would not have His affections there. The Christian, in like manner, ought not to be able to bear the world as to its objects of desire and its walk. Christ has given Himself in order to satisfy the justice of God and to conquer, for the church's sake, the power of Satan; having set her free, He is occupied with her, and, as she is not what He desires, He sanctifies her. The Spirit of God makes allusion here to a practice among the Jews, who purified themselves by washing in pure water. It is by the word that Christ cleanses and sanctifies the church; all the revelation of what God is is thus applied to the heart. This is why Jesus says, "I sanctify myself for their sakes"; I set Myself apart, as being the expression of all the thoughts of God, and I communicate them to Mine, that they also may be sanctified through the truth. Christ is not untrue to the thoughts of God. The word is the means of communicating them, it judges all in us and manifests what is in God. This is what Christ did here below.

The final object of the work of Christ for the church is to present it to Himself "glorious, having neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such thing."

47 There is reference here to the last Adam and the church; of which Adam and Eve were the types. Whilst Adam slept, God built for him a wife (this is the literal force of the Hebrew word) and presented her to him when he awoke. It is the same here; whilst Christ is hidden, so to speak, in God, God builds the church; and when it shall be perfected, it will be presented to Christ, or rather He will present it to Himself, being God and last Adam at the same time.

It is a precious thing to see that Christ so well knows how to take His measures that there will not be the least thing in His spouse which will not satisfy His heart; she will not have a wrinkle when He presents her to Himself; and all is based upon this, that He has given Himself for her; not only He has given His body unto death, His life, but also Himself. There is nothing in Christ - not an affection, not an element of wisdom, nor energy of devotedness, not a thought, nor perfection - not one thing in all the self-devotedness of Christ for the church - upon which the Christian may not count.

Verses 29-3l. There is in verse 29 something more than that which precedes. Not only Christ purifies the church by the word, but He nourishes and cherishes it; He considers its weakness; He shews tenderness and love towards it to nourish it as being His own body.

Verses 32, 33. It is said in verse 32, "This is a great mystery." What the apostle had at heart was the relationship between Christ and the church. We see in the verses which we have just read, four things:

1, Christ gave Himself for the church;

2, He sanctifies it by the word;

3, He presents it to Himself without wrinkle;

4, He nourishes and cherishes it, by giving all that He has for it, in order to shew how dear it is to Him. He loves it as Himself. It is precious to have the inward consciousness of the affection of Christ for the church. This is an important truth, and it is essential to distinguish the difference of this love, which belongs to relationships which God has established, and the goodness of His nature towards all. The consequence of it is that Christ undertakes the whole work; we are only His, entirely His. It is not a law, but a tie which binds us to another, that is, Christ. The moment that the power of man works, it is no longer Christ who has taken all upon Him for us.

48 Ephesians 6.

Verse 1. We cannot enter into the force of this expression, obedience in the Lord or according to the Lord, unless we take our place before the Lord with spiritual understanding. Christ, when He was with His mother and Joseph, had the power of the relationship in Himself; this power of judging good and evil led Him to obey. It is in like manner with us: we ought to obey as to that which regards our relationships in this world. We must understand our position in Christ, in order to be able to obey. God formed these relationships from the beginning; natural relationships are of God, but sin has corrupted all. Now this is what the Lord does: He does not bring in a remedy for this state of ruin; but He introduces a new man, having given Himself without sin in order to take away sin; and this new man is Christ. It is evident then that this new Man recognises what God has done in establishing these natural relationships; but in a manner superior to these very relationships. So when Christ began His ministry, He recognised nothing in this world; but He submitted to all as an individual, perfect in the midst of this evil. When He came into this world, He said, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

Nevertheless, He submitted to those who stood to Him in the relationship of parents, until God called Him to His own proper service. He acted as from God, as superior to the obligation. The Christian, in like manner, by his union with Christ is superior to his obligations, inasmuch as he has with God a new relationship beyond nature; but he recognises this obligation according to the intelligence which this new relationship gives to him, and the consequence is that He is infinitely more obedient, because he obeys as from God. But it is impossible that I do evil as from God, or that I prefer anything before the authority of Christ. I am made more subject according to the perfection of God in Christ; and likewise by the introduction of the new man, the strength of the obligation is maintained, but according to God. In order to act as Christ did in the world, we need spiritual discernment. God cannot deny the obligations which He has created; but if I act in these relationships, as being from above and not from below, I shall obey with all my heart, but in a superior position, which does not allow of the evil into which I might be drawn by those with whom I am in this relationship, because I could not do evil "in the Lord": it is a most simple principle.

49 Verses 2, 3. Paul refers to this promise, which has often been a difficulty to some, as though temporal promises now belonged to a certain line of conduct. The citation only shews us how much God estimated obedience under the law. However, I believe there is a blessing belonging to obedience to parents. But in the order of the government of God, in the ways of God with us personally in this world, there are important things which modify this. The Jewish system was the expression of the government of God in this world, and the blessing belonged to him who honoured his father and mother.

Verse 4. This is an important truth for parents, and which flows from the church being a company apart. It is evident that God desires that the children of Christians should be brought up as Christians. I must act as a Christian with regard to my child, and not otherwise; I must exercise towards him the discipline of God, and bring him up as a disciple - we do very wrong if we act otherwise. If it so happen that parents are converted at the moment their children are growing up, it will then be more difficult for these parents to bring them up in the manner we have just said. But God is faithful to direct these parents, and to guide them according to their need; it will be a subject of prayer for them. In the verse before us the apostle supposes children whom parents are beginning to bring up.

If a Christian mother introduce or allow her child to go into the world, she must expect a strong reaction when her child is in the midst of the world; but God is faithful to the mother who acts faithfully according to the instructions of the Lord. The moment there is a duty, God is there; and God is faithful to make us succeed, though we may have to pass through many a painful hour. But, alas! we like what is most easy; neither is it right for us to use the word as a law to make a child obey. We frequently hear parents say to their children that, if not good, God will punish them, thus putting them under a law; this ought not to be. I ought to be a Christian with my child. God cannot bless parents who make a severe law of the Christian religion with their children; and much less when they allow themselves to go back to worldliness and worldly motives. They ought to be Christian as to their children, and to act towards them according to the truth into which God has brought themselves.

50 Verses 5, 6. The expression, "as unto Christ," is striking. What is not done according to God ought not to be done; but as to our own will, we must have submission and spiritual discernment to know when submission ought to be absolute. When there is no evil, by submitting myself I act as from God, without asking whether the authority is wise or not; I am wise in obeying: and so, every time that the question is as to obeying my master, I do it without troubling myself about what he tells me; I do what he wishes, no matter what; I do it as in the sight of God and for God.

Verse 7. It little matters where God has placed me in this world, provided I serve Christ; and this principle can be applied to the most ordinary things of life; even if I light a fire, I can do it as for the Lord; and how honourable this makes it! What I do is for Him, and because He wishes me to do it; and I do it with good will for the Lord Jesus, serving Him with love.

Verse 8. The Christian religion has found its way into the midst of evil, and given liberty where there was none; it has given it even to the poor slaves, and that without taking them out of their state of bondage. The gospel does not touch that position. Paul acknowledges slavery as a right, when he sends back Onesimus to his master, telling him that in grace he would treat this slave as a brother. Christ comes in where sin reigns. It is a power superior to all here below, and which subsists in the midst of what is found here.

Verse 9. Ye are slaves of Christ, and servants of Christ, and with Him there is no acceptance of persons; if servants, ye can serve Him, however low your condition be as to this world; and if masters, ye ought to serve Him whatever are your advantages here below.

Verse 10. Here is strength! What joy to be able to say, If I am weak, Christ is my strength! We do not enjoy this strength when we are at a distance from the Lord, and when we parley with circumstances, instead of retiring into Jesus by prayer. If we gave ourselves to prayer, all would soon be overcome.

Verse 11. We must put on the whole armour of God; for if we have only truth and not righteousness, or only righteousness and not truth, the devil may reach us. The first counsel which the Spirit gives us here is to be strong in the Lord; and second, to have the whole armour of God; because the arms of man are useless against spiritual wickedness. The man of the world does not know that he is the object of the attacks of Satan, and in truth he is rather his slave, never having been delivered; but the Christian is the object of his attack, and if he is not clothed with the whole armour of God, the darts of the enemy reach him. None can resist him but the one who is thus clothed, for Satan is always there using wiles and artifices; he is often as a lion, but more habitually as a serpent, and he tries to reach us and introduce the point of his weapon; he seeks to deal his blows wherever he finds a part of the body unprotected, not clothed with this armour of God.

51 Verse 12. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, that is to say, not against man, as the Israelites who had to fight against the Canaanites. No! but against spiritual wickedness, against the powers of this world. When the flesh acts in the Christian, Satan can attack him; the flesh has no power whatsoever against Satan. "He that is born of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth him not," 1 John 5: 18. We have a perfect example in Jesus. The new man in us is never tempted. These evil powers are in the heavens, whence they are not yet driven out; and in their wickedness they act not in a gross but in a spiritual manner. Christ is still sitting down, and His enemies are not yet put under His feet; but we have the promise, that the God of peace will bruise Satan under our feet shortly. It is of all importance not to be terrified by him, for in Christ we gain the victory over the enemy of our souls: but it is needful for us to be aware of these ambushes, and to know what is acting against us.

That which guards us is the power of the Spirit in the path of obedience. The presence of the enemy in the heavens has spoiled and continues to spoil all the good that God ever committed to man; this is true, even in Christianity here below, because the heavens are not yet changed: the atmosphere is evil. But it is said, "Resist the devil, and he shall flee from you." If Satan meets Christ in us, he flies, for Christ has conquered him; but the flesh does not resist him. If I am in the flesh, the enemy overthrows me, as we have an example in Peter. Peter, after his fall, could strengthen his brethren; because he had learnt to know himself and his weakness, as well as the power of the grace of Christ. It is well to remember that, when walking in the Spirit, we are sheltered from the darts of the enemy.

52 Verse 13. In the preceding verses it is the general position of the child of God, in evil days, that is looked at. Here it is the armour more in detail that is spoken of. We have seen two things: 1, that we must be armed with the whole armour; 2, that we must be armed with the whole armour of God. This armour alone can resist the attacks of the enemy. There are times when we are attacked by the enemy, and when God permits that we should be more or less tried. The whole of this present dispensation is the evil day, during which Satan is allowed to exercise his power; Christ is absent from the earth, and Satan is allowed to exercise his power in it. There are moments when we enjoy in peace communion with the Lord, without being disturbed by the enemy: then all is peace; but there are times also when we are made to feel the power of Satan - the power of Christ also, without doubt, but it is in order to fight. This is the reason it is said, "Take the whole armour of God." It is the resisting the manifest attacks of Satan that is here spoken of; not only, as in the case of the Israelites, of gaining certain victories, of conquering certain territories, and of making progress in the country; this is not the immediate thought of the apostle. Inasmuch as we are filled with the Spirit, we already possess all things; while at the same time we have to carry on a warfare in the heavenly places. Satan tries to destroy our confidence, to withdraw us from enjoying Christ, and to take from us the consciousness that we possess all things in Him. What we have to do then in this position, is to stand firm; all is ours, and if we stand fast, we have all. Satan tries to prevent our standing; this is why we are told to put on our armour and to stand fast.

Verse 14. In this verse the means of resistance are set before me; we must have our loins girded about with truth, or else we shall be like a ship with its sails spread, but no ballast - it would founder; the ballast which produces the equilibrium is necessary. It is written, "Sanctify them by thy truth; thy word is truth. . ." and further on, "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth." Christ set Himself apart as the expression of all the truth of God in man; not that He had only the knowledge of the truth: Christ was Himself the truth. We ought not only to know the truth, but to have our affections filled and governed by it. If our hearts are full of Jesus, we are sanctified by the truth, as it is in Jesus, which sets us free and which sanctifies us.

53 The word "reins" expresses all that is within. The inner affections, the inmost thoughts, are turned towards God, the heart is with God; all that is not of Him being judged, I am in communion with Him, I am in His presence, taught by Him. The apostle urges that our thoughts our affections, should be governed by the truth; that that which the Spirit teaches us should reign over our hearts. This is what we must begin with; the heart must be at large, set free from the power of every lust and of every spiritual error; at liberty in the truth. We cannot be happy if we allow our hearts to go after all that presents itself to us; for then, in our service, we are not able to resist Satan. Perhaps we are not aware of the evil; the effect of it is not at first felt, but in an evil day it will discover itself. (See Job.) Satan roams around us, and seeks to overthrow us; this is why we must not allow our hearts to go abroad after everything, without paying attention, or without being on our guard; because Satan will have thereby power over us in the evil day. The established Christian discerns good and evil; his thoughts no longer wander about here below. If our thoughts are in heaven with Jesus, we are in safety. It is impossible for us to be happy here below, if we do not walk in holiness. There, in heaven, we shall be able to let loose our hearts, because nothing will be there but holiness and the glory of God; but here, in the presence of the enemy with such deceitful hearts, we must have truth to govern them: "Having your loins girt about with truth." It is the application of what is in Christ to the affections, in order that the heart may have the understanding of spiritual things, and we may walk according to Christ.

Be it observed, that all we have just said is true of each and every Christian; for he is in the truth, he has righteousness by faith, he possesses the gospel of peace. But the apostle desires that we should use these graces in our practical walk. If our hearts are guided by the Spirit of Jesus, we have the consciousness of walking in practical righteousness in all that concerns us; Satan will have nothing to say against us in the evil day, nothing which will weaken us in our conflicts with him. If the conscience is not good, if righteousness is not realised, we have no strength; we must hide ourselves in the day of battle. When Satan attacks the children of God, he does it according to the holiness of God, and they would be overthrown by having things on their conscience about which a worldly person would feel no uneasiness. The Spirit acting on the conscience cannot but give to holiness all its strength; and for him there is but the holiness of God. Also, the nearer we are to God, the more will Satan seek to surprise us. It is impossible for anyone to have a just estimate of the holiness of God unless standing fast in grace, and unless firm against the attacks of Satan. If we do not walk before God according to the light, which we profess to have, God's strength is not with us; and frequently even God withdraws the light in which we did not choose to walk. If we have failed in anything, we must have recourse to grace. If habitually we walk in the Spirit, as soon as we have stumbled we shall judge ourselves before God, before Satan attacks us; for God is good and faithful in His grace, and we shall be calm. Christ was ever with His Father, and when the evil day came, He was calm. (See for him who has failed, the example of David, Psalm 32: 5: "Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin," etc.) That which the Spirit commands is to be clothed with the breastplate of righteousness; because with this armour we have nothing on the conscience. A man cannot handle his sword if he is ill: God begins then, as we have said, by strengthening the man himself; then He speaks of the testimony which he ought to bear. God will have the soldier prepared for the battle.

54 Verse 15. He who is holy and righteous in his practical walk is the one who is in communion with God, who is at peace and restful in all his connections with God, and vigilant as to that which is good, knowing that Satan goeth about; but he is without fear, knowing that he walks together with God; and having nothing which disquiets him in his walk, the consequence is that he is at peace. This title of peace is one given to God more than any other; 1 Thess. 5: 23; Heb. 13: 20; Rom. 16: 20, etc. If there is one thought which is predominant in the character of God, it is peace. The soul which is thus in God is full of peace; he enjoys fully the gospel of God; he enjoys His grace; his soul is in peace, and coming forth from immediate communion with God to walk through this poor world, in this spirit of peace all his ways are marked with peace; this character sets its impress on all his walk in this world. God having given to the soul this place before Him, He begins to teach it to walk; and the walk of such a one here below partakes of this gospel of peace, of the peace which we first enjoy with God through the gospel, in virtue of the work of Christ, and which, setting us in communion with God, makes us happy in that which is good, and enables us, by this communion, to overcome the sin and rebellion of the heart. All that we meet with makes manifest in our walk by the Spirit the peace which we enjoy. It is beautiful to see a soul which brings the power of such peace into the world.

55 In this faithful walk the Christian meets with the fiery darts of the wicked one; the more faithful he is, the more also will Satan seek to trouble him; if he can cause a wicked thought to cross the heart, that is a dart; but the soul of the faithful is at peace; nothing can trouble him, though Satan tries to disturb this peace. If secret self-complacency glides unto the heart, it is the enemy who seeks to take away our confidence. We see Christ in this calm and perfect confidence in the midst of His suffering (John 18: 11), peace keeping His soul; not that He could feel joy in drinking the cup, but He felt it in receiving the cup from the hand of Him who gave it to Him: nothing could shake His confidence; all the darts of Satan were quenched on the shield of faith. At the moment when He was broken-hearted, crushed by the iniquity of men, He said, "I thank thee, O Father," Matt. 11: 25. When we meet with a trial, instead of complaining of others and reproaching them, we ought to take refuge in God; but frequently we do the very opposite, we distrust God; if we meet with difficulties, we reflect on God, and reproach Him with the iniquity of man. Satan seeks to produce mistrust; this is why the apostle says we must take the shield of faith.

Verse 16. Entire confidence in God is needed. From the position we see all the storms below us, we are at peace; but if we have not this confidence, there are things which trouble us. This is our position: we are on the earth, the flesh still in us; Satan is in the heavens, but Christ is still higher, at the right hand of God. Christ (in order that faith may be put to the test) has not yet driven out Satan; but if by faith we lay hold of the truth that Christ has done everything, that He has gained the victory over Satan, and that He is gone up far above all heavens to the right hand of God, we are then above all circumstances. I know Christ; I am near to God; I see things according to God and not according to circumstances. We see in Numbers, when the water failed, Israel threw the blame on God, and Moses thought about himself and his own personal importance. We frequently behave ourselves in the same way in affliction; but it is a want of confidence in God. Satan would like to break the links between us and God; but God has given us evident proofs of His love by giving us His Son, who has all power in heaven and on earth. Satan cannot take from us His grace; but if our loins are not girded about, our communion is interrupted.

56 Verse 17. The salvation of a soul once brought nigh to God is a settled thing; it is a helmet, a defence which guards him from the attacks of the enemy. There is a difference between this blessed position and that of working for salvation. In my battles with the enemy, I have on my head the assurance of salvation. He cannot touch me, I have eternal life; Satan cannot break in upon that. This gives boldness in the conflict; having the consciousness that God has saved us, we go on, the head lifted up (not proudly as to the fear of God), but trusting in Him, fearing nothing. Such is the case when we have the affections on Christ; we are so set as to be enabled to go on with boldness, by power being given to us to use the armour of God. This is what God desires for us. It is a blessed position to stand fast in the conflict. Truth applies to the judgment in the inner man. Practical righteousness guards the conscience from the assaults of the enemy; the power of peace gives a character to our walk; confidence in the love of God quenches the poisoned arrows of doubt; the assurance of salvation gives us boldness to go onwards.

We have seen in what precedes, that the apostle begins by setting before us that which gives inward strength, namely, the armour defensive against the attacks of the enemy. Now he speaks of the offensive weapons, and begins with the sword of the Spirit, as the means of resisting the power of Satan in the evil day; he speaks of the sword as a means of standing; the helmet is placed before the sword, because if there is not this confidence, this assurance, we cannot even handle the sword of the Spirit. All the threats, the warnings and precepts as to sanctification, become so many means, in the hands of Satan, to lay hold of us by, if we have not the confidence that God is for us; without this confidence Satan can use even the word of God to overthrow us. This word is called the sword of the Spirit, not of the understanding, but of the Spirit in us. It is the Spirit of God who alone can handle the sword of the word. It is the Spirit who recalls the suitable passage at the moment of temptation (we have a striking example of it in Christ in the hour of His temptation). We may reason about the things of God, but this does nothing for us against the enemy; the Spirit must act in us and apply the word. It is evident that if we have grieved the Spirit, if our loins are not girded, the Spirit cannot be there to handle the word; on the contrary, in that case, Satan employs it against us. If the Christian has not this happy consciousness of being for God, he has nothing to say when Satan presents a temptation before him: the smallest warning of the word troubles and overthrows him, because the word is not through the Spirit a weapon in his hand against the enemy; but it is in the hand of the enemy against him. It is true that God uses the word as a means of convincing of sin, and thus awakes the soul by acting on the conscience; but every time that this word is not made use of on the principle of grace, it is not the work of the Spirit of God. If this conviction of sin leads us to mistrust God, it does not proceed from Him, but from the enemy; the Spirit convinces of sin through the word, but it shews the refuge in Christ; it does not drive to despair.

57 The word is represented to us as a weapon for us to handle, for it works in two ways: first, the Spirit, in using the word, can act in us by presenting to us the object which fills our hearts with joy and hope; but besides, He can use it when He would convince us of sin. The Spirit will indeed shew us what are the consequences of sin, but He will never tell us that Christ is not sufficient for our soul. The Spirit cannot deny the testimony which He bears to the glory and to the work of Jesus in grace; He can use the holiness of God to produce in us the deepest feeling of sin; but He will never tell us that God is not the God of grace towards us. To the Christian who has peace, and to whom the love of the Father has been revealed, it is perfectly clear, that if he has any other feeling about sin, it is not the Spirit of God which produces it. If we have failed, the Spirit will make us sorrowful, but He will never tell us that the Master of the house is not our Lord; this thought would be the fruit of unbelief. But here the apostle goes a little farther; he supposes faith to be in exercise, and he places the word in the hand. Satan will tell us that we are not able to use the sword of the Spirit. Then this same Spirit, who recalls the passage, silences Satan. Again, look at Christ in His temptation, Christ who never lost His confidence. The Spirit was there in power. Christ had His loins girded, and He had on the breastplate of righteousness; He was calm and knew how to use the very passage which was suitable for the circumstance. Paul supposes a Christian who is standing fast in this power of the Spirit, and who completely stops the mouth of Satan, when he tries in a thousand ways to make him fall. Such a Christian, having all the defensive weapons, is able to handle the sword of the Spirit; and when the Spirit in him is not grieved, He bears witness to the favour of God. The word of God is the most powerful of the weapons of the Christian's strength.

58 Verses 18-20. The second weapon which is given to us is prayer in the Spirit; it is that prayer which springs from the energy of the spiritual life when the Spirit is not grieved in us; the same Spirit, which acting in us, uses the word, becomes a Spirit of intercession and seeks the interposition of God in favour of the saints, and of the work of God in the world. It is a soul at ease in the presence of God - a soul watching, instead of allowing itself to be surprised; and its prayers, instead of being complaints, will be according to the power of the Spirit; we can then use prayer as men who have watched, and who have found in watching subjects for the intervention of God. We may be afflicted, cast down, without being under the power of the enemy.

If I hear bad news, whether relating to the church of God or to a brother, it will make me sorrowful and cast me down, as it did Paul, who had fightings without and fears within. But though thus sorrowful, if Satan has nothing in us, the consequence of this depression will be communion with God, instead of having allowed our affections to wander; we are in the presence of God, we watch with Him in order to speak to Him; but if this is not the case, Satan will take us unawares in moments of carelessness. If we walk with God, this will cause prayers according to the mind of God. The broken heart finds in Jesus the full certainty of God's favour. The Philippians, in their suffering state, had met with God instead of being frightened by it (Phil. 1: 28); and though afflicted, if I am in the power of the Spirit, it will only cause more lively intercession. It is precious to see what is produced by affliction, even by chastening; if our walk is spiritual, it will only be an opportunity for gaining the victory, and for driving away Satan. All the members are united to the Head, and by His Spirit interested in all that concerns Him. They cannot always act themselves in such or such a case, but they can, like the centurion, say to Christ, "Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed."

59 As we have seen that the word of God is the sword of the Spirit, so also what importance does the Lord attach to prayer! There are two kinds of prayer: that which is the expression of our wants; and that which being made in the energy of the Spirit, is therefore infallibly answered. Whether for handling the sword of the Spirit, or for prayer, the Christian life must already exist; in order to be able to pray for others, our own life must be with God. There is amongst Christians too little intercession; because they come to a meeting for prayer, after leading a life of languishing, absorbed by present things. The consequence is, their prayers discover the weakness of the individual, and not the work of the Spirit for the good of the church. Too often alas! it is a settling as to our own failures. If we were watchful therein in our daily walk, our prayers would be intercessions, instead of supplications each day for our own faults. What we should desire is, that our individual prayers should be such as to enable us to pray for all saints; without this they will never have this powerful energy of the Spirit. Satan will find some means for overthrowing Christians. How desirable this makes it that there should be some able to bring in the aid of God! The more, whether it be an individual or a body of persons, we are faithful as to our position in this world, the more shall we be exposed to the ambushes of the enemy; and if we do not thus keep close to God, the enemy will find some way of making havoc.

We see here, that the most faithful and advanced Christians feel their dependence upon God, and on all saints. The apostolic gift of Paul depended in one sense on the prayers of the saints: God intended it to be so, in order that the church might be united in its affections; 2 Cor. 1: 11. The apostle was in a prominent position, and perhaps he received power through the prayers of a poor bed-ridden woman; but all hidden fruits will be seen in the last day. It is an encouraging thing to see that God honours the hidden members which are the least honourable to the eyes of the flesh. This thought encourages us to walk humbly in our place. Frequently there are persons hidden out of sight, who are the means of blessing for those who are in a very prominent place. We ought to think of the praise which God gives, and not of that of men. The only thing in our service is to glorify God. If my heart, which no one sees, does not beat, I cannot run. There are individuals who are truly the heart of the church; it is not often the things that are seen which are the most precious in the sight of God.

60 Verses 21-24. In these last verses, we have the expression of the tenderness of Paul in sending Tychicus to the Ephesians. We see how he counted upon the affection of the saints.

Substance of a Reading on Ephesians

J. N. Darby.

<27003E> 61

The nature of the Epistle to the Ephesians is quite distinct from that of Romans. In Ephesians we have nothing to do with the responsibility of man; we have with Christ, and man is looked at as dead in sins, and there is a new creation. Consequently the question of justification is not raised in Ephesians, but acceptance is. We have seen before that these are the two great subjects in connection with the gospel: namely, the meeting of the responsibility of man; and the counsels of God before ever there was a responsible man at all. These counsels are in the second Man, not in the first. The first man was the responsible one; the Lord Jesus is the Man of God's counsels, the last Adam or second Man. In Ephesians these counsels of God are taken up; in Romans the responsible man (in grace, but still responsible), sinners, every mouth stopped, and a propitiation through faith in Christ's blood, the whole question of God's meeting us in grace in our responsibility and failure, is fully brought out. In the Ephesians there is nothing of this. It begins with the counsels and intentions of God, and puts us in Christ.

Now the structure of the epistle is this. In chapter 1 we have these counsels of God as to glory, as to Christ, and as to our inheritance. Only at the end the apostle begins to unfold how far the foundation is laid for their accomplishment in what He has already done. So that, after stating the counsels, he enters on what God has done. That is, He has taken Christ from the dead and set Him up far above all heavens, principalities, and powers, and every name named. He commences, observe, with the raising of Christ from the dead. There you get not merely counsels, but the accomplishment, so far as exalting the second Man into glory above all heavens.

Chapter 2 shews how far God has accomplished that mighty work in us. We have been raised from being dead in sins and put into Christ, sitting in Him (not with Him, we are not there yet) in heavenly places. It is the operation of God putting us into His place. It is in Christ I am sitting, not with Him. This makes us God's workmanship; and then He brings us forth a step farther in making both Jews and Gentiles one. It is still what He has accomplished or is doing so far. He has put down the middle wall of partition, and reconciled us in one body by the cross, that is, down here; and He is not only building a holy temple to the Lord (it is not built yet), but we are builded together, Jews and Gentiles, for the habitation of God by the Spirit down here. This is what God has accomplished. He has raised Christ from the dead, and set Him in glory; He has raised us up spiritually from the dead and put us into Christ; He has abolished all differences of Jew and Gentiles, and He has not only made peace between Jew and Gentile, reconciling them, but He has reconciled them both in one body by the cross. They are reconciled to one another and reconciled to God, and they are going to be a temple, and they are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit, that is, down here. This is what is accomplished of His purposes, the foundation being laid for them all.

62 In chapter 3 follows another thing. It is neither God's counsels nor God's operation, but Paul's administration of all these, the dispensation committed to him. As to the substance of it, it is Paul's administration of the mystery, not God's counsels about it, but the apostle's administration of it; and at the end, as it refers to earth, there is the second prayer which is addressed to the Father of our Lord Jesus, where Christ is looked at as Son. The first prayer, which is found in chapter 1, is addressed to the God of our Lord Jesus as the glorified Man; but this is addressed to the Father, and Christ is looked at as Son, a divine Person. Therefore it is here not the object, or the thing objectively, but rather that Christ may dwell in our hearts, that is, power brought in down here according to His counsels. So that there is to be glory to God in the church in all ages. This is a power that works in us, as the other was toward us.

Having the counsels, and the operation, and Paul's administration, the effect is looked for in chapter 4 as regards there being a habitation of God through the Spirit down here; and then, secondly, here too the individual gifts. This goes down to the end of verse 16. Verse 17 begins the ordinary exhortations as to how to walk. They were to walk together. All distinctions of Jew and Gentile have disappeared. He has brought them together as one habitation of God through the Spirit, and now they are to walk together and keep the unity of the Spirit. Then we go on to individual gifts, and in verse 17 we begin the practical exhortation for all saints, which is continued in chapter 5. At the end of chapter 5 occasion is taken from the case of the husband and wife to bring in the relationship of Christ and the church. After going into the different relationships in which saints are to be faithful, the conflict in heavenly places is taken up.

63 Now another thing may be remarked as to the epistle, that is, that everything refers to heavenly places; not that we are not upon earth, for we are, but that now to principalities and powers in heavenly places may be known through the church the wisdom of God. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, and we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ, we are a testimony to principalities and powers in heavenly places, and we are fighting with wicked spirits in heavenly places. Our blessing, our place, our testimony, and our conflict are all in these heavenly places. Now you will find that ministry here is connected with all these.

Farther, what God is working in chapter 2 is that the whole building effectually framed together groweth into a holy temple. It is only growing up to this end. But moreover "ye are builded together for a habitation of God." This is taking place. The holy temple will be in glory. They are to be a building for a temple even as Christ said, "I will build my church." The temple that is to be is that spoken of by the Lord in Matthew 16: "Upon the rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it." You get it also in Peter, "Ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood." There they are built up stone after stone. So in Ephesians, "and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord." It is growing unto an holy temple, but it is not yet finished. The house that Christ builds is a perfect thing, it is not finished yet, but what people commonly call the invisible church. But then there is an actually manifested thing by the Holy Ghost being here: "Ye are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit."

In short there are two characters of the assembly, the body of Christ, and the habitation of God now by the Holy Ghost. When we speak of the body of Christ, the members are looked at as united to the Head in heaven, and, spoken of as the house, will be a holy temple; when we speak of the habitation, it is by the Holy Ghost down here. It is the same thing as far as they went, but they soon ceased to be identical.

64 In verse 21 it is a temple not yet completed; when it is completed, it will be in glory. We are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit (v. 22); this is the present thing. It is just the confounding of these two things that has made popery and ritualism. That is, they have attributed all the privileges which belong to what Christ is building and has not yet finished to the thing that is built on earth. Now when you get a thing built upon earth, God sets it up all right; but like everything else, like man himself when he was created, it is put into man's responsibility. God carries on His own purpose, and against what Christ builds the gates of hades shall never prevail. But always in the first instance, whatever God sets up, He puts into man's responsibility; and then it is all ruined. Nevertheless God's purpose is all accomplished in Christ. This is true of everything. It is true of Israel. It is true of individual saints, and of the whole church. What Christ is carrying on, the gates of hades shall not prevail against. The administration of it is on earth. In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul says, "As a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon. Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon." This is not Christ's building. It is not Christ carrying out, "I will build my church"; nor the living stones coming and growing into a holy temple. In the latter case there is no agent but Christ. It is He that is building; and therefore, of course, Satan's power cannot prevail against it. In 1 Corinthians 3 it is not Christ building; it is man's responsibility, as it is said, "Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon." Wood and hay and stubble can be built in; and if you attribute to wood and hay and stubble the security of what Christ is doing, you will be making a grave mistake. Papists and Puseyites are taking what has been built by man, and confounding it with Christ's work, saying the gates of hades cannot prevail against it. They confound two different works.

God set up right even what is upon earth: "the Lord added to the church* daily such as should be saved." God's work was right; but soon false brethren came in unawares, Simon Maguses and I know not what, because man was put under responsibility, and the first thing he does is to sin. Noah had the sword put into his hands for governing, and the first thing he does is to get drunk. The law was given, and the first thing the Jews did was to make a golden calf. Priesthood was set up, and the first day they offered strange fire, and Aaron never went into the holy place with the garments of glory and beauty. When royalty was set up, the son of David loved many strange women, and his heart went after their gods. The church was set up, and it failed. Christ will be the perfect Man; Christ will govern the world in righteousness; Christ is the perfect priest; Christ is perfect as the Son of David; He will arise to reign over the Gentiles. He will be glorified in His saints, and admired in all them that believe. Every one of the things put under the responsibility of man will be perfectly carried out. If I confound this accomplishment of purpose in Christ with what is placed under the responsibility of man, and attribute what belongs to the one to the other, I am justifying all the evil and corruption about us. That is the question now in the church of God.

{*[The true reading would run thus, "was adding together daily," etc. - ED,]}

65 The body is never looked at as incomplete in itself, it would spoil the whole idea. When the purpose of God is brought out, it is looked at as in that purpose. In chapter 1 He gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body. There it is looked at as complete when all things are put under Him. All things are not yet put under Him: it is not accomplished yet; it is in counsels. The moment I get it down here, I get both the house and the body.

Chapter 2: 21 contains the same thought as Matthew 16: 18, and also the same as 1 Peter 2.

Verse 22 is the house as set up now upon earth: only when God set it up, He set it up all right. "Ye are builded together for a habitation of God." It is a present thing.

The dwelling of God with men down here is a distinct definite fact, and the fruit of redemption. God never dwelt with man apart from redemption. He did not dwell with Adam; He never dwelt with Abraham, He never dwelt with anybody down here until Israel was redeemed out of Egypt. No doubt this was an outward redemption, still it was in a certain sense redemption. God redeemed His people out of the bondage of Egypt, and in the end of Exodus 29 He says, "And they shall know that I am Jehovah their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them." The moment redemption comes in, He makes the redeemed people His dwelling-place, and He comes down and dwells among them in the tabernacle. This was given up at the captivity when the times of the Gentiles began.

66 Since Christ's rejection and the accomplishment of the better redemption, the church is established on earth for God to dwell in. This habitation of God through the Spirit was set up, consequent upon redemption, but down here it is trusted to man's responsibility. What it has become now is Christendom.

The increase of the body is spoken of in chapter 4. It is merely the fact that here it grows. You afterwards see the different gifts and all of them exercised, and you find the body grows up, just as a child grows up. There are persons brought in; but they come into it all as a complete thing. The individual persons come in and are a part of that growth. You get evangelists as well as pastors and teachers. Still when individuals come in, they are only part of the same body. So when I eat my body grows. Of course, they are mere figures after all.

But in speaking of these things, you get the individual before anything of the body or the house. You will always find the individual has the first place. The individual relationship is with the Father; the corporate relationship is with Christ as a man: and the house relationship is with the Holy Ghost come down. There are the three. The first is that we have the adoption of children (sons) to Himself; and then that He has given Christ to be head over all things to the church, which is His body. Here is our relationship with Christ as raised and glorified, but before that comes all about the individual. Then in the third place there is the Holy Spirit come down to dwell. It makes a wonderful scheme and plan to put all these things together.

If you look further to the application of all this to ministry, you see, when he is beginning, he says, "Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith [it is the ground and basis that is given for ministry], When he ascended upon high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers." We first get the basis of all these gifts, Christ, but not Christ on earth as the Jew had Messias. All this has disappeared from the apostle's mind; and he sees Him going down into the dust of earth, and then ascending far above all heavens, whereof he takes up the effects. He went down into the lower parts of the earth, the grave, but hades for his soul. He went into the under world, the lower parts of the earth, and then He is far above all heavens. He has been below creation, for death and hades are in a certain sense below it, and then He is above it and in this way He fills all things. We see Christ in His redemption power filling everything. All service and ministry have their place in that, and they flow from it. He has come down where Satan had his power, death and hades (called hell). He goes down where Satan's power was, and breaks it; He leads captivity captive; and He puts man in the glory of God in His own Person far above all heavens; so that He has met on the one hand the power of evil, and on the other set man in the glory of God. As Man He gets these gifts, as we were reading in the Acts, "Being by the right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit" (the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Father), "he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." He has done that as Man, not merely as God, observe; but Christ, in virtue of this redemption by which He fills all things, receives the Spirit and sends Him to men whom He has rescued out of Satan's hands and builds up His church here. It gives a wonderful place to ministry.

67 Here in Ephesians we find the individual saints the first object, as it is said, "for (pros) the perfecting of the saints," and then it is added "for (eis) the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." The first thing is that each saint should grow up to Him who is the head, that is, Christ. There are three objects. One object is first of all distinct. There is a different preposition in Greek. He does all things "for the perfecting of the saints" (there He is the first-born of many brethren); and it has these additional characters, it is for work of ministry down here, and for edifying the body as a whole. You must not lose sight of the individual when you get into the body. He carries on the perfecting of the saints to the end of verse 15, and in verse 16 He comes to ministry and building up of the body. "Till we all arrive at the unity of the faith" (that is, each individual, of course) "and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ" (nothing short of that); "that we be no longer babes, tossed and carried about by every wind of that teaching which is in the sleight of men, in unprincipled cunning with a view to systematised error; but holding the truth in love, we may grow up to him in all things, who is the head, the Christ." There we see individuals, and they grow up to Christ. Then he goes on - "From whom the whole body [now we have the corporate thing] fitted together and connected by every joint of supply, according to the working in its measure of each one part, worketh for itself the increase of the body to itself - building up in love." That is the second thing, or additional aim. First, the individual saints grow up to the Head in everything, and, secondly, the building up of the body. It is the body building itself up; but still it is service and ministry. It is wonderful grace that He who went into the lower parts of the earth has gone to glory and has done this immense thing - put the saints in personal connection with Him.

68 The prayer in chapter 3 is wonderful, "that he might give you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man." He asks that the power of the Holy Spirit might work in the heart of the individual, and that Christ might be in the affections, "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith," that is, that Christ may be realised by faith. I have now got Christ - who is the centre of the whole universe of blessedness - dwelling in my heart. Thus I have the centre in me, and this is perfect love sure enough, for we are dwelling in God and God in us; and thus rooted and grounded in love. Being there my heart takes in all the saints, "rooted and grounded in love that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints." You cannot leave them out, for they form part of this plan of God, the nearest circle to Christ. Then, getting the whole scene of God's glory and purpose, we apprehend the breadth and length and depth and height, that is, the whole scene of God's glory. All the glory that God surrounds Himself with we have by having Christ in the heart, by faith realised in the power of the Spirit. But as we might be lost in this glory, we get back to Christ with whom we are familiar, and he prays that we may "know the love of Christ which surpasseth knowledge." We find in this galaxy of glory ourselves perfectly intimate with the Person that is the centre of it all. He dwells in the heart, and we know the love of Christ. Accordingly this does not narrow, but really quite the contrary, because it passes knowledge. Therefore He says, "to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God." We have what surrounds God in the glory, and now having known the personal love of Christ we have got to God Himself. "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." This passage is generally quoted as referring to what God can do for us. People in their prayers say (piously no doubt; I do not attribute any harm) that God can do more than they ask or think. That is quite true, but it is not what is here. He says, "to him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." Thus it is a very different thing. "To him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages." We are carried out into all this of which we have been speaking; it is a power that works in us so that He is glorified in the church in all ages and of course now. That is where He sets us before He takes up the question of ministry.

69 The prayer is not that we might know the hope of His calling and the glory of His inheritance, but that the Father of our Lord Jesus according to the riches of His glory may strengthen us with might. It is according to all this thing in which He is glorified that He strengthens us. In the first prayer he prays that the eyes of our hearts may be opened and we may know the things that are ours. The glory is ours and the inheritance is ours. Here he comes not to what is objective, but to what works in us. The prayer is to the Father, not to God; and He looks for Christ dwelling in our hearts. He is looking for power in us, not objects before us, "that we may be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man." He prays that this power may work in us, but it may not be working. He is not looking that we may know certain things that are ours, but that the things may exist. I may not be strengthened with might in the inner man, though I may have the Spirit. It is a positive state he is praying for.

70 The first prayer is not a prayer for anything to work in us, but that we may see the things, and He puts the things before us as objects. The things are ours. We have got the calling: we are partakers of the heavenly calling, as it is said in Hebrews, and if we have not got the inheritance actually, we are joint-heirs with Christ. He prays that the eyes of our hearts may be opened so that we may look at these things, but they are ours. It is wonderful that the Holy Ghost cannot shew us anything of glory that is not ours. The power spoken of at the end of the chapter which does the work in us, is a power that has taken us when dead sinners and put us in the Christ where He is. But this is all settled. "And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." There we find that you who were dead in sins He has quickened. That is the power that has wrought and made a Christian of me. Here is chapter 3 he is praying that the power may work in us now. Practically it is the realisation of it.

In chapter 4 is one of the three "worthys" in the walk. We are called to walk worthy of God who has called us to His kingdom and glory; we are called to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing; and here we are called to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, that is, the habitation of God through the Spirit - the whole thing, but specially the last part. They are all brought into unity, reconciled to God, brought together as the habitation of God through the Spirit. Here he tells them to walk worthy of that calling. It is striking how he goes on directly to lowliness and meekness. This is the walk that is worthy of the vocation. We would feel our own nothingness if we thought of this place. It is very simple if we could take it practically. He has made us all one by the Spirit; we are all builded together like stones in a house; and He looks to us walking in that unity and the spirit of peace. We are to walk in the sense of these great things and of our own nothingness.

71 There is threefold unity, one body, one Spirit, and ourselves called in one hope of our calling. We then get the outward profession, one Lord, one faith, one baptism; and afterwards a still greater circle - one God and Father of all, above all, and through all, and in you all. In other words, we get unity of the Spirit, the unity of the lordship, and the unity in connection with one God and Father. It is the Spirit, the Lord, and God, as you find it in 1 Corinthians, where he speaks of gifts, diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; diversities of administrations, but the same Lord; and diversities of operations, but the same God that worketh all in all. It is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; this is not the thought, though it is connected with it, but the Spirit and Lord and God. You have the Spirit, the active agent down here, the Lord under whose authority the work is carried on, and after all, it is a divine thing - the same God that works all in all. So it is in the Corinthians, but just the same principle as here. There is a difference between the gifts there and here, and a very important difference, though here as there the Spirit and the Lord and God. We have the Holy Ghost down here; then Christ as Man in glory (He is more than that, but still He is Man; God has made Him Lord and Christ; He has got an official place. It is not that He has not a human nature, and a divine nature: that is all true; but He has an official place): one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Then follows a wider larger circle, one God, who is above all, through all, and (bringing it back to the internal power) He is in us all. Scripture is remarkably correct. Pantheism puts God into everything, and makes it all God; but Paul gives us the truth.

Next we come to "everyone of us." Each of us has his own special niche; we all fill some little service, whatever it is. "Unto every one of us is given grace": it is individualised. It is to every member of the body.

"Every one" is contrasted with that unity. He takes them first all as one thing, and then He takes them separately. It is according to the measure of the gift of Christ. We have Christ the giver now. You do not get this in 1 Corinthians 12; and the difference is an important one practically. There it is the Holy Ghost come down and distributing divinely. The Holy Ghost distributes to every man severally as He will, and therefore in the Corinthians they are merely looked at as powers. Must a man necessarily speak with a tongue because he is able to speak with it? No, says Paul, you must think of the building up of the church; everything must be done to edification. If the gift you have does not edify, you must be quiet. If there is no interpreter, you are not to speak. That is, we have power, but power subject to the ordering authority of the Lord in the church of God. They were speaking two or three at a time. They said they were all speaking by the Holy Ghost, and they thought they must utter what they had got to say. "No," says the apostle, "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." There must be order. There was power, but this power was restrained and authorised by the God of order. The possession of power was no proof that the person possessing it was to exercise his power; he was only to exercise it when it would edify the church. In consequence we find in the Epistle to the Corinthians what are called sign-gifts. There are no miraculous gifts in Ephesians, whereas in 1 Corinthians appear healings, miracles, tongues and various signs of power, which you do not get here. There it is the Holy Ghost down here. Here we have Christ on high caring for His own body, and looking for its edification, and hence we have only those gifts which are permanent for its good. The apostles and prophets were the foundation. The foundation is not being laid now; but the other gifts are given till we all come to the unity of the faith, to a full-grown man. That is, it is not a mere question of power, but of the faithfulness of Christ to His own body, the assembly, which He nourishes and cherishes as a man does his own flesh.

72 The word "gift" has a double sense. If you do not see this, you might be apt to take it in verse 7 as if it was Christ that is given. It denotes the giving as well as the thing given. Grace is merely a favour given, as a special grace conferred in giving a man such a qualification from Christ for service. To every one of us is given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift. That is, I have got this grace, this thing that is conferred upon me, in the measure Christ has given it. You cannot say grace is given me to use a gift when the grace is given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

The grace is the gift. It is according to the measure of the giving of Christ that He gave this. If grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ, everyone would have perfect grace according to the gift He had given.

It is character, it is God's grace given; but it is a gift, whatever it may be. "To me is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."

73 It is tantamount to every member of the body having a gift. Also He makes a distinction between permanent gifts and what every joint supplies. He does not give pastorship, He gives pastors. This is not unimportant, because Paul a prophet was not always prophesying, though always a prophet, and he was an apostle, though not always exercising his apostleship. Therefore Christ does not give apostleship but apostles. Taking it as such given to him, it is a certain position and place of service given to him, and he is that. Christ ascends up on high and gives him. In Psalm 68 it is said that, when He ascended up on high, He received gifts in man. The point is, that Christ as a man has gone up and is a giver. It is the measure of the gift of Christ, not of the Holy Ghost, though it operates by the Holy Ghost.

Supposing I say I give to you an act of pastorship to-day, and that is all about it. This is not the case here. He gives the man as a pastor, and he is always a pastor, though God might deprive him of it if He liked. The man has that place and function. Paul was always an apostle. It was not a certain thing that came upon him and was gone, but he was an apostle always. When we get to the power of the Holy Ghost in 1 Corinthians, we read that God "set in the church first apostles, then prophets"; but it is much more an action of the Holy Ghost present down here as power.

Here then we find what we have referred to already - we come to the immense truth, Christ going down to the place of death, His soul to hades, and His body to the grave; and then going far above all heavens and filling everything. Having led captivity captive, He now comes in power, and makes other men the instruments of His power. Then, being so exalted, He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, etc.

There are first the apostles and prophets. They are passed away, but we have their writings, and these are precious. I mean we have not their personal presence, but are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets; and of course there is no foundation to be laid now. Then he takes that which must come first to have the church, for you cannot have pastors and teachers till you have had an evangelist to bring people there to be nourished. You see the foundation must be laid first, whence you have apostles and prophets first. Then how are you to get souls to be taught if there are no evangelists? "How shall they hear without a preacher?" Hence evangelists come next. It is a most blessed gift. I think more of evangelists than of pastors and teachers. They face the world more for Christ. Still I believe a pastor is a rare gift. The work of the evangelist is simpler. He stands in the face of the world for Christ. A pastor must be like a doctor; he must know the right food, and the right medicine, and the right diagnosis, and all the pharmacopoeia, and must know how to apply it too. In one sense it is a rare gift, and very precious.

74 Pastor and teacher are distinct things, but they are in Greek (and indeed in English) joined. They are connected, but not absolutely one, because a pastor includes in a certain sense the other; whereas a teacher has nothing to do with the office of pastor, so as to care for souls. I might expound the scripture, and yet not really have wisdom to deal with individual souls as a pastor has to do. That of pastor is a wider gift. Still they are closely connected, because you could hardly profit an individual without teaching him in a measure. A person may teach without being a pastor, but you can hardly be a pastor without teaching in a certain sense. The two gifts are closely connected, but you could not say they are the same thing. The pastor does not merely give food as the teacher; the pastor shepherds the sheep, leads them here and there, and takes care of them. I think it is a thing greatly wanted, but I believe it is a rare gift and always was. Pastors must have a heart for the sheep. There are degrees of completeness in it, but that is what the pastor has to do. The testimony is in the evangelist, but his work is simpler. He carries the gospel to the poor sinner, whereas the pastor has saints on his heart and cares for them.

One has taken some comfort out of the thought that the evangelist was not so important, for God would be sure to do the work. But it is not the way the apostle put it, for he says, "How shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?" There is nothing like going to the word of God God can do anything He pleases in that way, I have no doubt; still His ordinary way is by preaching.

The extent of an evangelist's work is to announce the glad tidings. It extends till they receive Christ and remission of sins. The evangelist throws the net into the sea, and it gathers of every kind, and then the fishermen put the good fish into vessels. It is the same figure in that parable. No distinction is made there. The net is drawn to shore at the close of the dispensation. Their business was good fish. They got a lot of bad ones into the net, and they put the good ones into vessels. Hence it is now a question of sorting. Then an evangelist distinguishes between those truly converted and those not. That parable speaks in general of all. Those that were pulling at the nets were putting in the vessels too.

75 But the evangelist has nothing to do inside the church as an evangelist. A man may not be a public speaker very much, but there will be evangelising going on, if there is much life. Saints always rejoice in the truth. There is a great deal of the teaching gospel now. Saints want the gospel very often as much as sinners (I mean the clear plain gospel); and therefore what I call a teaching gospel really has its place. It is another kind of thing from what awakens the sinner.

It is a mixture of a teacher's and evangelist's work. You will hear one man praying and beseeching God to bring in poor sinners, and you will hear another praying that Christ may be glorified in His sheep; the one in principle has a pastor's heart, and the other an evangelist's. You thus see where a man's heart is. The one is for people outside, and the other's desire is that Christ's sheep may glorify Him.

Owing to the perverse teaching which is abroad, you have to get converted people to the gospel. It is not the same thing as going out to the highways and hedges, and compelling them to come in. To such one would preach not only about their sins, but the grace of Christ for them in their sins. Romans 3 comes before chapter 7; but I was in the seventh before I got to the third, because I had nobody to preach to me. The first thing a person wants to know is that he is guilty, and when he knows his guilt in his conscience and his responsibility, the blood of Christ meets it, and there is forgiveness and cleansing.

Recollect we are talking about preaching the gospel when all the world professes to believe in Christ. When Peter preached the gospel to the Jews, he says, You have crucified and slain Him, and God has raised Him from the dead. You go and tell a sinner in the street that God has raised Him from the dead, and he will say, "I know that as well as you." They preached facts then. I believe that the gospel is really a great deal more powerful when we preach or bring forward the great facts of the gospel. There is immense power in these facts; but at the same time in the ordinary sense they are admitted, and hence you have to press their power and value upon people. When they went to heathens first, they told them that God had sent His Son into the world, that the world had crucified Him, and that God had raised Him. If you tell that to people now, they do not deny it. We have now to take the other part, "Be it known unto you, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." This is the effect of it. I believe the more facts are brought forward by the evangelist, the more power will be in his testimony.

76 It is not always knowledge. If a man has just got his soul saved, he is sometimes more in earnest than one who is a long time saved. You find persons just converted in that aspect better evangelists than others. But then you must bear in mind that we are evangelising in Christendom, we are not going to Hindoos or Chinese. If you do not take account of that, you will have a very superficial gospel. Evangelising in Christendom is not evangelising in heathendom; it is in worse case if you please.

But take a fact, when a man's sins are brought forward and you press it upon him - you shew him Christ. It is not the teaching that does the thing; it is a certain character of gospel that deals with the condition of soul, and after it they cannot go on with what they have got.

The parable in Matthew 13 is descriptive of the kingdom of heaven, how it goes on. You do not get directions how to do it, nor will directions ever do. If you want an evangelist, you must get a man who has love for souls; and counsel as to the manner of it would never do anything. Of course I may suggest to another; that is very well in its place. But the thing to be desired is a fervent spirit and love to souls.

The gospel is the glory of His grace. I get a much clearer gospel in its first elements if I know the glory. It is a more teaching gospel. I may say, How can you stand before God in glory? and Christ is in glory; and if you look to Christ, and He has borne your sins, they must be gone; for He has not got them in glory. This is the thing that gives peace to the conscience. I might take the coming of the Lord and present it as terror, and it might be used to awaken the conscience, and there is nothing done till conscience is awakened. It is a bad sign to receive the word at once with joy, unless there has been a previous work. You must have one consciously brought into God's presence, or you will never have anything real. There is no bringing the soul to God except by the conscience; because a man cannot be in God's presence without his conscience being awakened. What a preacher has to do is to bring the light to bear on a man's conscience, and make him thus find himself out in the light.

77 There may be a preliminary work - what the old Puritans call the common operations of the Spirit. There may be appeals to the conscience, which may have reached it, and the soul going on as before. The conscience may be reached, and a man may be quickened, or he may not; and the conscience may be reached and bring out the bitterest enmity against God. The consciences of the people whom Stephen addressed were reached, and made them gnash with their teeth. When God quickens, the conscience is reached, and the man is made to feel he is a sinner. The conscience may be reached, however, without that inward work as well as with it.

Whenever the Holy Ghost works, it produces a want. In Nicodemus's case, it went on to quickening. You have the words, "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost." It is not His work in the sense of saving or quickening, but the conscience is reached. That is the reason why the Puritans call such the common operations of the Spirit.

There is a conscience in every man. The fall of a tree may alarm a conscience. If God accompanies it in grace as He did in the case of Luther, whose friend was killed by a flash of lightning, the work is effectual. You see men alarmed and plunge into greater wickedness to get rid of it. They are distinct things, though they may go together.

In the last of the seven parables the gospel is the net that takes the fish. But then they caught bad fish as well as good. It is all God's work, but He employs workmen. Not only God works, but He works alone as to everything good. The net is cast into the sea. "How shall they hear without a preacher?" is what God says. I quite admit God will have His own. Scripture is plain upon it, but He has His way of doing things. His ordinary way is by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." This is the ordinary rule of God. I see two ways of God's love manifested. One is His own essential blessedness in Himself; He gives us to enjoy this in communion by the Spirit. There is another thing in God, and that is, the activity of love towards those that have no communion with Him; and He gives us a part in it too. And the fact that He acts by instrumentality, as He speaks here, is an enormous blessing. He leaves poor creatures like us a part in this activity of saving souls. If it is man's work, it is good for nothing.

78 Servants are addressed in Luke 14, "Go and compel them to come in." And the point insisted on there is that, when the Jews would not come in, He would have the Gentiles. He first went and took the poor Jews, the poor of the flock, and brought them into His house, but they did not fill it, and then He sends to the Gentiles. He does not speak of whom He sends out.

But I do not think you will ever teach anybody to be a good evangelist; he must have it from God. He must have the love of souls in his heart. If he lean on the Lord, he will win souls.

You cannot have the church without the evangelist. Looked at as an evangelist, you see his point of departure is the church because he is a member. When things were right, the power went from the centre and gathered into that centre. "The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." All gifts are independent of the church; they are all dependent on Christ. All service is simply to Christ. I quite admit discipline. If a man teaches wrong, he must be disciplined; but the service is to Christ. They are all for the Lord, and I believe the Lord would add them to the church if things were in order. The church is what is formed upon earth in which He is to be glorified. It is where He glorifies Himself now in the world, and therefore the evangelist gathers people in. This is all true; but when you take the person of an evangelist or pastor, he is Christ's servant. He is a great deal happier if he goes in fellowship with the assembly, but the fact of evangelising is not the assembly's act. The assembly will not go on well, unless there is a spirit of evangelising in it, to which the love of Christ will constrain them. I quite admit that which has taken place in connection with revivals: the action which converted, and that which gathered, have been in a measure disconnected. I see clearly in the operations at the beginning that they went together. The Lord then added to the church daily such as should be saved. This was the regular order of things.

79 At the beginning there was the church which God had set up and power was there. They commend Paul to God, and he comes back and tells what God has done by his means. There is action and reaction, but now this has all got dislocated. You are in an immense thing called the church, which is far indeed from Christ. Therefore there is this difficulty for a man who feels pressed to go and speak to souls, when he does not know there is such a thing as the body of Christ. If a man was a heathen or Jew and became a Christian, he was added to the church, but that is not the case now; and therefore it requires more real power and wisdom to do the work rightly now, and not simple power merely which evangelises the sinner.

We had most happy exercise of heart about it in  - . When they first went out, they did not know anything about the body of Christ. They went and devoted themselves to people that were gathered, some going to the world and some to sects, as they knew no better. The work goes on more slowly, but a great deal more solidly. They did not cease to evangelise, but it was more connected with Christ outside the world. It told more healthfully. After all there is as much real work done and a better kind of work. A difficulty arises that we are not preaching to heathens. If you go to China or India, the persons converted to Christ come amongst those Christians that are there. If you go and convert a man now, and he belongs to the Independents or Presbyterians or Methodists, he goes on with them. The man belongs to Christ, but the whole thing is lost in a morass. By a clear gospel the person will get hold of things that will make it impossible to go on as he had been doing; he will be led to consider that to continue as he had been doing will not do. It is one of the reasons that hindered me from preaching in dissenting places, that the gospel I preached tends to break the whole system to pieces. How can a man who believes me preaching that by one offering he is perfected for ever, go and listen to a man that is dinning about the law every day? If he does, the condition of his soul is lowered. I might not have been talking of any particular doctrines or separation from the body to which he belonged - and never would so speak; yet the preaching of a really full gospel would (if received) bring a man necessarily to that centre.

80 If you preach a full gospel, it will tell in the way described. It will gather to Christ without effort or persuasion. Indeed I never could and never did make one Christian leave the systems. I believe that there are people among the poor Roman Catholics that will go to heaven. But there is one thing wrong, and that is all those divisions; for I defy anybody to shew me such a thing in the word of God as what is now called the church. One must come out of confusion. But, further, we are told to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

The gift of a pastor is a rare one. Could anyone exercise the office of a pastor without having a gift, that is, do a pastor's work without being specially gifted? He will do it very badly if he has not got the gift. If he does it really, he has got the gift - he cannot do it really without that. It is possible that I did not quite convey what I meant. In the present state of things is the work of a pastor done in any way by any one who has not the gift of a pastor, or can it be? Much depends on the spirit of the thing. You may have him in the place and office, but he cannot do the work of a pastor because he has not got the gift. Supposing a person says, I do not profess to have the gift of a pastor, and yet I must look after souls as well as I can? One has no objection to that, for it is brotherly love. If you get a person in brotherly love doing what he can, it is very well: we all ought to care one for another. A very young Christian cannot do as much as an older one, but in a certain sense everybody ought to care for his brother. In verse 16 after the chief positive gifts, evangelists, pastors and teachers, which go on to the end, you get "from whom," that is, Christ, "the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth." That is what you refer to. One has not a specific gift and office, but he does whatever he can do. "Fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying itself in love." Here then all the members have something or other. They have each their place and service: one may exhort, one may have a little word of wisdom and never appear in public at all. There is that which "every joint supplieth." It is real and approved of Christ.

81 It is connected with verse 7 of course: only there he spreads that out into these gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers; and then he goes on to what "every joint supplieth." You first get the positive gifts. A person may evangelise, though he be not actually an evangelist; he may take an opportunity of speaking for Christ. Compare Acts 8: 4.

I leave every person to his own conscience as to places where he may be free to evangelise. At first I preached in every church or chapel where I was permitted; but I found it was not a good plan. If I saw a man preaching the gospel honestly or fully in the streets and there was opposition, I could identify myself with him without asking who he was or where he came from; but this is a different thing from planning to go out with him. I could not; but I leave every person free. You cannot control any man's conscience; you may advise him. I do not conceal that I am outside the camp. It makes people angry sometimes; but I am deliberately outside the camp, altogether and totally, and I think I know what I am about from Scripture. If I go there, I mix myself up with what is in the camp, and I give an uncertain sound. My deliberate judgment is that in the present state of the church of God one should be outside these connections. I think it is all going on to judgment as fast as it can, and it is not charity to go on with it so as to enfeeble the testimony. I have seen it going on these forty or fifty years nearly, with persons attempting to go on with it; and I have never seen such persons either grow up into the truth or make others clear in their walk. After an experience of many years I am perfectly clear in my judgment about it.

As to how far one could wish God speed to or have fellowship with any work going on outside, if I knew of a person preaching Christ even of contention, I would rejoice as the apostle says. I could not go and join with a man that was doing it in contention, yet I am glad he is preaching Christ.

With certain preachers I would not have fellowship for special reasons. It is a matter of discipline. I separate between having fellowship with Christ preached and co-operating with the men that preach. Do you think I should join with a man that preaches from contention? I am glad he is doing it in one sense, because Christ is made known by it.

82 In this way I can own all ministry where it is true, apart from recognising a man in the sense of co-operating. It is the thing that gives a character to the evangelising itself. My experience is that it is not the way to get souls on. I have seen both done. I have seen brethren doing it; of course they stand or fall to their own Master. I would go with them in preaching the gospel, but not with the camp. I think it is a great thing for our souls to get hold of - you cannot expect the newly converted soul to get hold of it at once - that there is this immense system, "the camp," which is not of God, though there are many people of God in it. Therefore you must leave individuals to judge in each case. But that which associates me with it I cannot do. It would be building again the things I destroyed. If I am to associate myself with it, why did I leave it? I never should attack anybody nor ask anybody to come. I never would and never did; but I am not going to be driven out of what is plain in Scripture.

There is no true Christian that has not something or other given him for service in the body, merely perhaps a little bit of wisdom. Everybody has got something for service to the body, as a hand or foot or eye; but not everybody a prominent gift as a pastor or evangelist. Everybody has got something according to the measure of what Christ has given him; and if he go beyond that measure, it will be mere human action or no good at all.

We now come to the ordinary exhortation as to walk. He shews the state they were in - ignorance and sin. "As the truth is in Jesus"; it is not doctrine, though doctrine is contained in it. The truth as it is in Jesus is the having put off the old man and put on the new - this having been done by faith. Then he adds, "and being renewed in the spirit of your mind." The putting off and the putting on are not in the present tense, whereas being renewed in the spirit of your mind is. The truth is, that you have put off the old man, but you do want renewing. In Colossians (chap. 3) this is distinct: "Lie not one to another, seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new." In the Epistle to the Ephesians he is not saying directly to them what they have done, but saying what the truth is in Jesus. So it is more abstract. The truth in Jesus is having put off and having put on. Being renewed is present; the renewing of the spirit of your mind is a thing that is always going on.

83 After this we get another immensely important principle in the new man, which according to God is created in "righteousness and holiness of truth." This is the character of God Himself. The first man was innocent; he was not righteous but innocent. There was no evil in him. To be righteous and holy you must have the knowledge of good and evil. God is perfectly righteous and perfectly holy. He judges with authority what is evil and good; but innocence does not know good and evil. The new man is after God. Another expression is found in the Colossians, which is of great importance - "renewed in knowledge according to the image of him that created him." There is a positive knowledge of God. It is not merely that there is an absence of sin, but I have a positive knowledge of God Himself, and it is what God is that is the character and essence of the new man.

So Peter speaks of being "made partakers of the divine nature." It is not merely that a man is born again. It is the truth as it is in Jesus. Of course a man is born again. Abraham had to be born again; but he did not know anything about putting off the old man and putting on the new. You never find this in the Old Testament. You find there the knowledge of sin working, but the Old Testament saints did not make a difference between the old man and the new. The moment that death came in, the believer and man took his place with God in Christ, I get the old man and the new.

We get here the putting on the new man, created after God in righteousness and true holiness. I have put on this new man, but then I have put off the old. It is a totally new thing. It is Christ who has died, so that the old thing is done with. For faith I have done with the flesh. I am not a debtor to the flesh; I am crucified with Christ: the old man is done with. We are quickened together with Christ. This is more than being born of God. Christ quickening as the Son of God, which He does - He quickeneth whom He will - is a different thing from being quickened with Christ as risen; because, when I am quickened with Christ as risen, I have left all that is the old thing behind me and have gone into a resurrection-state. The old man is crucified with Christ. This is of all importance as being one of the two great elements of Christian walk. These are, first, the putting off the old man and the putting on the new; secondly, that the Holy Ghost dwell in us and we are not to grieve Him. These are the two grounds of Christian walk in Ephesians.

84 To be made partakers of the divine nature is the moral character of it. It is after God; it is the pattern of what God is. God is righteous and God is holy; and now it is not merely setting us up as innocent, but we, being actually partakers of the divine nature, have a character according to what He is. It is after God, created in righteousness and holiness.

It is morally like God's nature, but still, that might be rather a bold way of saying it. Morally it is the same; else you could not delight in Him. He chose us in Christ that we should be "holy and without blame before him in love," which is God's nature. He is holy, He is blameless, He is love. And so it is with Christ. If you look at Him down here, He was holy and blameless, and He was here in love. So in Hebrews "he that sanctifieth," that is Christ, "and they that are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren."

85 But the putting off the old man we had better not pass over. The Christian, in virtue of Christ's death and having Christ as his life, as a Christian does not own the flesh at all. The mind of the flesh is enmity against God, but he does not own it. He has not to die to sin but to reckon himself dead, Christ having died and all being available for him. What Christ has done he reckons himself to have done in this respect. How can you be alive? I say I am not, but Christ lives in me. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." We have put off the old man (not, are to put it off), that is, if we have heard Him and have been taught of Him. Besides, this new man is after God.

Observe the two in Romans 8. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (that is, the new man) "hath made me free from the law of sin and death; for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." When Christ was on the cross, He not only bore our sins and put them away, but God condemned sin in the flesh there, so that I see it is all put off. Faith reckons it. Christ died to sin; He is the only Person that died to sin; so God reckons us alive unto God, not in Adam, but in Jesus Christ our Lord. My life in which I live is not flesh: "ye are not in the flesh," but in Christ. When you come to realise it, you take the putting off first; you say I have put off the old man - I am not a child of Adam - and put on the new man, that is, Christ. In short I believe in the testimony of 1 John 5 where it is said, "this is the record [or, testimony] that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." It is entirely a new thing in Christ; and as a proof that eternal life is not in Adam but in Christ, he shews the Spirit, and the water, and the blood - what has living power and what cleanses, what expiates - all coming consequent upon Christ's death. The water came out of His dead side, as did also the blood, while the Spirit came after He was glorified. These are all witnesses that eternal life is not in the first man but in the Second. I reckon myself dead, I am crucified with Christ. Thus it is a nature that is after God Himself. Then we get another element - the Holy Ghost dwells in me, and I am not to grieve Him.

The putting off of the old and the putting on of the new occur at the same time really; but practically, when you come to details, you find you have the one first, and then you realise the other. In real truth you put on the new man first. When you come to practice, you have to treat the old thing as dead, and the other comes free. In point of fact we must get the new man in order to treat the old man as dead. If the old man was treated as dead first, I would have no man at all. When I have got Christ as my life, I come to look at myself, and it is all over with the old man. There are many who own that they must be born again, but they do not recognise that they put off the old man. The moment I have got the death and resurrection of Christ, I say I am not a debtor to the old man. This is not merely the fact of being born again; it is not merely saying I am born again, but the other thing I have put off, that is, to faith.

Of course the old man is part of the old creation. "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation." We are the firstfruits of His creatures. "He has begotten us that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." When he speaks of dealing with the condition I am in, which you do not get here but in Colossians, which is a little lower, he does not say, Mortify the old man, but your members which are upon earth. He does not allow any life but Christ - "Your life is hid with Christ in God." "Ye are dead"; now mortify (that is, put to death) your members. This implies power. It is never dying to sin, but that I am dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, and therefore I can mortify.

86 Romans 8: 13 ("Ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body"), and Colossians 3: 5 ("mortify your members") are but a different way of expressing the same thing. In Romans we are not viewed as risen with Christ, whereas in Colossians and Ephesians we are. In Romans we are presented as dead with Christ, because the object of Romans never is to take us out of our place in this world. It shews us that we are in Christ, but at the same time still here; whereas in Colossians the apostle will not let them be alive in the world. "Why," he says, "as alive in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" All ritualism flows from not knowing we are dead.

Then we get another immensely important element, namely, that God dwells in us - the Holy Ghost; for we are told, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." The Christian is to do nothing that displeases God who dwells in him. You have no mortifying the members here in Ephesians. It is a new creation and nothing else. The epistle to the Colossians does not go as far as that to the Ephesians. In the former you get us risen, but not sitting in heavenly places as in the latter.

If Romans puts us into Jordan, it does not go on to the coming out of Jordan. Colossians puts us up on the bank; but Ephesians takes us and sets us down in Canaan to eat the old corn of the land where there is no manna any more. You cannot say they are a figure of that, it is going into details, which the figure does not. You get a figure of the whole thing that I have passed through Jordan. I am not in the wilderness, but am in heavenly places, and seated there in Christ; and not till then do I get circumcised. You get this in Colossians. There are two things in the Romans: man is dealt with, looked at as alive in sin; and death is brought in - Christ's death. By Christ's death their guilt is gone, and by it also they died. They are in Christ, but they are looked at as persons that have died, though not risen with Him. In the Ephesians, although the fact is looked at, as to the doctrinal statement, they are not looked at as alive in sin; they are dead in sins, which is another aspect of it, but the same state. When I am alive in sins I am dead towards God; there is not a single movement of thought, heart, or feeling in that state towards God. God can create me over again spiritually. Ephesians looks at a man as dead in sins, and says we are created in Christ Jesus. It is not justifying sinners there.

87 The man is justified in Romans; he is a new creation entirely in Ephesians; while in Colossians you get both. In the latter there is death and the new creation, but not yet seated in heaven. They are looked at as on the earth, and there is a hope laid up for them in heaven - "ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." In chapter 2: 11, 12, we read, "In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him in baptism [there I get the doctrine of Romans], wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead [I have now got beyond the Romans]. And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh hath he quickened together with him." There we get Colossian doctrine, but it does not take us up to heaven. When he speaks of that in Ephesians he says, "He hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Colossians is, as it were, between Romans and Ephesians. Therefore in Colossians you get, instead of sitting in heavenly places, "set your affections or things above," "the hope that is laid up for you in heaven," and such expressions. He does not talk of the Holy Ghost in Colossians. What we find in Colossians is life, and this is as important in its place as the Holy Ghost dwelling in us. In Ephesians you get the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, and therefore the body; whereas in Colossians you never get the Holy Ghost mentioned except in the expression "your love in the Spirit." For example, in Ephesians we read, "Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another," whereas in Colossians he says, "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds." Instead of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, it is God's nature the measure of how we are to behave ourselves.

The Holy Ghost works in the new nature, but is not said to dwell in it. It is said, that "Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." The Holy Ghost operates in the new nature. Still the dwelling is never spoken of as in it, but in the body; we need Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith.

88 I have got a new nature, and of course have not to pray to get one. The effect of this is most striking. In the Ephesians we are brought to sit in heavenly places, we have put off the old man and put on the new, and we have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us. In Ephesians it is, "As God in Christ hath forgiven you." We have got the nature, the state that I am in, to be able to walk: we have put off the old and put on the new; and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, and then we are told to be imitators of God as dear children. If it be said, How can we talk of imitating God (of course it is not Almighty power, but refers to moral things), how can poor worms such as we talk of imitating God? I answer, is not Christ your pattern? You are to follow that. This shews the absurdity of making it merely the law as our rule of life. If a dear child of God, I am to have a sense of it in my soul and exhibit it in my walk; I am "to walk in love as Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren"; we are to go and walk as He walked.

We have had the two subjective elements (that is, the state I am in) consisting of the new man, and the old man put off, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us. Then follow as a measure the two essential names of God - love and light. This is what Christ was in this world. "While I am in the world," He says, "I am the light of the world," and He was the expression of divine love. You are to be an imitator of God, and if you ask, How can that be carried out in man? you get Christ, that is, God manifested in a man. How clearly the thing is entirely above law! If law was carried out in the world, we should have the world all happy, and righteous, and peaceful; but this supposes the world to be all right. I am to care for another as much as for myself, but that will not do in this world, and therefore I get this, "He gave himself." It is not taking love to self as the measure of love to my neighbour, but going beyond the law, and giving oneself up for others. If all went on rightly, the law would be your rule now, but it is otherwise. As Christians, when you come to a world of wickedness, you have to follow God.

89 Let us look at the double character of this love, which is entirely practical. There are two kinds - what I may call love up and love down; and they are entirely different in kind. The care of a father and his child will illustrate the difference. The father loves down, and the child loves up; the one is to something above it, whereas the other is in condescending goodness. If you take a case of loving up, the more excellent the object the more excellent the affection. If one love a base thing, it is a base affection. If one love a man of noble character, it is a noble affection. If one love God, of course, it is the highest of all. Then on the other hand, if you take love down, the baser the object the greater the love. Such is the character of God's love to us. We get both in Christ. He loved His Father perfectly as Man (which was loving up), and He loved us when vile sinners (which was loving down); and we are to go and do likewise. Therefore I read here "as Christ hath loved us and given himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." He gave Himself for us and to God. This is perfection. He had an infinitely high object, and an infinitely low one, and He was perfect both ways. We have to seek to walk as He walked. There is fellowship also one with another. Of course when we can see, the thing to imitate is Christ walking in love - "as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God."

This is the side of love wherein you are imitators of God. Then you get the other essential name of God, and that is, light; which he says we are too. We are partakers of the divine nature - "ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." God is love, and God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. We were darkness, but now in Christ we are light in the Lord. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light." I get the full light in Christ, also the full love. Thus are the two essential names of God brought out. I am a partaker of the divine nature, and the Spirit of God dwells in me, and I am to act as God acted, and that acting was in Christ. "Awake, thou that sleepest," that is, looking at Christians, not committing sins, but gone to sleep in the world. In the world the people are all dead: but if a man goes to sleep, he is just as much alive as when awake, but he is as much as dead; he does not hear, nor speak, nor think; he is like a dead man. Look at the Christian that is going on with the world - he is with the dead. What am I to do, then? Christ is the light of the world, and "ye are the light of the world," He says to His disciples. It is a wonderful exhibition.

90 In 1 John it is said, "If we walk in the light," that is, absolutely; but, realising position, we walk in it. It is position; we are actually there. It is not like standing in righteousness. Here he is looking at practice. Walking is a real thing. It is not as if I say, Christ is my righteousness. It is a real living place we are walking in. Of course he judges in detail all sins. All the Gentiles are walking in darkness - I refer to the passage in Ephesians. "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but wise." Uprightness is not sufficient. If I have to go through a bog, I may be perfectly sincere in seeking a house on the other side; but if I do not look about me, I may sink in the bog. I must look about me. It requires wisdom to go through this world, I mean as a Christian.

The expression "redeeming the time" is apt to be always misapplied. It means seizing opportunities. You get it in Daniel 2, where the king speaks to the Magi: "I know ye would gain the time, because ye see the thing is gone from me." They wanted to redeem the time. Here I am to walk in such a way, so full of Christ, that, when an opportunity offers, I can bring Him out. The days are evil. You cannot always have an opportunity; you might be casting pearls before swine; but you must be in a condition to embrace every opportunity. In Daniel it is "gain the time," or as in the margin "buy" the fit moment. A thousand more opportunities would present themselves of bringing Christ before people if we were living in the power of the Spirit of God. The days are evil, we are told. The power of evil is there. You must not complain because the days are evil. The Lord can guide us through one day as well as another.

"Instant in season" is to the saint. The time will come when they will not receive sound doctrine. This applies to the dealing with the saints. It is often applied to the gospel; but the mischief is, that people take passages without reading the context. I am sure we could find a great many more seasons if we were faithful to Christ. "Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned into fables." He is evidently looking to Christians. Timothy was to go on earnestly pressing, because soon they would not listen to him. Whether it were seasonable or not, he was to go on with it, because very soon there would be no season at all.

91 I do not think the apostle here means the gospel. The previous chapter speaks of the departure. He is speaking of the evil days. It is not that we are not to be preaching everywhere we can to sinners, but the special thing he has in his mind is that the church would get into such a state that they would not listen to truth. When we preach the gospel now, we preach to people that call themselves Christians. You may meet infidels, it is true. It is of the last days he is speaking. In John's time they were come in. It was the last time then, though morally developed since. Peter says, "The time is come that judgment will begin at the house of God," and Jude says, that these men "have crept in unawares," and also that these are they that the Lord comes to judge.

The latter times bring it up to the last days, being the more general term: "In the latter days some shall depart from the faith," and in the last days they shall have a form of godliness. It is rather more distinctly characteristic; because in John you get the last days marked by antichrists being there. He does not use them to say they are the last of the latter. In the latter days you get celibacy and asceticism, as it is called; so the apostle shews in Colossians. He speaks of that system which was already dawning. God allowed it all to begin before the apostle went, that we might have scripture upon it. It ripened afterwards. Therefore he speaks of the latter days as those coming in after he was gone. They are used in the Old Testament pretty much in the same sense. Still the last days are more definite. "As ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists."

We had before the oppositions of science, falsely so called, and the forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats, and we all know it is going on since. In England you can hardly go into a cathedral without finding the monument of a bishop who lived forty days without eating anything: I have seen them when I used to go into such places. Now one may fast very profitably if one has occasion to do it. As such I recognise it: but to set about making a virtue of it in the way usually done is wrong because it went upon the principle that matter was an evil thing, and denied the atonement entirely, for they said that Christ could not have a body. This is the reason the apostle John insists He is come in flesh, and that His disciples had handled Him. It was denied that He was really a man in that way, because they thought all matter was a bad thing; and therefore the great thing to be done was to get the Spirit, which was good in everybody away from matter. Therefore they fasted to keep the matter down. This was a torment to the church. Though some of them were very strict, a great many were grossly immoral. It spread everywhere and affected even the orthodox. The Gnostics died out, but they left their taint in the church, and the whole system of celibacy and monasticism continued. I used once to fast in that way myself. On Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Saturdays I did not eat anything at all, but on the other days I did eat a little bread. I said, If I fast three days I can fast four, and if four, five, and if five, better six, and if six, better seven; and what then? I had better die. Thus there was something that made it impossible to go through with the thing. I went on with it, but God delivered me.

92 The Spirit of God had them in view. They were dawning then, because it says, "The Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter days some shall depart," etc. You see that evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, and that, when once the evil was introduced, it could not be put out.

It had been among the heathen before. The system of monasteries, and celibacy, and begging friars, was all in existence five hundred and forty years before Christ, and many think it was actually borrowed from the East. Certainly it is the same thing morally, but, as I said, many think it was actually borrowed from the East; as a great many of their doctrines were, I have no doubt. A Roman Catholic priest, when visiting the East, was perfectly astounded, and did not know what to think when he found among the Buddhists exactly the same things as Roman Catholics had at home. He told them he was a Lama from the west, and he was received in all their monasteries and elsewhere.

Returning to our epistle, we see that another element comes in. When we have them all in order, he says, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." Such is the joy they were to have, "Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." There are two things - my own will gone, and the perfect certainty of God's love. "Giving thanks always for all things": take away my fortune and I say, "Thank God." It is not easy, and of course the will must be broken; but on the other hand, God makes everything to work together for good to those that love Him. Then you get a spirit of grace, "submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ." It is not submitting to do evil if you want me to do it, but that in faith there is no will. If you want me to do wrong, I cannot do it because it is not God's will, but in everything in which my will is concerned I give way to you. We are to submit to one another in the fear of Christ. It is what sitting in heavenly places produces upon earth. Christ when here, could say He was in heaven, and He is given as our pattern, though to us it is purely by grace.

93 Next, there are two other main subjects that follow - the love of Christ to His church, and the conflict of the saints with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. We have passed away from what we are with God, and now we come to the special relationship of Christ with the church. The main thing in His mind is the church. "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the Saviour of the body." This I believe to be our body.

I get two things He does in consequence of His love to the church. He gave Himself for it out and out. This is the first thing He does in consequence of His love to it. Then, having taken it to be His own, He sets about to make it what He likes. He does not make what He likes to be His own, but takes it to be His own to make it what He likes. Next, I get present sanctifying and washing by the word; and afterwards His presenting it to Himself as a glorious church. This is special. It is not God loving poor sinners, but the special love of Christ to the church. The purification that we get here is that which we have in heaven; as far as it goes, it is the same nature, and quality, and standard, and measure, and everything else as will be in heaven. He washes it here that it may have no spot there. "Beholding with unveiled face the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into the same image from glory to glory." Looking at Christ in glory our hearts get filled with the motives that are there, and this effect is produced upon earth. The effect is produced here, but the motives are all above. He "loved the church and gave himself for it." This is the starting-point - "that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present the church to himself glorious, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing: but that it should be holy and without blemish." It is a great thing for us to see that the condition we are to be presented in to Christ is the power and measure of our sanctification here.

94 It is manifest that we find the same thing all through the epistles. For instance, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God: and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." I know I shall be perfectly like Christ in glory, and I purify myself according to that standard. It is not that I am pure according to it. I cake that measure and apply it now. Every step I take I see it clearer, and I may apply it to something else; but this is the only thing I am looking at to judge by.

In 1 Thessalonians 3 the same truth comes out in a striking way. "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do toward you; to the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." This is a passage that looks perfectly unintelligible until you get hold of what I have been saying. Instead of saying unblameable in holiness before God at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should have said, "unblameable in your walk down here." He looks at their realising their Christian position - "to the end he may establish your hearts," and draws the veil and there they are unblameable when Christ comes. This is where it is all measured.

But it is evidently a very important principle for this day and every other. All the perfection which is spoken of, Wesleyan or whatever it may be called, is clean gone. It does not come into the question, good or bad, because what I am shewn is the perfection of Christ in glory. I do not get it till I am in glory, and there is no other object presented to a Christian as the standard but Christ in glory. We are to be "conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." Again, "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Therefore the apostle said that he had not yet attained, but there was no other thing before him. He was always running on to it. We retain in heaven the impress got here; but this is Christ. There may be degrees of realisation. We shall be perfectly like Christ when we get there; all of us will be perfectly like Him. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the heavenly. I am like a person in a straight passage with a light at the end; I have more of the light every step I take, but I do not get the light till I come to the end. When He shall appear, we shall be like Him. I get a sight of this, and say, This is what I am going to be. It sounds strange to say that we cannot be as Christ was here, because He was absolutely sinless, and if I say I have no sin I deceive myself. But I shall be like Him there, and this is brought to bear upon me now that I should have no motive working in my soul but Him there. This is what the apostle means when he says, "not looking at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen."

95 It has been said, indeed, that God would not give a measure that we could not attain to; but I take the bull by the horns and assert that He never gave one that a man could attain to. He made man innocent, and there was no demand necessary; but the moment man becomes a sinner, God put something beyond him, which he is to run after. God gives him a law when he is in the flesh, and he is not subject to the law of God. It is an unattainable measure. Again, "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." This is our measure. Are you as perfect as this? When things are fully developed, I get Christ in glory. This is perfectly unattainable here, because God wants me to be always running on and having the one thing always before me. "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

The meaning of John 17: 19 ("For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth") is, that for their sakes Christ sets Himself apart as a model man (though I do not like the expression), that we might be made into His likeness.

96 The passage in Hebrews 12 ("Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus") is more the difficulties we have to encounter that he is looking at there. He says, Christ has got there; you take courage and run on. It is just the same race exactly. It is wonderful that we shall really be conformed to the image of God's Son, when we think of what we are. But it has nothing to do with our responsibility as to salvation. You are not set in this path until you are saved. Our responsibility as men, God's creatures, is not affected: as responsible men we are lost. It is over in that sense. Take, by way of illustration, a man in business who has contracted debts; suppose I go to him and tell him how he is to manage not to get into debt, he would only tell me I was mocking his misery, for he had nothing to manage. Responsibility is over in that sense; not that a man is not responsible for all he has done, but that he is ruined already, and of this the cross is the proof, because the highest act of grace is that Christ came to seek and save the lost. As to the history in Scripture, the whole system of probation concluded at the cross. "Now," said Christ, "is the judgment of this world"; as it is also said in Hebrews, "now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." When it is all over with man, sovereign grace steps in, and saves people out of their ruined condition. A person may get all his debts paid, but be left without a penny to begin the work again. God has not dealt with us in that way. He has paid our debts, and has given us the same glory as His own Son. This was a matter of His counsels before the foundation of the world; and it belongs to all Christians. There is labour which God rewards, for every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour; but in the likeness of Christ every saint will then be.

We shall all be conformed to the image of God's Son in glory. It was God's counsel before the foundation of the world, but never brought out till the cross. He "hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works [which is responsibility], but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but now is made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ." It was before the world in God's purpose about His people, but it was never brought out till Christ had laid the foundation for it in the cross. In Titus 1 there is a similar statement, "In hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began; but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching." All this glorious purpose, glorious for us and for God, never was brought out - never hinted at - until Christ laid a righteous ground for it in the cross. Then God brought it out and said, "That is what I am going to do." This with much more is what we find here in Ephesians.

97 But we have to notice another thing also: "No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ the church, for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." There I get not simply this purpose of presenting us to Himself, but how He loves and cherishes us as a man does his own flesh. It is His present care of the church. "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." This shews that the church could not have existed at all till Christ was glorified, because it is with Christ as a man it is connected. It is not that the Son quickened us (though this is true), but that we are members of Christ's body, of His flesh, and of His bones.

After exhortations to children and parents, slaves and masters, there is another great subject in this Epistle, the conflicts of the saint. We do not find the conflict except in Ephesians. It is not a conflict of flesh and spirit, nor is it a conflict of conscience when a man is quickened. The Jews were slaves in Egypt as an unconverted man is in his sins. When God brought them into Canaan, were they at once to have rest? There was conflict; and the proper sense of conflict with Satan is for us in heavenly places.

In the Authorised Bible "high places" is inserted in place of "heavenly places," which shews that the translators were afraid of the truth, and so altered the word. A similar alteration occurs in Revelation 4. There we get One seated on a throne, and the four and twenty elders also seated on thrones; but though the word in the original is quite the same, the translators altered the thrones of the elders into "seats." In our epistle they were afraid to translate "heavenly places," and they made it "high places"; but the word they have translated "high" here is the same as the one they have translated "heavenly" elsewhere, as chapter 1: 3.

98 People speak of Jordan as death, and quite rightly too, for it is a figure of death; but then is it not strange that, when they crossed over Jordan and got into Canaan, Joshua met a man with a sword drawn in his hand, and they had to fight? Is it not strange that, as soon as heavenly places are entered, conflict has to be entered on? Now what is Jordan? After passing through death into these heavenly places we begin to fight. Thus it does not mean actual rest in heaven as supposed. If I say I have put off the old man, this is the same as that I am dead with Christ. I have passed through death, and been circumcised with the circumcision of Christ, and now I can fight the battles of God with Satan. This is what we get here.

Redemption brought us into the wilderness. The wilderness is our passing through this world where our flesh is tested. Canaan is the other part of the Christian's life, where he reckons himself dead. Christ in spirit is there as the Captain of the Lord's host, and He has to fight the battles of the Lord Himself. That is what we get in Canaan. I sometimes wonder that it does not strike people what an odd thing it is, that if Jordan means death, and Canaan heaven (which they do), fighting should characterise the place in Joshua, for the first thing he meets there is a man with a sword drawn in his hand. The whole book of Joshua is about the battles of the Lord. There we get death brought in, as we have been saying, reckoning ourselves dead - I am crucified with Christ. This is what Jordan is: "If ye be dead with Christ." By-and-by it will be our place of rest. Yes, heaven will be ours. I am not quarrelling with the use of the image in that way. Jordan is a type of death, and Canaan of heavenly places. In the account we get in Numbers they are going through the wilderness and tested by God; and in Canaan they fought with flesh and blood, which is a figure of spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. We do not get there till we have passed through Jordan, that is, till we are dead and risen with Christ. This is every Christian's place; but I speak of realising it.

The Christian is in both at the same time, but not in experience, though his condition down here affects his power of fighting. He must have the armour on. I have to go through the world with the cares of family or business, or meeting the contradiction of sinners. But this is not a moment in which I am fighting God's battles: I am then fighting my own, so to speak. We are with God down here, or God is with us; and we fight with the devil in heavenly places. Until Revelation 12 he is in heaven. It is not where God dwells in unapproachable light; he is not there; but how could he be the accuser of the brethren if he be not in heaven? He went with the sons of God about Job, for we find Satan was amongst them. You could not have him accuser of the brethren, if he were not there. He tempts them down here, but accuses them there.

99 Suppose a Christian was preaching the gospel: in that would he be in wilderness circumstances? No, he is rather fighting the battle there. He might be in wilderness circumstances as to various things, but he is fighting the battles there, and he must use the wisdom of God against a subtle spiritual adversary. Suppose a man is attacked in the street and abused? You never get the question of the flesh away. When they did not consult Jehovah, they made mistakes, as in the case of Ai and Gibeon. Our contending with Satan would be against heresy, superstition, and other things. Satan may raise up opposition and violence in the streets, and hence the Christian would need wisdom; but you cannot separate the idea from having the flesh, because you will be making blunders. Thus there are doubts, and things of that kind, which Satan brings into the mind - infidelity, for instance. Satan in them acts directly; they are not mere temptations of an ordinary kind.

In this connection he adds, "Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might." We have no strength of our own. We have nothing to do with any carnal or fleshly weapons. "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." As long as the saints lean upon flesh and influence, they are not leaning on God, but flesh. The world has all the upper hand there.

Take an example in our Lord in His conflict in the wilderness. There was no sin in being hungry. This is hardly the kind of conflict; still the Lord overcomes. There was more wilderness work; still it was Satan. He too hindered the apostle from going to the Thessalonians. If one were endeavouring to make void all this truth, brought out up to this point, and say it was not true, it would be Satan's work. Infidelity, and heresies, and things of that kind, are referred to in this warfare. In a case of discipline Paul says, "we are not ignorant of his devices." Satan was trying to divide Paul and the Corinthians, and he says, "If you forgive it, I also forgive it. I see what Satan is at: he wants to make a split between us." Error as to any doctrine is Satan's power. I merely took the other as an example. In Canaan it is not so much as a roaring lion, but he might be. "In nothing terrified by your adversaries." In the case of Paul being prevented by Satan from going to the Thessalonians, God allowed it in His providence, as He allows everything in that dealing. In the case of Job, it was God commenced the matter. He overrules all that. "We would have gone once and again, but Satan hindered us." Opposition was raised up that he could not go. All that is conflict. We do not believe enough that there is such a thing.

100 The rulers of the darkness of this world are Satan and his angels. The darkness of the world is ignorance of God, who is light. Conflict of Satan is not characteristic of the wilderness. If there is anything of the kind, it is an attempt to go up and get beaten. They might have gone in at Kadesh Barnea, but they did not; and when they found how foolish they were, they attempted and were beaten altogether.

It is not what characterises the wilderness. God might give them a specimen of what they were to meet. He destroyed them unto Hormah. All our war is with the people that possess the land, that is, the devil and his angels. The wilderness is the patience of going through this world according to God. At Sinai is not the wilderness, it is totally apart. The general character of the wilderness is going through that where they had only manna and the cloud - Christ and the word and Spirit. They were to go through this world dependent on God. It is this characterises the wilderness, and not fighting. In Canaan they had not any manna. It meant characteristically the heavenly places, and the Lord set them to fight. In the type we get what characterises it. The first thing is the wiles of the devil; it is not his power here. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." He has no power if you resist him, so far as we are concerned. His wiles are dangerous enough. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood" as Joshua did; we wrestle against wicked spirits in heavenly places. "And having done all to stand" (that is, to make good your ground), "stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth": you must have the mind and affections tucked up with the word of God.

101 "Having on the breastplate of righteousness," that is, practical righteousness. It is not before God, but with Satan here. If I have not practical righteousness, Satan has got something against me: I am afraid. It is a good conscience I must have; my loins thoroughly tucked up and in order. I must have a good conscience and be walking in the spirit of peace.

We have not got the sword yet; the defensive armour comes before the offensive. In that state (having a good conscience, and the spirit of grace and peace) I now come to the shield from Satan. I am to look up to God with entire confidence; this is the shield of faith. Then comes the helmet of salvation. I can hold my head up; and, having got all the offensive armour complete, I take the sword. The sword of the Spirit is God's word.

And then, mark further, when I have got the armour and weapon, I am thrown back in entire dependence on the Lord - praying always. The word is first of all applied to myself - I am girded with truth, and, having got the rest of the armour, the word comes into activity which is the sword of the Spirit. Lastly I am cast entirely upon God.

When I begin to take the sword, it may be service among saints or in the gospel. People have sometimes fancied that the armour of righteousness here described is Christ as our righteousness; but this is with God. He is my righteousness with God; but I do not want armour against God; it is armour against wicked spirits I need. There is only one offensive weapon - the word. It is wonderful how the Lord has provided everything for us in Scripture. There is the love of Christ, who loves us like His own flesh; and the fighting with Satan follows. After we are put in our place, we get the love of Christ, and then follows the conflict with Satan.

Watching is another element in it. He says in this place, watching with prayer. If I am watching in my path in everything with God, it turns to prayer. If my heart is engaged about the blessing of the saints, I cannot get on without it. Watching in it is perseverance in it. The object of Satan is to keep us from realising these heavenly things. There is conflict for the benefit of all, as well as for ourselves. We have to put the armour on ourselves, but when we have got it on, we must fight Satan. The first part of verse 18, namely, "Praying always with all prayer and supplication," refers to the individual, then to all saints. It is for themselves, and then it widens out. It is a general principle first. You get this constantly in the Ephesians; as for instance, "That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints." The moment he gets to the thoughts and purposes of God, he cannot leave out the saints.

102 Confidence is in God known in Himself. I am not likely to go and ask you for something if I have not confidence in you. "The mystery of the gospel," in verse 19, includes not only the church but the whole testimony. Glad tidings take in really everything with Paul. He was a minister of the gospel in the whole creation under heaven, and a minister of the word to complete the word of God.

Comparison of the Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians

J. N. Darby.

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An attentive consideration of the Epistle to the Romans and that to the Ephesians, will afford us some interesting light on the question of the position of the believer in Christ. The whole question of our place in Christ is viewed under a different aspect in the two epistles. I would briefly consider this. The doctrine of redeeming grace may be viewed in two ways. God's own purposes as to His children in glory may be developed on the one hand; or the condition of man portrayed, and met by grace visiting them in mercy to deliver them on the other. The Epistle to the Ephesians follows the first of these methods; the Epistle to the Romans, the second.

In Ephesians we have at once the saints blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ - placed in the blessed image of God before Him, and adopted to be His children. Redemption itself comes as a means in the second place. The knowledge of the mystery - the gathering together in one all things in Christ, and our sealing as heirs till the redemption of the purchased possession follow. The Romans, after some introductory verses, commences by the description of the dreadful state in which fallen man was, unfolding the depravity of the Gentiles, the hypocrisy of those who pretended to moralise and yet were personally no better, and finally the sad condition of the Jews, who, if they had the law, broke it. In chapter 3, at the close, grace meets this state. But this leads to the consideration of the work of grace, in each epistle, in a different way.

To speak first of the Ephesians, the sinner is seen dead in trespasses and sins - walking, doubtless, in them, but, before God, wholly dead. But even here this is not the first object presented. As chapter 1 presents the position in which the saint is placed, so the second the work which brings him into it. With this view, what is first brought before us is God's power towards us manifested in what was wrought in Christ. God had raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His right hand, far above all principality and power, above and beyond all created glory, not only in this age, but in that to come, where all hierarchies will be in their true glory and unclouded elevation, but He above and out of them all. Divine power in its exceeding greatness had brought Him from death up there.

104 As the origin of our life is before all worlds (John 1; 1 John 1), so our place before God is out of and above all worlds and creature powers. It is to be remarked here, however, that Christ Himself is looked at as already dead. The whole work is thus of God; for Christ being dead, is looked at, of course, as Man, and this wondrous power is exerted, and He, as Man, is at God's right hand. Then the saints are brought before us, Gentiles or Jews, as alike children of wrath by nature, and are seen once utterly dead in trespasses and sins, quickened together with Him, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ. The whole is entirely God's work. We are created again. It is not living men who have to be dealt with, who are without law and under law, must die with Christ, and are set free by death. They are found dead in sins, and we get the perfect full blessing of the work, because it is entirely God's. Man is for nothing therein, for what has he to do with creation? He is created; all that man (that is, the believer) is is God's work. Hence, also, remark, we have peace, making nigh, reconciling, exalting to sit in heavenly places in Christ, but not justifying; because it is a living, responsible, existing man who has to be justified before God. But we have Christ exalted, and ourselves exalted in Him. It is God's work in Christ and in us, not our being justified before God.

If I turn now to the Romans, it is otherwise. I get Christ alive on the earth, come of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared Son of God with power by resurrection. Still flesh could not live unto God, nor they that are in it please Him. Hence we find Christ as come in grace for them, not dead but dying, and then alive to God. I get the condition and quality of man, not simply the work of God as to one dead. So as to men; I get the means of standing in righteousness before God, and not an absolute work. Nor is this all. In the Romans the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God is not contemplated, nor the union of the church with Him. Hence we are not said to be quickened together with Him, nor made to sit in heavenly places in Him. His exaltation is just mentioned in chapter 8, with "who even is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us" - which last thought does not, of course, contemplate union. In chapter 12 the practical effect of union among ourselves is spoken of; but, in general, these topics form no part of the instruction of the epistle. Men are living, guilty beings, the whole world guilty before God; and to learn that, in the remediless state of their nature, death is the only remedy; in itself fatal, doubtless, but perfectly saving when in Christ. It is atonement for all sin, and deliverance from the position in which we were: for death is evidently the end of that, and our life thus wholly new, Christ being risen from the dead, and we are to walk as alive to God through Him. We are justified by His blood; and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

105 But the Romans, as teaching the justification of a sinner, necessarily first views him as a sinner to be justified. Hence it goes through the whole question of law; and we have the experiences of the man not justified, though convinced of sin, and then justified from the sin - alive in conscience without law, dying under law, and alive in Christ, where there is no condemnation. The practical process is gone through. The effect is this, that he is brought up to the point where the Epistle to the Ephesians begins with him. He finds that there is no escape from the condition he is in, as a child of Adam, or a Jew, but by death. Yet, were it his own, it would of course, lead him to judgment, not to justification, but where all guilt is proved. It is Christ who dies, and is set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood; so that God is just, and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. That meets the case of guilt, but is not life; for so Christ would be dead, and we brought in Him into death. This could not in any way be. For not only would there be no life, but it would even prove, as the apostle shews in 1 Corinthians 15, that there was no remedy. Our faith would be vain; we should be yet in our sins. But we believe that God has raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.

The consequence of this different view of things is seen in the practical result in man under the operation of God's Spirit.

In the Romans we have experiences flowing from the conflict of the newly introduced principle of life with flesh, or the effect of deliverance from it, by the knowledge of the power of deliverance in Christ. The former we find in chapter 7, where the conflict of the new nature with the lusts and will of the old under law are depicted; and the second in chapter 8, where the spiritual blessings of one who is made free from the law of sin and death, by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, are drawn out before us in a way to produce the profoundest interest in the soul that enters into it.

106 In the Ephesians the man is dead in sins, and transported into heavenly places by the operation of God; being created anew in Christ Jesus, unto good works, which God has afore prepared, that we might walk in them. The works belong to the new place and condition in which alone we are known in the Ephesians. God has afore prepared works for His new created ones. Hence, we have no experience of passing through conflict, and deliverance, and its results; but there is a demand to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, and a desire that the saints, being rooted and grounded in love, may realise in their hearts, by Christ's dwelling in them by faith, the full effect, even to filling to all the fulness of God, the greatness of the infinite scene of glory into which they are brought, and know that love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

In result the general principle of the difference is this. In the Romans, the man is found alive in sin, is convicted of it, and has (Christ having died for him to put it away) to come, in the conviction of the hopeless badness of his nature, to death, and then rising again, alive through Jesus Christ, be thus justified before God, and by God, on the one hand, and alive in a new life on the other; then nothing shall separate him from the love of Christ. In the Ephesians the man is found dead in sins; but then he is raised up, and set in heavenly places in Christ (according to the power in which Christ, when dead, was raised of God, and set in the heavenly places, far above principalities and powers, and every name that is named), and brought as a new creation, children withal, and heirs into immediate nearness to God. The additional truth is brought out, that we are united to Christ in this place, as members of His body, and His heavenly bride.

I cannot here - time does not allow it - do more than draw out the great general principles of the different aspects of truth presented by the two epistles. He who searches as a devout learner into the truth of God, will, I am sure, find (in what I here notice in these epistles) elements of deep and profitable instruction, as to his own relationship with God, the Christianity of his soul and of the word, and of his soul according to the word. Perhaps some one, for his own and our edification, may furnish us with further results which flow from it.

Comparison of Epistles

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The comparison of certain epistles illustrates with much interest and instruction the path of the Christian. I send you the thoughts which have suggested the remark. I refer particularly to the Epistle of Peter, Colossians, and Ephesians.

In Peter we have Christ risen, having accomplished redemption; then His own actings, in that resurrection, of that power of life which is the spring of all our hope, and sets it in lively exercise towards its end, which is in heaven, and hence makes a man, and even a Jew (who once had other thoughts), a stranger and a pilgrim here. We will examine this in the statements of the epistles.

But to make my meaning more clear, I will first refer to the Ephesians. There the saints are seen sitting in heaven - there already - not on the way there; their conflicts and position in general flow from this. Hence they are seen risen with Christ, seated in heavenly places in Him, and this, through union with their Head, by the Holy Ghost sent down; on which last great fact their earthly position also depends.

The Epistle to the Colossians is based indeed on the same principle; but there they were in danger of not holding the Head. Hence they are addressed on somewhat lower ground, and urged up to the point which should have been the spring from which their thoughts and feelings flowed.

To turn now to the epistles themselves, remark, in Peter, the ground on which the Spirit of God places the saints, the sojourners of the dispersion, that is, the believing Jews scattered through the provinces. They are "begotten again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." It is not that they are not risen with Him. Of course they were; yet they are not viewed under this aspect, but as redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; travelling through the wilderness towards Canaan - not seated in the land eating of the old corn of it (whatever conflicts were before them there), but through the efficacy of redemption made strangers and pilgrims in the desert. It is the Christian's place here below - not the privilege and joy of faith, but the life of faith; and hence, all through which he passes here become not distractions for his heart, whether painful or pleasant, but trials of his faith. This is exceedingly gracious and loving of our God (and what is not?), and the consequences in many respects exceedingly precious.

108 In the Ephesians we have, however, the Christian in another point of view. Heaven is not presented as a hope; the Christian is there. It is not that the resurrection of Christ has begotten him to such a hope; the same power which raised Christ, and set Him at the right hand of God, far above all principality and power, has wrought in him; and he is raised up together with Him, quickened together, and sitting in heavenly places in Him. Thus he is viewed as in heaven in Christ the Head, not as hoping to arrive there. Peter views him as toiling along the road, being redeemed by the precious blood of Christ - as Israel in the desert, with Canaan before them; the Ephesians, as sitting there in his Head, Christ. Hence neither is the coming of Christ presented as a hope in the Ephesians. What is set before us in the way of hope, in the form of intelligence communicated of God, is the gathering together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth - in Him in whom we have received an inheritance. The power which has wrought in Christ has wrought in the believer, God having given Christ to be "the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." God, of His great love wherewith He has loved us, has, when we were all together children of wrath, quickened us together with Him, and made us sit, raised up together, in heavenly places in Him.

In Colossians, at first sight, we seem to have lost this position. But the epistle does but serve to bring out more distinctly the great and precious truth. The apostle is obliged to bring out heaven prominently before them. They needed this; and we have, as in Peter, "the hope which is laid* up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before." Why this difference where, nevertheless, Christ is put forward as the Head of the body? They were beginning alas! to be beguiled, and to be subject to ordinances, not holding the Head. But the apostle urges them, as it were, back to the point from which they were slipping away. He presses on them their resurrection with Christ; once dead in trespasses and sins, but buried in baptism with Him, and raised through faith in the operation of God who hath raised Him. If dead with Christ, how could they, as alive, be subject to what related to flesh and perished with it? And then he draws the conclusion, which associates the two practically: "If then ye be risen with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth; for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." This was their real position. They were indeed in danger of slipping away from it; but he urges them upward to their privilege and place in Christ.

{*The word is different from the one Peter uses.}

109 As regards the coming of the Lord, it is also introduced in a way which remarkably confirms this character of instruction. They were not taught to wait for Him as if they were on earth, and He to appear. Nor is it omitted in order to contemplate their association with Him in heaven. His appearance is spoken of; but then their association with Him, in a life which is with Him now hidden in God, is pressed upon them, by this remarkable truth, that when He appears, so identified were they with Him that they would appear with Him. Their hearts and affections, then, are urged upwards, but it was to lay hold on the consciousness that they were one with Him that was there. Their life was hid with Him there, but they were not holding the Head as they ought. I do not go farther here; perhaps I may, at another time, notice the different way the Lord's coming is spoken of connected with this.

What God is to us in Christ

Ephesians 1.

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There are two ways in which we may look at our relationship to God, and rightly: first, our coming to Him; and secondly, our souls looking at the dealings of God towards us.

Of Abel, it is said, by the Holy Spirit, God had respect unto his gifts - he came with his needed offering. We are looked at in the Epistle to the Hebrews as drawing near to God. Who could draw near unless he could bring Christ as an offering? We must have that sacrifice in order to bring us near, consequently in that case our relationship to God is measured by our need. We come near because we find we cannot do without it, and we accept that offering as needed to accomplish it.

In another way, the measure of God's blessing we never know until we look on our relationship as measured by God's thoughts of us - by all that which He loves to display when He satisfies His own heart of grace with His ways of shewing it out. We never enjoy our true blessing unless we see how He thus feels and acts. My mind must rise above what I am, to what God is; then it is my mind is formed by the revelation of what God is. To this we are called.

We must come in by our need, as the prodigal did. Man cannot by searching find out God. There cannot be any knowledge of God in grace by man's competency to know Him. There would be no need of grace if he could know God without it. If I can claim this grace, I do not need grace at all. The way a sinner must come in must be by his need; in that way he learns grace, learns love. But when I have got to God, it is another thing. Then He would form our minds and hearts by what He is Himself. I come as a sinner, because I need it - just as a hungry man needs food; but when brought, I have fellowship with the God who has brought me to Himself. The measure is given in this epistle - "growing up into Christ, in all things." It is a wonderful thing that God has called us into fellowship with Himself - to have the same thoughts, the same feelings as God, and to have them together. All flows down from Him and we are brought into it by grace, and we enjoy it just so far as we are emptied of self.

First, He makes us partakers of the divine nature - the same nature as Himself. This gives the capacity - I do not say power. The new nature is capacity; the Holy Ghost is power. The new nature is entirely dependent and obedient. The Holy Ghost being there gives me power. In the first Epistle of John this capacity is brought out in a remarkable manner (chap. 4). Every one that loveth is born of God - has this nature; and he that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Then being partakers of His nature, we, by virtue of the blood being sprinkled on us, have received the Holy Ghost which gives power. In order to communion there must be perfect peace as regards the conscience. There is no communion in conscience. I am alone as to my conscience, and so are you. In order to communion, I must have nothing to settle with conscience: a perfectly purged conscience is the basis of communion. We must know that God has settled the whole question of sin. The moment a child of God fails, communion ceases. The Spirit then becomes a reprover to bring him back; but there is no communion. Communion is the full enjoyment of God and of divine things; when there is nothing to think of as regards oneself. God can now let flow into his heart who has a conscience purged, all that He delights in. He loves to communicate what He Himself has joy in. All that Christ is is for us to enjoy. You are called into this place of Christ Himself - He, the Head of the body; and that the delight God has in Christ should flow down into your heart. How rich then the saint must be! but he is entirely dependent on the Spirit of God for power. There is no power to enjoy anything without Him. There must be an emptying from self to enjoy what He gives. The Spirit of God has no place to act where self and imagination are in exercise. It is not the glory at the end that is so much the object of the believer's thoughts, as the source of it - God Himself. There is more happiness in the fact of being in communion with Him than in the things He communicates: and I say again, because of its importance, a soul cannot have the enjoyment of the things of God without having peace, which is connected with the conscience.

111 The beginning of this chapter shews how we are presented to God. It is a test, whether the judgment-seat brings any terror to your minds. Does it give you any uneasiness? How does the saint get there? Christ comes to fetch him. He said, "I will come again, and receive you unto myself." Do you ever think of your coming before the judgment-seat being the effect of His having come to fetch you? Not sending or you, but coming Himself for you, because of His desire to have you with Him where He is, to be fashioned into the same image. You are to bear the image of the heavenly, as you have borne the image of the earthy. When you are there before the judgment-seat, you will be with Him, and like Him: every trace of God's unwearied hand, all His patience, here brought out. We shall be like the One who is the Judge. You will never (I speak, of course, to saints now) be before the judgment-seat of Christ without His coming to fetch you into the same glory in which you are to be. It is the knowledge of grace, or redemption, that leaves me at perfect liberty; and all my life should be a witness to the enjoyment of this blessedness into which we are being brought. The whole of this is through looking at Christ. He is the Firstborn among many brethren in the Father's house. We shall be with Christ and like Christ before God the Father. There will be the blessedness of being with Christ, in the presence of the Father, loved as He is loved. This is what we have in this chapter - set in the presence of God.

112 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." We are blessed in Christ, and God is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is "my God and your God," Christ said. There is no measure of any relationship out of Christ - nothing but condemnation out of Christ. If I have known what it is to be condemned, if I have known what sin is, and how God hates sin, I know there can be no hope for me out of Christ. But God has put away sin. God does not look at my sin, but on Christ. Just as I know my condition in Adam as ruined and condemned, so I know my place in Christ - accepted. How it throws us out of self-importance, self-dependence, self-glorying! We enter into the presence of God in Him who has perfectly glorified God. He is the God as well as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is that wrought in Christ which was hidden from ages and from generations, and He has gone back in virtue of what He has done to vindicate the character of God. We enter into the blessing in Him who has done all. We shall know God in virtue of what the Father bestows upon us. The Father brings many sons unto glory, and brings them back perfect through the work of Christ - "blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ": none can be wanting; not an affection of God's delight is wanting. He brings us into His presence without one reserve of the affection that Christ has. We are brought back in Christ. Therefore all that Christ has we have.

113 How he goes on to unfold it! "That we should be holy and without blame before him in love." He is not content with a mere general account, but brings it out in detail that we may know it. Suppose I saw a person with an excellent character, and I felt I could never be like that person, I should not be happy. The fact of the excellency of the person, without the possibility of being like him, would make me miserable; and to have him always before me would be all the worse. But in heaven I shall be with Christ, and see Him, without the possibility of being unlike Him. What divine inventiveness of love to make us happy, infinitely happy! What God does, and is, is infinite; and it is so much the better that He will be always above us.

We shall have perfect freedom of intercourse with Him. Moses and Elias were speaking with Him of His death (it may not be then so much of His death), but there will be communion with Him of all that He has.

"Without blame." Released from all that which would hinder my loving Him; therefore I am made "holy and without blame." There is the proper joy of the heart - "before him in love," but no thought of equality; "wherein he hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence." Then there is another fact - "Chosen in him before the foundation of the world." Thus we have His heart set upon us in eternity. The soul knows there is a personal love from God towards himself, and the heart delights in that. So with Christ. In Revelation 2 there is the white stone He will give - proof of personal delight. There is the individual rejoicing in the love of Christ.

How the Spirit seeks to draw out our affections by all this! He tells it all, and would have us know and enjoy it. He would have us know that we are going to heaven, and why He would form our hearts by what He is doing, while bringing us in, "having predestinated us unto the adoption of children" - still in Christ and with Christ - "by Jesus Christ unto himself." It is through Him, and in Him, and with Him I find it. It is having my heart fixed on God and the Father, that my affections may be drawn out to Him, and all is because "accepted in the beloved." God has not blessed angels like this. We are not servants only (we should be servants, to be sure), but we are brought into the confidence of children. Ought not a child to have confidence? We have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry "Abba Father." Our heart should answer to God's outgoings of heart in grace, and reflect this grace, "to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved." He has done it all.

114 Remark here, that there is not as yet a word about the inheritance. I dwell on that, as shewing how the affections of the saint are formed. If I speak of the inheritance, it is something below me. All prophecy concerns the inheritance. But I am looking at what is above me, and my own blessedness is in what is above me. Subjects connected with the church, blessed as they are, as prophecy, etc., are below. He will exercise us about these things, but let me first get my relationship with my Father known. Do not talk of me, what I have, but of what Christ is, and what He has. My soul must enjoy the love that has given it all. The love that has saved is more than the things given. It is of importance to the saints to feel this in the presence of God. It is not mental power, but the heart right - a single eye - that is the great thing. Unless a soul gets its intelligence and direction from God, it never understands the ways and affections of God. His own affections must be known and valued. If I have not known my place in the affections of my Father, I am not in a position to have the communion of His thoughts and purposes. When we were dead in sins, His heart was exercised for us. The sinner is here looked at as dead, not "living" in sins (as in Colossians) and chastening, etc., for that, but in Ephesians "dead," not a movement of life, when God comes and creates and blesses according to His own will. When our souls have known the value of Christ's sacrifice bringing us to God, we are seen not in ourselves at all, but only in Christ. Then there is perfect rest.

But afterwards he can tell us of the inheritance; and then the prayer is that we may know the hope of His calling (which calling is not the inheritance). He has called us to be "before him in love" (v. 3-6); then verse 11 begins about the inheritance. Now I will shew you what Christ's inheritance is, and you are to have it too. I must know I am a child and have the thoughts and affections of the child before I can have to do with the inheritance. The end of the matter is that we are brought in to share the inheritance.

115 How far are your hearts confiding in God's rest only for your wants, etc.? Rather how far is your confidence and delight in Him for Himself? The heart of the child will delight in the affections of the father. Do your thoughts about God flow from what God has revealed to you of Himself? or are you reasoning about God - will He, or will He not, do it? When it is a settled thing with me that I am a sinner, what have I to reason about? We want to be brought to this simple conviction: I am a sinner; and if I am a sinner, what am I to do? Can I look for anything from God on the ground of righteousness? No. When brought to God I am brought to grace. What He is is the spring and source of the whole matter. We are in Christ. It could not be otherwise. We stand there now, by virtue of the atonement, in that position which makes the sin the very occasion for God to bless. Christ died for my sins, and God is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins."

God is going to take us to heaven, to be happy with Christ there; but He makes us happy out of heaven too. It is a difficult thing, but He does; and He would have the saints living up there where God is, and where we are going, and free from this present evil world.

The Prayers in Ephesians 1: 15-23 and Ephesians 3: 14-21

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One prayer is attached to the name of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He is looked at as Man; the other to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because He is looked at as Son. The beginning of chapter I gave us God's calling, that we should be "holy and without blame before him in love," that we might receive "the adoption of sons." After stating His purpose concerning Christ Himself, that all things are to be gathered together in one in Him, the apostle goes on to the inheritance of which the Holy Ghost is the earnest, and then to the prayer for them on this ground. At the very close of the chapter he adds our relationship to Christ Himself, "the church which is his body." It is always well for us to remember that Christ has purified to Himself a peculiar people, a people of possession, and we cannot rise up to the counsels of God and mind of Christ unless we be brought into these intentions of God. The most immediate and closest object of His thoughts is His saints. I necessarily take in all saints if I am in His thoughts; I cannot have the mind of Christ without taking in all of them; it is the very spirit of Christ Himself.

There are two parts in this prayer of the apostle. The first is, that they might know the place itself; the second, that they should know the power that brought them there. The very fulness of the blessing we have got is that we are blessed with Him. As we were associated with the first Adam in ruin, so we are associated with the second Man in glory. There is nothing He has that He does not bring us into. This is the character of perfect love. Christ gives "not as the world giveth." The world may give generously sometimes, but it has done with what it gives; Christ gives by introducing His own into what He is enjoying Himself. Take glory: "the glory which thou gavest me I have given them." Take joy: "that my joy might remain in you." Take peace: "peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Take love: "that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." Having become man and accomplished perfect redemption, He would not take the inheritance without His joint-heirs. He is the source and head of all the glory that is given. "What is the hope of His calling?" Not of your calling - this would not do at all. Here it has the fullest and highest character. He takes the heart up to these thoughts and counsels of God. We are called to be before God holy and without blame; we are called to be in Christ's place before God, before the Father, perfectly answering to His love. He does not pray that they may have it, but that they may know it.

117 As to His inheritance in the saints, if our minds took in the Jewish place compared with our own, this would be extremely simple. Whose land was Israel's? It was God's inheritance; and those in whom He inherited it were Israel. We are not an inheritance, but we are heirs of God. We have nothing below what God would have in His mind here.

Observe the prayer is, "that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened." We must not think that we ought not to know these things. The New Testament carefully tells us that we have them laid open to us expressly. "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him" - such was the state of the Jews; but it is not our state. These things are not only given to us, but we are given to understand them; we are not in the condition of the Old Testament at all. In 1 Corinthians 2 we have the three steps; revelation by the Holy Ghost; communication of the word given by the Holy Ghost; and the reception of the word by the Holy Ghost.

Take the account of the heavenly city in the Apocalypse - it means something. All those images are characteristic in Scripture; I quite admit they are only figures, but they convey thoughts. The more we live in the mind of God, the more intelligent we are. The same things I see through a glass darkly, I shall see more clearly, but not differently. Thus the "white stone" is a symbol full of power. We have common joys, but there is the immediate approbation of Christ to the individual. "Gold" is always the sign of divine righteousness in itself. In the laver the priests were to wash and be clean; but with the sea of glass like crystal I walk upon purity. So "fire" is judgment, as "a sea of glass mingled with fire"; it is perfect purity as the result of judgment. "The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." Instead of walking through the dirt of this world, I am to walk in holiness and righteousness according to God. In the Apocalypse we do not go beyond the idea of God in government.

118 Now we come to the power that brings us into these things. "According to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead." What an immense truth there is in connection with this! The Messiah was not merely the promised Son of David, but the One in whom all God's counsels would be accomplished. He went down below all things, and then goes far above all heavens. This dead Man is raised above all principality and power. He had gone down into the place of death, and men are consequently looked at as dead in sins, not as living in them.

It is well to note here that to look at the sinner as alive in sins, or as dead in them, is just the same state, but a different aspect of it. In Romans man is seen alive in sins, and Christ meeting that state. There is nothing of justification in Ephesians, not a single stir of life there; we were dead in the sins, and Christ died for the sins. God comes in and takes us all up together, looked at as in the mind and counsels of God. God quickens us together with Him. Christ comes down to this place of death, having cleansed our sins on the road, and God raises Him. Man is looked at consequently as united to Christ. This you do not find in the other epistles. The same power has wrought in every individual who believes in Christ that wrought in Him. Christ had gone into death for us, entering into the whole thing in grace and finding us where we were, and, He having wrought the work that entitles Him to take us out of it, we are raised with Him, seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is your place; He does not ask you what you think about it! There is no person who has the Spirit of Christ without this as his place. We are waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, but one must be either in Christ or out of Christ. There are never two places for the Christian.

All things are to be put under Christ's feet as Man, for God "gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body" - a short sentence, but the whole mystery is in it. It is a quotation of Psalm 8, "all things are put under his feet." In Psalm 2 He is seen as Son of David, King of Zion, Son of God. Nathanael refers to this psalm; and Jesus says to him, "Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man." He is rejected, and then comes out Psalm 8. Now He is crowned with glory and honour, but we do not see all things put under His feet yet. He is now sitting on the Father's throne. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne." "Sit thou on my right hand," says Jehovah, "till I make thine enemies thy footstool." The day of grace is before that "till." There is our comfort and blessing, that He has finished the work for His friends. "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them which are sanctified." We stand therefore between the work which He perfected at His first coming, and His second coming. We are not, like the Jews, waiting to see that His offering is accepted, because the Holy Ghost is come out meanwhile and seals those who believe in Christ. I know the acceptance; I know that He is our forerunner. Then He deals with His enemies. When thus set over all things, the Son Himself will be subject to Him who put all things under Him - a most blessed truth for us. He will reign while He brings all into absolute order for God; when this has been done, He will take His place as Man and never give it up. He is the first-born among many brethren. Over everything He created, He is set as Man: but a head without a body would not be complete. The supplement is wanting; the church is His body.

119 No one ever mentions the church but Paul. Others may speak of a local church; and Christ said, "On this rock I will build my church"; but I am not speaking of this either. If the church had been revealed before the cross, you must make every Jew who was in it break the law. The essence of the church is that all are one, Jew and Gentile.

The prayer in chapter 3 is addressed to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There the apostle does not ask that they may know all these thoughts and counsels of God, but that Christ may dwell in their hearts. He is not now looking at them objectively, but at Christ in them. He desires that they should have Christ actually, consciously, by faith dwelling in their hearts, settled in the perfectness of divine love, that they may be able to comprehend the breadth and length and depth and height - he does not say of what - while putting Christ in the centre of all that glory. If I look at the breadth and length and depth and height, it is dazzling. If I found my closest friend the centre of the Queen's court, I should be at home there at once. Is it that I have lost anything by this, that it is the humble lowly One who is dwelling in my heart? Not a bit.

120 Thus, if in chapter 1 we have exterior power bringing up Christ, or ourselves by grace, into a position of glory at God's right hand, in chapter 3 we find divine power in us as in the position, and we sought to be strengthened and filled accordingly, in order to realise what it and God Himself is in the fulness of it. It is not God dealing with man, but Christ's relation as Son and dwelling in us by faith - He, the centre and divinely entitled light of the fulness and display, dwelling in us to give competency to enter into all the scene. Rooted and grounded in love we are at the centre thus in its moral or rather divine springs, and so embrace all that partake of the divine nature, because it is the action of that nature. Thus we look out into the wide extended scene of glory, whose limit none can tell; yet still this is a display, not a source, a scene, not Himself. In love we are at the source of all. We know the love of Christ that passes knowledge. What I know it in has made it wholly and peculiarly mine, yes, mine as being nothing in it. Christ is divine, infinite in nature. It is so proved in the way it adapts itself to all my wants and weakness, known in adapting itself to them, yet known in itself. As Christ's love it is for man, is manifested in man, and adapts itself to man; yet therein as divine it passes knowledge and brings man, as spiritual (he can feel, think, and apprehend as man), into the enjoyment of the scene, in which God is displayed, and to God Himself according to His own fulness, and this filled with love as in the centre of it consciously. It is we, not brought into a scene by power, but filled up to the measure of the fulness of God, Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith. Thus love is the spring of power in us, so that we estimate the scene of that fulness according to the title, character, and nature of God in it, He Himself being the ultimate blessedness of which we are conscious. What makes us familiar there is, that that which is in us, and which is the central light of all, is One we know, who dwells in us by faith, the nearest and most confided in of all, yet the fulness of Deity is in Him. Compare Rev. 21: 23.

121 God "is able to do exceeding abundantly according to the power that worketh in us." This is what we are to look for now: has your heart got hold of this? There is a power that works in us, and He can do exceeding abundantly above all we ask and think according to it. How little faith there is in the power of God!

I believe everything is in ruin or confusion; but there is no ruin or confusion in the power of Christ. I never can think of a power of evil that is not below His power.

"Not of the world"

Ephesians 1

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We get here the whole scope of God's thoughts and purposes. The Epistle to the Ephesians takes in two things: the presence and power of the Holy Ghost on earth, and the condition that we are in as the result of it; and what this is founded on, the exaltation of Christ at God's right hand. Ephesians does not speak of the coming of the Lord, because the way our glory is brought about is not its subject, but the present blessing of the saints. There is a distinct part at the end where our conflict with Satan comes in, but the general scope is what I have said: the basis, the exaltation of Christ; then purpose, what is in God's mind; and then the knowledge of it, by the Holy Ghost come down. "He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand"; this was needed for us to know our place and the most important consequences flowing from it down here. The presence of the Holy Ghost who has come down from heaven, the seal of our being heirs, and the earnest of the inheritance, is our present condition, based upon Christ raised to the right hand of God. A Man is sitting at the right hand of God: a wonderful truth for us. His "delights are with the sons of men." Being a Man, and having died and therein perfectly glorified God, God has raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand; and thereupon the Holy Ghost is come down here, so that we are associated with Him and the things that are on high, in heart and mind, though not yet there as to our bodies. This is where the heart has to be; our conversation is in heaven, for the Lord is there, not here; He is coming to make our bodies like unto His glorious body, but at present we have the Holy Ghost associating us with the place where He is.

God has "blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." That is God's mind. We are not yet there in fact, but it is the thought of God about us, and we ought to have it always before us. Blessings of the Jews in earthly places under Christ will be fulfilled in time, but for us it is "spiritual blessings," and "in heavenly places," and "in Christ" Himself; and our present connection with it all comes through the Holy Ghost.

We next get, in verses 4 and 5, two aspects of these spiritual blessings: they are brought before us in connection with the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, Christ is looked at as Son and looked at as Man. The Father owned Him in manhood as the Son in Matthew 3, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." God is called the God of our Lord Jesus Christ as Man; He is called His Father as Son.

123 This is the great basis of the wonderful place in which we are. It is man that God has in His mind put in this place of glory in His own Son. And this is not without its consequences, and those of the very highest nature.

God's choosing us before the foundation of the world is not what affirms in the time of choosing the sovereignty of grace, for, supposing for a moment that God were to choose us now, it would be just as sovereign an act as doing it then. The practical truth brought out in His choosing us before the foundation of the world is, that it proves that we have nothing whatever to do with the world; before its very foundation we were chosen; we have nothing to do with it but to get through it. God would bring us into this blessedness with Himself which has nothing to do with the world. We have just to go through it "unspotted"; that is all we have to do with it. Our living place was settled with God before ever it existed. God had this thought to have a people in Christ, "holy and without blame before him in love." This is what God Himself is. He thus brings us to be according to His own nature - "holy and without blame" before Himself. We have an infinite object before whom we are, and having the divine nature we can enjoy that object. We are not taken out of the world yet, nor are meant to be; but we are to pass through it as Christ did. If one look at it in another point of view, it is just what Christ was Himself, and that before God. This is the thought of God.

Then (v. 5) I get the Father. He might have had servants like the angels, but this was not His thought: "He predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself." He insists on that, it is the blessed part of it - that it is before God, and to Himself as Father. If it be a relationship, it is to Himself.

Thus we have the nature, "holy and without blame." It does not say there "according to the good pleasure of his will," for God could not have beings in His presence in a sinful state. But when it is relationship, it is "according to the good pleasure of his will": He chooses to have us as sons. I get love, the nature of God - "in love" - and love of predilection too. The place we get into is one that is according to the good pleasure of His will, and He brings us according to His own nature before Himself; there is not a cloud because He has "made us accepted in the beloved" - Christ assuredly; but He gives that name to Him to mark the full character of the blessedness, and thus brings us into His own presence.

124 This is the purpose; it does not say here how much of it is accomplished: it will not be fully until we are in the glory. Only in the end of the chapter we get what is accomplished in fact, as the groundwork of all our present enjoyment of it in spirit. God takes Christ out of death and sets Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places. This is an accomplished thing; it is "wrought in Christ": Christ as Man is in the glory of God.

And then we get the third thing: the Holy Ghost has come down meanwhile. Before the purpose is accomplished, but when the work in Christ is accomplished, the Holy Ghost comes down, the seal with which God has sealed those here who have part in His purpose, and the earnest of their inheritance. We are then competent to see God's plans about Christ Himself, His purpose "to gather together in one all things in him, both which are in heaven and which are on earth." Then it is glory.

The first verses were our calling; now it is our inheritance. And this inheritance is "after the counsel of his own will." It is sovereign grace to poor sinners that brings us into this place. It will not be accomplished until He come; it is in Him we have obtained it, being "predestinated according to his purpose." That which is believed in order to our being sealed is "the gospel of our salvation." John the Baptist was the forerunner of Him who was to accomplish it; but now we have the glad tidings of it consequent on the actual exaltation of Christ, and the seal of the Holy Ghost as the earnest of what is to come.

This is where we are whilst still in the world which is no part of the purpose of God, but in which, passing through discipline, we learn the difference between flesh and spirit; it is His ways, but not part of His purpose. The Holy Ghost comes down from heaven, gives us to know Christ, reveals to us our inheritance, bears witness to us that we are "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ." He makes us know where we are; that we belong to heaven and not to this earth at all. As we read in Proverbs: "In the beginning of his way, before his works of old, from the beginning or ever the earth was, then I was by him, as one brought up with him, and my delights were with the sons of men," so Christ became Man, and is gone into glory as our forerunner.

125 I desire that our hearts may feel that in God's thoughts and purposes He has given us a place that is not of the world at all, and that all our business in this world is to keep ourselves unspotted from it. I do not belong to this world; before the foundation of it I was chosen. It is not thus simply the sovereignty that does what it pleases, but that we, as Christians, do not belong to earth at all. Epistle of Christ is what we are; we may not live up to it, but it is what we are called to: to manifest the second Man in the midst of the world that has rejected Him.

Elect of God, Holy and Beloved

Ephesians 1: 4-14

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God has purposed in Himself to have before Himself that which shall reflect His own blessedness - He taking pleasure in us, and we taking pleasure in Him; as it is said here, "that we should be holy, and without blame before Him in love." He will have His people of the same nature as Himself, gathered around Himself, happy here, and for Himself. His thought is not merely that we should have an inheritance; as we read of "the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints." He "hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved."

And this is just the character of this Epistle; the apostle, in speaking of redemption, does so, not so much as of something needed by us, in order to appear before God, as of these purposes of God concerning us. We may look at God as a Judge; but, more than this, God is working for the display of the riches of the glory of His grace.

This lifts up the soul. God has thoughts and intentions about us. As in the case of a young man, whom, a person has (in ordinary language) "taken up," and is about to provide for, it is not a question of what the one was, but of the thoughts and intentions of the other - of what, in a word, he is, and will do, for the young man; so, though in a much more blessed sense, has God "taken up" poor sinners, that He might act towards them worthily of Himself, to the praise of the glory of His grace. The other thing remains true: God is a Judge, and "we have redemption, forgiveness of sins, through his blood" (Christ's); and we must understand this before we can enjoy our privileges in Christ.

God has "taken us up." Our very existence in the new creation, is the fruit of His purpose and thoughts about us. This has a double bearing. It shews how we are to measure what God is doing for us, as a question of God's purpose; and, besides being this measure, it makes us understand the source of it all. And this has a most happy effect: instead of looking at ourselves, and judging from ourselves, we look at God. Nothing but life-giving power could ever have wrought this. Our thoughts about God are, that He is the source of all our blessing. As the young man, before alluded to, would have pleasure in thinking about the friend who had "taken him up," so this thought about God is a happy thought, and, moreover, one of great sanctifying power.

127 God has "predestinated us unto the adoption of children." It is not here, simply, a question of purpose (of God's counsel, and, therefore, sure): that to which He has predestinated us, is the present adoption of children. A poor sinner, a sinner of the Gentiles, having no title whatever to blessing, I trace all my title to God's purpose, which He has purposed in Himself. This is true also of the Jews, though, in a certain sense, they stood on different ground; Christ was "a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers"; but of the Gentiles it is said, "and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy." It is of grace, of God's free thought about us. He has taken pleasure in us, as Joshua said to Israel: "If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it unto us, a land which floweth with milk and honey." We cannot boast in anything; for we have not anything whatever wherein to boast, except in this, that God has taken delight in us to give us the adoption. The effect is most blessed; we know Himself - "after ye have known God, or rather are known of God." What He has predestinated us unto, is not a distant thing, nor yet merely salvation (in the sense of escape from the wrath of God); it is the nearest place He could have put us into, not as with the Jews, "I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn": we are adopted with the "adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved." Here we get not only the source but the manner - the source, God's love; the manner, in Christ.

"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" - the Word that was in the beginning with God, and was God. But the light shone in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. It is not said that there was want of power, but that men's deeds were evil, and that, therefore, they would not come unto the light. A Christian who is walking carelessly does not like a godly Christian to come into contact with him, he feels condemned; whenever the heart is not with God, light makes it uneasy. But besides being light, "In him was life," and that is what we needed; while He shews us our evil, He is the good we need. Predestinated unto the adoption of children, it is in Him. Called according to God's purpose, we are to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Of His fulness, have all we received, and grace for grace. We are brought into the presence of God in Jesus Christ. Therefore, when Jesus goes away, He says, "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, unto my God and your God." He has Himself met all our responsibility, otherwise the light would have been terrible. There are two things, substitution, and communication of life. In substitution, He stood alone. But guilt being taken away, we quickened together with Him, He presents us in the Father's presence, as He is.

128 "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." But not merely has the Son of God visited us when we were in our sins, nor merely, either, been delivered for our offences. "Herein is our love [love with us] made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world." We have no life except in Christ; we have no acceptance apart from Christ. He has made us accepted in the Beloved - the measure is just that. It is God's delight to bring us, in Christ, and by Christ, into His own presence. We can go no farther; "truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ," writes John. We may enjoy it more and more, we may delight in it in deepened measure, but we cannot have anything beyond. When God speaks of glorifying Himself, or of our glorifying Him, it means through the display of what He is; it is God's glory to display Himself; therefore, in this, which is to the glory of His grace, we have the display of Himself.

And do not let us suppose that this goes beyond what we may think about (a very natural thought): the apostle says further on, "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith: being rooted and grounded in love, that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God," chap. 3: 14-19. It is not a matter of human wisdom, learning, or attainment; in proportion as we become simple as little children, we shall understand these things, through the Holy Ghost. "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." It has nothing to do with human learning, except to set it aside; lowliness of mind is what is needed.

129 "The good pleasure of his will" is not, simply, sovereignty - it is the good pleasure of His will. God is acting in His love, displaying the will of His grace, "taking up" poor, wretched, vile sinners, and unfolding on these objects of His mercy, all the riches of His own goodness. The "good pleasure of his will," that which God takes delight in, is the ministering of the fulness of His blessing to us. Here the soul gets established. It is quite evident, that the measure of His goodness cannot be, in any sense, the measure of what we are, as deserving at His hands; while it is His good pleasure, it is the good pleasure of His grace. And further, whilst I have need, for the establishment of my soul, to learn what He is, to be delighting in the goodness of God, it is this too which sanctifies. If I could be always thinking of what He is, I should be perfectly happy, and there would be the reflection in me of that with which my soul was occupied.

We begin, often, at the wrong end. On what are we resting our acceptance? It is not anything in ourselves that will do. Or, it is a question of sanctification? "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord" (that is, I look at the Lord, and, as a consequence of my looking at the Lord, I reveal to men what He is). Moses, on coming down from the mount, was not inquiring whether his face shone, in order to know if he had been with God; others saw this.

It is such a comfort, to get to God and feel, that it is in Him, and from Him.

Where, naturally, would our souls rest? It is quite a natural feeling, if we have been convinced of sin, that we should want to get at peace to know there is nothing against us, but the apostle here, is looking at those whom God has "taken up," and He has "made us accepted in the Beloved." That is God's thought about us; He has shewn us this grace in a particular way, and in a particular person - Christ. It is not merely a negative thing; He takes as positive delight in us, as He does in Jesus. He is no double-measure God.

130 "Put on as the elect of God," Paul writes to the Colossians, "holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness," etc., saints, and beloved ones of God, objects of God's love, God's delight (the measure of which is Christ), thus He addresses them. If I am beloved of a person, this draws out love. So the consciousness of God's love, God's delight produces links in affection, that exist not without it. My thought of being accepted is not merely, that my sins are put away, so that I could stand before Him - I am the object of His delight; holy affections are drawn out, and I pass through the world as a beloved one of God. We cannot suppose, in Christ's going through this world (and this shews us our deficiency as Christians), one single thing of it, that acts on our hearts, acting on His; He was the beloved One of God - "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," and He was going through the world as such. Thus, too, should the Christian walk through the world with the consciousness of being beloved of God; with this, we do not want the world - without it, we are obliged to turn to something that makes self the centre.

Young or old, that is what we are - beloved of God. Perhaps, you will say, "Ah, but I am very proud, very worldly, I do not give up the things of the world." Very likely not, and that is a reason for your being reminded of this, that you may.

"In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." This is the leading thought in the apostle's mind. And remark, he speaks of that which is positively possessed, not of something we are hoping for, or expecting; He "hath made us accepted in the Beloved," we "have redemption through his blood," etc. This grace of God, this "good pleasure of his will" has planted and set us in it all. We may be practically destitute of the joy of these things, but that is where we are. And He has given to those whom He has set in this place, the knowledge of His purpose as to the glory of Christ, as it goes on to say, "wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence"; the apostle explains it, "having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself"; here again it comes from the good pleasure of His will, "that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth." Having placed the saints in all this fellowship and blessing, He imparts (as with Abraham - "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I am about to do?") unto them His thoughts. Not only has He accepted us in Christ, but He will have everything brought under Christ's dominion and power. He is to gather together in one, all things in Christ - "even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory." We are joint-heirs with Christ. Hence the prayer at the end of the chapter.

131 We cannot deny, we do not deny (whatever man's efforts to make the best of the world), that sin is in the world; there is not a single thing (take dress for instance) that does not tell us that. There is not a single thing we are buying or selling, a single thing we are looking upon, that is not, in some sort, a proof of sin. All that man does for pleasure, is necessitated by sin; Adam in Paradise had no need of it. What makes the world get on without God? The principle of sin; this is running through everything, it has got, so to speak, into the vital blood, and (though it be God's creation through which it runs) it runs through everything. Man builds his city, invents his instruments of music (Gen. 4), and strives to make the world happy without God. Introduce God, and His amazing work, where men are occupied with gain or with pleasure, it is all wrong and out of place. Whether for pleasure, or for gain, God must be excluded. That is the character of the whole world, and to tack on the name of Christ does not mend it; an avaricious Christian (nominally such) is in nothing better than an avaricious heathen. God is lingering over it, but the existence of the gospel in the world is proof that the world is lost. "We know," says John, "that the whole world lieth in the wicked one"; and again, "All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." As it is, as a plain matter of fact, it is not God's inheritance. Who is called its god? Satan. God's title cast away, through the lust of men, and the pride and power of Satan, whom they follow, God has designated Satan "the god of this world," and made known to us (those who are of faith) the mystery of His will. The apostle speaks here of hope (v. 18). We have obtained an inheritance in Christ, and all things are going to be put under Christ; meanwhile (like Abraham, who had not so much as whereon to set his foot) "having nothing and yet possessing all things," the Christian walks through the world, as one beloved of God, in the consciousness that he is the object of God's purposes, and of God's delight. But what do we see in the Lord Jesus? Not merely that He has been designated the heir of all things; "the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." So too our proper delight is in knowing that we are beloved of God, and that God will have us before Himself, and for Himself - His delight in us, and our delight in Him. It is as a consequence of this love, that we shall have the glory of the inheritance. Where are our hearts? what is our joy? are we journeying, aye journeying, through the world in the blessed, joyful confidence of this secret of God? Then will the world be to us a "dry and thirsty land"; instead of finding delight in things around, we shall have to guard against them as against that which would bring us down to Satan's ground. Are we taking the world, with its pleasures and its gain? If so, we are entering into Cain's portion, and not into that of Abel or Abraham: we are "enemies of the cross of Christ." Through these things Satan is deceiving the world. Are we taking the position (not of Adam before he sinned, not of Christ when He was in the world, neither of Christ in the glory, but) of the "men of the earth?"

132 The Lord give us to see, and so to estimate that which is God's object, that we may have done with this present evil world.

Ephesians 1: 9

J. N. Darby.

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What has all failed in the first Adam will all be accomplished in the last Adam, and much more, gloriously fulfilled. In Ephesians 1 there are two things as the portion of the church: one is not entirely fulfilled, and the other we have nothing of yet, the calling of God, and God's inheritance. The calling we get in Ephesians 1: 4, 5. The first part of the calling is what is before God (v. 4), to be holy and without blame, etc. The second part of the calling is in connection with the Father (v. 5) as children. He has not only put us in a certain place, but has made known to us the mystery of His will, that is all His plan for Christ's glory, which is to gather together in one all things in Him. And the moment that comes I get the inheritance - not the calling only, but the inheritance. Of this we have nothing now but the earnest of the Spirit. We have the calling. Colossians presents the same general truth, but more developed as to Christ.

In Colossians 1: 15-18 I get the two headships of Christ - Head over all things, and Head of the body. He takes as Man what He created as God; and, besides, He takes other men as fellow-heirs with Him. Thus we see in verse 21, that us who not only were in confusion and disorder, but were positively enemies, He reconciles. This consciousness has been lost by the professing church - that we are reconciled. The state of things is not reconciled; but we are reconciled. The inheritance we cannot have, till the true Heir take it. Christ is not sitting on His own throne now, but on His Father's throne. When He sits down on His own throne, He will have us there with Him. He sits on His Father's throne by His title of Son. "To him that overcometh will I give to sit down with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne." Our present condition is to know that Christ is exalted, and we reconciled. But He has not taken the inheritance, nor, of course, have we. Our place before God is His calling - everything that is created will be our inheritance.

In Psalm 2 you have the counsels of God about Christ, to set Him on Zion as king. Adonai shall have them in derision - not Jehovah as such. These two points, Christ set as king on the holy hill of Zion, and owned to be the Son of God, you find in Psalm 2. In Psalm 8, you do not get Him as Son of God, but as Son of man, put over everything that God has created - that He has created, for He is God. In John 1: 49 you hear the Lord applying these two things. There Nathaniel owns Him as King of Israel, according to Psalm 2 and He says as it were, "That is over: I am not going to be King of Israel now." But you shall see greater things, the Son of man according to Psalm 8, with every creature subject. The place the church gets is to be joint-heirs. We take the place of suffering now. We only see half of Psalm 8 fulfilled yet We see Him at the right hand of God, but not with all things put under Him. He is gathering now the joint-heirs. Nothing is yet fulfilled. For the redemption of the purchased possession He must come again.

134 Yet in Him we have redemption. There is no such thing recognised in Scripture, as a Christian doubting he is saved. And it is all a totally false pretension of humility. If my Father forgives me, and I doubt His forgiveness, I am not trusting Him. It is doubting God's word, or not receiving the truths He gives us: we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. Let a man fear temptation - doubt his own heart, that is another thing; but not doubt God, or dread God. There is no such thing in scripture as a Christian without the Spirit of adoption, crying "Abba, Father." There is no such thing after Christ's death recognised in Scripture as a Christian not knowing he is saved. The thief on the cross was as fit to go to heaven as Paul, and he went there; and none went not fit. I know that there is growth, of course; but there is no meetness or fitness for heaven, except the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not Christianity to doubt, though many a real honest Christian does doubt. It is Christianity to know we are reconciled. If you have not peace, you have not got what Christ left for you. He says, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." If you have not rest, am I to say either you have not come? or Christ does not speak truth? It may be bad teaching. Many a one will cry "Abba, Father," most heartily in his prayers, who would not own, if you asked him, that he was a child of God. Of course, he has the Spirit of adoption, though he does not know it. It is just selfishness that makes him doubt. In Romans 7, what is it he is talking about? Just self - not Christ at all. Is that humility? not a word about Christ and the Spirit! and I am told that is a Christian. There is nearly forty times "I" and "me," and not once Christ and the Spirit, just the law and me; and poor things those are to bring together! Very useful for ploughing up, bringing down to self-knowledge. Then he sees there is no good in himself, and he gets set free, and it is all at an end. Romans 7 is just a quickened man, without the knowledge of redemption.

135 In 2 Corinthians 5: 18 we are reconciled, but the state of things is not reconciled. After that we have the Spirit of God taking up our infirmities, and sympathising with us, as we are - taking up our groans.

When the Lord Jesus comes, the first thing He does is to take us up to Himself. He cannot take His inheritance till He get His joint-heirs. The object of Christ's love is to take us into the enjoyment of all that He enjoys Himself. Is He a son? I am a son. Is it life? He is my life. Is it peace? He says, My peace I leave with you. Is it love? As Thou hast loved Me I have loved them. There is nothing He has not taken us into. Of course, I do not mean His incommunicable Godhead. But He takes us into the same place with Himself, and over everything. When He comes again, then, and then only, we get the full fruit, when "he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied."

Psalm 22. As soon as He is heard from the horns of the unicorns, He says, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." So in John 20. "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." He is alone in the work of atonement, but as soon as that is accomplished, He says, Now I am going to have others with Me. "In the midst of the church I will sing praise to thee." When all the joint-heirs are gathered, then He comes and takes them all; and after that He begins to take the inheritance. The wilderness is the place in which we are tested and tried, not for fighting. When we get into heavenly places to possess spiritual privileges, then we must fight Satan. Supposing I can say I am of the Lord's host, I am dead, I have crossed Jordan - not merely redeemed or simply crossed the Red Sea; but if I am dead, crossed Jordan, and become one of the Lord's host, then I need all His armour to fight His enemies; and if I get a wedge of gold, or a Babylonish garment, it will be detected by my want of power, by my being conquered in the fight.

When Christ takes us up there to be with Him, He puts Satan out. We shall be taken up to God and His throne (not the Father's throne, that is the prerogative of Christ), then Satan is cast down. He will be in this world, then, in great rage, knowing his time is short; but we shall be above it all. Satan will never get up there again. When, those years being over, the Lord comes with us (when He appears, we appear with Him), then Satan is put in the bottomless pit, and the kingdom is fulfilled. Satan then is not merely turned out of heaven, but out of earth too. Before judgment begins to be executed, we are in glory in Christ. He that believeth shall not come into judgment, John 5: 24. There are two things in the chapter shewing Christ's power: first, He quickeneth whom He will, this is, life-giving power; then judicial power, by which the wicked are obliged to own His power in spite of themselves. Christ will not have to make good His power in judgment where He has made it good in life. We are passed from death unto life. There is the resurrection of judgment in John 5. We are raised in glory when He changes our vile bodies, and fashions them like His glorious body. We shall ALL be conformed to the image of God's Son.

136 But there is another privilege we have now by grace, that of being workers together with Him. So when that time comes, as regards the blessing of Christ I shall have that as much as Paul, but as regards the activity of love and its results, Paul will have fifty thousand times more than I. For instance, Paul will have the Thessalonians for his crown, and I shall not. There comes in every man's little bit of service - in that you will have yours, and I mine. When He appears with us, then He sets up His kingdom. For Christ has a three-fold title. He created everything - that gives Him a title. He is the Son, and consequently the Heir; and He is the Man to whom God has determined to give everything - the title of redemption.

If I look for the worst power of Satan now, I must look for it in the so-called church. The responsible church has totally failed. In 1 Corinthians 3 you get three cases: first, a wise master builder, who did his work well; then you get persons who build badly, but who are saved themselves, building with rubbish, as wood, hay, stubble; and lastly, if a man corrupt the church of God, him will God destroy. Think of men bringing in Gnosticism. I will not refer to modern times. This is not merely building badly (all do so) but it is antagonism to the church of God and even to Christ.

137 Not one of the fathers, so-called, saving Irenaeus, held the full deity of Christ, or held redemption as Irenaeus did, who was a saint. They were affected with Platonic philosophy, which brought out Arianism after. Justin Martyr positively declares that the supreme God could not become a man - that it was a certain inferior Logos who did. People say we must have what was at the beginning. Knowing of nothing more primitive than Peter and Paul, I will therefore have what was at the beginning; but I will not have what was one hundred and forty years after the beginning. Justin Martyr was about so long after.

In the four first of the seven churches we see the history of what is called the Apostolic succession; in the three last, the history of Protestantism. There are three things in the Revelation: "Things thou hast seen," that is, the glory of Christ; "things that are," that is, the seven churches; "things which shall be hereafter," when we are caught up into heaven, and the final judgment of God sets in. In the first four churches, is given the complete history of the church to the end, closing in popery. There are two ways God uses to judge the existing thing by. He contrasts our condition with what He set up at first, and with the readiness to meet the Lord when He comes. The previous churches were referred back to what had been. Thyatira is referred on to His coming; and hence His coming is here first mentioned.

In the last three churches the Lord's coming is already named, and is kept before them till Laodicea, which is spued out. First, we have the Protestant warning, "a name to live and are dead." To Sardis He threatens what in Thessalonians is spoken of as only belonging to the world, His coming as a thief, that is, I will treat you just like the world. Philadelphia is a solemn word to us. It is the character of Christ which we are to suit ourselves to - "He that is holy, he that is true." After Thyatira we never get a reference to what he had seen walking among the golden candlesticks. There is no ecclesiastical position after that. What marks the thing the Lord owns now is, the absence of infidelity, or of ecclesiastical pretension: Christ's word against all such pretensions, and Christ's name against all infidelity. "Kept my word, and not denied my name": the promise to these is complete identification with Himself - "a pillar in the temple of my God - the name of my God - the city of my God - my new name." To those who keep the word of His patience He says not now, "I will come to you as a thief, and ye shall not know when I come," but "Ye have had patience: have a little more, I will soon be with you." Those who had a little strength are made pillars in the temple of His God.

138 We never get the direct work of God in the seven churches, because God cannot judge His own work. He walks through and sees how this thing has turned out and how that has; but you never get a direct intervention of God all through Isaiah's prophecy, "the heart of this people is waxed fat,"; etc., was spoken nearly eight hundred years before the judgment was executed in nearly the last piece of New Testament history. Paul says in Acts 28, "Well did Isaiah say, the heart of this people is waxed fat"; "be it known unto you that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles," etc. It is more than eighteen hundred years since it was said of the church, judgment must begin at the house of God; and for all this time God has borne with it, but assuredly the judgment of the church will come.

The power that works in us

Ephesians 3: 16-21

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The subject of prayer here is that there might be an inward power put forth by the Holy Ghost. Paul's heart was desiring to see these saints in a deepening enjoyment of Christ, and this by an operation of the Spirit unlimited in its measure.

They had the inner man. the divine nature communicated to them. God had looked upon them in His great love, not only quickened them, but given them out of His fulness. They were in a family every member of which is purged from sin. "I write unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you." The incorruptible seed is not the word of God, but that which is communicated by the word of God. The Christian is thus put into a position in which the creature does not stand. The first Adam was innocent but corruptible. The Second man was pure and incorruptible. The believer now (in spite of that which is corruptible in him) has received this incorruptible seed, and that by the word of God. This they had: yet the heart of the apostle was not satisfied, but must go forth with energy that God the Holy Ghost might act in them according to their individual need, and that "according to the riches of his glory," not only eventually to be enjoyed, but a spring of power now to be given, and that without measure. It is the same Spirit to quicken and to strengthen now as will fill the whole bride. Paul put no limit short of this.

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith" (v. 17). This is not having happy feelings, or suavity of character, etc. It is one thing to be safe in the ark on the Ararat of God, and another thing for Christ to dwell in the heart by faith. Oh what a quantity of care goes out when Christ is there! If Christ is the master of the house, and dwelling in it, He does not let the dust and cobwebs accumulate, but He fills it altogether: and should a sudden start come to the heart, there will be found not fear, but Christ.

Some people make love among believers into a commandment. This is not the secret. If Christ is master of heart and conscience, He will teach brotherly love, and then will be comprehended "with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height," v. 18. See the connection of understanding with being rooted, etc., here and in Colossians 2: 2. I shall not understand, save as divine (not human) affections are in exercise. Breadth, etc., of what? Soon after Christianity was launched, philosophy came in with progression. Paul knew no length, breadth, etc., save what was in Christ; Satan knows many, but they are only his depths and can be detected.

140 Next, we are set in the fulness of God. Thus we have had first the inward strengthening by the Spirit; next, this is shewn by Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith, rooted and grounded in love, that they might comprehend with all saints what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and height; thirdly, by this they might be filled with all the fulness of God; and fourthly, this is described as the power that works "in us." This fulness of God calls for something back. All that God gives Christ is yours: then I must praise Him. Can I be silent? Why not lift your voice to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you ask or think? We cannot expect too much.

Observe the distinct superscriptions of the prayers. The first is to God the Father of glory, the second is to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory of Christ as the servant of God and the glory of the only begotten of the Father are quite separate. It is very different for Christ to say, "My Father and your Father," and "My God and your God." When Christ took the servant's place, God was the Father of glory to Him.

Christ's sympathy flows out according to need down here. We have His sympathies. If we knew more of Christ's sympathies, the children of God might have more for one another. If full of sorrow yourself, go and sympathise with another, and your own will be gone.

Many a saint, if he knew what Christ's sympathy was, would wish to be left alone. Christ does not sympathise with my fleshly thoughts, but what He does is for the glory of God. He may have to break my will, and bring it to His. He will take up all the good, and He can make the face to shine; but it is of no use for us to ask for sympathy, if not set on the glory of God.

Our sympathy with Him is another thing: but He cares for us; John 16.

141 Let me ask (as exhortation) whether you pray for the acting of the Spirit as prayed for here. One of the reasons why the light and knowledge given connected with God and His Christ is so little entered into is connected with lack of prayer for the operation of the Spirit in this way. Christ is in heaven now. He was the centre of the thoughts of the little company who followed Him in Galilee. Why should not you and I have Him practically as the centre of our minds and hearts? All with them was simply done in the light and at the word of their Master. Had they boats to launch, nets to let down, all was at His word. This is a challenge to our hearts as to every-day circumstances. His presence in our hearts changes everything. It is very hard to be discontented when He is in the heart. How the thoughts of one's mind change with the company one is in! God has put us into a place where we may be sounding the unsoundable depths of the motives that have acted on Christ.

Grace and Government

Ephesians 4.

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As soon as our hearts have personally found Christ connected with the glory of God, there are two things which we are called to enter into and distinguish. The first is the place of grace in which we stand as the children of God; in other words, the church's or Christian's position. The second is the government of God. This last unfolds itself in various ways. There is the millennial time, when a "Prince shall reign in righteousness": and it shall be said of the Lord, "Thou hast taken to thee thy great power." Then shall "the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord." All this blessing will be the effect of the government of God.

In another sense God is always governing in providence now. "The hairs of your head are all numbered." But do we not see a righteous person often put into the greatest trouble? This is not the normal effect of God's government. In the millennial time there will be the proper natural results of the Lord reigning. In another sense, for us now, "the Father judgeth every man's work." He has, no doubt, committed all judgment to the Son; but yet He chastens His children; Heb. 12. Christ says, "If any man will serve me, him will my Father honour." "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father," etc. This refers to the consequences of the child's conduct. It is the Father's government of His children; it is the Father's care watching over His children for their good, and is not like the government of the world in providence. God is dealing with the wicked now in grace.

I have said this of the children's position with the Father, that we may more undistractedly look to the Christian's position. The position of the church shews the fulness of God's grace. If I am one with Christ, there is no question of being accepted. If I am one with the Judge, I cannot look forward to the judgment with the thought of being condemned. Now it is certain that the church is the body of Christ, "the fulness of him that filleth all in all." "We are members of his body," etc. You must see the amazing bearing and import of this truth - one with Christ, to realise the privileges it brings us into. It carries us into a place unlike any other, as to acceptance, righteousness, etc. When once we have this divine teaching in our souls, all is simple. It becomes a matter of faith, and this produces a consciousness of relationship. If it is merely objective truth, it is of no value to me. I must be in it to know it and use it: and so with all these truths, you must be in them. You find the very prayers of a man betray where he is. A man cannot say "Father" in his soul, if he has not the consciousness of relationship. We cannot and ought not to have the enjoyment and feelings and affections belonging to it, if we have not it. The moment that through the teaching of God I have got into it, all is mine; not merely knowledge, but all peaceful and holy affections flow.

143 So with the church of God. We shall never enter into it, if not on the ground of grace. I cannot suppose too much and too great blessings when I see them flowing from God Himself. If from ourselves, what could you or I expect? I should be ashamed to think of anything I can have if I bring myself in; but if I bring Christ in, then I see nothing too much for Him.

In every possible way God had put man to the test; and now all is done with, as to myself (not as to the Father's government), and God is dealing in the way of grace.

In Scripture we have the fullest, and most detailed history of all that our hearts are, the history of Israel, etc. All was the proving of sin, but now it is the putting away of sin. Righteousness was not yet declared when God was proving man. It was not accomplished. Where was righteousness to be found before? Never, till Christ sat down on the throne of God. Innocency there had been - grace there had been, for He was spit upon, etc., but righteousness there was not. It was prophesied of, promised, but not one righteous could be found. All that the trial of man resulted in was, that weighed in the balance, he was found wanting.

See Jacob's sons, law given, and the calf made before Moses came down from the mount. See priest, prophet, king. All flesh was grass. At last God's Son came, and then they said, "Here is the heir, come let us kill him." The end of that was, "now is the judgment of this world." It is not executed yet, of course, but the consequence of this is that the righteous One has sat down above. It is all over with the world. They see Him no more, except when He comes in the glory of His power. Christ the new Man is accepted, according to His prayer "glorify thou me" - "I have glorified thee on the earth," and He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. There is our righteousness: all God's ways having found man a sinner, even to the putting Christ to death, the righteousness of God is now declared - it is "unto all, and upon all them that believe."

144 Man has come short; man is set aside, root and branch, irreclaimable: but there is another Man. Thus it is all grace from beginning to end. He is the Source of the life and Accomplisher of the righteousness, and He has taken His place on the throne of God, and that is the foundation of the church of God. So that now it is not merely the fact that a person who believes is saved, but he is one with the Head in heaven. This is the immense privilege of our position, and now is sent down that "other Comforter" to dwell in us and to abide with us for ever. We are one spirit with the Lord. The Spirit unites us to Him, the Head, and we are one with another also - one body.

Here we discover the leading truth of what the church really is - "raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ." In this epistle there is nothing said of men living in sins, as in other places; but it speaks of being "dead in trespasses and sins" before this movement in the soul by God, who comes and finds the soul dead in sins, but He quickens it together with Christ. It is the whole power and working of the grace of God. We must get at the source, the perfect grace of God, before we can see where the church is set. We must be brought to that. Flesh can have no part. "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." "We are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." We have conflict with it indeed, but we are not in it; and now "henceforth know we no man after the flesh," etc. The place of Christ at God's right hand is our place. Workings within to the humbling of the soul must go on till we come to this; no good thing is in us - "dead in trespasses and sins." Then, as of Israel, it can be said, "What hath God wrought?" Where and how am I to learn it? When I was dead, without any movement, Christ comes down. Not only is He come, but "made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." He has come down; and now what are we to expect? According to what God is: let us not reason from what we are of ourselves. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" If God "spared not his own Son," etc. We may reason from what He has done to what He will do; and if I say, How can He save me from my sins? May I not say He must, when He has done that - given His Son, and raised Him from the dead? Set down at God's right hand is the key, as well as the ground, of the church's place. What has God done all this for? For my sins. Christ was dead; He died for my sins; but why does He go up again? He is righteous, and has taken His place in heaven. The one righteous One was rejected on earth, and the one righteous One is taken to heaven. God was not ruling in righteousness on earth, and it would have been no adequate testimony to Him, the only righteous Man, for Him to have taken the righteous rule on earth then; but He would give Him a place in heaven, far above "principalities and powers," etc.

145 It is an accomplished righteousness, and therefore a preached righteousness. Because He was accepted, He could send down the Holy Ghost, which we received after He went up. He had been sealed Himself as the righteous One down here; but now the Holy Ghost comes down and seals us, because we "are made the righteousness of God in him."

Two things we have in consequence of this - the Spirit of adoption in our hearts, and union with Christ. We are not only blessed by Christ, but we are raised up together with, and made to sit together in, Him in heavenly places. All this is to shew we have it with Christ. Thus we are more than children of the Father, we are members of Christ. The Spirit was sent down to unite all the members in one body to the Head. If I am in the Spirit and not in the flesh (and you are in the Spirit and not in the flesh), how many Spirits are there? One. It is one Spirit in you and in me. One Holy Ghost has been sent down, uniting the members to the Head in heaven. There is not only life (that was given to Christ), but the Holy Ghost is sent down to gather together in one body. The other form of our relationship to Christ is the bride, united thus with Him in all He is and has. Is He righteous? so am I. Has He life? so have I. I cannot think of having any life, any righteousness, any glory, but what Christ has. What a place this gives us! We were dead, but now are put into the same place with Christ. "As he is, so are we in this world." This gives boldness in the day of judgment. In the earthen vessel surely we are, but "as he is, so are we" - "bone of my bone." There is an allusion in Ephesians 5 to Genesis 2. - We have entire association with Christ; not only as a man cherishes his own flesh does Christ care for us.

146 Eve was not lord in the garden of Eden, but Adam was. She was not the inheritance. What was she then? A helpmeet, dependent on him, taken out of him, enjoying what her husband had as her portion. So is the church with Christ. The title is in Him, but it is His delight to confer it on her. He has more delight in her having it than Himself. Not only then is the church safe - of course that - but who will be the Judge? Christ. How does He judge? According to the righteousness He has given me. I get before the judgment-seat by being glorified. What does the apostle say? "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord" does he speak of himself? No! "We persuade men." If I see the terror of the Lord, I shall persuade others to take care and not despise the gospel. The glory of that day is the means of our present manifestation before God.

How entirely different our thoughts when we see this as our portion! There, in Him, is in principle what the church is - righteousness accepted, and not that we have accepted it, but God has accepted it, and then the Holy Ghost has been sent down. The bride is not yet complete. There are souls yet to be gathered in, while His long-suffering continues. When complete we shall be no longer here. There is another aspect of the church; "Builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." This is the earthly character (Eph. 2): and however man may have spoiled it all, it does not alter the fact on God's part. God has a dwelling in His church. In paradise on earth God did not dwell. God was in heaven and man upon earth. Adam could not say, "How amiable are thy tabernacles," etc.; but directly God works in grace, He brings man into His house.

Man is to dwell with God, God will dwell with man; Ex. 15: 17; chap. 29: 45. God has given us a "promise of entering into his rest." God has a rest in grace. The fruit of grace is that He is going to bring us into this. If I can fathom God's heart, I can fathom grace. There is something in the blessed God we can never measure. Jesus is the measure. He has come down here, and He is gone into that blessed dwelling-place of God; and therefore He says, "Let not your heart be troubled. I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am," etc. There is a man gone before into the place where He will have us with Him. God cannot rest here, for He cannot rest where all is not according to His mind and heart; but there all will be according to Himself; (Exod. 29, and afterwards Solomon's temple, but see Acts 7: 48). God had a house till they sinned it away; but now God would have a house - the church, the habitation of God through the Spirit.

147 Man having been placed in responsibility and in all failed, God now brings in all the blessedness of what He has done by His own power. Is He glorified in His saints? He will be admired in all them that believe. Is the church now what it was at first, when "great grace was upon them all?" If you get half-a-dozen people together really in the Spirit, it is a triumph of grace - great occasion for thankfulness. It may indeed be said, Where is the beautiful flock? But God will have it. Down here, in its earthly character there is failure, but in the body there is no failure; it is not yet complete, for when the church is gathered, the long-suffering will be over. Therefore we know it is not all gathered; but the church at Jerusalem at the beginning was as much the habitation of God as when complete. There was no Achan in the camp then. Now "false brethren have crept in unawares" (Jude), and these are specially the objects of the judgment of God. But all this does not alter the character of the habitation of God.

Ephesians 4 gives administration of grace, in the gifts bestowed for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The apostles and prophets are the foundation, and then all that is needed is given. We may see weakness now, but there is nourishment in Christ the Head, and that cannot fail.

In 1 Corinthians 12: 13, is one body, not merely having life: but "we are all baptised into one body," Jew and Gentile. Then he puts the whole train of gifts for the display of power. The apostles and prophets are carefully shewn in Ephesians 2, 3 and 4, to be the foundation; evangelists, pastors, teachers are to continue till the body is perfect. Whatever may be withheld in a time of ruin, the Lord gives, not what would take His people out of it, but fully and perfectly what they want in it.

Now, having seen the privileges of our position, we must remember the obligation never ceases to be what Christ has set us to be - to walk in holiness. The presence of the Holy Ghost never ceases to be the Comforter who abideth for ever. The power is never absent. How is it then there is such weakness? "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God," etc. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." If my eye is not single, I cannot tell what to do or how to do it. The power is according to the will and holiness of God. The comfort is when God's thoughts supplant ours.

148 There is something strange in the want of confidence in divine love amongst saints - no consciousness of relationship. In the midst of failure, which one must and ought to feel, there is the Father's love. Has not God said He would go with the people, because they are a stiff-necked people?

I am in a place of relationship with God, and this nothing touches. The superstitions, etc., of men all around cannot touch us, if one has a sense of God's love. But what of the forgiveness of sins, etc.? Why, I know I had it ever so many years ago. The atonement? Why, this is the ground of it. "He that is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not."

Everyone now who has faith in Christ is a member of the body of Christ. Love, then, naturally flows to all.

Thoughts on Ephesians 4

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The first part of this chapter gives ecclesiastical, the second, individual godliness. In the previous chapter this connects itself with it, that we have not the counsels of God simply, but the realisation and verification of these counsels in Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.

First of all we see the thought in God before the foundation of the world, but now it has been brought out. God has brought these eternal counsels into actual realisation, and this leads, of course, to actual walk. God has brought out now (as soon as ever Christ had laid the foundation for it by the cross) "one body and one Spirit."

Though the vocation looks back at the counsels of God, it is brought into actuality in this world. It is a sorrow to the heart, and it ought to be a much deeper sorrow to us, comparing these thoughts of God and their realisation. This is the revelation of God's thought in full blessedness, but we see how little in any sense saints have acted up to the mind of God.

This epistle first gives us the thought of God without reference to how far it has been accomplished or not, the mind of God as it is; though in chapter 3 we have the actual realisation of this in the power of the Spirit of God. Then comes the question of how far this is acted out. While Paul was there in the world, a continual struggle was going on; they were Judaising - dragging down, but the standard was never lowered. You will never find that God lowers the standard, whatever the failure. He never can lower the standard; He may have and has long patience, but He cannot take a lower standard. There are two standards of judgment: one is what God set up at the first; the other is, are they prepared for Christ's coming? There must be the going back to what He gave at the first. Malachi takes the Israelites back to Horeb: "Remember ye the law of Moses my servant which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel." Surely He will accomplish His promises, but He never lowers the standard. There may be a degree of light possessed or not possessed; He deals with this in grace: where there is light, more is given; but the standard is not lowered.

Paul unfolds the vocation, and then calls on us to walk worthy of it, in the first part of chapter 4. The necessary effect of being brought so close to God as we are is lowliness and meekness; how can it be otherwise? The greatness of the grace makes nothing of self. This is not easy. In Christ's life you see it plainly enough, in Philippians also. Then the effect of lowliness and meekness is to manifest the unity of the Spirit. "With lowliness and meekness," that is what we ought to be: then the effect to others will be longsuffering; others may not be lowly and meek. Practically this brings God in and self is gone. The power of love walking with God brings in longsuffering to others. "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." As servants of Christ, and self being gone, we are looking at others. "Yea, and if I be offered [poured as a libation] upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all."

150 The mere fact of their being Jews and Gentiles in the church, and the constant tendency among the Jews to think little of the Gentiles, made this needed, "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit," not the unity of the body - God keeps that. Then it comes to be jealousy for Christ's glory. What comes from the Spirit is always one; why are we not all. agreed? Because our own minds work; if we had only what we have learned from the Scripture, we should be all the same. The body is one that cannot be kept by our endeavours. All this is the practical realisation of what is in the purpose of God. If a man has the Spirit of Christ, he is a member of Christ. Jesus was the Christ on earth, but He was a Christ rejected: "Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing." Then a much larger scheme and purpose of God comes out. He that was the Messiah goes down to the lower parts of the earth; the Creator goes below creation, and now He is above all creatures. Having done that, He delivers persons from Satan and makes them vessels of His power for building up those that are delivered. When "he ascended up on high, he lead captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." You do not find miracles, tongues, signs of power here, but that which, as immutable and faithful Head, He gives for accomplishing His purpose.

If you take the state of things here, through the unfaithfulness of those to whom service was committed, "the wolf catcheth the sheep and scattereth them," but he cannot touch the power of the Head. You may have everything upset, but everything works together for good; you never can touch that. But for this, if one was to think of the saints, he would break his heart.

151 "I stand in doubt of you." "I have confidence in you through the Lord." You cannot touch the power and faithfulness of the Head, nor confidence in the Head, though there is disorder all around.

"For the perfecting of the saints" - that is the object. The specific object of ministry is the perfecting of the saints. This never fails: and it is done in various ways. The Corinthians had all sorts of gifts, but they failed in walk. We find various differences among the saints. Individual perfecting is the direct object of Christ - that each individual should grow up to the standard of Christ. Then comes the increase of the body. The first object is, that my heart or your heart is to be up to the measure of Christ; consequent on that comes the increase of the body. It is wonderful if you take the sphere and scope there is here. Christ goes to the lower parts of the earth, then above all heavens; from thence comes ministry.

We now get what the truth is in Jesus. If we have learned Him ourselves, we get this putting off the old man, and putting on the new. This is stated as a fact in Colossians: "Seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man." The truth as it is in Jesus is the having put off the old man, and having put on the new.

There are two great elements of the Christian life: one is this putting off the old man and putting on the new; the other, that the Holy Ghost dwells in us. "Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear children." Supposing this done, God's conduct is the rule and measure of mine. "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." We are in the new creation, we have Christ. What is Christ? The manifestation of God. The truth of my state and condition, the truth in Christ is that I have put off the old man, and put on the new. Christ is our life: it is a new creation - created after God "in righteousness and true holiness," not as innocent Adam. In Colossians 3 it is expressed in another way, "the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" - that was not Adam's case at all. God is known. I have got now the divine nature fully revealed in Christ, in a Man. We are created now after God; we have the knowledge of what God is, not of what man ought to be. If as a poor sinner, I am brought to God, I know His love the very first instant; I know the righteousness and love of God. There is growth, of course. I have Christ instead of Adam. I have put off the old man as nothing worth, and put on the new. We have to contend with the old as an enemy. I own nothing but Christ for my life. The knowledge of good and evil has come in, and I cannot take any standard of it (now Christ has revealed Him) but God Himself.

152 God has made Himself known as Almighty, as Jehovah, and as Father. As Almighty, He said, "Walk before me and be thou perfect"; as Jehovah, "Thou shalt be perfect with Jehovah thy God"; as Father, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

The second great principle is, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." The precious blood of Christ having been sprinkled upon us, the Holy Ghost dwells in us: this is of immense value to us. The new nature cannot reveal anything, the new nature has no power. What we see in Christ (there was power in Him, of course) is dependence and obedience; these are the great leading traits of the new man. The Spirit of God reveals the things of Christ, encourages me, shews me His faithfulness and His love, and is power in me. God is dwelling in me in power, giving me liberty, power, sonship, but at the same time the sense of God's presence. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" If He is grieved, the effect is that power is gone, and the conscience is bad; the Spirit then becomes a rebuker. If the queen were in the house, every right-minded man and every thing would bow to her.

How our hearts cultivate things that are not of Christ! Whatever is not fit for His presence is not fit for my heart. How often things are allowed in the heart which make the heart unwilling (not at the bottom, of course) to let Christ back! It is to me a most striking expression of what the Christian is that he has put off the old man, and put on the new, and that, having the Holy Ghost dwelling in him, he is not to grieve the Holy Spirit. "Be ye imitators of God as dear children." Grace has put us in the place distinctly; and this is the way we are to walk. He takes the two essential names of God (He has many attributes), love and tight; both are that in which we have to say to God. However could I imitate God? you may say. But what do you think of Christ? Is He not God? and God just where we want Him? "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Do you look at Christ and see what that light is? Christ is the pattern and model. If you wake up from the sleeping state of soul (sleep is for the time as bad as death), Christ will give you light. "Walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savour." Christ gave Himself up entirely: the law never asked that; the law only said, "love your neighbour as yourself." In a world of sin and sorrow there is another principle, the giving up of self for others; and I get another principle of Christ's love, it was "to God." If as a creature I love an unworthy object, my love is unworthy. Divine love does not want a worthy object. "For us," and "to God!" - if we reached that, we should get the right thing for Christians, the giving up of self and for a worthy object. What a picture of the Christian - the old man gone, the new man put on, the Holy Ghost in us, and Christ the pattern! Surely it is a blessed privilege and a truth. Christ's love went on as a divine source when everybody was against Him. Oh! what a calling, beloved brethren. If we are only babes in Christ, we may be consistent with what we have got. Where a person does walk in that way with God, the soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness in a dry and thirsty land.

153 If we let Christ practically out of our hearts, it costs a deal to bring Him back again.

Growing up in Christ

Ephesians 4: 1-16.

J. N. Darby.

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One cannot help seeing in such a passage as this the profound interest the Lord takes in blessing. There is profound love in it, as well as that it is a fact that He delights in blessing. His purpose is to bring us into the enjoyment of His own blessedness. His thoughts are blessings; and there is none anywhere else but in Him. If I speak of blessing, it must be what is in the heart of God. A father's thoughts of giving to his children are measured by his love for them. When we see what is in God's heart for us, and that all His thoughts have the form and power of blessing, what must they be for us! He is bringing us to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ - this is to be the result; but it is the principle and spring of blessing that was in my mind to speak upon. He is conforming us as to His own thoughts in blessing at the end. The objects of this love, we, abject sinners taken up by Him, shew the greatness of His love.

Christ is the great Workman of it all. It is by Christ that He does it. When God sets about to bless, it is by the Son of His love. It is an immense foundation for us to rest upon - not only strong, but wide and large and deep. "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things." "He descended first into the lower parts of the earth." What, then, is to escape the power of Him, who has been borne up to the throne of God, after going down to the very lowest place of death under sin? He has been in the lowest place of misery and death, and is taken up to the highest place in glory - the throne of God - and all between is filled up by Christ. This nothing can escape. He went down to the place of death and sin, "made sin for us," and went up to the throne of God! There is strength for me a poor sinner, something to rest on. Yet it is not distant from us, but we have the consciousness of its being in and around us. It is said in Revelation of the "city," "the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."

The Lamb is nearer to my heart than any. He has known me better than any, better than I know myself; and this Christ who dwells in our hearts by faith is the One we shall meet there. I shall find One in heaven nearer and dearer to my heart, than any one I know on earth. Nothing is so near to us as the Christ that is in us, and nothing is so near to God as Christ. Yet the world is in a man's heart. All that is agreeable and outwardly good in this world finds its echo in a man's heart, and all the evil that has come in finds its place there too. Christ was here amidst it all. He met it all without having the evil in Him, yet He knows it all. Everything we feel, all that passes through the heart of man, Christ has gone through, not by grasping at the thing, but by resisting the evil. With all the sensibilities of the heart to good or evil (and this makes the heart of man such a wonderful thing) Christ can meet all. The centre key to all this is Christ: He has power to put away the evil. If there was one thing where my heart could not rest on Christ, it would be dreadful. All have the knowledge of good and evil, even the unconverted man. Without Christ he sets about racking his heart to find any good thing that is under the sun. All the best affections of a man are the occasion of his greatest distress, because sin has come in: the heart gets pulled and torn every way, but it must go through it. See a wife losing her husband, a mother her children. The instant I see Christ in all this trial, I find the perfect good God delights in. Divine sympathy is found in God Himself. I may have trial and conflict, I must have it in passing through the wilderness; but I become weaned from the thing that was a snare to me by looking to Christ in it. Present confidence in Christ is needed in trial (losing a near relative, etc.) but the practical effect is that every trial a man goes through gives him (if the heart is thus trusting) to know more and more of what Christ is to meet the need, and more of Christ as possessing Him.

155 "I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself"; and there we find all the unfoldings of what God is in Christ. I cannot do without Christ. I want manna in the wilderness: God gives it to me; and not only do I get all this, water, manna, etc., but I have Christ Himself in it all. No matter what it is that exercises my heart in the knowledge of good and evil, and the need of the heart in consequence, it makes Christ more known and more enjoyed. Our natural portion as Christians is to enjoy God. Where has God planted us? In the enjoyment of an accomplished redemption; and the result is that love has not only been manifested towards us, but poured out in us. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which He has given unto us. We dwell in God - for His love is infinite, but I am in it; I dwell in it, and He dwells in me: I, a poor thing, a nothing, dwell in Him. I must learn it, as a sinner, in Christ. A proud sinner will try to prescribe to God this and that, etc., but God will have His way; and blessed it is that it should be so. We are "builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" - this is the "vocation." What a thought! What a bringing down, not of heaven, but something more, by special blessing bringing Him down to dwell in us. God would not dwell in angels; there is not the same want in them, but He will make Himself better known to angels, through His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus. There is a great deal more for us than the bringing down heaven. "Whosoever shall confess Jesus the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God."

156 What is the first practical effect of this calling to be "the habitation of God through the Spirit?" "With all lowliness and meekness," etc. (chap. 4: 2). A vessel of God! All the passions of the flesh there, but having the presence of God makes us unspeakably happy; that is our portion! "In all lowliness," etc. A man who is humble needs not to be humbled. There is no safety but in being low. Then what is the consequence if self is not working, and there is lowliness? Why love works. I cannot be happy with you all, if self is working; but if self is not working, love is, and I am full of love towards you all. What a spring of blessedness in communion there is; so far as self is down, broken to pieces, there is an outgoing of perfect love to the brethren. "Love is of God." His nature is at work when we love one another. The spring of the fellowship we find just now is God being here. God is our joy, and love (God's own nature) working, and God our common object. There are trials and difficulties for us all; but there is blessed joy in knowing one another thus, and seeing Christ in one another. "Receive ye one another to the glory of God." If we meet a Christian, though he may be a stranger, we can be more intimate with him than with one's own family who are not. Why? Because God is there.

Another thing observe, there is the consciousness of what this unity is. "There is one body, and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith," etc. We are brought together, not only through being united, but by what we possess together, one Lord, one faith, etc., rich or poor. Another has his particular trials, and I mine; but both have God.

157 "One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." God is above the world; you cannot tell me of one thing God is not above, and therefore there is not one thing that can separate me from His love. He is "through all." You cannot find yourself in trouble and God not there; you cannot find yourself in any difficulty, perplexity, and not find God through it all. And He is "in you all." He has come to be the spring of all happiness in us. If I know what water is, it is by drinking; if I know what sweetness is, it is by tasting it; if I know God, it is by His being in me. We can look upon one another and see God in us all. Then these light afflictions, what are they? God is come to take possession of us, and He is the spring in our hearts also. He comes to make us love, because He loves. We shall find it is fully so in heaven. If anything is a safeguard against evil, it is that such an one dwells in us; but it is more - it is the spring in the new nature, God's nature.

The perfecting of the saints is before God, and should be before us. Christ is the object of His thoughts. I must have these loved ones like Christ; therefore what God does is to make them grow up unto Christ. In the unity of the body, and in all the communion, and through all the exercise of heart, we have the end of all. In ministering to you or you to me, it is to grow up into Christ, that there may be more of Christ in us. All the flow of Christian affection, all the enjoyment we have here, is for this end. I can look at my brother and know he is going to be in heaven with me. The enjoyment of all this shuts out the world: you are not thinking of your cares and troubles now. Fellowship with the brethren is perfect deliverance from all that is of the flesh; flesh cannot enter into it, all that is of the world is gone. I am dead to it. Every bit of fellowship I have with a brother is a proof that outside things are gone and done with. The more we are individually full of divine things, the more this communion with each other is realised. Two together, if both are spiritual, open the sluices that all the wells in the world cannot dry up. The power of the Holy Ghost, that makes me overcome now, will make me enjoy heaven, where there is nothing else: "they that dwell in thine house will be still praising thee." The power of evil, of the world, of Satan, is all gone. Our common joy now is in Christ, in the communion of His love; and when we are with Him, it will be completely without alloy.

The Christian Walk

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We find in Ephesians 4 and 5, a very seasonable unfolding of the principles of the Christian walk, of the height of the principles which ought to govern it, and of its moral elevation, to which I desire to draw the attention of your readers. In chapter 4 the apostle, after having developed Christian doctrine as to our relations with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (relations founded on these two names, and afterwards the relations of the church with Christ), begins his exhortations to Christians with respect to their walk. They ought not to walk as the rest of the nations in the corruption which was bound up with the state of darkness in which they were found; they had not so learned the Christ, if they really knew what the truth is in Jesus, namely, to have put off the old man and put on the new man, which is created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth.

For there is the truth such as it is in Jesus; not that we should strip off, but, inasmuch as we are risen with Him, that we have put off the old man and put on the new man. There then is the first principle of the Christian walk: we have put on the new man; and here is its character, created according to God; not only the absence of sin, which was realised in the first Adam, but according to God fully revealed to one who has already the knowledge of good and evil, and created according to the thoughts of God Himself as to good and evil, according to the estimate which God by His very nature has of good and evil. What an immense privilege! The new man, born of God, is, in his nature, the reflection, and the intelligent reflection, of the nature of God Himself. Wherefore the apostle John says he cannot sin because he is born of God. Also we find in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is parallel to this, "renewed into knowledge* according to the image of Him who has created him." Such is the first principle of the Christian walk, a nature which comes from God, created as an expression and reflection of what He is in righteousness and holiness of truth. Here it is a life, a nature, that which we are.

{*The Greek word translated "knowledge" means full knowledge, personal knowledge, so as to recognise anyone.}

The second principle is the presence of the Holy Spirit. "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God by whom you have been sealed for the day of redemption." It is God Himself who dwells in us by His Spirit. Nothing unworthy of such a guest, unworthy of God Himself, ought to go on in us. Also, our walk should be characterised by that which characterises God Himself, for His love is active in us. Consequently we find here love also, and not only righteousness and holiness. We forgive one another, even as God in Christ has forgiven us. Christ being ascended on high, and thus the righteousness of God being established, ourselves perfectly purified by the blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is come down, and the bodies of the believers are become the temple of God. It is the seal of God put upon their persons, the earnest of their entire redemption and of their part in the inheritance of glory.

159 The walk of the Christian ought then to be the manifestation of the divine nature, and of the ways of God in grace towards us. Such is the instruction which chapter 4 gives us; but chapter 5 furnishes still more light. Who is it that has been the expression of this nature in man down here below? Evidently it is the Saviour, the image of the invisible God. Thus, God Himself becomes the expression of this divine life in man, the model of our conduct. Let us examine our chapter 5 in this point of view, that we may draw from it the instruction it contains.

"Be ye therefore imitators of God." Have I not been right in speaking of the moral elevation of the Christian walk? Be imitators of God! Partakers of His nature and of the indwelling of His Spirit, we are called to imitate Him in the principles of His conduct. But then, as we have said, Christ is the perfect example of it; as the Holy Spirit goes on to say, "And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." This adds a very precious element to the principles of the Christian walk. Here love has not the character of the divine love which pardons, being above evil, when a wrong is done to us, as God pardons (in virtue of Christ) sin against Him. Here it is devotedness, an offering made of oneself to God. It is no more a law which would have one love his neighbour as himself, which would be blessedness without any remains of evil in the world. It is not loving God with all the heart, which supposes that evil is not there. It is a devotedness, which supposes evil, a necessity which is the occasion for the exercise of love. One is given up for others, one is devoted. But for love in man, there must be a motive, an object. For this love to be perfect, the object, the motive of the love, must be perfect. If one is given up to a man, there may be a noble devotedness in it, but the motive is imperfect: love does not and cannot rise above its object. Just so, that there should be devotedness, there must be needy objects. These two elements are found in Christ. He gave Himself for us, for needy beings, objects of compassion on His part; but He gave Himself to God, infinite and perfect object, which could not have been, had He only given Himself to us and for us.

160 It is thus we ought to walk, ready to sacrifice ourselves for our brethren, always in self-abnegation to serve them, whilst offering ourselves to God Himself, to Christ whose we are. Thus the measure of our conduct is that of God Himself, Christ being our example in His life here below, in order that we should add love, the bond of perfect action, to brotherly kindness. It is not said that we are love, which is God's prerogative. He is love, and He loves, as to us, without any other motive than what He is; which could not be the case with a creature. We imitate Him in the matter of the wrongs that have been done to us. But the love which acts from itself towards others is of God alone.

Again, light is a quality in itself, a purity which also manifests everything. It is the second name that God gives Himself to express what He is. God is light. So Christ, when He was in this world, was the light of the world. We were in darkness, we are light in the Lord. Thus in the Epistle to the Philippians we find, respecting Christians, that which might be said in every point of Christ Himself, "blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life." In this pure nature we share, inasmuch as we have Christ for our life - purity in motives, in thoughts according to the divine nature; that which, manifested in this world, manifested the true character of all that is around us. We are light in the Lord.

Thus the two names, the only ones God gives Himself to express what He is, love and light, become the expression of what the Christian ought to be in his walk. He is even light in the Lord.

161 There exists another sort of motive and of rule, the relationships in which we are found, as father and children, husband and wife, master and slaves. We are in these relationships also with God and with His Christ. But it is another ground on which I do not enter at present. That of which I speak is the Christian character, as having divine life in Christ and the Holy Spirit: so that one has to imitate the conduct of God, and to take Christ for model on the earth.

"Christ loved the church"

Ephesians 5: 22, 23.

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Remark, beloved brethren, how the grace of God has associated us with Himself and with Christ, though, of course, remaining Himself meanwhile in the supremacy of infinite Godhead, in which none can be associated with Him; but He has made us partakers of the divine nature, and given us His Spirit to dwell in us, so that we realise what He is, and become one with Christ through being united to Him.

We find, in the early part of Ephesians 5, that we are called to be "imitators of God, as dear children, and to walk in love." Love is His nature; and we see this exemplified in a man, if we take Christ as the pattern of it. "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us."

Besides this we get another word brought before us, which also expresses God's nature: that is light; and it is said: "Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light." And, here too, Christ is given as the perfect expression of what is put before us. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." As a man in the world, He was the expression and pattern of light.

But after this he adds, "Be filled with the Spirit"; for, though we are made partakers of this divine nature, which is light, and we are called to love after the pattern of God in Christ, yet after all we are but poor human creatures, powerless in ourselves; and the Spirit is the only power we have for everything.

In God's mind it is everything for us to have fellowship with Himself. He has put us before Himself in love; He has made us His sons and daughters - the objects of His delight; and He should be the object of our delight. So much for the first relationship that we find here. It is with the Father as sons, and in this Christ is the Firstborn among many brethren.

The second is union with Christ now glorified: "We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." We are livingly united to Him, as members to a head. I cannot get closer to him than being a member of His body, and in the same glory with Himself. This relationship gives us the indissoluble union of Christ and the church. "Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it . . . and let the wife see that she reverence her husband." Though quite true as regards husband and wife, it is a figure of Christ and the church.

163 But, though we are united to Him, He is ever pre-eminent, and what even gives its value to this relationship is the necessary pre-eminence in it, as in everything, of Christ. When Moses and Elias were on the mount with the Lord, they were in the same glory as He was, and talking with Him of what was nearest His heart, and nearest His Father's heart too; they were in familiar intercourse with Him. But, even then, the moment Peter talks about making three tabernacles, one for each, thus putting them on an equality, the Father's voice comes in and owns His Son, and Moses and Elias at once disappear. I only use this to illustrate what I mean; and so it must always be. There must always be the eternal blessedness and pre-eminence of His Person, and the nearer we get to Him the more conscious we shall be of this. If I know a man indeed intimately, I shall surely get to know his foibles. In Christ, the more I know Him, the more I shall only get to know deeper, and divine, excellence. There is no fear of near acquaintance diminishing respect towards Him: the more I feel His love, the more I shall feel that He is supreme in it. Intimacy with His love only shews out its excellence, and produces more adoration and love in me.

God is supreme in love. It is not said in chapter 5 that we are to be love; we cannot be free and supreme in it; we are said to be light, because the new man partakes in the purity of His nature. And in the love of Christ we find the working of this supreme goodness, and in a man, so that following Him we can walk in it, though we cannot say we are love, as we say we are light.

But, in the case of the church, at the close of chapter 5, we have a love of special relationship, not simply the goodness and sovereign love of God; yet the spring and source of all is in the unsought love of Christ, in which He acts in the thought of His own grace, when there was nothing to draw it out. He has to purchase what He loves, and form it for Himself. He "gave himself for it": and when He gets it, He cleanses it for Himself.

But there is yet another point of view. He presents it "to himself." When God had made Eve, He presented her to Adam; but here we get the glory of Christ's Person. Being a divine Person He presents the church to Himself, having formed it and perfected it, so as to be suited to Himself. He does all for the church. Let us now see a little of the way in which He does it.

164 The first thing of all is His own unmotived love. "He loved the church," perfectly, divinely, infinitely; we here find the utterness of His love. "He gave himself." He did not only do something for it: "He gave himself!" And this is constantly repeated in the word; it is even said that "He gave himself for our sins," our sins being that which was in the way between us and God. As I look at Christ's love, I see that it had no motive but in itself, and it gives itself: nothing is held back. He is wholly and altogether mine; He has given Himself, and all is lumped up in that. The self-sacrifice of Christ was absolute: it was Himself, all He is, and all He was in His perfection. The whole motive of His nature was engaged in it: "He gave himself." And this is a wonderful thought, if our hearts could only get hold of it. It is not that He gave His blood, and gave His life, though that is true, and we may speak of it distinctively, for Scripture does; but the point here is the character of His love; so it says, "He gave himself." The motive was self-giving.

Mark here how, as regards the process of fitting the church for Christ, loving it and giving Himself for it goes first. It does not say, He cleansed and washed it so that He might have it, and then loved it because it was cleansed and fit to be loved. No. He gives Himself for it, and possesses it with a perfect title; Himself given for it, in the absolute completeness of His whole heart, according to which He has taken it to Himself. He gives Himself for it because He loved it; and now, He says, it must be cleansed and made fit for me. Not, it must be happy - happy it is, no doubt - but not only so; it must be made fit for Himself. I cannot be satisfied if a person I love is not what I like him to be - my children or wife, for example. It is not a feeling of discontent - I do not mean that - but a want of full satisfaction. So Christ sets about making the church what He would like it to be. He cleanses it by "the washing of water by the word." As He said before: "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."

As the word comes from God, it judges all that is contrary to God, by the revelation of what is in God, so that it may make me like what it reveals. "For their sakes," He says, "I sanctify myself." As Man, He set Himself apart as the perfect expression of what is divine in a man, or man according to God. So it is not that I am what I ought to be, but that I am connected with Christ, who is the expression of what I ought to be, and forms me into His likeness. "We all, with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." That is the way it cleanses: it purifies our motives, thoughts, and apprehensions, thus changing us into the same image from glory to glory. But He is the doer; He redeems us, cleanses us, sanctifies us, and presents us.

165 There is also a thought here which is full of the deepest interest; and that is, that we cannot separate the cleansing from the glory. The cleansing is according to the glory, and, when the body is changed, the state of holiness is according to the glory revealed; see 1 Thessalonians 3: 13, where we should have said "unblameable in holiness" in our walk; but we read, in the presence "of God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." We cannot really get on without looking at Christ in glory. It is said that "He might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing: but that it should be holy and without blemish." That is the cleansing. Practical cleansing is by the power of the revelation of the glory of Christ. But let us always remember that this cleansing is not in order that we may belong to Him, but that it is "Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might cleanse it."

Another thing that we find as regards the church, and this ought to comfort us in these dark days, and in the darker ones which we see coming. He goes on to say: "No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." It is not only that He fits it for Himself - makes it according to His own mind; but the same love that fits it, watches over it in the circumstances of weakness in which it is found, as it passes through the world. Why, he says, a man's flesh is himself; Christ takes care of Himself in taking care of the church. As he said to Saul: "Why persecutest thou me?" You are touching Me in persecuting them. Christ does not separate the saints down here from Himself. He is interested in them, cares for them, nourishes and cherishes them as a man does the flesh of his own body. And in this He can never fail. The darkness may be great, and the power of evil strong, and growing stronger (not that God is not working, for He is; and when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him, and is doing so, and preparing the coming of the Lord), but no more than a man can hate himself, can Christ fail in doing this - nourishing and cherishing the church.

166 The Lord has long patience with all this growing evil (we may pray that things may go quicker, that He would bring the end on more rapidly, calling in His own; but, if so, it will bring evil out more rapidly too, and the judgments that are coming on the earth, but yet we may desire it); but all through the faith of the saint can reckon on the care and love of Christ. You cannot put me in any circumstances where the love of Christ cannot suit me.

Nor even does the working of unbelief hinder. For, when those who are believers cannot use the power that has been brought in against evil, what is to be done? We read, that when they brought one possessed of a demon to the disciples, and they could not cast him out, the Lord says: "How long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" If you cannot use the power I have brought in, what is the use of staying with you? But He adds, "Bring him hither to me." Even if the faith of the church fail, and one were alone in the trial, individual faith will always find grace in the Lord Jesus Christ for its want. Just as the father of the child cried out with tears: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." Christ cannot fail; and we on our side must not be like Elijah, saying, "Lord, they have thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life to take it away" (and mark at the moment he had thrown down their altars and slain their prophets), and then run away. What we want to say is: Well, Christ never fails, and there cannot be a want in Christ's church without there being an answer to it in Christ's heart.

All we want, beloved friends, is to have the eye fixed on Christ, from whom all grace and love flow, and to be sanctified in heart and spirit thereby, while waiting for Him, who has given Himself for us, so that we might be like Him even now, while walking through this world.

Conflict in Heavenly Places

Ephesians 6: 10-18.

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The very blessings of the church (as in Eph. 1: 3) set us into a sort of conflict, which, without such blessings, we should not have. So the church is subject to more failure than either Jews or Gentiles were, because they were not called to the same blessing. A Jew might do many things that would be monstrous in a Christian, and yet find no defilement in his conscience. The veil that was over the knowledge of God being rent, the light shines out; and the consequence is that this light which has come out of the holy place cannot tolerate evil. Christians are in a more dangerous position, if not walking in the light, than Jews. Satan may draw and entice me with many things, which would have no power against me if I were not so favoured. "Be strong in the Lord"; here is the place of strength. There is no strength but in Christ - I have none at any time, except as my soul is in secret communion with Him, and through Him with God the Father. The direct power of Satan is toward this point, to keep our souls from living on Christ. Put on the whole armour of God; there is no standing against Satan without this. Strength is always the effect of having to do with God in the spirit of dependence.

We see in 1 Samuel 14 the contrast between Saul and Jonathan; between confidence in God overcoming all obstacles, and self failing with all the resources of royalty. Jonathan clambered up on his hands and feet, confident in God, and the enemies were overcome. Saul, when he saw the work going on, not knowing the Lord's mind, calls for the priest. He had a right intention, but not a simplicity of dependence on God, when inquiring what he should do, and spoils all by his foolish oath. It is said of Jonathan that "he wrought with God." God was with him, and he had strength and liberty, not a humiliation we have often felt, because he wrought with God. When we are walking in dependence on God, there will always be liberty before God. Jonathan knew what he should do, and took some honey, because he went on in liberty, for God was with him, whilst Saul in legality had put himself and the people into bondage.

The word then, after grace in Christ has been fully shewn throughout the epistle, is, "Be strong in the Lord," v. 10. We have the privilege here of individual dependence on God. Everything may be dark, but the Lord tells us to be strong. This is always accompanied with lowliness of heart; come what will, when the Lord is rested on, we are strong.

168 We are called to put on the panoply of God, to take it to us (v. 11-13). And no wonder: the conflict is not with men but with evil spirits (v. 12). Who but an unbeliever can overlook or despise them? They are principalities and authorities; they are the universal lords of this darkness; they are spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places. Truly to withstand such we need the whole armour of God; which, remember, is not a question of standing but of practical power, and this is in entire dependence.

If we pray, be it observed, without searching the word, or read the word without prayer, we may get no guidance, for Jesus said, "If my words abide in you, ask what ye will," etc.; without this I may be asking some foolish thing that would not be given. We are to stand against the wiles of the devil, not his power. It is not knowing Satan that enables us to discover his wiles, but the keeping in God's presence. It was always so with Christ, because He was always dependent on God. Stand, having your loins girt about with truth. Truth is never really ours but as the affections are ordered by it. If the soul of the hearer be not in communion with God in the truth he hears, his loins are not girt with it. The breastplate of righteousness supposes not merely this, but that we have nothing on the conscience (v. 14). Christ's blood made it good; and walking in the Spirit keeps it so.

Verse 15. The gospel of peace is ours in Christ; but I must have the spirit of peace in my heart, and be sanctified by the God of peace, the soul in communion with God, with Him in the spirit of peace; and without this how can the saint walk as always having peace? He is thus prepared to walk by the gospel.

Verse 16. Whether I look at the sin that made grace necessary, or at the power which caused me to enjoy it, I may walk in perfect peace against every source of sorrow. Every fiery dart is quenched by confidence in God - the shield of faith. It is as essential for the conflict as for saving the soul. We need to cherish confidence in the grace of God all through.

169 Verse 17. I hold up my head because I know I am safe; salvation is mine. I must first get that which is internal: that which is wrought in me is power. Before I use the sword of the Spirit, I must first have the loins girded about with truth, the heart covered with righteousness, the feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and then (the shield of faith being up and the helmet of salvation on) I can take the sword of the Spirit. Nothing is more dangerous than to use the word if it has not touched my conscience. I put myself in Satan's hands if I go beyond what I have from God, or what is in possession of my soul. To talk with saints on the things of God, beyond what I hold in communion, is most pernicious; to fight without it is fatal.

Verse 18. The word always must deal with ourselves before others, but prayer is the expression and exercise of dependence. If a person asks me a question, and I answer without speaking to God about it - going direct, it will be more likely to lead him from God than to God. When a question or difficulty comes, do we turn to God? We may have turned to God before, and the thing is answered, and we ought to have such power of prayer, that there would be no difficulty when any circumstance arises. If supplication be thus continual, there would be no occasion to ask Him about particular things when they come before us.

"Supplication in the Spirit." All acceptable prayer is not, I think, prayer in the Spirit. A wish or desire expressed to God, in all the confidence of a child to his father is heard, but this is not necessarily "prayer in the Spirit." It is the power of the Spirit in us looking for blessing as walking in the Spirit of God - that is such prayer; not even a difficulty here when living really in the power of communion. We have that energy of supplication which looks for answers - for all answers, and for myself too - watching thereunto with all perseverance. Suppose you begin the day with a sweet spirit of prayer and confidence in God: in the course of the day, in this wretched world you find a thousand cares and agitations; but if you are spiritually exercised, alive to see the things of God, everything will be a matter of prayer and intercession, according to the mind of God. Thus humbleness and dependence should mark all a saint's actions.

Instead of being full of regret at what we may meet with, if we are walking with Christ we shall see His interests in a brother - in the church. What a blessed thing to carry everything to God! The word in verse 18 refers to a man walking in the whole armour.

170 The apostle took the love of the saints for granted. We also, if walking in the Spirit, can always count on others being interested in our affairs.

Brief Notes on the Epistle to the Philippians

J. N. Darby.

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The Epistle to the Philippians presents the development of two distinct subjects. On the one hand it shews us the ties of affection which exist between the Lord's servant and those to whom he had been blessed; and, on the other, Christian experience. It is perhaps the only epistle which treats of the experience of the Christian. We thus see the completeness of God's word; in it every subject has its own proper place.

Chapter 1: 5-7. "I have you in my heart" ought rather to be translated, "Ye have me in your hearts." The meaning of this verse is this: "It is righteous for me to think thus as to you (that is, that I should have confidence in the completion of the good work begun in you), since ye have me in your hearts."

"Ye are all partakers of my grace." This signifies that they were all participators in the grace that rested on him. Everyone has not a gift of ministry; but by grace, whoever loves the Lord participates in the gospel.

Verse 10. "That ye may approve things that are excellent" - that is, that differ and so are the best. There may be a regular walk, which does not perhaps shew enough of that delicacy and regard which the love of Christ teaches, and by which God is glorified.

Verse 11. "The fruit of righteousness" - that is, such fruit as would have been found in the life of Christ Himself.

Verse 12. "The things which happened unto me . . . for the furtherance of the gospel." All the difficulties resulting from Paul's absence only turned out for good; Christ was more abundantly preached; the Philippians were taking courage, the gospel was carried before Caesar, etc. And Paul was rejoicing when he saw that the efforts of Satan were contributing to the progress of the gospel.

Verse 16. Who are the preachers pointed out in this verse? All that is said is, that they preached Christ in a bad spirit. They might be persons who had too little spiritually to dare to act when Paul was present, but availed themselves of his absence to come forward.

Verse 19. "For I know that this shall turn to my salvation" - that is, shall contribute to my final victory over the enemy.

172 Does the apostle refer in these words to the hope he had of being delivered from his bonds? I do not think that he does. The word "salvation" is used for our complete deliverance, and not merely for passing deliverances which we may experience by the way. Salvation is an absolute thing; it is the final result of the race. It is well to maintain the sense of this word; because we have here the key to the whole epistle. If there be not a salvation at the end of the race, of what avail is the priesthood of Christ?

Verses 20, 21 are the same subject. Whatever may be Caesar's decision about me - whatever may await me, be it life or death, it works salvation to me, says the apostle; my race is accomplished through such circumstances. If life be left me, I will labour for the church; if death be my portion, I will die for Christ, for His name; as to this, Christ will decide. As regarded himself, Paul wished to die. Having death before him, he had, so to speak, attained his Gethsemane; and thus he had confidence that the Christ who had been glorified in his life would be also glorified in his death.

Verse 21. "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Christ was all in Paul's life. If Paul lived, it was by Christ and for Christ. Therefore to die would be better; he would be most entirely with Him.

Verses 25, 26. Paul decides his own case; he decides it in the sense of the good and profit of the church. Neither Caesar nor his court would decide it, but Christ; and He would do it in the interest of the church. Paul in this shews the most elevated faith.

Verse 27. "The faith of the gospel." In this expression Paul personifies the gospel. He sees the gospel carrying on warfare in the world, and the saints carrying on warfare for Christ, associating it with that Person. The epistles of Paul present several instances in which the gospel is thus personified.

Verse 28. "Of salvation." Here again salvation is looked at as the result of the race.

Verses 29, 30. Paul on one side, the Philippians on the other, were in the warfare, and they had - all of them - salvation before them.

Chapter 2. We see further on that the Philippians had sent help to Paul. While expressing his satisfaction, he insinuated, but with caution, that they might have done so sooner; chap. 4: 10. Here, with the same delicacy, he says, "If it be true that there are any bowels and mercies, if it be true (which he did not doubt) that ye have my joy at heart, fulfil ye that joy, by thinking the same thing," etc.

173 Verses 3, 4. Above all else, the heart of Paul desired that unity might be maintained among the saints; and, as a means of maintaining happy harmony, he recommends humility, which teaches the Christian to esteem himself to be least of all.

Verse 5. Paul, doubtless, will find an echo in the hearts of the Philippians, but he wished to give them higher motives than those which related only to himself. To this end he places before their eyes the humiliation of the Lord Jesus, who, being God, yet became man and servant; and was obedient even unto the death of the cross.

Verses 5-11. In these verses, although the thing is not said in express terms, there is, it seems to me, a contrast between Christ and Adam. Adam - man - in wishing to exalt himself to be like God, was disobedient unto death; Christ - who was God - emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondman, and, even when He was in fashion as a man, became obedient and obeyed even unto death. There are two degrees in Christ's humiliation. He first strips Himself of His own glory, and becomes a man: then, being man, He goes down even unto the death of the cross.

Verse 10. "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow." The name of Jesus is a personal name - Jah-Oshua* (Jehoshua) - Jehovah - Saviour. It is the name of His Person. The name "Christ" expresses a title - that of a man who is appointed. Independently of any title, Jesus possesses His own proper personal claim to supremacy over all things. He is God. The deity of Jesus occupies in the New Testament a much greater place than is generally observed.

{*See Numbers 13: 16.}

But as man Jesus has also a glory which He receives, the glory which results from His humiliation - "God also hath highly exalted him."

All things are subjected under the lordship of Christ - things heavenly, and earthly, and infernal (which are under the earth). This third class has no part in the reconciliation of "all things," as they are mentioned in Colossians 11: 20.

Verses 12, 13. The emphasis in verse 12 is on these words: "not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence." If, Paul being absent and retained in prison, the Philippians were deprived of him, God would suffice; He is never absent.

174 "Work out your own salvation" - not your acceptance, but your salvation. Apply yourselves to the things which become persons who look for salvation. Be watchful, lest anything should lead you out of your way, for your path is strewed with difficulties. Here, as in the preceding instances, salvation is looked at as the end of the race. We never find in the Epistle to the Philippians that the Christian is viewed as possessing that which is a matter of faith - a very remarkable thing; unless we discern it in the believer on his way and striving for salvation, it is unintelligible.

Paul, when he was called, saw the Lord in glory. He knew that he would one day be in that glory with his Master, and like Him. Hence, until he reached this, he felt that nothing could entirely satisfy him, and, moved by heavenly affections, he pressed on towards that blessed moment.

The Christian, through grace, is placed on the same road. At the starting-point he is reconciled with God; and that reconciliation has become in its turn the starting-point for his other blessings. Now the Lord, in calling that Christian with a heavenly calling, has put into his heart spiritual affections; grace has formed a relationship between the Christian who is on earth and Jesus who is on high. But if this blessed relationship is not sustained, the heavenly affections in the heart of a child of God become dormant and cold affections. The assurance of salvation might remain perhaps, but isolated; all spiritual affections are lost.

"With fear and trembling." We meet with difficulties on the road, though indeed we are sure to arrive. Although the race be not the title of our acceptance, still that race is none the less a serious and important thing. What a privilege and what an honour to be God's instruments in the conflict engaged with Satan! But what a responsibility also! One cannot stand firm in this conflict if one is careless, if we act in a bad spirit, if we yield to the flesh, etc.

Verse 14. Translate, "Without murmurings and reasonings."

Verse 15. Translate, "Ye appear as lights."

Verse 17. It is, "If also I am poured out as a libation."

Verses 25-30. What a contrast between the feelings of Paul, and those which he knew to exist in the Philippians respecting Epaphroditus, with the mass of ice to which Christianity has been reduced in these days! How quick and coldly one says of a departed Christian, "He is happy." Of course Epaphroditus, if he had died of his sickness, would have departed happy to be in the bosom of Jesus. And Paul would assuredly have been resigned in seeing the departure of his brother; but his recovery filled Paul's heart with joy.

175 Chapter 3. This chapter forms a kind of parenthesis, at least after the first verses. Paul interrupts the subject of brotherly intercourse to give us the beautiful developments of the heavenly calling, which we notice in this portion of the epistle. He then draws from those developments some teaching for the Philippians; and by this he comes to chapter 4, the exhortations and spiritual communications of which form a sequel to those of chapter 2.

Verse 2. "Beware of dogs." That is, of those who do evil shamelessly.

Verse 3. We see in this verse three features which characterise the service of the Christian. One worships God in [by the] Spirit, not in carnal ceremonies; one boasts in Christ Jesus, and not in man; one has the Lord, and therefore has no confidence in the flesh.

Verses 4-6. The flesh finds means, even in the things instituted by God, to do many things in order to exalt oneself.

Verse 7. Paul's doctrine presents the abiding fact, that the last Adam has all superiority over the first, and the Spirit over the flesh. One cannot retain anything of the first Adam without detriment to the last.

Verses 7, 8. Always that which is before - "to gain Christ" - to reach unto Him. Had Paul reached Christ? Not absolutely. As to his soul, he had; he is with the Lord; but not as to the body. The resurrection has not yet taken place.

Verse 8. "I have suffered the loss of all things." What things? Those which the flesh values - things like those which the apostle tells us he had given up.

Verse 9. "Found in him." When? Rather at the end of the race.

Having "the righteousness which is of God." To be in Christ in order to have that righteousness, and not to possess righteousness as a means to get Christ. Such is the order in which things present themselves to Paul when it is a question of the heavenly calling and of the race. Mark well, he wished not for the righteousness of the law, not because he cannot attain to it (which, however, would be true); but because in Christ he had something better than that. The righteousness of the law, had he been able to attain to it, would hinder his possessing Christ - so he will not have it.

176 Verses 9, 10, present two things - to be in Him, and to know Him.

Verse 10. Paul points out in this verse the means by which he would arrive at the resurrection from among the dead and attain Christ. When he had laid hold of the power of the resurrection, he can pass through death and not before.

Verse 12. A fact which precedes all others is that before taking a single step in this path Paul had been taken possession of by Christ. He had been taken possession of by Christ - for Christ Jesus.

Verse 14. "Toward the mark" - always this aim - the glorious Christ towards whom the race tends.

Verses 15, 16. The degree to which one has attained in the knowledge of Christ is not the rule of unity; the saints must be able to walk together, whatever difference there may be between them as to the extent of that knowledge. Let not the strong in receiving the weak require from him a state to which he has himself attained: and let not the weak lay down the limit unto which he has arrived, as the rule for others. Let us walk together: and as to that which goes beyond the measure to which we have attained, God will teach us.

Could it be that a Christian might not finish his course? In some respects it might so happen: or, at least, the course would not be finished in the way that was intended. Nevertheless such a case was foreseen in God's counsels. Ananias and Sapphira furnish perhaps a similar instance. There are some who make shipwreck, who fail as to faith, as to the doctrine that faith receives, without its being said on that account that they had abandoned their faith. Having in view this danger, Paul recommended Timothy to maintain faith and a good conscience; to hold fast the truth of God as well as that uprightness of heart in which the soul judges itself, and abides in the presence of God, ever open under His eye. If a good conscience fails, the enemy finds an entrance, and faith is in danger.

There is a crown of righteousness promised to those who love the Lord's appearing. Why is it called a crown of righteousness? Because it will be given to those to whom it is righteous to give it, "which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me," 2 Tim. 4: 8. "God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love which ye have shewed towards his name," Heb. 6: 10.

177 Verses 18, 19. "Who are the many whose walk made Paul weep?" They are rather professors than real Christians; those perhaps in the beginning of the chapter. I should feel a difficulty in saying in an absolute way as applying it to Christians - "whose end is destruction."

These two verses have this importance, that they may indicate the period when Christendom will have gone beyond Christianity. We see in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that the saints are warned of this danger; chap. 10. And in this epistle we find that the very presence of evil is already stated.

Verses 20, 21. Here again salvation is presented as a future thing. "We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus." He is coming in glory to receive us into that glory. This is the goal towards which we run.

Chapter 4. Paul now returns to exhortations.

Verse 3. "Thee also, true yokefellow." It was, doubtless, the one who carried the letter, Epaphroditus. Literally, "Help them [those] who have contended along with me." It is a recommendation to help the women who had contended in the gospel. Euodia and Syntyche were of that number.

Verse 7. "The peace of God . . . shall keep your hearts." The peace of God is that peace in which God Himself is. We read, not that our hearts keep that peace, but that it keeps our hearts.

Verses 8, 9. In walking according to the exhortations of the apostle, the Philippians would find God with them - the God of peace.

Verse 10. "Your care of me hath flourished again." It is a slight reproach, which Paul softens by adding, "wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity."

Verses 12, 13. It is often in a very abstract way that one says, "I can do all things." While Paul says, "I can do all things," he adds, "I have learned," "I am instructed."

Verse 19. "My God" - that faithful God, whose faithfulness Paul had felt so often. It is with this feeling of gratitude that Paul says, "My God."

178 REMARKS.

In the race which the Lord has opened to faith, the Christian finds himself individually engaged, and his responsibility finds its place. The Christian, it is true, is no longer before God in the condition of a man with his sins. But, in virtue of the new position which grace has made unto him, he has entered upon a new and different responsibility. He has practically to answer all the privileges which are vouchsafed to him. He has to walk in the Spirit, to press towards the goal, to shew himself worthy of his calling, and as a child of God to walk in love, etc.

The day of Christ will shew in what manner that child of God has run. It is while he runs the race that he has to watch, lest anything should stop him, or turn him aside from his road. He meets with hindrances, and may perhaps find them even in the unfaithful state of God's people. It is for him to watch; the delay of others could not justify His own; the race is an individual things.

Nevertheless, in the Book of Numbers, which presents the going through the wilderness, do we not see a people on their march? This is true, but we must observe, that in the heavenly calling, of which we are partakers, God has formed a relationship with each of His saints; and that relationship is infinitely more developed than it could have been with the Israelites in the wilderness.

The reward at the end of the race is never the motive given to make us enter on the course; it is an encouragement to persevere when one is already engaged therein. Jesus Himself knew these encouragements - "Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame," Heb. 12.

The Book of Experience

J. N. Darby.

<27019E> 179

Philippians 1.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, and even in that to the Colossians, we see our place with Christ; but in Philippians the believer is seen passing through the world - as a Christian walking in it. There is no doctrine in the epistle; the believer is seen pressing toward the mark. And another thing: he looks at this course as run in the power of the Spirit of God: this is what characterises the Christian, that he is entirely running the race in that power. So there is no sin in this epistle - not the word sin even - and no conflict, in the proper sense of the word. Not that he has attained, but he is never doing anything but one thing - running in the power of the Spirit of God towards the goal. He had not attained, but he was doing nothing but running to attain. He was raised above all in himself, and in the world - entirely above all circumstances.

It is the epistle of experience, but according to the power of the Spirit of God. We learn this lesson, that though we fail, yet there is the possibility of running on in the power of the Spirit of God. Not that flesh is changed, or the thought of having attained admissible (there is no perfection down here); but the possibility of always acting consistently with the calling to get to Christ in glory. There is no looking for points of progress in the world; it sets him above every kind of circumstance, or contradiction, or difficulty, for he sees the path of the Christian entirely above them all.

To have a path shews that man had got out of God's place where He had set him. The moment we have a way it shews that we are not at home. It is blessed to have a way in the wilderness (of course, Christ is the way). Adam wanted no way; he would have stayed in the garden in quietness if he had obeyed God. But we have set out from Egypt, and we are not in Canaan; we go towards the goal. Numbers of things come out on the way, but all we have got to do is to run. We get a great deal more of Christ at every step; like a lamp at the end of a passage, we get more and more of it as we go on; we have not got the lamp yet, though we get more of the light of it every step we take. But there is entire deliverance from self as governing us, and a motive above circumstances, so that, though not insensible to them, they exert no influence over us.

180 "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making request with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel, from the first day until now." The Philippians had taken a zealous part in the gospel, and had shewn a loving spirit. How constant the intercession of the apostle was for them! Every time he prayed he was making mention of them. Mark how he carries the church of God on his heart; and it was the same way with individuals. He was thinking of all the good in them, and thanking God for it. See the kind of interest he had for the saints; he was always thinking of them. Even to the Corinthians he says, "I thank my God always on your behalf."

What Christ thinks of we should think of. If Christ is my life, and by the Spirit the spring of my thoughts, I shall have His thoughts in everything, for there is that which is right according to Christ. I have to be in the midst of circumstances as Christ would be, and that is Christian life. It is never necessary we should do anything wrong - never necessary we should act in the flesh; though it is there, why am I to think by it? I shall not, if I am full of Christ, for it is He who suggests the thoughts to me.

If I get into Christ's mind and thoughts, I shall not bear to see evil in saints; I want them like Christ. He is doing the work now in the heart of the saints - "that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word" - and I must be going along with Him in the same Spirit; and I must be all right myself, or I cannot do that. Christ gives Himself first for His people, and then He sets about to cleanse them, and make them what He would have them; and that should be our heart's desire to do in intercession.

There is plenty of power for this, though we are dreadfully low. He can suit His grace now just as in the brightest days of the apostle. There was much more to delight in when David was hunted as a partridge on the mountains, than in all the glory of Solomon for then there was the power of faith. It is with all saints that we are to "apprehend"; Eph. 3: 18. We shorten our own blessing if we do not take them [the saints] all in. There is competency with Christ; and if I go on with Him, I must have peace about them.

Praying for saints gives a person the power of seeing all the good in them. We see this in the epistles, with one exception, that to the Galatians, where the apostle does not speak of what he could commend, but goes straight into all the evil, for they were turning away from the foundation. If we prayed more for the saints we should have more joy in them, and more courage about them. It is always wrong to lose courage about the saints, though it is possible it might come to be like Jeremiah: "Pray no more for this people." The Lord is always there, and love cannot fail; so we can reckon on it with joy, and comfort, and courage. Even when Paul had said to the Galatians, "I am afraid of you," he adds, soon looking to Christ, "I have confidence in you through the Lord." He had the saints under Christ's eye for a blessing. How much are we looking with Christ's heart at all the saints, with comfort and courage that there is grace enough for them? "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ"; and, as he says further on, "that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke."

181 "Both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace." We are little aware how real the unity of the Spirit is: we have greatly lost the reality of it, though it is owned as a truth. It is a unity by a living power which is in every saint, so that the thing must be: "if one member suffer," not all ought to, but all do, "suffer with it." The body may be in such a mortified state as to have little feeling left; but, supposing there were a work of the Spirit in India, do you think it would not revive the saints here? So those people who were praying for Paul, when God strengthened him, praise returned to God from them all. The working of the Spirit of God tells in blessing on all who hear. But when he had to say, "All have forsaken me" (they had not forsaken Christ, but they had no courage to go into danger), Paul went on alone. It is plain if I have a pain in my body all my nerves are hurt by it; I cannot read or work so well. There may be a deadening of the spiritual nerves so that there is very little feeling, but it cannot be destroyed.

At verse 8 we get into the tone of the epistle. The apostle was no forgetful person; he remembers every little trait of kindness done to him, and he prays that they might have all kinds of knowledge and spiritual judgment, so that they might do things just fit to be done - that they might know in what one thing differs from another - that they might be connoisseurs in the Christian path; not only not fall into sin, but have the knowledge of just the right thing to do in the circumstances; for the standard is the satisfying the heart of Christ, not "Where is the harm?" The apostle desires that they might discern things now as they will be when brought into the light in that day of Christ. It is as if he said, I want you to think of the Lord Jesus, and know what will please the heart of Christ. There is the delight of pleasing Christ, and the delighting in the thing that pleases Him as well, by the active energy of the Spirit of God.

182 Then see how he rises above all the trials of his four years of imprisonment, two at Caesarea and two at Rome. "I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." He might have reasoned: If I had not gone up to Jerusalem, and there listened to these Jews persuading me to things, I might still be at liberty preaching the gospel. He does not do thus; and let me say, beloved friends, there is nothing more foolish than to be looking at second causes. Perhaps we may not have been wise, but the man who lives above things here knows that every one of them works together for good. All would turn to his salvation, he says, "through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ." And we see here that there is the increased activity and energy of the Spirit of God - "the supply," as the apostle speaks; so that, though we cannot look to Him to come (as He has come), we can and ought to be looking for the "supply," and His ministering grace through the word.

"Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death." We see here that perfection in the flesh is all nonsense, for Paul was looking to be like Christ in glory. The heart is always upright when it says, "For me to live is Christ." He had no object but Christ, and he walked day by day by that - Christ as source, Christ as object, Christ as character; all the way through, Christ was his life, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that the rage of man and Satan had no power over him. Self was practically gone. When he looked at himself he did not know what to choose-whether to go and rest with Christ, or to remain and serve Him. To be with Him was better, but then he could no longer labour for Him. Thus self was gone as a motive, and he counts on Christ for the church, and the moment he sees "it is necessary for you that I remain," he says, "I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith." He decides his own trial before Nero. When thinking of himself he did not know which to choose, but when he thinks of those dear to Christ needing his presence he says, "I know I shall abide."

183 The Lord grant, beloved brethren, that He should be our only object, and that we should not let ourselves be distracted from it, so that we may say, "This one thing I do." The Lord give us grace to be the true epistles of Christ till He come. What a bright and blessed witness the church of God would then be!

If we have less fighting and fears than Paul, it is because we have less energy.

Philippians 2.

I desire first to say a little word on the closing verses of chapter 1: "In nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." It is not merely that he wants to guard them against this, but he assures them that conflict is the natural state of the Christian - "Having the same conflict which ye saw in me." Here it was positive trial that they were in; but the whole of the Christian life is one of conflict with Satan; not that we need to be always thinking of it, if we have on the whole armour of God; but if we are not in the consciousness of Christ's victory, we are in danger of being terrified; and though we know little of this conflict, yet in a small degree we do. When Satan is resisted, Christ is then in the conflict, and we know that Christ has bound him, and he has been completely overcome; so it is "resist the devil, and he will flee from you." If we are walking with Christ, the apparent power is much greater with Satan and the world than with us; but it is all nothing; it is all a mistake to be terrified by it. What does it matter if the cities are walled up to heaven, if they tumble down, and you walk in over them?

You see, beloved friends, it is not a question of the difficulties, as we see in the case of Peter walking on the sea. He walked on the water to go to Jesus; but when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid. But if the water had been calm as a mill-pond, he could not have walked on it; you never heard of a man able to walk on water of any kind. It was all a mistake in what he was looking at. What we want to remember is that Christ has bound Satan; so now He can spoil his goods. He allows Satan to cast some into prison to be tried, but Satan gains nothing by that; when he meets a person walking with Christ, he has no power against him at all. We may have suffering, but this is what God has "given"; as we see in Moses, "esteeming" - he does not say reproach, but - "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." So that rough seas or smooth seas are all the same; we sink if Christ is not with us there, and we walk on them if He is.

184 To turn to chapter 2. It is astonishing the grace which associates us with Christ; we are called to have the same mind as Christ. Here we get the lowliness of the Christian life, as in the next chapter we have the energy of the Christian life. Here it is in following the pattern of Christ, a lowliness shewn in esteem of others, and in perfect consideration for others, and in gracious gentleness of demeanour in connection with the things of every-day life. Thus he tells them he would keep Timotheus, and send him to them as soon as he should know how it would go with him - reckoning on their true interest in all that regarded him; but he would not keep Epaphroditus, but send him, for he had been ill, and the Philippians had heard it, and were full of anxiety about him; as a child might say, My mother will be in a terrible way when she hears I am so ill. So Paul would send him that they might see him. In little things this considerateness is seen in Paul, this thorough thoughtfulness for others. Even the world can see it is lovely; their very selfishness delights in it.

The Philippians had shewn these things he speaks of in their thoughtfulness for Paul, yet they were not quite united in Christ. But he does not like to come with a rebuke in the midst of all their love for him. He says, I see how you care for me, but if you want to make me thoroughly happy, be of one mind, "fulfil ye my joy." It is in the most delicate way that he rebukes them - a gentle hint; but they needed the exhortation.

Then he goes on to shew the principles on which it is founded. "In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." It is a kind of impossibility if you look at it in one way; for if you are better than I, it is evident I cannot be better than you. But when the heart is thoroughly lowly, walking with Christ, and delighting in Christ, he thinks himself a poor creature with nothing but the grace of Christ to think of, and never sees anything but defects in himself; all the grace he sees in Christ; and, seeing this grace, even if he is using it, he feels what a poor instrument he is, the flesh hindering and spoiling the vessel, and not letting the light shine out.

185 But when he looks at his brother, he sees all the grace Christ has poured into him. What the Christian sees is Christ in his brother, and all the good qualities in him. Paul could say even to the Corinthians, who were going on shockingly, "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ." He begins by recognising all the good. Love took hold of all the good it could, and thus he got their hearts to listen to the rebukes. I detect the grace in my brother, and I do not see the evil at work in his heart; but I do see it in my own. When Moses came down from the mount, he wist not that his face shone. What made it shine was not looking at his own face - of course we know he could not do that - but looking at the glory; and it shines forth from us in the measure in which we look simply and purely at it. I see in my brother all the gentleness, graciousness, courage, faithfulness; and in myself all the defects. As I said, of course, if you are better than I, I cannot be better than you; but it is a question of the spirit in which the Christian walks; vain-glory is gone; and it cannot be otherwise if the heart is on Christ. It is not giving me a false estimate of myself; but when I look at the grace, it is Christ. Of course I must look at myself sometimes, and judge myself; but the best thing is not to have to look at myself at all. "Look not every man on his own things."

Then he turns to the principle on which this is founded: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Here we get the path of Christ from the glory of the Godhead to the cross; He never did anything but go down - the exact opposite of the first Adam. "Being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God"; not only He bore everything patiently; that is true; but another side of the truth - "He made himself of no reputation." He laid aside the form of Godhead, and was found as a man; and, being a man, He took upon Him the form of a servant. True, even coming in the form of a man, there was soon seen, in word and work and spirit and way, all moral glory shining out; but He, having laid glory aside, was always going down in lowliness till there was no lower place. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich."

186 There is the double step in His descent. The first was laying aside the form of God; the second, that, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient. There is nothing so humble as obedience, for then we have no will at all. He was not only obedient, but obedient unto death (self given up altogether, not only the will); and not only to death, but the death of the cross - the gibbet, as it would be in our day; then for slaves and malefactors only. From the form of God right down to death, obedience and humiliation all the way, the opposite in everything of the first Adam, who was not in the form of God, but set up to be as gods, and was disobedient unto death; the exact opposite to Christ in the spirit and character of his ways.

And as God says, "He that exalteth himself shall be abased," Adam was humbled because he exalted himself. Christ waited till God exalted Him; He humbled Himself, wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him. God sets Him as Man over all the works of His hands. Hence we read, "There is one God, the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ." This is not a question of His nature, but of the place in which He is set. God has put all things under His feet as Man. All things were created by Him, and for Him, but He will have it all as Man, and thus it is He takes joint-heirs. He is heir of all things as Man, and has all believers as joint-heirs with Him. In Colossians 1 we get Him as Creator, as Son of God, as Son of Man, and as Redeemer (the fourth telling us His title - Redeemer - that which has given Him a right over everything). All things are to be reconciled by Him; I do not say justified, because the things had not sinned; but they were all defiled; and, having reconciled all things, He takes us as joint-heirs. Just as Eve was not one of the different animals that Adam gave names to, neither was she lord as Adam, nor was she that over which he was lord; but she was a help-meet or companion with him over the things. And it is under the fourth title, though all remain united in His Person, that He brings in creation unto undefiled blessedness. It never can fail, and we know the redemption already: "you hath he reconciled"; the redemption is accomplished, though the results are not yet produced, as it is said, "that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures."

187 Then he tells us that the same mind is to be in us as was in Christ. He had "a body prepared," or "ears dug," as it is in Psalm 40: 6. He had taken the place of a servant as man. He comes, the fulness of the Godhead, in this body, and exhibits perfect obedience in it; and God has exalted Him to His right hand. He has gone before. We are not there yet; we are left to walk like Him here. It is a blessed thing to see the place He has taken: His path coming always down, and that to be the mind in us. So God says, "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth" too; that is, infernal things will have to own His title in glory. In that character, that He is exalted, they will have to bow to Him.

The first Adam did not become head of a race till he had sinned; and Christ did not become Head of a new race till He had accomplished redemption, and was Head of righteousness. As man entered Paradise, so He entered the world; each began a race. Sin complete, and the race ended on the one hand; and righteousness complete, and the race begun on the other.

When we talk of coming down, we mean the getting rid of pride in us. It is just the thing the Christian learns, and just the thing the flesh dislikes. Moses killed the Egyptian through the remains of court pride. Satan says, I cannot allow this; you must take the place out and out, or you cannot have it. The world's weapons will not do to fight God's battles with; Moses runs away, and is forty years keeping sheep instead of fighting. Then when God sends him, he cannot go; the extreme of one side and the extreme of the other. Our part in detail is always to wait till God puts us up higher, like the man who took the low place, to whom it was said, "Go up higher." If we are content with the low place, we shall miss ten thousand rebuffs we should otherwise have.

Now there comes a passage which often troubles people, but needlessly, as we shall see. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." The mistake people make is putting God's working and our working in contrast. It is not so. The contrast is between Paul and themselves. In losing Paul they had not lost God, who was working. He says, Do it, now that I am absent, for yourselves. Paul had been doing it for them. He had met the wiles of Satan for them in apostolic blessing; his spirit of wisdom had told them what to do. Now he says, My absence does not alter the present power of grace; God works in you Himself. "Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." They were now to meet the enemy without Paul in the front to lead them on. Never mind, he says: "work out your own salvation." I go always down, Himself working in me.

188 Chapter 2 is the pattern of Christ's lowly walk, the Lord coming down, and always so to the end; chapter 3 is the power and energy of life with Christ, and glory its object. The effect is to produce exactly the character of Christ: "That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life." That is exactly the description of Christ Himself. Take every member of that sentence, and you will see it is Christ. He was all that, and that is just what you are to be. How completely self is put down, God graciously working in us; and the effect is exactly what Christ was - constant selfhumiliation - and so blameless and harmless, the Son of God without rebuke, the expression of divine grace when there was no will or human exaltation, but the contrary. We see the perfect beauty and blessedness of it. It is not the energy, as in the next chapter; it is the character of the obedience. Wherever the path of obedience led He went. Having taken the form of a servant, His perfection was to obey.

Look what the effect was produced on a creature doing his own will as Adam. What an awful spectacle for angels - the ruin and destruction of God's glory in the world! But, when we had destroyed God's glory, Christ comes, and God is a debtor to man for His glory - not to us, I need not say - just as He had been a debtor to man for His dishonour; for by the cross God was glorified in His very nature. Christ comes, and we see what sin was - deliberate enmity against God's goodness, but all that God is was glorified; His majesty maintained, and all His truth comes out; His righteousness against sin; His perfect love. But the putting away of our sins was a small part of the glory of the cross; it is the foundation of eternal glory and blessedness.

189 Not only does Christ take the form of a servant, but He will never give it up. As never the place of man will be given up, so He will never give up its true place before God. He took upon Him the form of a man, and served His time on earth, as we have in the figure of the Hebrew servant in Exodus 21, and could have gone out free as man - could have had twelve legions of angels to deliver Him. But He did not. The ear of the servant was bored with an awl to the door when he would not go out free, because he loved his master, his wife, and his children, and he became a servant for ever. And that is what Christ is. In John 13, when the blessed Lord was going to glory, we should have said, there is an end of service. It is not so. He gets up from where He was sitting among them as a companion, He gets up and washes their feet; and that is what He is doing now. He says, I cannot stay with you here, but I will not give you up; you must now have part with Me where I am going. If I do not make you clean enough for heaven, you cannot have part with Me there. So this He does by keeping our feet clean. In Luke 12 we learn that He still continues the service in glory - "He shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." There we get His service in glory. It is His glory in love, though in the form of service. Not only heaven's table for us, but Christ Himself ministering it to us. He never gives up the service. Selfishness likes to be served, but love likes to serve; so Christ never gives up the service, for He never gives up the love. It is His love expressed in ministering that makes everything doubly blessed to us.

When I am brought to God in the spirit of my mind, I can go down like Christ.

Working out your own salvation with fear and trembling is not justification, and our place with God. Salvation in Philippians is always the final result in glory. What was the effect of redemption on Israel? Not to put them in Canaan, but to make them enter on a road through the wilderness. And where were they to get food? and were there not enemies in the way, too? I am to make good my way, maintaining God's name and character, and the devil is trying to hinder me; this is why there is fear and trembling. An Israelite in the wilderness never doubted as to whether he were in Egypt or not. If I find a doubting Christian, he does not yet know that he is redeemed. An Israelite might not gather manna, and would have nothing to eat that day; but he had no thought of being in Egypt. It was only eleven days' journey from Egypt to Canaan, as we get in Deuteronomy 1; but they were forty years journeying before they got to the plains of Moab, except the year they were at Sinai, for they had no courage or faith to take hold.

190 And so Satan seeks to hinder now. You will not get to your homes to-night without the devil trying to take away the blessing you may have got here. The devil will try to get up pride in you, and thus not let you shew out the character of Christ. If you knew that you were charged to carry this character of Christ through the world, and that Satan was trying to hinder you, you would count it a very serious thing. So Peter says, "If ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear." Satan is trying to dirty your feet, or to get you to dishonour Christ in the most awful way. I am in conflict with Satan, the world, and self, but I am in perfect peace with God. It is totally false to confound the working out our salvation with our relationship with God. This is all settled, and my confidence in God enables me to go on working.

Beloved brethren, how far are we doing this? Redemption is complete. How far are our souls making nothing of ourselves, and looking to manifest what Christ was here? It flows out naturally if I am full of Christ. I am not saying I must do this or that like Christ, though that sometimes too; but "he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

You will find the spirit of this graciousness and considerateness running all through the chapter in its details; it all comes out most beautifully.

I would make one remark more: that it is exceedingly blessed to see all this going on when the church was already sinking away into ruin. "All seek their own," he says in this very epistle, and that already. How little we realise its real state when we speak of the primitive church! There it is, all seeking their own; and it was a great deal worse after. I refer to it as a matter of comfort, for he exhorts them to this path in spite of the condition around; as it was when Elijah went up to heaven without dying, at the very time when he could find none but himself who had not bowed the knee to Baal, though God knew where to find them. There were brighter things, too, in David than there ever were in Solomon, who goes to Gibeon (where the ark was not), to sacrifice (2 Chron. 1), not to teach to sing before the ark on Sion "His mercy endureth for ever," 1 Chron. 16. Solomon had never a heart which God could string to play such tunes about Christ as He did in David.

191 We are told never to be discouraged; to rejoice in all good. If we find that all seek their own, we must only be the more like Christ ourselves. It is a comfort that the Head cannot fail though the members do; you cannot put me in a place in which Christ is not sufficient in full power and grace. All we want is to find ourselves lowly at His feet, He the counsellor of our hearts. If we are with God in light we know our own nothingness; and if all seek their own, His grace and blessedness come out the more.

The Lord give us to look to Him as our life and strength.

Philippians 3: 1-14.

We saw the apostle in the last chapter bringing our hearts in contact with the Lord Jesus, giving up His divine glory on high, taking the form of a servant, and going down; and then as Man highly exalted. That is exactly what we are to do; we are to have the same mind.

He had closed then, in the last chapter, the state and condition of soul we are to be in, and he now looks before - onward to the glory. The things before will keep the soul from being hindered - Christ set before the soul so as to take complete possession of it. It is not the character of graciousness in the life here, and considerateness for others, as in the last chapter, which looked at Christ emptying Himself of glory and humbling Himself; but the energy of divine life which presses forward to the goal. Sometimes we see a want of energy where there is loveliness of character; or a great deal of energy, on the other hand, when there is a want of softness and considerateness for others. But in the things of God you must get the whole that any part may be right. Satan imitates part, but you never get the whole in what he imitates. When you get both - when Christ is everything, it delivers from selfishness, and shews itself in seeking the good of others; but it will not give way when giving up Christ is in question (I do not mean giving Him up as to the soul's salvation, but in our path here). So the apostle Peter says, "add to brotherly kindness charity," for if God is not brought in, we have no power to walk according to Him in graciousness. Christ has gone up and is everything to us; He is before us as an object, and we cannot give Him up to please the flesh; but we can look for power to press on.

192 He then gives the starting-point in rejoicing in the Lord. "Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, rejoice." The effect of the ending of self is that I rejoice. Nothing separates from the love, we know; but there is danger when we are in the enjoyment of present blessing; we are apt to rest in the blessing, and not feel dependent on the Blesser. David said, "I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: Thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled." When his mountain was gone, he found he had been trusting in his mountain, and not in the Lord. When he says, "The Lord is my Shepherd," there was no being moved, for he was resting in the Lord Himself. If the heart is emptied of self, it does rest in the Lord; but the heart is so treacherous that a person experiencing great joy as a Christian often gets a fall after it, because of having got away from the place of dependence. He is restored again, we know, as in that Psalm: "He restoreth my soul."

Here Paul was just going to be tried for his life. He had been in prison four years (two of them chained to heathen soldiers), and he says he knew how to be full and to be hungry, how to abound and to suffer need. Pains and sorrows, and joys and comforts - he had gone through all; and he was not discouraged as a man might be who was obliged to be with brutal uncultivated men, and in constant suffering chained to a soldier, and four years in prison. And that was not all; he might have said, I am in prison and cannot do the Lord's work. No, he is with the Lord, and he says, all will "turn to my salvation." Even when Christ was preached of contention, he could say, "I herein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." When we are weaned from everything, we are cast on the Lord, and able to rejoice in the Lord, and that is when He leads us.

193 But what an object, what an energy-producing object, there was in the Lord before him! He looks at everything beyond the wilderness - he a traveller across it, and on the way, always rejoicing in the Lord. Whether he was preaching in public, or quietly in his lodging receiving those who came in, he was rejoicing. It is a great setting aside of self to be always rejoicing in the Lord. He had hoped to go on into Spain after being somewhat filled with the saints' company; but there was now no more about Spain, or being filled with their company either, yet he was still rejoicing. You can never get inside the defences of the one whose joy is in the Lord. "Nay, in all these things," he says, "we are more than conquerors." All these things are creatures - "angels, principalities, and powers"; but He dwells in us; He is near the heart, and that is the great secret. We get Christ between us and the troubles, we understand how unbelief hinders, but this is the secret that makes everything work for good. The love of God is reckoned upon; His love is shed abroad in the heart. The great starting-point is, "Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord."

We see, too, the simplicity of looking to Christ. The religion of descent, of ordinances, and of works - the moment I get these three, morally speaking, I get a Jew. It was all works, ordinances, and descent. I could boast of all this just the same if Christ had not come. But where does it all end? "Beware of dogs." "Dogs" is a name for a perfectly shameless thing.

I must get the conscience with God, and Christ from God, or I have got nothing. A Jew could bow his head like a bulrush and do all that without his soul being with God, and therefore God puts perfect contempt upon it all. He says, "My son, give me thy heart." "The cattle upon a thousand hills" are Mine. "If I were hungry, I would not tell thee." It is no use your bringing offerings: I want you, not your offerings. Cain had much more trouble in tilling the ground than Abel had about the lamb; but Cain's conscience had never been with God, nor seen the ruin that had come in; we see the hardness of his heart as to sin, and his ignorance as to the holiness of God. He brings what was the sign of the curse - what he had got by the sweat of his face. Abel brought a lamb, and was accepted. If we have got the real knowledge of the work of atonement and acceptance in Him, we are like Abel. The testimony as to righteousness refers to the person of Abel. What it was founded on was his offering, which was a type of Christ. God cannot refuse me when I present Christ to Him; He accepts me according to the pass I bring. I cannot think of going through a process to make my soul up in some way. In coming to God I must come in God's way, which is Christ and nothing else; and with my own conscience, not with ordinances, which are all outward things.

194 It is remarkable the way in which he treats the subject in this chapter. It is not the conscience with sin on it, but the worthlessness of all ordinances; so he calls it the "concision." Have your hearts circumcised - that is the true ordinance. "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit"; even as Jeremiah says, "Circumcise your hearts." It must be the flesh totally put down. The flesh has a religion as well as lusts; but the flesh must have a religion that will not kill the flesh. Satisfying the flesh in mortifying the body - a voluntary humility, not sparing the body - that is easy work; but it is not easy work to be done with the flesh.

Suppose I could say, "A Hebrew of the Hebrews," "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless," perfectly religious - who would be accredited by that? Paul; not God or Christ. It is not worth a farthing, this righteousness. It is giving me a good place. It is "I" all the while, not Christ. And it is in this that it is detected - the moment it accredits the flesh. It may be costly and painful, it may be things by which I punish myself, but it is utterly worthless. I have seen a person irritated to the last degree when told it was not worth anything.

It is striking, the way in which Paul takes it up. It is not as sin, but as something perfectly worthless - legal righteousness, and the true religion as man can see it. "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ." He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and after the strictest sect he lived a Pharisee; that was gain to him. Then he says, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." There was no question of sin; when he speaks of righteousness, it is not as meeting sins, but as contrasted with righteousness according to the law. We can always detect it; all it does is to accredit self - that is the mischief and the evil; for who would have filthy rags (that is what our righteousnesses are called) when he could have Christ for his righteousness? He had such a perception of the excellency of what Christ is in God's sight - what God delights in - that he says, I am not going to keep this wretched righteousness, or add it to that which is of God. The deceitful lusts are bad enough, but this religious flesh is worse. It was not real righteousness; it was self puffed up, not self judged; it was self eked out, and painted over. Now he wants to get rid of self, and have Christ instead of it.

195 That is the place, and now he unfolds it. Remark, it is not when I was converted I counted all things loss. We find, when a person is converted, Christ is everything; the world is a vain show - vanity, nothing. It has passed from the mind, and things unseen fill the heart. But afterwards as the man goes on with his duties and intercourse with his friends, though Christ is still precious, he does not continue to count all things loss; often it is only that he counted. But Paul says, "I do count," not did. It is a great thing to be able to say it. Christ should hold always such a place as He did when salvation was first revealed to our hearts.

Allow me to add a thing which comes into my mind. Of course if a man has not Christ at the bottom, he is no Christian at all; but I mean even where Christ is in a man, and you may find him walking blamelessly, yet, if you speak to him of Christ, there is not an echo in his heart, though his life goes on smoothly. Christ at the bottom, and a fair Christian walk at the top, and, between these two, a hundred and fifty things that Christ has nothing to do with at all. His life is practically passed without Christ. This will not do. It is the terrible levity of the heart that goes on without Christ, until it becomes the highway of whatever the world pours into it.

He now tells us what is the power for this. He wants to win Christ, and it looks like a terrible sacrifice to give up everything for this. But it is just like a baby with a plaything. Try to take the plaything from it, it will hold it the faster; put a prettier before it, and it will let the other drop. He counted everything loss and dung; the things were gone. I shall have temptations, I know; but nine-tenths of the temptations that beset and hinder would not exist if Christ had His place. Things would not tempt and beset us, as gold, and silver, and pretty things, if "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" had its place in the heart; that kind of conflict would be gone. We should then know the snares of Satan, and suffer for others; it would not be the struggle to keep my own head above water, but to keep others from being drowned.

196 Christ having got this place, other things have lost their value. The eye is single, and the whole body is full of light. He had suffered the loss of all things; but he says, "I do count them but dung." He was looking at Christ as such a blessed object that everything was given up for Him. And he kept this place for Him, so that he goes on to win Christ. He had not got Christ yet, but Christ had got hold of him; and he was running the race to get there, and looking at the end of the journey. No matter what the road is; it may be rough, but I am looking to the end.

There are these two things here; first, that I may win Christ; and second, that I may not have my own righteousness. A man with a threadbare coat, if he gets a right good one, is ashamed of the old one. Paul would not thank you for the kind of righteousness he had before. I cannot have my own and God's; I would not have my own if I could. This is blessedly brought out in 1 Corinthians 1: "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." What we are in life as of God, Christ is of God towards me.

He then goes to the next thing, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection."

The first thing was winning Christ; the second, knowing Christ. There is the victory over the whole power of evil - death, and everything else. I want to know Him - His perfect love and life; to have Him as the object before the soul-occupying the soul, and mind, and heart, and so grow up into Him; and to know the power of His resurrection, for then the whole power of Satan was set aside. He had spoken of the righteousness as that which he sought in Christ, not in himself and the law; and now he wanted to know the power of the life expressed in the resurrection of Christ. When he has known Christ as a Person, and victory over death, he can take up the service of love as Christ did, and can know "the fellowship of his sufferings." How different from fearing, and dreading, and creeping on as the apostles did when told of His death, in Mark 10! "They were amazed, and as they followed, they were afraid," instead of rejoicing because death was before them. But, if I know the power of resurrection, death is behind me, all its power is broken. So, when He rose, He said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth"; "Preach the gospel to every creature"; "Be not afraid of them that kill the body," He had said before: they killed His body.

197 When I have got the power of resurrection I can serve in love. Paul was looking death in the face, and not speaking lightly. Satan says, You want to follow Christ? Yes. There is death in your way. Very well; I shall be all the more like Christ for going through it.

"The fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." It should be rather "the resurrection from among the dead." Paul so came into this, that he uses words Christ Himself might use: "I endure all things for the elect's sake." It was all of grace - a totally new place - all pretension to righteousness gone, and what I am as man too, and Christ substituted as righteousness for me. And then Himself - to know Him. That is where progress goes on to; the affections are now engaged. When I see suffering before me, I get the power of His resurrection, and then the privilege of the fellowship of His sufferings. Paul had a large share of this; we have a little. He says, "If by any means I might attain"; that is, Cost what it will, if death is on the road, all right: I shall arrive at what He did - resurrection from among the dead. Resurrection here in Philippians 3: 11, is a special word in the Greek, and never even found but here in the New Testament. When we look at the resurrection from the dead, we find it to be a matter of all possible importance. Christ was the first-fruits, not of the wicked dead, of course. What was Christ's resurrection? God raised him from the dead, because His delight was in Him, because of His perfect righteousness and glorifying Him. And it is the same with us. Resurrection is the expression of God's satisfaction in those raised; it is His seal on Christ's work. Christ was the Son He delighted in, and now it is the same with us because of Christ. In Him it was His own perfectness; with us it is because of Him. In power He comes in to take His own out, while the rest are left behind.

198 "From among," etc. - in that lies the whole force of the expression. So at the transfiguration He charged them not to speak of it "till the Son of man were risen from the dead"; they questioned among themselves "what the rising from the dead should mean." What astonished them? It was "the rising from among the dead." It was this very thing. God intervened in power, and raised Him up, and set Him at His own right hand; and when the time is come, He will raise His saints too. It is an immense act of divine power, for divine righteousness is there. In 1 Corinthians 15 there is no reference but to saints; it is not a general resurrection, for the wicked are not raised in glory. I do not know anything that has done more harm to the church than the notion of a general resurrection. If all are raised together, the question of righteousness is not settled; but it is, "if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." The whole character, and nature, and meaning, and purpose of this resurrection is entirely distinct. "From among" is the expression of divine delight in the person raised, and we are all raised because of it; else there would be no sense in the expression "attained."

He says, "if by any means" - if it cost me my life - it is all nothing. "That I may win Christ" is the first thing. But, in winning Him at the close of the race, it is also as a present thing "that I may know him." It has been asked whether this refers to the present effect, or to the future glory? I say it is present effect by future glory.

"I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling." The high calling is the calling above. We see the immediate connection of the object with the present effect. He wanted to be like Christ now, not only when he should be dead in his grave and his spirit in paradise. If he were to die, he would be then like Him; but that was not what he was looking for, namely, to be conformed to the image of the Son of God in glory. This he would be of course, but this I never shall be till Christ come and raise the dead; this I wait for. I am conscious of never attaining, but I wait for it, and every day I am more like Him, suffering in the power of the love in which He served the Father; and there is a continual growing likeness to Christ inwardly from looking at Him in the glory. The only thing I care for is to be like Him in glory, and with Him.

199 The whole of Paul's life was founded on that, and completely formed by that. The Son of God was forming his soul day by day, and he was always running towards Him, and never doing anything else. It was not merely as an apostle that he entered into the fellowship of His sufferings, and conformity to His death, but every Christian ought to be doing the same. A person may say he has forgiveness of sins, but I say, What is governing your heart now? Is your eye resting on Christ in glory? Is the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus so before your soul as to govern everything else, and make you count everything loss that is in the way? Is that where you are? Has this excellent knowledge put out all other things? not only an outwardly blameless walk, and able to say you love Christ; but has the thought of Christ in glory put out all other things? If it were so, you would not be governed by everyday nothings.

If a labouring man has a family, he does not forget the affections of his children because of his work. On the contrary, when his labour is done, his tools are thrown down, and he returns home with all the more joy because he has been absent from it. His labour did not hinder or enfeeble the affections of his heart.

To be in our daily occupations as to Christ, we have also to watch against another danger; when there are not other objects, there are distractions. We must watch the distractions as well as the objects, and have habits of jealousness of heart for Christ, else there is immediate weakness. And then when we go into God's presence, instead of rejoicing in the Lord, conscience has to be talked to. It is sad indeed when the walk in the world has been such, that, on going back to Christ, we find He had not been thought of in it.

Could you say, as Paul to Agrippa, Would to God you were (not almost, but) altogether such as I am? Are you happy enough to say that? Can you say, I am so rejoicing in Christ, and see such excellency in the knowledge of Him, that I would to God you were like me? What we have to look for in hearts is, not I have counted, but "I do count." Do your hearts count, as a present thing, all things loss? Two things we have to watch against, having another object, and, what is even more subtle, distractions.

200 The Lord give us to have our eyes so anointed with eye-salve, so to see Him, as to detach our hearts from other things; to have no other object than Himself before them. Perhaps we shall have the cross to take up; but mark, then it is not merely suffering, nor always exactly for Him either, but it is always with Him. The Lord give us (for we have to pass through a place where people do not care about Christ) to have the eye thus fixed on Him, having Him as a sanctuary, as the power and energy which carries us through. The Lord give us - and it is in His heart to give us - to say, "This one thing I do." The Lord give us truth of heart, and diligence of heart too.

Philippians 3: 15-21; 4: 1-7.

We were seeing, beloved brethren, the way in which Christ being before the eye gives earnestness of purpose in running towards the glory. Christ had laid hold on Paul for it, and he wanted to lay hold on Christ in glory. We were seeing too that this epistle looks at the Christian as travelling across the wilderness with everything at the end, but remember this, that, all through, the power of Christ's resurrection being in him, he had already the power in life, and wanted it in glory; and the practical effect was to make him run as a person who had only the glory in view. One single object - winning Him - and being raised up himself into the glory.

That is what we are predestinated to - "to be conformed to the image of his Son"; not looking forward to being like Him when our bodies are in the grave and we in Paradise. True, "when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is"; "but our conversation" is now "in heaven"; our citizenship, though I do not much like the word. It means all our living relationships; as we say, He is an Englishman; that is what distinguishes him. What distinguishes us is, we are of heaven. So he says, "this one thing I do," running towards the place; it has determined my whole life; "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling." The high calling means the calling above. We can have no notion of perfection but as in that glory.

The moment I have seen Christ come down, obedient to death for me, there is nothing too great to expect as the answer to it, for all is the fruit of the travail of His soul.

201 The "earnest of his love" is nowhere in Scripture; it has been taken, I think, out of a hymn. The earnest of the glory we have; "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." Paul felt the power of the glory on his spirit; and that is how we are to run, but all Christians do not know it. If a man is a Christian at all he must know the cross as that through which he is redeemed; but he may not know that he is going to be with Christ in glory. The "little children" know that their sins are forgiven. This is the common knowledge of all. And the children know the Father - have the Spirit of adoption. But the perfect in Christ, as they are here called, know the evil of their own hearts far better, and at the same time see the perfect love of God in giving Christ on the cross - love come down to the sinner in his sins. They see not only that they are forgiven, but that we are all done with as children of Adam. The little children have not that. They do not know that they are entirely set aside as to their Adam nature. The old nature is dead to faith, and "when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory"; and faith has got the place now, "Herein is love with us made perfect," "because as he is, so are we in this world." There is the man perfect.

He says, "Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you." He may be at the beginning, and you farther on; if so, you ought only to shew him the more grace; however, Christ has laid hold on him, and forgiven him his sins, and he will yet know another thing, even that he has died with Christ - that not only sins are forgiven, but that sin is put away by faith - that he himself is put away - that self which troubled him a great deal more than his sins. They are to be likeminded, as those who know that they are associated with the last Adam. Even if this is not seen by all, they are yet to go thoroughly together; God will reveal it to the others.

He then turns to the contrast, and, in doing so, puts himself forward in a remarkable way as their example. There are those whose "conversation is in heaven," and there are those who "mind earthly things"; the end of the latter is destruction; they are contrary to Christianity. It is now not a question of not seeing clearly, but of having the mind on earthly things. That is not Christ in glory; I cannot mind earthly things and Christ too. "The friendship of the world is enmity with God." "All that is in the world is not of the Father." The children are of the Father. When I was first awakened, I was astonished to find so much about the world in God's word; but I soon saw, when I had to do with Christians, how it dragged them back, always soliciting their hearts.

202 He says those who mind earthly things are the enemies of the cross of Christ. What was the cross? It had judged all this. I find the Son of God - the spring, and root, and plant, for all glory to grow on. The cross was all He got in this world. And what is the world? The world would not have Christ on any terms; so I have done with it. "The world seeth me no more"; the Holy Ghost is not come to be seen; "whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." That is how we know the Holy Ghost.

Evil and good came to an issue at the cross. It was the turning-point; it was where the two met. And now the whole question is, Am I with the world that turned Christ out, or with Christ whom the world turned out? There is nothing like the cross. It is both the righteousness of God against sin, and the righteousness of God in pardoning sin. It is the end of the world of judgment, and the beginning of the world of life. It is the work that put away sin, and yet it is the greatest sin that ever was committed. The more we think of it, the more we see it is the turning-point of everything. So, if a person follows the world, he is an enemy of the cross of Christ. As Christians we have to look into it, how far this vain show puts a spider film over our hearts, so as to hinder us from seeing. If I take the glory of the world that crucified Christ, I am glorying in my shame. Where is a man at home? In his Father's house, not in the dreary desert he has to cross in going there.

The meekness of the path we saw in chapter 2; here we have the power and energy that delivers from the world that would hinder our being like Him.

"Who shall change our vile body" - the body of our humiliation, not vile morally. I have Adam's body now, I shall have Christ's then. All our living associations are where He is. As Saviour He will come and accomplish all in changing our body, and conforming it to His glorious body. The price has been paid, but the final deliverance of what has been paid for is not yet come. "He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God," but we have not yet got it. We are waiting till He come, to get it.

203 Ah! beloved brethren, if our hearts really felt that God is going to make us like Christ, if we practically believed that He is going to bring us as brethren to be with and like Christ - well, we should have altogether another thought about the world, we should be "perfect" then, pressing towards the mark.

If I die meanwhile, I am always confident. I do not want to die; I want mortality to be swallowed up of life; but if death come, it does not touch my confidence; "absent from the body, present with the Lord."

He first speaks of the hope; that is what I want. Then he looks at the two things that are man's portion: "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." As to death, it is gain to me, for to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But what about the judgment? It is a solemn thing. It is "the terror of the Lord." I think of the poor things not converted, and I "persuade men." It makes him think not of himself but of other people, though he says, "we must all appear" - that is, be manifested - "before the judgment-seat of Christ." We persuade men, and are made manifest to God. The day of judgment had its effect on him; it made him feel now the effect of the presence of God, as he will do in the day of judgment. It keeps my conscience awake and alive; it is a sanctifying power, not a terrifying one. Divine power will take us; as Adam had Eve presented to him, Christ, being God, presents His Eve - His church - to Himself, as last Adam.

Persons have asked if this is present or future - "that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection." It is the present power of looking at it objectively. "He that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." It is the present effect of having the eye fixed on Him and waiting for Him. Final redemption will come, and make good, as to the body, what is true now of the soul. He will make us like Him in the Father's house; and, what I feel is so blessed, He will have us there without even the need of a conscience. Here I must always have my conscience on the qui vive; if not, I am at once caught in a snare of Satan. There I shall not want it, where all around will be blessedness. We shall have the Holy Ghost then too, and His whole power spent in enabling us to enjoy the glory. Now "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us," but much of the power is spent in making the ship go.

204 As a matter of fact, a number of us have cares, and trials, and temptations. God has thought of all these; He has counted the very hairs of our heads, and given us something that takes us out of them all. He thinks of the weather for us even: "Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter." Nay, even a sparrow falls not to the ground without your Father. God thinks of everything, and gives us complete superiority over everything.

It is blessed to see that the apostle goes from the most exalted thoughts of the revelation of God to the commonest things a saint has to pass through. From things so exalted he turns to two women who were not getting on well together. So it is to-day. There is no forgetfulness in grace. It takes up to the third heaven, but goes down to the smallest things. Even when a runaway slave is in question, the delicacy with which Paul deals with it has been admired in all ages.

What was Christ's comfort on the cross? He could not tell the poor thief that he was going to paradise without telling him that He was going there too: "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." So Paul, when thinking of the women who laboured with him, says, "whose names are in the book of life." God being there, there were divine affections; we are put in the place of divine affections.

There is nothing I feel more in going out to visit, than the desire that Christ should be so there, that the thing should come out that would come out of Christ - not my own thoughts. We do not know half how blessed it is to have the mind of Christ; but the mind of Christ was to go down to the cross.

"Rejoice in the Lord alway." Who was a fit person to say that? The man who had been in the third heaven? No. The man a prisoner at Rome. That was rejoicing always; as we have in the Psalms, "I will bless the Lord at all times." When I get the Lord as the object of my heart, there is more of heaven in the prison than out of it. It is not the green pastures and waters of quietness that make him glad, "The Lord is my Shepherd," not the green pastures, though green pastures are very nice. And even if I wander from them, it is "He restoreth my soul." And if death is in the way, I am not afraid, for "Thou art with me." And though there are dreadful enemies, there is a table spread in their presence. Now he says, "My cup runneth over." He carries him through all the difficulties and trials of his own feebleness. Ah! he says, "surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

205 The man who trusted in the Lord, the more trouble he was in, the more he proved that all was right. Paul says, I know Him free, and I know Him in prison. He was sufficient when he was in want, and sufficient when he abounded. So he says, "Rejoice in the Lord alway."

What could they do with such a man? If they kill him, they only send him to heaven; if they let him live, he is all devoted to lead people to the Christ they would destroy.

It is more difficult to rejoice in the Lord in prosperity than in trials, for trials cast us on the Lord. There is more danger for us when there are no trials. But delight in the Lord delivers us altogether from the power of present things. We are not aware, until they are taken away, how much the most spiritual of us lean on props. I mean we lean on things around us. But if we are rejoicing in the Lord alway, that strength can never be taken away, nor can we lose the joy of it.

"Let your moderation be known unto all men." Do you think people will think your conversation is in heaven if you are eager about things of earth? They will only think so if there is the testimony that the heart does not stick up for itself. "The Lord is at hand." All will be set right soon. If you pass on in meekness, and subduedness, and unresistingness, how it acts in keeping the heart and affections right; and the world can see when the mind and spirit is not set on it. So he says, let it be "known unto all men."

"Be careful for nothing." I have found that word so often a thorough comfort. Even if it be a great trial, still "be careful for nothing." Oh! you say, it is not my petty circumstances - it is a question of saints going wrong. Well, "be careful for nothing." It is not that you are careless, but you are trying to carry the burden, and so you are racking your heart with it. How often a burden possesses a person's mind, and when he tries in vain to cast it off, it comes back and worries him! But "be careful for nothing" is a command, and it is blessed to have such a command.

206 What shall I do then? Go to God. "In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." Then in the midst of all the care you can give thanks. And we see the exceeding grace of God in this. It is not that you are to wait till you find out if what you want is the will of God. No. "Let your requests be made known." Have you a burden on your heart? Now go with your request to God. He does not say that you will get it. Paul, when he prayed, had for answer, "My grace is sufficient for thee." But peace will keep your heart and mind - not you will keep this peace. Is He ever troubled by the little things that trouble us? Do they shake His throne? He thinks of us, we know, but He is not troubled; and the peace that is in God's heart is to keep ours. I go and carry it all to Him, and I find Him all quiet about it. It is all settled. He knows quite well what He is going to do. I have laid the burden on the throne that never shakes, with the perfect certainty that God takes an interest in me, and the peace He is in keeps my heart, and I can thank Him even before the trouble has passed. I can say, Thank God, He takes an interest in me. It is a blessed thing that I can have this peace, and thus go and make my request - perhaps a very foolish one - and, instead of brooding over trials, that I can be with God about them.

It is sweet to me to see that, while He carries us up to heaven, He comes down and occupies Himself with everything of ours here. While our affections are occupied with heavenly things, we can trust God for earthly things. He comes down to everything. As Paul says, "without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us." It was worth being cast down to get that kind of comfort. Is He a God afar off, and not a God nigh at hand? He does not give us to see before us, for then the heart would not be exercised; but, though we see not Him, He sees us, and comes down to give us all that kind of comfort in the trouble.

Philippians 4: 8-23.

The first two verses I have read are the last of the exhortation in this epistle.

207 We have already seen the way in which, in entire superiority to all circumstances, the Christian is to go on. All through the epistle that character of the power of the Spirit of God is brought out. In verse 8 we get the effect of what we were speaking of last time: "Rejoice in the Lord alway"; "let your moderation be known unto all men"; "be careful for nothing; let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." The heart is set free, for the peace of God, which is immutable, keeps the heart and mind. There is nothing new or strange to God. He is always in peace, working all things after the counsel of His own will. It is thus that the heart is to be at rest, and then it is free to be occupied with what is lovely and blessed.

It is a great thing for the Christian to have the habit of living in what is good in this world, where we necessarily have to do with what is evil. We were evil ourselves once, and nothing else was in heart, thoughts, and mind; and there is still evil not only in the world but in our hearts, and we have to judge it where it is allowed. But it will not do to be always occupied with it. It defiles even when we judge it; just as when the man had to do with the ashes of the red heifer in Numbers 19; he was really doing a service in gathering them up, and laying them up without the camp, yet he was unclean until even, and the same as to him who applied them. It is soiling to our minds, even to be judging evil. There is in some hearts a tendency to be busy about evil, but it will not do to live in. Of course I am not now speaking of living in it actually, but of even in thought judging it.

It is a great thing to have the heart toned and tuned to take delight in the things God delights in. Even in the sense of judging evil as evil, it is not happy. I am to be living now as with God in heaven, and has God to be judging evil in heaven? We know He has not; and it is a great thing for our souls to be above with the Lord, not only doing the things that please Him, but being also in the state of mind in which He can delight. Take one day only and ask yourself, has your mind been living in the things that are lovely and of good report? It is that the apostle speaks of here. Is it the habit of your mind to be dwelling on what is good? Evil forces itself on us in these days, but it will not do to be dwelling on it. It weakens the mind; the mind gets no strength from thinking of it. It may awaken disgust where the mind is in a spiritual state, but even judging it, we are not doing it rightly unless the heart is dwelling on what is good. We might be bringing down fire from heaven, when Christ would merely go to another village.

208 He walked in the full power of communion in what was good in the midst of evil, though He had to do with it; He had to say, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees"; and we may have to do with it too, but it is never done rightly unless we are living in what is good. There would never be softness, and by this I do not mean softness towards evil - we have to judge that peremptorily - but there would be no gracious softness. Paul had to say, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you." There is no softness here: but still even this comes out in love. Supposing we have to judge evil, we have to do it in the power of the good that is in us. Here is the path in which our souls have to walk: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." The Lord give us, beloved brethren, to remember them. God may have to judge, but He dwells in what is good.

We then get - and what a blessed thing it is for a man to be able to say it - "Those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do." Mark here, that is the way of having the God of peace with us. When our cares are cast on God, he says, "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus"; but this is more. Paul stood in a special or peculiar place, filled by the Spirit of God, though the chief of sinners, as he says, yet "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus": "death worketh in us - life in you." It was a great deal to say. He had to have a thorn in the flesh to enable him to carry it out; it was not that his flesh was naturally any better than yours. He did not only say, I am dead, but he carried about the death in the flesh, so that it did not stir. He was a chosen vessel, we know, and it was through the grace and power of Christ that he did it. But he was doing it, and so, as we remarked in beginning, there is never sin mentioned in this epistle, because it is the proper experience of Christian life; doctrine is scarcely alluded to either. Paul speaks throughout in the consciousness of his experience.

209 If I look to walk after Christ, I must reckon myself dead. I never say I must die, because this would be to suppose the flesh there working; of course it is there, but I say it is dead. I quite understand a person passing through a state by which he learns what flesh is, and such processes are more or less long. But when brought thoroughly down to say, "In me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing," then God can say, Reckon yourself dead; do not let sin have dominion over you. The spring from which all power comes is that you have died. That is the fundamental truth as to deliverance. Deliverance comes when by the power of the Spirit of God we reckon ourselves dead. It is not so but to faith. Christ is there in power, and I reckon myself dead, and then I can deal in power.

"This is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." But is that all? No. For supposing life is there, and that the old nature is still alive, there is nothing but conflict between the two, and, unless I have the power of the Spirit of God, no settled freedom from sin; and supposing I have, still there is conflict. Only if I am dead really, my deliverance from the working of the flesh is fully realised. The apostle says, in the power and being of this life, I am dead; and when he comes to carry it out, it is "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." I have received Christ as righteousness before God, and as life in me; and I treat the old thing as dead. It is not only that I have life, but I have died, so it is not an even chance between the two, which shall have the upper hand. It is the way till I am brought to the discovery that there is no good in the flesh, and that I have died with Christ. Then I learn that not only I have done bad things, but that the tree itself is bad, and that Christ, who is our life, has died to sin, as well as for sins; and, when I reckon the old thing dead, I find liberty.

I do not say forgiveness, but deliverance. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free." Of course I may fail, and may be brought under the power of sin for a moment, but I am not a debtor to it any more. How has He condemned the flesh? In death. Then I am free - in the fact of life treating the old thing as dead. We are always to manifest this life of Jesus. Keeping in faith this dying of Christ, I have got the cross for the flesh. The apostle says, The death of Christ works in me, old Paul, and so nothing but the life of Christ flows out for you; and he says, Go you and do like me; "those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you." He Himself will be then present with you.

210 What a wonderful thing it is, beloved brethren! The life of Christ given - the flesh reckoned dead - and we walking accordingly. Is God then going to keep Himself separate from you? No. "The God of peace shall be with you."

It is wonderful how often He is called "the God of peace," while He is never called the God of joy. Joy is an uneven thing. Joy gives us the thought of hearing good news, and sorrow may be there too. There is joy indeed in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, for that is good news there; but it is not God's nature like peace. It is an emotion of the heart. Man is a poor and weak creature. He hears good news, and he has joy; he hears sad news, and he has sorrow. It is the ups and downs of a creature-nature. But He is "the God of peace." It is a deeper thing. Look at the world and the human heart; do you ever see peace there? Joy we do see in the animal nature even; as in a beast let loose. And we may see a kind of joy in the world, but there is no peace; the heart of man is "like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest" - incessant harassment for amusement, and they call that joy. The world is a restless world, and if it cannot be restless in activity to get what it wants, it is restless because it cannot. We never find peace in this world except when God gives it.

If we are walking in the power of the life of Christ, the God of peace is with us. We have the consciousness of His presence. The heart is at rest; there is no craving after something we have not got. Even among Christians we see persons who have no peace because they are craving after what they have not got. That is not peace. But enjoying what is in Him, though surely craving to know Him better, is blessed rest of heart; - it is peace. It is a blessed thing to have such a sanctuary in this world - "the God of peace" with us.

We then see how Paul is superior to all circumstances. He had been in want, though in a kind of free prison, and his heart felt it. "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again." He says, "now at the last," as if they had been a little bit careless. But there is a gracious delicacy towards them; he at once withdraws what he had said, by adding, "but ye lacked opportunity." There is never insensibility in the Christian's superiority, else it is no superiority. In all circumstances the heart is free to act according to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was never insensible. We steel ourselves against circumstances; our poor selfish hearts like to get away from suffering. But He was always Himself in the circumstances. So, as has been said, there was no character in Christ. He was always Himself. Perfectly sensitive to all things, but never governed by them, always in them in the strength of His own grace. We never find Him unmoved. When He saw the crowd, He was "moved with compassion towards them"; and when He saw the bier which carried out the only son of the widow, He had pity on her; and at the grave of Lazarus "He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled" - a strong expression, it is, He troubled Himself inwardly. The power of death in the people around Him pressed on His spirit. No matter where He was, He was never insensible, but was Himself in grace for that He was sensible of. On the cross, He had the right word for the thief. Even when He had to say, "How long shall I be with you, and suffer you?" He immediately adds, "Bring thy son hither." He was perfectly sensitive, as we are not, with His grace always ready to be called out. What shews itself in Christ is what we should seek to be; that is, perfectly sensitive to all circumstances, but that they should meet Christ in us, so as to draw Him out.

211 We have seen how Paul corrects what he had said, "at the last your care of me hath flourished again," by adding, "ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity." We never find the Lord correcting Himself. Paul was a man of like passions as we are. At Troas he could not stop, though a great door was opened to him for preaching the gospel; he had no rest in his spirit because he did not find Titus. In Macedonia, too, his flesh had no rest. And he says of that epistle which gives us inspired directions for the assembly (we could not do without it), that he was not sorry he had written it, though he had been sorry; and yet he had been inspired to write it. His heart had sunk below the place he was in, when he thought all the Corinthians had turned against him. It is blessed in one sense to see that, though he was an apostle, he was so like us: but we would not see it in the blessed Lord. Perfect sensitiveness, but perfection in it, is what we see in Him; while we see the apostle was a man, though it is interesting to see him feeling in that way.

212 He then goes on to shew, that he was superior to all these circumstances. "Not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Power has come in for us, beloved friends. People say, Oh! we can do all things through Christ, as a kind of absolute truth. I say, Can you? You cannot. Oh! you say, a person can; and this is perfectly true as an absolute statement, but it is not what the apostle meant. He meant that he could do all things; he had learned it. It was a real state for him, not an abstract proposition. "I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry." If full, He keeps me from being careless, and indifferent, and self-satisfied; if hungry, He keeps me from being cast down and dissatisfied. With him it was not a man can, but I have found Christ so sufficient in every circumstance that I am under the power of none. He had been beaten of rods: five times he had received of the Jews forty stripes, save one; he had been stoned, and he had gone through all sorts of things; but he had found Christ sufficient in them all.

And do not say, Ah! that was when he was a mature Christian; it was very well to say it at the end of his life. If he had not found Christ thus sufficient from the beginning right through to the end, he could not have said what he did at the end. It is that faith reckons on Christ from the starting point of Christian life. It is the principle I was referring to in Psalm 23. When the Psalmist had gone through everything, he says, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." Full or hungry I shall always find that He is enough. But to be able to experience this at the end it must be experienced by the way.

Do not say, Oh! he was an apostle! he was a wonderfully blessed man, far above the evil that is torturing me. No such thing! He had a thorn in the flesh while he was writing; and though that was not power, it put him into nothingness where the power could come in. The Lord would not take it away when Paul besought Him. "My grace is sufficient for thee," was His answer. It seemed a hindrance; but, when he preached, Christ's power was seen, not Paul's. I refer to it so that you should not say that he was free from the difficulties and snares of the flesh. God had put him in danger of being exalted above measure by taking him up to the third heaven, and He sent him a thorn to make nothing of him, and then His strength was made perfect in weakness. Divine strength cannot be where human strength is. If it had been human strength, Paul's converts would have been worth nothing; but God's converts were worth eternal life. It is a great thing that we should be made nothing of. If we do not know how to be nothing, God must make us nothing. A humble person does not need to be humbled.

213 Paul was dependent upon Christ - absolutely dependent on Christ - and we find the infallible faithfulness of Christ to him. But, I repeat, he could not have said it at the end, if he had not experienced it by the way. It is a blessed testimony. He is sufficient for us where we are; but He must bring us to the point of uprightness. The soul must be in the truth of its state before God. Till the conscience get into the place where I really am - till it get the consciousness of distance from God, and unfaithfulness to Him - it is not upright. But when it gets there, Now, says God, I have got you right; I can help you. Job said, "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me, and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help." I did this, I did that. That will not do, says God; that is all I, I, I. So He lets the devil loose upon him till Job curses the day in which he was born, but at last he says, "Now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself." That will do, says God; now I can bless you. And He did bless him.

God would have us not merely holding our heads above water, but going on in the strength of His grace.

"Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity." Love is never forgetful; it treasures up acts of service. And the apostle treasured up in memory the things, wherein he had been cared for. God delights in service done to His saints; even what is done to the world He delights in too.

214 "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Mark the intimacy there is in "my God." It is emphatic. It is saying, I know Him; I can answer for Him; I have come through all kinds of things, and I can answer for it that He never failed me. I know the way He acts even in the small things of everyday life.

It is a great thing to trust God daily and hourly; not thinking we can provide for ourselves, and secure ourselves against the power of evil, but to trust God thoroughly. And what is the measure of the supply? Nothing short of "his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." He must glorify Himself - even in the falling of a sparrow - for there is nothing great and nothing small with God. He thinks of what His love must glorify itself in.

"My God shall supply all your need." How could Paul tell that? He knew Him. Not that he had not been in a condition of want, but he had felt the preciousness of being met in it by God. Things may look very dark, but we have always found that, if He led us by the wilderness where there was no water, He brought water out of the stony rock for us there. He always exercises faith, but He always meets it. Their coats even did not grow old for forty years. This is a blessed result.

"My God shall supply all your need." He was counting on blessing for others. What a comfort! Instead of walking by sight, to be passing through this world in the blessed consciousness of what God is for oneself, and so able to count on Him for others. We find ourselves sometimes almost dreading to press a person into the path of faith; but we should not dread, but count on grace for them. Faith is always triumphant.

The Lord give us to count on Him always, and we shall then say, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

Thoughts on Philippians 2

J. N. Darby.

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Philippians 3 presents the energy of life and of the Spirit of God in the Christian running toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, that he might win Christ. In chapter 2 we find the display of the gracious affections. But in order to this, the Spirit of God fixes our minds upon Christ looked at in this humble condition, or rather when He humbled Himself. It is beautiful, the way in which, toward the end of the chapter, without an effort, we find the apostle's feelings were all drawn out - the spirit elevated really above the circumstances, but free to unfold itself in gracious affections in the midst of them all. And that is just what the Christian ought to be, having Christ as his one object, the power of the Holy Ghost raising him above all around him, that there should be the display of Christ towards all around him. The Christian's life here ought to be the manifestation of Christ in the midst of the world. For this we must be in constant communion with the source of it. The Christian's life as such down here is the display of Christ's life. It is the life of Jesus manifested in his mortal body.

The Philippians had sent to the apostle to help him, when in prison, with a supply of what he needed. His heart had been touched, and he felt the kindness and love. But while owning it, his heart turns to think of them. The Spirit of life in Christ is at work in him, and he immediately thinks of their things. He is comforted of them and can say, "I know how to abound and to suffer need." I am rejoicing that I can get the blessing from you: but the consequence is that it turns back towards them. He says, "If there be, therefore, any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind."

If the love of Christ is in our hearts, the consequence is that things acquire a character entirely different. They had sent to the apostle what he wanted, and he says there is consolation in Christ. It is not merely the things he got, but the comfort of Christ and fellowship of the Spirit. It was the working of the spirit of grace in Jesus, shewing itself in this fellowship. He says, If you want me to be perfectly happy, go on well among yourselves. There were some little jealousies at work, such things as do spring up amongst Christians; but he takes occasion, by owning all the grace that was in them, to say, "Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind." And one just sees how these gracious affections are drawn out and in exercise, where the heart, in the power of the Spirit of God, is carried beyond the things which act on the flesh. His heart turns to Christ as the expression of this. He says, "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves." Now if we are not very near Christ, that is often very difficult. We may see great vanity or pride in another, and one may be going on really better than this or that person. I do not mean that the other may be positively sinning; but I may feel that he is not walking spiritually. Yet, if I am practically close to Christ myself, I see my brother in Christ, and then it is not hard to estimate others better than myself. Where I am walking in nearness to Christ, if there is anything consciously wrong in myself, this is what I feel about and not my goodness.

216 The best thing is not to be thinking about myself at all, but to have the sense of my own nothingness, which we always have when we are near the Lord. I feel my nothingness in the presence of Christ. But if I look at my brother, I see Christ in him - not his faults. If we are thus close to the Lord, it is natural to esteem others better than ourselves. We judge ourselves in His presence; but we see the workings of Christ in our brother. The thing that is before us in our brother is Christ. See the amazing privilege of the Christian. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." The state here is the fruit of the energy which is brought before us in chapter 3. There he was counting all as dross and dung, and pressing on toward the mark. That is supposed here, and he says, "Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." In this passage we get the complete and absolute contrast of all that was in the first Adam and in the flesh now. You are to have the same mind as there was in Christ, looked at from the time that He was in the glory till He came down to the cross. That is what governed all His path from the divine glory down to this nothingness of death, "the dust of death," as it is called. You are to have the same mind as He had all that pathway. And you will see what it is here.

217 It is a wonderful thing to see that we are called upon to have the same mind which was in Christ Jesus. It is from having His nature," who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation." If we look at the first Adam, it was exactly the opposite. He was in the form of man, in the condition of man, and he did set about, as a robbery, to be equal with God. He took it in order to get into this place, to exalt himself; and he was abased. Whereas Christ abased Himself, and He is exalted. It is not only that He appears, but He abases Himself. "He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." Then there was a second step in this humiliation. "And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." There is nothing so humble as obedience, because we have then no will of our own at all. Adam, besides setting up to be God, was disobedient unto death; whereas Christ, on the contrary, was obedient unto death, as a matter of sorrow and pain. He was "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross."

The thing that I find in Christ exactly opposed to the first Adam and to our flesh is that He humbled Himself - emptied Himself. First, He made Himself of no reputation, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death. You see it is not merely bearing wrongs - this He did most really. But there is another thing here - perfect love. It was this that brought Him down. He came into the place of obedience, and it was through perfect love to others who wanted it. For love likes to serve; selfishness likes to be served, and thinks itself exalted when other people are waiting upon it. Love likes to serve; and that is what Christ always will do. He will never give it up. He served when He was down here upon the earth. "I am among you as he that serveth." Wretched hearts they had to enter into it! Knowing that He was come from God and went to God, He girds Himself, pours water into a basin and begins to wash the disciples' feet. This is what He is doing now; He is washing our feet; He is servant in that sense still. It is His glory really - the glory of His love towards us.

And when the time comes, it is the same thing. He tells them to be as men that wait for their Lord. "Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching; verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." The Lord thus presented Himself in this wonderful way as taking the form of a servant - His ear bored. It was not there His becoming a man; but when He had served the seven years perfectly, He says, I will not go out free. He remains a servant for ever. He might have had twelve legions of angels and gone out free; but that is not what He came for. He said, I will be a servant for ever.

218 That is the very thing which Christ all through His path has done. Leaving God in the glory, leaving the form of Godhead in abeyance, He became a servant for the blessing of others. We have got the blessing now and the glory; and the way you shew that, is by serving now in that spirit of love that thinks everyone better than oneself, and serves everybody. In the presence of Christ selfishness disappears, and blessed holy affections flow forth without difficulty. I am not thinking of myself. I see what is blessed and good in another, and this is the energy that overcomes all difficulties. Christ humbled Himself: God, therefore, has highly exalted Him, and "given him a name which is above every name," etc.

In verse 13, it is God working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. We have by grace, God as the worker in us of this willing and doing. That is what is displayed in our life. It shewed itself in Christ by His coming down and humbling Himself, and now He says God is working in you the same mind, to will and to do of His good pleasure. You are to be blameless and harmless; that is what Christ was. You are actually manifested down here as Christ was. Did He not shine as the light? That is what you are. He was the word of life, and He was holding it forth; and He says, that is what you are to do too - "holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain." Just see how all these affections come out. "Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all." It was really manifesting Christ to them.

He was there a prisoner, perhaps going to be put to death; but "I joy and rejoice with you all." Your faith is what I look at as a precious sacrifice; you are going to be in glory with Christ: and if I am offered up, it is for that very reason; I am offered on your faith. The offering was their faith. He says, as it were, I throw myself in, that we may rejoice together. We are all going to heaven in company. He is looking at Christ having these saints, and he is helping them. "For the same cause [he adds] also do ye joy and rejoice with me." What! rejoice when he was going to be put to death! Looking at the blessedness in Christ, he rises above it all.

219 But we see the same affections coming out still. Even in common things, he cannot be happy till he knows their state. "But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of good comfort when I know your state." I cannot rest perfectly happy till I know that all is well with you all. "For I have no man likeminded, who will naturally care for your state." It is not that he could trust others for the same love, but it was in him. "For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." But still he rests in Timothy. "But ye know the proof of him, that, as a son with the father, he has served with me in the gospel." It is still the same blessed happy feeling. Timothy's affection, too, is brought out. Paul knew that the Philippians would care about him, so he says Timothy shall come and tell you.

"Yet I supposed it necessary to send unto you Epaphroditus, my brother and companion in labour, and fellow-soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants." Thus he links them all in one. "For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick." The Philippians had heard that he had been sick, and Epaphroditus felt they would be all miserable because of this. How he reckons upon their love! He was full of heaviness, not because of his own sickness, but because they had heard of it. It is the present flowing out of affection. "For indeed he was sick nigh unto death; but God had mercy on him: and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow." What a sorrow it would have been to me, if you had lost this blessed servant of Christ through serving me! "I sent him therefore the more carefully that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful." How all these gracious, blessed affections are drawn out where this mind of Christ is! Look at Christ Himself. "With desire," He says, "I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." He was about to suffer; He was going to work the work of redemption. Still His soul was always bright instead of being oppressed. Even when He wanted for the last time to have the paschal supper with them. "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you." It was not to be again. Think of the amount of lowliness, as well as love, that comes out in this affection. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." It cannot be unless we are near to Christ, because the wretched flesh rises and is anxious about itself. But where the soul has, as the single thing before it, the desire to honour Christ, the life of Christ is set free in displaying Christ in the world; and then all these blessed affections are in full play. What do we learn in Christ? He was always going down. We are elevated because we are in Christ. But we are to have the same "mind"; and the way that this shews itself is in self-humbling and in obedience, This sets free all the Christian affections, because Christ has set me free from self.

220 May we so feed upon Him, and have Him for our object, and enter into His spirit, that we may have the mind of Christ, and shew Him forth in the world!

The Effect of Christ down here

Philippians 2.

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The whole of this epistle contains very little doctrine (doctrine being just alluded to in chapter 3); but it gives us, in a remarkable manner, the experience of a Christian life in the power of the Holy Ghost. It is full of blessing in that character - the life above seen down here in a man through the power of the Spirit of God. So much is this the case that the very word "sin" is not found in it. When he speaks of justification and righteousness, it is not in contrast with sin, but rather with human and legal righteousness. The flesh was there. At the very time Paul wrote the epistle he had got the thorn in the flesh to prevent it from acting; but we see in him one rising above the flesh and all hindrances, that Christ might be magnified in him. Whether to live or die, he did not know; he would have like to be gone, but in love to the church he says, Better for you to remain; and so, counting upon Christ and knowing it is better, he knows he will remain. He knows how to abound and how to suffer need; he is pressing towards the mark for the prize - it is the only thing he has to do.

The graciousness of a Christian is in chapter 2, the energy in chapter 3, the absence of care in chapter 4; but it is all by the power of the Spirit of God. It is well for us to lay it to heart. We are the epistle of Christ known and read of all men - an epistle written not in stone, but in the fleshy tables of the heart. We are set as Christians to be a letter of recommendation of Christ before the world. Yet it gives us the fullest and blessedest confidence towards God if we take that ground; for, if we are in the presence of the world for God, Christ is in the presence of God for us. His work has perfectly settled that question, and He is every moment appearing in the presence of God for us.

We are loved as He is loved. In every shape in which we can look at it, all is a fixed settled thing according to the counsels of God in grace; it is in a poor earthen vessel, but our relationship is settled, all that belonged to the old man cleared away, and all that belongs to Christ, the new Man, our positive portion. Not only are our debts paid, but we are to be conformed to the image of His Son, and He has obtained for us the glory which is His own. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given them." He has given Himself on the cross to meet what we were, and He has obtained for us all that He has. This is the way Christ gives - not as the world. If the world gives, they have it not any longer; but Christ never gives in that way - never gives away, but brings us into all He has. If I light up one candle by another, I lose nothing of the first; and such is the way He gives. I speak of blessed principles. "My peace I give unto you" and "that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves." "The words thou hast given me I have given them" and "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them." He became a Man on purpose to bring us as men into the same glory as Himself. That relationship we are brought into already. "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." If I look at righteousness and holiness, I am as He is; if at the Son, I am before the Father as a son; and, as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the heavenly.

222 The work that entitles us to this is absolutely and totally finished. The Spirit makes us first feel our need in order to our possessing it, but the work is finished. In order to get our path clear, we must see where He has brought us. I cannot expect anyone to behave as my child, if he is not my child: you must be in the place before you have the conduct suited to that place, or be under the obligations which belong to it; and it is this last part I desire to look at a little here to-night. "You hath he reconciled," not brought half-way: as to relationship, brought into Christ. That is all. Through the work of the cross He put away our sins, and when He had done it, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. He finished the work which His Father gave Him to do; and in Hebrews the Spirit contrasts Christ's work with that work of the priests which was never finished, so that they never sat down.

We are perfect as pertaining to the conscience. A blunder often made is confounding perfection as to our state with perfection as to our conscience. When once we have understood the work of Christ, we are perfect as regards the conscience. If I look up to God, I can have no thought of His ever imputing sin to me again, or I could not have peace with God; and this is so true that it is said, if this work was not perfectly done, Christ must suffer again. But He cannot drink that dreadful cup again, the very thought of which made Him sweat great drops of blood. If there is any sin still to be put away (I speak now of believers), Christ must suffer again, and this can never be. God has set Him at His right hand as having finished the work: "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do; now, O Father, glorify thou me." He will deal with His enemies, no doubt, when He rises up in judgment; but, as to believers, He is sitting down because He has no more to do. I am not speaking now, of course, of the daily grace He ministers to them. It is settled, and settled with this double aspect that, the purpose of God being to bring us into the same glory as His Son, the work of Christ not only cleared away our guilt but obtained that glory for us. We have not got it yet; but the work which is our title to it is finished, though we have not yet the glory to which it is our title. We are anointed and sealed with the Spirit, and He is the earnest of our inheritance. We are to the praise of the glory of His grace, but not yet to the praise of His glory, which will be when He comes the second time to bring us into the glory which His work obtained for us when He came the first time. And our life stands between the two - the cross and the glory.

223 We are here in this world, beloved friends, in the midst of temptations, snares, and difficulties, everything around us tending to draw us away; but the power of God is in us. We know that we are sons of God, though the world knows us not. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that, when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." The practical effect of beholding the glory of God is to change us into the same image.

When Moses came down from the mountain, they were afraid to look in his face, because the law required what they had not to give; but now I see the glory which excels - the glory in Christ, which is infinitely brighter. But the glory in the face of Jesus Christ is the witness that all my sins are put away. That which shone in the face of Moses required what man ought to have been as a child of Adam, but it came to man who was a sinner. It required righteousness, and pronounced a curse if it were not there. Now I see it in the face of Him who bore my sins in His own body on the tree. The Christian sees the Man who died for his sins now in the glory as Man, a witness that the work is done, and a testimony to the place unto which He is bringing us; and, meanwhile, we have the testimony of the Holy Ghost that our souls may be perfectly clear as to this.

224 That is where the believer is set, resting in entire confidence upon the efficacy of the work of Christ, and on the other hand, waiting for God's Son from heaven, converted for this: "Ye yourselves as men who wait for their Lord." Standing here is perfect liberty, for where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.

And here we have the proper experience of a Christian as led by the Spirit of God. We have in chapter 3 a Christian as to his walk, Christ having laid hold of him for that; as in 2 Corinthians 5, "He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing," etc. He has wrought us for that, not only cleared our sins. He sees Christ in glory before him (Paul had really seen Him there), and that was what he was going to get. "This one thing I do . . . I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." What he was doing was to win Christ. He had not yet obtained Him, or got into glory; but it was the only thing he was doing in the world: his whole life was that.

In chapter 2, on the other hand, Christ is looked at, not as going up to glory, but as coming down to the cross; and here we see the graciousness of His character. By this our hearts and affections are won, and we are formed into the likeness of this graciousness. And thus we have the two great things that govern the Christian: the glory that is before him, and the grace that has been shewn him.

One word as to verses 12, 13: "Not as in my presence only," etc. Often this "fear and trembling" is used to cast a doubt upon our relations with God. Yet it is not this we have to fear about. But we are in the midst of temptations, everything around us, the power of Satan distracting and turning the heart from Christ; and he presses upon them that, now he is absent, they must take care. He had worked for them when he was with them, he had met the craft of the enemy in wisdom and apostolic power; but he was in prison when he wrote this. He says, "Therefore, now, you must fight for yourselves"; but this is in contrast with his fighting for them; and they were to do it, for it was GOD that worked in them. The contrast is between (not God and man working, but) Paul and the Philippians. God it was who did work in them, if Paul were there; and, if they had lost Paul, God who wrought in them was still there.

225 But, then, what a solemn thing for us, beloved friends, if we have the sense of this, that we are left down here to make good our path to glory against Satan and all the difficulties of the way! It is enough to make us grave. A false step will throw me into the snares of Satan. I have to be serious; I have the promise of being kept, but I need to be serious.

I have spoken of the finished work, but there is another thing that exercises us: how far can we look at the flesh and say we have done with it? And this is where the practical difficulty comes, if you are in earnest and desiring to walk in fellowship with the Father and the Son: I ought never to walk after the flesh. The existence of the flesh does not give me a bad conscience, but if I allow it to act, it does. Whenever I let even an evil thought in, communion is interrupted. It is not that the flesh is gone as a matter of fact; not that there is nothing in us which Satan can tempt, but there is power in us not to let it act. The flesh is not changed. The word is as plain as ever it can be as to what the flesh is. If left to itself, it becomes so bad that God had to destroy the world. Noah, saved out of the old world, gets drunk. The law is given, and the flesh is not subject to it. Christ comes in grace, and the flesh crucifies Him. The Holy Ghost is given, and the flesh lusts against it; and we get the case of one in the third heaven, and the flesh ready to puff him up. The flesh could not be mended, but he gets a thorn in it. But that is no reason why I should ever let it act; it never ought.

Scripture does not speak of our being conformed to Christ here; it says we are to walk as He walked. But the place of conformity to Christ is the glory, and "he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself"; that is to say, he is not pure, he has not attained. The place where I shall be like Christ is in glory. He has obtained it for me; and then, my eye looking upon Him by faith, I am changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.

I find this the great truth which Scripture does give me: not only that Christ died for my sins, but that I died with Christ. In the Epistle to the Romans, in the first part, you get all the sins dealt with, the great truth of Christ being substituted for us on the cross - bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, He is delivered for our offences; and, in the subsequent part taken up, the question is, not of sins, but of sin - not the fruit but the tree, and we are shewn not to be in the flesh if the Spirit of Christ is in us.

226 I do not live by the life of Adam, but by the life of Christ; and this is where the total difference is for the Christian. But it is not only that I have a new life as quickened by Christ, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, nor that He has been crucified for me so that my guilt is removed, but I am crucified with Christ.

In Colossians we read, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" - therefore dead in this world. This is God's declaration of our state as Christians. In Romans, "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed." "In that he died, he died unto sin . . . wherefore reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God (not in Adam, but) through (or in) Jesus Christ our Lord." This is faith's estimate of it, and this is where you find real deliverance and freedom from the bondage of sin. It is "no condemnation," not to them whose sins Christ bore, but "to them that are in Christ Jesus." God condemned sin in the flesh; He did not forgive it, He condemned it. If I get the law, it condemns me; but Christ - does He condemn me? No; for He has taken the condemnation for me, and in Him God has condemned sin in the flesh, and I reckon myself dead because it was in death He did so. Christ's death is, as all that He has wrought, available to me; and therefore I reckon myself dead. In 2 Corinthians we get the carrying this out in practice; "Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in your mortal bodies." And then he speaks of the exercises which God sends for our good, to test this realisation in us and make it effectual: "Alway delivered unto death," etc. We all fail for want of watchfulness, but that is what our life ought to be.

Suppose I have got a man in my house who is always at mischief. I cannot turn him out, but if I lock him up, he can do no harm; he is not changed, but I am free in the house. If I leave the door open, he is at mischief again: but we are to keep him locked up, this is what we are called to do - what God calls us to do. The world will not have this; it will mend and improve man, cultivate the old man, as if it could produce good fruit, because it does not see how bad it is. The world would dig about it and dung it. That has been tried. God cuts it down and grafts us with Christ. This condemning and cutting down was in the cross of Christ; not, of course, that He had any sin, but as made sin for us; and I know, not only my sins cleared away, but myself crucified with Christ, and my life hid with Him in God.

227 And this is available for power, if I carry it about in my heart. Supposing we honestly held ourselves dead; can Satan tempt a dead man? But in order for this, it must not be putting one's armour on when the danger is there; but, living with Christ, my heart is full of Him.

Would a woman who had heard that her child was killed or hurt at the other end of the town be thinking of what she saw in the shop-windows as she ran toward him? No; she would have just enough sense to find her way. If your hearts were fixed like that on Christ, nine-tenths of the temptations that come upon you would be gone: you would be thinking of something else, and outward things would only bring out sweetness, as they did with Christ; for we are never tempted above that which we are able.

Saints, if in earnest, have got to realise not only the putting away of their sins, but also the having died with Christ; and this delivers from the power of sin.

We see in chapter 3 a Christian with one object: knowing Christ has laid hold of him for glory, and his heart is running after Christ. I am to have no other object, though I may have many things to do. He is "in all" as the power of life, and He is "all" as the object of that life. He is all and in all. (See Col. 3: 12.) This is again summed up in the latter part of Galatians 2: "Not I, but Christ liveth in me"; and then the object: "I live by the faith of the Son of God." Then there is the sense of His perfect love: "Who loved me and gave himself for me." The heart is fixed on Him, and follows hard after Him.

There is another thing - the spirit and character in which we walk down here; and this we see in Christ coming down. When I have got this blessed place, Christ my life, holy boldness, yea, to know we are sitting in Him in heavenly places, the place a Christian is called to (a wonderful thing, I grant) is to go out from God and be an epistle of Christ. I joy in God, have got the blessedness of what He is, and go on in communion with Him to shew out His character in the world. This is in chapter 2.

228 Ought I to walk as Christ walked? Every Christian will own that: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Suppose my soul has tasted this perfect love, and it is well we should recollect it, God's love shed abroad in our hearts, and know, be conscious down here, that we are loved as Jesus was loved; for if I really know God as thus revealed in Christ, what do I believe about Him? What put it into God's heart to send Christ down here? He knew how He would be treated. Did the world? It would not have Him when He came. It was all in His own heart! Perfect love in His heart; the unsuggested origin of every blessing. What character did it take in Christ? Was it staying up in heaven and saying, "You behave well and come up here?" No! we all know that. But He who, in the form of God, in the very same glory, thought it no robbery to be equal with God (mark the contrast with the first Adam), made Himself of no reputation; and what brought this about? Purest love, love coming to serve.

For Christ took the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. He emptied Himself of all the glory - the very opposite of the first Adam. Divine love came to serve; a new thing for God - the only new thing. And this is what I learn. I know this love, I know that I am made the righteousness of God in Him; so that I stand before Him, and then I come out from Him towards the world to bring out this blessed character. I have learned the love, and now I must come out and shew it. "Be ye followers of God as dear children." You are children: that is all settled. Now you go and give yourself as Christ did, in whom this love is known - a sacrifice to God, and for us. The spirit of love is always lowliness, because it makes itself a servant. I get the grace that brought Christ down. It is very difficult for us to bow: I know that, beloved friends. He "went to another village." There was perfect meekness; but it tries men - some more than others; but the moment perfect love is seen, it comes and takes the lowest place to serve others. Paul endured all things for the elect's sake, that they might obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

And here I find what is entirely beyond law. Law tells me to love others as myself; grace tells me to give myself up entirely for my neighbour or for anybody. Did not God forgive you? You go and forgive your enemies. Is He kind to the unthankful and the evil? You go and be the same. It tests all the fibres of our hearts, all the pride and vanity and selfishness that are in us. You like doing your own will.

229 "He humbled himself and became obedient to death"; He goes so low down that He could go no lower; "even to the death of the cross." But, then, "God hath highly exalted him." He was the first grand example of "he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

Blessed be His name! He will never give up His service; it is the very thing He shews us, and in which He would that our hearts should see the perfection of His grace. It is what He is doing in John 13. He had been their servant down here, but now they might think that there was an end of His service. No. He says, I cannot stop with you, but I must have you with Me: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." He does a slave's work; and this is what He does now. We pick up dirt as we go - there is no excuse for it, but then Christ is up there, the Advocate with the Father. And even in the time of glory, "He will gird himself and come forth and serve them"; He will be there to minister the blessing Himself. Our hearts want to learn the perfections of that love in which He came always down, down, till He could come no lower.

Are we willing to walk in that path? No one would deny we ought; but are we disposed to do it? Would our hearts be glad of the power of that grace which, holding the flesh as dead, can say, Here I am in the power of that love to walk as everybody's servant? We are to esteem others better than ourselves. If my heart is full of Christ, I judge myself for everything not like Christ, I judge the evil in myself because I see the blessedness in Christ. But what do I see in my brother? I see Christ in him. The effect of being full of Christ is to make me think little of self and much of my brother: there is no real difficulty about it if one is.

"Do all things without murmuring," etc. If you take every single part of this passage, you will find it a statement of what Christ was here. He was blameless and harmless, the Son of God, without rebuke in the midst of this evil world; He was the light of the world, and He was the word of life.

230 If I reckon the flesh dead, only the life of Christ comes out; if only this came out, we should be a very wonderfully blessed kind of people! To him that hath shall more be given. If I yield myself to God as one alive from the dead, I have got fruit here unto holiness, as well as fulness of blessing hereafter.

I would ask you, beloved friends, do you purpose to be Christians? Are you willing to yield yourselves to God as not having one bit of will of your own? There is power in Christ, not to say "I am pure," but, always having my eye on Him, to purify myself.

The Effect of Christ in glory

Philippians 3

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There are two ways in which we may look at the Christian: one, according to the counsels and thoughts of God, and the efficacy of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ; "by one offering perfected for ever" - accepted in Christ Himself before God, everything that stood against us put away, and the believer cleared completely and for ever from his old condition in Adam, taken out of that old condition, and put into the acceptance of Christ Himself; this is the grace wherein we stand. But evidently there is also another condition in which the Christian is seen, and that is as walking in this world.

This walk of the Christian we get in two ways - in the Epistle to the Philippians and in Hebrews. In Hebrews it is looked at in respect to the grace Christ obtains for us as priest on high; not the operation of the Spirit in us, but the work of Christ for us, and grace to help in time of need. But if in Hebrews you get the Christian down here in weakness, needing help and getting it, in Philippians you get him down here, and the energy and power of the Spirit of God working in him. We have to pass through the world, and there are difficulties in our path, temptations to draw us aside; but one walking in the power of God's Spirit rises above all the difficulties in the midst of which he is. In Philippians is brought out the power of God's Spirit acting in our walking in the right path, and the result is a person entirely above it all, one who can "rejoice in the Lord alway." We may remember, too, that Paul had been four years in prison at the time, two of them with a soldier chained to him; and, what was still more trying, his work as an apostle put a stop to, his activity all come to an end. He might have reproached himself as to going up to Jerusalem, and so on, but he does not; he rises above it all. It is a remarkable fact that in this epistle sin is never spoken of; nor is the flesh, except as having no confidence in it, in a warning to avoid its religiousness; it is simply a walk in the power of the Spirit. In the previous chapter you get the graciousness, but in this the energy, of the course - the full energy of the Christian going through this world. He does not here speak of the cross as that which puts away sin; it has another character here, being looked at practically; it is being "crucified to the world." Thus it is the book of experience, according to the spirit of the Christian on earth.

232 Imprisoned, so that he cannot be active, yet Paul says, It will all turn to my salvation; it will all turn to good, and I can rejoice in the Lord always. This comes with power when we remember where he was when he could write thus. He looks back and contrasts his own course with that of those who had made profession, but were still going on with the world.

Let us first look at the character of the energy with which the apostle ran this race. He says he has not yet attained, is not yet perfect; this is because he is looking at his state. We must just see what he means by this. In the first place, he has not a thought of his own righteousness at all. There was a righteousness which he had had; there was a righteousness which he had boasted in; he had had it, all that which depended on himself: "touching the righteousness which was in the law, blameless." But the moment the spiritual character of the law was seen, it was all over; all that flesh could trust in was gone for him. We all know how when he was in the full flush of his career, the Lord met him, and he discovered that all that had been gain to him, all of which he had boasted, had only served to bring him into open enmity with God. All this knowledge, all this energy of character, he had only made use of to try to destroy the name of Christ. It was not a question of his sins; it was that all he had valued as good was gone, his conscience proved to be misdirected, his legal righteousness nothing worth. There, on his way to Damascus, with authority from the high priest, he found himself in the presence of Christ, and in open enmity with Him; and in that presence all that he was as a religious man, "blameless" - in the outward sense, of course, for he found himself to be the chief of sinners - all that Saul could clothe himself with outwardly was smashed, and he himself left to dwell in darkness three days, to go through in his own soul what this terrible revelation had discovered to him. The practical effect of thus seeing the Christ in glory was to put down in the most powerful way all that was of man. The first thing we need as sinners, and get through the cross of the Lord Jesus, is "redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins"; but here it was not sins - it was righteousness put away. What he had stood in before God was all gone; it was brought out in the strongest way in his own experience what man was in his best estate: the upright, honest, law-keeping Pharisee was only enmity against God. And it was not only that he had failed - this was not the thing - but that the whole structure, the moral structure of man, was brought out in the sight of God and done with. It was the end of the first man; and this not as a doctrine, but practically, for we must learn everything in our own consciences if it is to be a real thing. It was total, entire condemnation of man in the flesh in his best form; the best man in the world was the chief of sinners - best as man goes. This, evidently, is a truth that we can learn in different ways, either as seeing ourselves open sinners in rebellion against God, or by discovering that what we esteem best is utterly valueless before Him. Innocence is gone; man fell from paradise, and that is all over. There is no going back to the tree of life; and from that time forward man must be either an alien from God, an enemy in his mind by wicked works, or else he must have a heavenly place with God. On the road to Damascus, Saul meets the Man in the glory, and then he is judged in his own conscience, and is found to be an open ceaseless enemy of God. It is easy for us to see that our sins must be judged by God, but we do not see at first that the mind and affections of the flesh are enmity against Him. But here you see there is an end of Saul, and of everything that the flesh was in this world - this world which was not paradise, and certainly was not heaven - this world in which the good things were worthless in the sight of God, and certainly the sins were not any use.

233 Outwardly, Saul was the best man possible - as man goes - conscientious, religious, righteous; and there he was an open enemy against God. There was nothing to be found here: consequently he looked out of this world and saw Christ in glory; he saw Him there where he stood; and the effect was that the old man was perfectly judged, and there was another Man in heaven. All that Saul was was gone. It is not a question of sins, but of righteousness. In another place he says, "I had not known sin but by the law." But supposing there were a righteousness according to the law, no man ever reached it except the blessed Lord Himself; but even if Paul could have reached it, he would not have it now, for he says, I have got another; there was "the righteousness of God" for him now. The law required righteousness from man to God, but that was now all given up; besides, none had attained it. It is, "not having mine own righteousness"; he does not say, not having my-own sins. It goes a great deal farther than that, and I press it on you - theoretically, a man blameless; yet he says, I will not have it at all. The whole standing, place, and condition of the first man is a judged thing in his soul, and another Man, Christ in glory, shall be for him, not that which he was. The condition of the first man has been shewn out by the revelation of the second Man, and Paul follows Him. Thus we see the whole ground and standing of legal righteousness swept away. Nobody had it, of course: still that was altogether the ground he was on; but now, he says, I will not have my own at all, for I have got Another.

234 You cannot have the two before God. Seeing this sets aside a thousand things that are floating in the world. A man will have perfection nowadays; he says, I will not go on sinning. And he is quite right: he has no right to go on sinning. But God would not thank me for my righteousness, not when I clothe myself in an Adamic robe, for I have got another thing altogether in Christ. Paul does not speak here of his position in Christ; it is not here: "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus"; it is the condition of soul of those who possess this "no condemnation." And the condition of Paul's was that the revelation of Jesus Christ had set aside in him all that was of himself; it was the righteousness of God that he had, and that does not go from man to God, but from God to man. When did the prodigal get the best robe? When the Father put it on him. "I know that in me [that is, in my flesh] dwelleth no good thing." The whole nature, the character, and the quality of it is a judged thing. But mark, when this Christ was revealed, his mind, and heart, and desire never stop short of reaching Him, and then what happens? Away goes all your perfection here. He says, The glory I saw in Damascus; that is what I want. It was no longer the judgment of the old man - it was the hopes of the new.

He says to him, "I am Jesus of Nazareth." There was no longer any question about it; that Man was there in the glory - the carpenter's son - the One whom they had rejected. They all fell down at the glory of that light, though they knew not what it meant. And in that light Paul was totally and entirely condemned and done with; Christ took the place of everything. All that he had counted gain was gone. Supposing he were a learned man - well, to whom was that gain? To Paul, not to Christ; it is only building up, and furnishing, and giving credit to, and adorning, that old thing which has been judged as enmity against God.

235 And it is not only "I counted," but he has gone on with Christ; he adds, "I do count," as a present thing. All that I esteemed best - righteousness, learning, birth, everything - "I do count them but dung," for I have seen Christ and I want Him, and the things of this world I count nothing. He has revealed Himself to me in grace; He has proved His love to be above all my enmity, and now I must have Him. Paul was a man whose whole course and career were marked by an object that was before him; and it is the object that is before us that marks our course, and gives it its moral character. Paul followed after Christ. Let us ask ourselves, Are we following Christ in this way? Is this what governs us? I do not say we may not be distracted, but is He the object after which we are running? We cannot have two at the same time. Has there been such a revelation of Christ to our hearts that we have Him as the only object before us?

And I will ask here - for it is very current in some places, called "higher life," and truly alas! for so many Christians follow the world - what is true Christian life? It is "higher life," and no mistake, for our calling is a "calling above" - that and no other; I have no calling to anything down in this world. There is no calling for the Christian according to the word of God but the calling to a risen and glorified Christ. What is put before us is a glorified Christ; we are going to be like Him; and you cannot have a right object except as that object is a glorified Christ, because that is the only Christ. Christ down here is a pattern for our walk, but there is no such Christ now to attain to. I cannot win Christ down in this world, because there is no Christ to win. Attempting it only lowers the standard of holiness, and, instead of being "higher Christian life," it is lower. It is the hope of being like Him in glory that makes a man now "purify himself even as he is pure." The object, that I get before my soul in this race that he speaks of, is a glorified Christ, and that only; that is what I am going to attain to; I am going to be like the Christ that I have seen. Whatever progress Paul made, he was so much the nearer to Him, but he had not got Him; he would only get Him when in his glorified body. There is no other Christ to run after or win; not that our affections do not cling to Him in humiliation, but it is a glorified Christ only who is the object of our hearts. I may get to heaven now in spirit, and be happy there with Him, but I never attain to Him, I never win Him, until I am with Him in the glory; it is then I shall have won Christ.

236 When all that was Paul was judged, it brought him into all kinds of difficulties; for instance, now he was going to be tried for his life; but he had done with Paul - he had the sentence of death in himself. Many may not - none perhaps - so realise it as he did; but the consequence was, he was always "bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," so that the life of Jesus was made manifest in his body. He had the sentence of death in himself, that he should not trust in himself, but in God, who raises the dead; that is, he says, The God I know has raised Christ from the dead, and therefore I am not afraid of death, of trial, of anything that may come on the road: I can glory in it all.

It is not only patience and hope as in Romans; here it is "the fellowship of his sufferings." We are always called on to suffer with Him here. We hardly know what it is to suffer for His sake - a little trial perhaps now and then; but to suffer with Him we do know, for we cannot go through this world of sin and sorrow without suffering in principle what the heart of Christ suffered. We can rejoice in the saints when they are going on well, but there is nothing else in it to rejoice anyone; it is only the world that crucified Christ, except, of course, poor sinners, and he must speak to them; that is all he saw in the world.

"If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." That does not imply doubt; but he says, Even if death be on the road, I will go through it, and I shall only be made like Him if I die. Here I get the apostle fixed on an object - Christ in glory, and nothing short of it; and here he will have suffering with Christ, let it cost him life and everything, if but only he may get this place - part in the first resurrection; for he is looking at it here not as our position, but as attainment. It may be a bad road that I tread, but I get refreshment by the way, and it is the road Jesus travelled.

"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after." There is the activity of the life. In these days, when people are giving up Christianity on all sides, it is well to know what Christianity is. Christianity is perfect peace, and reconciliation with God: we are perfected for ever before Him; and as regards the path in this world, it is the eye on Christ Himself in glory, and one undivided energy to get after Him. Every step we take we get more of Christ, and are more capable of knowing Him, and thus the effect is practically to form one into His likeness. This bringing in of the life of Christ to my soul enables me to see Him in the glory, so that even now I get more like this resurrection I am aiming after. The resurrection from among the dead identifies itself with winning Christ; raising from the dead speaks to us God's perfect delight in us as in Christ.

237 Then he speaks of perfection: "As many as be perfect." A perfect Christian is a full-grown man, in one sense; it is the same word as the "perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." And what is that? It certainly is not being like what Christ was when He was down here, for there was no sin in Him, so the thought of being like Him is a mere delusion. He that gazes on Him up there walks like Him down here, but to be like Him as He was down here is not possible. To walk like Him, I repeat, is said; but to be like Him would be to be absolutely sinless. To be conformed to Him in glory, that we shall be, and therefore the heart desires and runs after it now; and that is what he calls a perfect Christian. It is not one who knows what it is to have got the sins of the old creation cleared away - it is not knowing the work of Christ which puts away sin, hardly measured either by the sin, for it is the whole state of the nature; all is settled, and I know that "by one offering he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified," that there is no more a question of anything to be settled between me and God, and I have liberty before Him in the sense of His favour; but then I say, Is that all? All my debts paid, but am I to have nothing to go and buy anything with? Am I henceforth to starve, without possessing a farthing? Then it is that the soul comes to see that, having part in this forgiveness, it has also part with the last Adam: he has got hold by grace of this Man in the glory, and knowing this, I say, my whole soul is in that; I have seen the excellency of Christ Jesus, my Lord, and it has set aside everything here. I have done with it all; I belong to another place, and no longer own this old man.

238 It is then the Christian has got to be what he calls a perfect man; he has this object before him, he has got Christ's place before God, and he grows up into the stature of Christ; not that he has not still much to learn, but he has got into his place; he is of full age, he discerns good and evil, he has got hold of his place in Christ, and he knows it. This sets aside the flesh altogether, and also that which is a deceptive thing to many, perfection in the flesh, for Christ in glory is my only perfection. In the world I am running a race, I have not attained yet, but Christ has laid hold of me for it.

He then puts in the strongest contrast those who are not thus perfect: "If in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." I can walk with one who only knows his redemption in Christ with just the same love, but I look for him to get hold of this also.

Then he talks of another thing, of those who have the profession of Christianity, but who are "enemies of the cross of Christ"; they are not exactly enemies of Christ, though in the end it comes to the same thing. In paradise God got rid of man as a sinner; at the cross, as far as his will was concerned, man got rid of God in grace. The very disciples ran away: they could not stand it; as He said to Peter, "Thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards." Amiable or unamiable, all either ran away or banded themselves together against Him. Satan was proved to be the prince of this world. People fancy he is not the prince of it, because the gospel is preached in it; but the gospel never would be preached in it if he were not the prince of it; He brought all the world up against Christ, so the world is judged, and all that is in it. "The world is crucified to me." The cross - really a gibbet - put an end to all human glory. He came down to that to put an end to everything of man. There is no such infamy as the cross; nothing but a slave or a bad criminal was ever put upon it. Thus Satan was proved by his influence over the world to be its prince; such is what the world is, and this is the very reason that the Lord says, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee"; and therefore the world is convinced of judgment, and righteousness is proved, how? "Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool," is God's answer. And He sits there till the judgment of the world is to be executed; it sees Him no more as the Saviour. And now, because He glorified God in that place of sin, we carry out the testimony of the grace that seeks sinners.

239 These were enemies to the cross of Christ. They carry the name of Christian and go on with the world. Of course, the true Christian may get into the world and be ensnared; it is not that. The enemy of the cross of Christ put Christ there, and now if I look for righteousness, it is not to be found in the world that did that; I must look for it in Christ up there, for righteousness has done with the world.

Then see the place that he puts the Christian in: "for our conversation is in heaven"; our whole relationships in life - all that my life is involved in, and develops itself in - are in heaven; I am to run here having all my relationships up there, because Christ who is my life is up there. What a definite thing the Christian life is - not here at all!

"From whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." Now what is He called "Saviour" for here? Christians are all saved in a certain sense - we have eternal life: but in this epistle salvation is the result of redemption, not merely redemption. Practically, Israel was saved out of Egypt as soon as the Red Sea was crossed, but they had not got the place till they had got through the Jordan too. We get in the Red Sea Christ's death and resurrection. The blood upon the lintel gave them safety while God was passing through, destroying the first-born: the question between God and the people as to their sin was settled, still God was in the character of judge there, and He passes them by. Yet it was not deliverance. But when they come to the Red Sea He says, "Stand still, and see the salvation of God." God had now come in as a Saviour and taken them out of the place they were in, and now they are delivered. When I get to Jordan, it is yet another thing; the waters open not to bring them out, but to bring them in; not that Christ was dead and risen for them, but that they were dead and risen with Christ. So you get the Red Sea smitten, so to say, whilst in Jordan the ark stays in the water and we go through with it. The reproach of Egypt was never rolled away till they got into Canaan; and so with us: I do not get deliverance and full power in heavenly places until I see that I have died and risen with Christ; I do not get into my place until then.

240 Now have you got there, beloved friends? If so, all your desire will be there, and you will be longing to be there too. Christ is there, and the Christian's heart is with Christ, his affection is in heaven, and he looks for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives character to the Christian as one who has seen Christ in the glory, and who says, That is my hope; my citizenship is in heaven, and here in this world all I am to do is to run after Him as fast as ever I can to get there.

And my hope is not to die, blessed though this be, but to look for the Saviour, "who shall change this vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." We are running the race towards the place where our standing is. We are in Christ, but this is not the thing here. Got it we have; but how far does the cross really tell us the tale of what we are? Not only that our sins, but that we ourselves are put away. Can you say with the apostle, "The life which I now live in flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God?" Is there nothing in the circumstances down here by which we live? We must go through them, but are we living by them? Are we living to Him in that sense? There are many Christians who have no distinct idea that they are to take up their cross and follow Him. May we learn that the times press! May our hearts so really look at Christ that we may be in conscious relationship with Him, our affections there with Him, and because they are there, looking for Him to come from heaven to change this vile body because it will not suit that place! Where are our hearts? Have we the deep blessed sense that He has associated us with Himself? "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory."

The Lord give us so to have our eye on Him, that we may have all the blessedness of the consciousness that He has taken us to be with Himself in His unutterable love, and that we may thus know real deliverance from the power of sin and the world. The Lord fix our eye on Him with steadiness and earnestness of heart, so that we may say with David, "My soul followeth hard after thee."

Thoughts on Philippians 4

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It is a great thing to rejoice always. It is important to consider the apostle's own history in connection with these epistles. When he was writing this, he was in prison at Rome. He had been cut short in his ministry, and as he looked on, he had to say, "All they which are in Asia, be turned away from me," and "All seek their own," etc.; and yet he had something which lifted his heart above it all; not that he was insensible to it, but he knew a superior power. It was as looking at Christ he could rejoice, not in these circumstances. In one chapter in Galatians he says, "I stand in doubt of you"; in the next, he says, "I have confidence in you through the Lord."

The Lord's own path was the same, meeting with disappointments and distresses, on every hand, and yet He prays that the disciples may have His joy fulfilled in themselves. It is living in a power superior to evil; and if I am not living in that power, I should be depressed and cast down by the stream of evil within and around me, instead of rejoicing always. To do this, it requires that the heart should be with Him who has already overcome and sat down.

The first mark of power is patience. Nothing troubled the peace of the apostle's soul, so that he is free enough to think of individuals - Euodias, etc. (v. 2) - or to write about a runaway slave. He was passing through the valley of Baca, making it a well. It is a more blessed thing to make trials causes for thanksgiving than our own mercies. "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be continually in my mouth." In all his many trying circumstances, he was finding that the Lord was sufficient. He possessed that eternal happiness which enabled him to say, when before Festus, "I would to God" that you were "altogether such as I am."

Are you so happy in your soul that you can say that? The young Christian rejoices in what he has got - his salvation, joy, peace, and so on. The old Christian rejoices more in Christ. The young Christian says, I have got this, I have got that; but the old Christian says, Christ is this, and Christ is that. Not that this is wrong in a young Christian: in that sense a young Christian cannot be an old one; but if they walk with God, they will soon ripen. So in 1 John 2: 12-14, "I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning"; and while he goes into detail about the young men and babes, he repeats this of the old men.

242 There is the continual conflict with Amalek, but in the confidence that he has already been overcome. Read John 16: 33: "In the world ye shall have tribulation; be of good cheer: I have overcome the world." Run the race "looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of faith; who . . . is set down," etc. Do not let any evil or any circumstances prevent your rejoicing in the Lord always; but for this you must be with Him.

"Let your moderation," etc. Naturally I like to assert my rights in the world, and if I see injustice done, I like to resent it. Moderation is putting a check upon our own will, for the present content to be put upon this - "The Lord is at hand." When the Lord set His face like a flint to go to Jerusalem, the Samaritans would not receive Him, and the disciples wanted to draw down fire upon them. If you set your face like a flint to go to Jerusalem, you will not be received by those who are half-hearted. "The Lord is at hand."

Do you believe that? The character of my whole life will be governed by this, if I believe it. You may say, I have troubles in my family; the saints are going wrong, etc. Well, "Be careful for nothing; but in everything," etc. What do you want? Go and ask God about it. Instead of harassing your own mind about it, carry it to Him: and it is not said He will give you just what you ask, because this might not be for your good; but He gives you His peace. You put your cares into His heart, and He will put His peace into yours. Do all the things that trouble you disturb the peace of God? "With thanksgiving," etc. When I put my affairs in persons' hands, and ask them to see to it for me, they undertake it, and I say, Thank you, although as yet they have done nothing in it; In this state of soul the heart is free to enjoy what I see in others. There is such a tendency in us to get living in the things of the world, where we could not have the heart of Christ with us.

Verse 9. You walk in the path you have learned of me, and the God of peace Himself shall be with you. Joy is an up and down thing, but peace is something constant and undisturbed. God is never called the God of joy, but the God of peace.

While Christ was with His disciples, during His ministry He never said to them, "Peace be unto you": it was rather, "Fear not." But when He arose, He said, "Peace be unto you." Christ has made peace by the blood of His cross in such a way, that if God rises up in every attribute He possesses, He sees nothing to disturb His peace. I am in the light as He is in the light; and if I have conflict with the world, the flesh, and Satan, I have peace with God.

243The test of the true condition of a person's soul is seen in his everyday life. "I have learned," etc. Paul had learnt it; it is not merely saying it. It is a much greater snare to abound than to be abased; but Christ was enough. I get not only peace in the circumstances, but also moral power over them.

"My God," etc. That is as much as to say, I know Him well, and I will answer for it that He will supply all your need according to the riches of His glory. What a reality there is in the life of faith! He may put us through trials, because this is good for us, but He will be with us in them all.

The Superiority of Christ over circumstances

Philippians 4: 8.

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It is a great thing to have the spirit so free from everything else, as to be able to be thus occupied with "these things." It is not a healthy thing to be occupied with evil, though of course we must be sometimes.

In Numbers 19, if anyone touched the unclean person, whoever had anything to do with it was unclean till even. You cannot have to say to evil, without getting, in a certain sense, away from God. It may not be like the man who had to be cleansed, and wait seven days; but the mind cannot touch sin without a certain removal from direct communion with God.

It may be necessary to go to a brother or sister who is in evil. I do not mean now temptation: there you get positive evil; but the man who touches is "unclean till even" - a kind of warning against having to say to it. One sees persons who like to pry into evil; but, if in the power of the Spirit, I am occupied with "these things," which are pure, lovely, etc. I may have to come down, and be occupied for a time, as a duty, with that which God hates.

The principle of Numbers 19 remains the same. It was grace, and to restore communion. There a man was actually defiled. Sin is sin in God's sight, whatever way I have to do with it; and sin is hateful to God. Even if a man did not know, still he had to bring an offering. It was not a question of imputation here; the ashes of the red heifer were there, the testimony that the sin had all been consumed when the heifer was burned; but something had come in to destroy communion. The ashes put into the water gave the consciousness there was no imputation: that question was not raised; but the man could not go in to God for worship till he were clean. The very putting the ashes in gave the character that sin was judged for the saint, all done away; but then he may have been doing a thing that Christ had to die for. It is a question of holiness and my state, just because there is no imputation.

What he looks for here (Phil. 4) is, that their souls should be in the peaceful enjoyment of these things, what God likes and loves; and the God of peace should be with them. Now, when we meet in intercourse, are these the kind of things that occupy the mind? It may be mischievous talking - that will not do you any good; or it may be idleness, vanity - that is no good either; or it may be talking about people; but how far can God say, I can go there, for they are talking about things I like? "My heart is inditing a good matter, I will speak of the things I have made touching the king." If the heart is inditing a good matter, we get fellowship and communion; the heart is full, and it comes out.

245 It is a lovely picture in Luke 1, 2: a despised remnant nobody knew or cared about; yet there they were speaking of Christ.

Verse 10. The apostle let slip something here - "now at the last." He thought it rather a long time coming, and then, to correct it, immediately adds, "but ye lacked opportunity." He let out that he had really been in need, and it had come at the last. It is beautiful to see the delicacy of intercourse in that way: we get it amongst ourselves. Like everything else, he just took it up for Christ. At Corinth, where they were rich, and fond of money, he would take nothing; but here he is very glad to have it.

But, going back to what was said about our intercourse when we come together, we find "these things" are not uppermost. There are two things: in the first place, if we are full of the Lord, it will come out; but if there is watchfulness, it will come in. It is just our ordinary intercourse I mean. I may have to go and speak about special things, but that is not the point here.

Paul was the expression of the power of divine grace in that which was committed to him. Here were Gentiles who had to learn everything, and he was sent in their way, the expression of divine life, that they might learn what it was: he could say, "Walk as ye have us for an example."

Truth came only "by Jesus Christ": that which is "true" characterises the whole thing. "He has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true." "Whom I love in the truth." But it is remarkable what the apostle says in verse 12. It characterises all the epistle. He is above circumstances, and experimentally he had found Christ sufficient in all things. He had been in hunger, cold, and nakedness, and found Him a wonderful source of content. It was not a general principle, but what he had actually learned; "I am instructed." It is more difficult to abound than to be abased. You are cast on God when you are abased; but when all is comfortable around, then is the tendency to be independent of Him. "I can do all things": not I go on well, but the presence of positive power; not that I get into a better state, not that the circumstance is changed, or the state of my mind; but power has come in, and put those things away which were pressing upon me. It is "all things" - you cannot get anything for which Christ is not sufficient as a present thing. If we have to die, He is sufficient for us; if we have to live, He is sufficient for us.

246 These are things to be learned, not known in a moment; but if he had not known what Christ was, he could not have said this. He says, I have learned that all through. It is true Christian experience.

We get the power of the Spirit in all the epistle. Here you have it shewn in entire superiority over circumstances. It is not merely known, but "I have learned." Then it is Christ strengthening us, strength made perfect in weakness. That is its nature, the character and kind of strength. "My strength" is not made perfect in people who think they are strong. We must be brought down to nothing as to strength, in order to know where real strength is; that is what people are rather slow to learn.

You have this in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul wanted to get rid of the thorn, But the Lord says, No, I must have you incapacitated: and then evidently it is My work and power, not yours. You get the two sides of Christian life in that chapter. One was, "I know a man in Christ"; the other, that Christ's power was known in him. When I come down here, I find myself made nothing of, and then it is Christ in me. You must have weakness: "When I am weak, then am I strong." We may know we can do nothing without Him; but it is a different thing when one comes to say, I can do nothing without Him.

In Colossians 1 we get strengthened with all might . . . unto all patience, etc. Here he is speaking of his circumstances. But it is a very great thing, and one we are slow to learn, that without Him we can do nothing. We all know it as a truth - all Christians do. It is connected with abiding in Christ.

247 It is not actual service, though true of it; but you get that more in 2 Corinthians 12. I do not feel the want of Him so much in joy; we do, but we do not so feel it.

Hence, often a Christian, after a great deal of joy - even spiritual joy, will get a trip. I must have all the armour on before I can take the sword.

"My God shall supply all." A very strong expression, which means a great deal. As I know Him, who has been through all these things, and know what He is to a person in every case. It is not "God," but "my God," the God I know, who taught me to abound, and to be hungry. It could not come down lower than that. I see my need, and He is rich. No matter what need I get into, He is sufficient for me. Paul was in a most trying position, not only kept a prisoner, but all his activity totally stopped - a terrible trial to Paul.

"His riches in glory" meet the need. As in Ephesians, when he speaks of all the thought and purposes of God, he speaks of the glory of His grace; when He speaks of my sins, it is the riches of His grace. All the dealings of God are according to what He is in glory, having taken us up in grace. It is all through Christ Jesus, whatever it is; it all comes down, and all goes up, through Christ.

It is a simple thing, but not simple for us - at least we are not simple enough for it. (See Psalm 23.) Jehovah is my shepherd. In Psalm 30 he says, "I shall never be moved. Thou, Jehovah, by thy favour hast made my mountain to stand strong. Thou didst hide thy face" - and where was this fine mountain then? But in Psalm 23 he cannot say, Jehovah is my shepherd, till he has been through all the power of evil. Not Jehovah has given me abundance of green pastures (though He does give them), but He is my shepherd, and then come the green pastures and still waters, but he is not looking at that only. "He restoreth my soul," if he had got into trouble. Then he goes on to death: "I will fear no evil"; Jehovah is the shepherd. If he meets enemies, Jehovah spreads a table for him in their presence, as Joshua did when they went into Canaan. Then he says, "He anointeth my head with oil." He reckoned on Jehovah, and learned to reckon through all the difficulties of the way. For His name's sake He leads in the paths of righteousness, and goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life; but he did not say that till he had been through all the power of evil. The point is, Jehovah is my shepherd, not, having good things.

248 When Christ says, "sufficient for thee," it is clear there was something He had to be sufficient for. We need strength made perfect in weakness. God hath chosen the weak things of the world, "that no flesh should glory in His presence." He pulls down all human competency. He makes vessels, it is true, but they are mere vessels. It is weakness here; not failure, but infirmity. What a blessed thing to have Him to go with us, to take care of us, to lift us up, and keep us up!

Restoring the soul is not necessarily after failure, but takes it in. "For his name's sake" He makes good what He is in all His dealings. If I set up to have any strength, that is not according to what He is; and He has to pull me down. He must make the vessel nothing, so that the work shall be His.

It is a great deal to keep self nothing in the heart; we know it is so; but still. . . . Even a heathen writer said, "You may drive nature out with a pitch-fork, but it will ever slip in." The thorn was not strength, but it made nothing of Paul, and Christ could act, because Paul was put down.

A person gets on, and the flesh takes subtler forms; but I ask the question, Am I just as happy if others are blessed in their service as if I am? All these things are so dreadfully subtle. There might be room for self-judgment if there was no blessing, and quite rightly; but am I content if I know I am doing His will, and there are no results? There is no standard but what becomes Christ and His revelation.

Self can come in everywhere. In 1 Corinthians 14 it was the shutting out self to covet the best gifts. They were fond of tongues which made a show, and they were told to covet prophecy.

Anything can puff up the flesh; a man would rather be the best thief in the country than nobody at all! Self is so very subtle, that, unless in God's presence, we do not detect it.

Notes on the Epistle to the Hebrews

J. N. Darby.

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The Epistle to the Hebrews presents to us the continuation of the testimony, by Christ Himself, of the Old Testament prophets. At the same time, this epistle unfolds the glory of Christ according to the testimony which these prophets have attributed to the Person of Christ the Messiah. He, Son of God and Son of man, came down here as an Apostle, bringing to us the divine truths; then returned to God from whom He has received the mediatorial office of Priest, waiting for the moment when He shall come in the governmental glory of Messiah. To this present glory of Jesus as High Priest in the heavenlies is conjoined a change of great importance in the operations or actings of God. A heavenly call takes the place of the earthly Jewish dispensation. This change of dispensation is one of the principal features of the book.

In this epistle Israel is acknowledged of God as a people, but is only recognised as such as seen in the remnant. Accordingly this remnant is not separated from the whole of the people, as the church is, but presents itself under the figure described in the emblem of the olive tree (Rom. 11), forming the branches upheld there by God. It crosses the period of Christianity, partaking of the blessed promises with the Gentiles who are also admitted on the olive tree during that time. We are put, we Gentiles, by the doctrine of Romans 11 into the place given to the believer in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The church is not at all in question in this epistle, unless in chapter 12, where only it is named amongst those gathered by God for glory. The church is a heavenly body formed outside the arrangements of God in the ways of His government on earth. It is not a continuation of anything that preceded down here. Amongst the blessed families of God it is the one nearest to Himself. The remnant of Israel, alive during the period of the gospel, belongs to it; it partakes of the nature of the new man (Eph. 2), in which it ceases to keep its distinctive character of remnant of Israel. But the doctrine of the Epistle of the Hebrews gives it that character, and this gives a double place to this class of saved ones, namely, the one of remnant of Israel on the earth, and the other of members of the church united to Christ in heaven.

2 By the fact of a heavenly call resulting from the setting up of a new dispensation, confided to the Messiah in the heavenlies, the Epistle to the Hebrews pours upon the remnant a blessing which is also heavenly. And besides this blessing adapting itself to the purposes of God towards His people Israel, the epistle unfolds to us the privileges of the second covenant, which can already be realised under the present state of things, although in truth the covenant may only receive its accomplishment in the future. What is also remarkable is to find some expressions speaking of a blessing which could have a fulfilment only after the rapture of the church.

There is no mediator for the church; it is seen in Christ and perfect; but the saints, seen as individuals, receive succour from the Mediator: this shews that in them there may be weakness or failure.

Let us remark also that the Holy Spirit, in putting under the eyes of the Hebrews these numerous developments concerning the change of dispensation, purposes by it to detach the remnant from the first covenant, in order to bind it in heaven to a heavenly Christ.

Chapters 1 and 2 unfold those glories of Messiah which pertain to His apostleship. It is, although a new feature, joined in chapter 2 to the humiliation of Christ. The Prince of salvation, for the benefit of the children of God He is bringing to glory, has borne the suffering of death and passed through afflictions. By this He is made bearer of the qualities necessary to priesthood. Accordingly in these two chapters are laid the foundations of His apostleship and also of His priesthood: of His apostleship in that He as God came Himself to bring the word to men; of His priesthood in that He as man passed through the experiences of the God-fearing man.

Hebrews 1.

Verses 1, 2. "God spake to us in his Son," not in the Son as instrument of His word, but Himself, God the Son, by the prophets, but in [the] Son.

"In these last days." At the end of the prophetical period God Himself spake to us: His testimony follows that of the prophets, but His is necessarily superior to theirs. As to "the worlds," the Greek word in the Epistle to the Hebrews is used in a general sense to indicate all that is in existence: it is used in the plural again in chapter 11: 3.

3 Verse 3. "The exact expression of his substance"; Christ, "the image" of the invisible God. He has revealed down here by His presence the God who dwells in inaccessible light. All His acts did shew that He was God. He shewed His grace when He pronounced the forgiveness of a sinner, and His kindness when He took little children in His arms, etc. "Having made by himself the purification of sins." The purification of our sins is here attached to the divine title of Jesus; it is part of His divine glory as much as the creation and preservation of all things. The title is the same also when it is mentioned a little further on: "He sat down."

Verses 4-14. The Son, who brought us the word, is put in contrast with the angels by whom God dictated His law.

Verse 4. "Having become" or having taken a place. These words indicate the place taken by Jesus at a given time, without looking at what He was previously.

Verse 5. "Thou art my Son: to-day have I begotten thee." Scripture speaks of Jesus as Son in two different aspects: as Son of God, born in the world, and Son according to the eternal relationship. This verse refers to the first of these: Jesus is seen here not in His glory as essentially divine, but in His glory as born Son. Nevertheless it is very important to consider the glory of Jesus as Son of God before His incarnation; for we could not speak of the love of God as we do, if the One He gave us was not His Son.

Verses 7-9. "Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire." It has pleased God to give to these agents of His power this nature of spirits. But as to the Son it is said, "Thy throne, O God!" God, in the exercise of His will, makes of His angels spirits, or flames of fire; but of the Son we do not read that God makes anything of Him. God said of Him, "O God!" This Son exists or subsists in the divinity. Though the angels are in a state superior to that of man, they are, notwithstanding their glory, in a condition very inferior to that of the Son.

In these three verses the Lord is seen in a personal glory higher than what is shewn in verses 4-6. There we have the Son begotten of God, here He is God Himself. "Thy throne O God, is for ever and ever." How much doth this raise the dignity of Messiah! Nevertheless the same One, who is God, is anointed by God. He becomes man and is in a condition where He finds companions. Wonderful link of man with God in Christ!

4 "Thy throne"; not the Father's throne, but the governmental throne of Messiah. "Thy companions," or, as in Psalm 45 from which these words are quoted, "thy fellows." When Christ is in the humiliation of the cross God calls Him His Fellow (Zech. 13); when He is in glory, God then gives us to Him for companions.

Verses 10-12. Here is a higher degree of Christ's glory. He is the eternal God, creator of all things. It is no more Godhead hidden in the anointed Man, but the Creator-God - Godhead fully revealed. Thus, there is no room for misconception as to the Person of the Messiah.

Verse 13. The superiority of Jesus over the angels is doubly established. The Holy Ghost, after having put Him in contrast with the angels as regards His divine Person, views Him as man; "To which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand?" This contrast of the Man-Messiah with the angels goes on in the next chapter.

Hebrews 2.

Verses 1-4. This is an exhortation of the Holy Ghost brought in parenthetically. We must keep close to the word of God, the more so as having been pronounced by the Lord Himself. How shall we escape if we neglect it? This greater privilege imposes greater responsibility. It is the preaching of a great salvation, made by the Lord Himself when on earth; not the gospel preached and the church united after the death of Christ. This testimony consequently goes on to the millennium without speaking of the church, a fact to be noticed not only in these verses but in the whole epistle.

We find also in this exhortation that the testimony of the apostles is swallowed up in the apostleship of Christ. Paul is apart from it; thus we see a difference between the testimony of Paul and that of Peter. In Peter's discourses in the Acts he never presents the Lord as Son of God. In conformity to the testimony addressed to Israel, he presents in Jesus the Man approved of God down here, risen afterwards, and glorified by God in seating Him at His right hand, "as Lord and Christ." Whilst Paul, who was brought in outside the teaching of the twelve to reveal that free grace of God which forms a church united to Christ in heaven, sets himself from the beginning of his testimony to shew clearly that Jesus is the Son of God.

5 Verse 5. "For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come of which we speak." This is millennial glory. The words "the world to come" do not apply to heaven, but there will be a change on earth. Angels are the instruments of the providential government of God during the present period. We are still in the age which existed before the coming of Christ - an age which began with Noah. But we must notice the two principal phases of it: Moses and Sinai, the time of separation from the age for Israel; and Nebuchadnezzar in whom God entrusted the power to the Gentiles when He declared His people Lo-Ammi; "not my people."

Verse 9. "A little inferior to the angels for the suffering of death"; "a little" refers to the degree rather than time. Jesus went down to the lowest of creation to be able to grasp it all. But this point is not unfolded here; it is only said that He went lower than the angels. Notice that in this place the death of Jesus is attached to God's grace; "By the grace of God," it is said, He suffered death for all. It is the Man who died to accomplish the grace of a God of love. Other passages present, in the death of Christ, the Man falling under the judgment of God.

Verse 10. "For it became him for whom are all things," etc. The first object was to bring many sons to glory; but it was necessary that the One who presented Himself before the majesty of God for man should bear the consequences of the state in which man was found. "It became him," God, "for whom are all things and by whom are all things." It became His Majesty that the Prince of salvation should pass through the suffering of death.

Verse 11. "For both he that sanctifieth and those who are sanctified are all of one." Christ is a separated Person and exercises a sanctifying power. We, as children of faith, are sanctified by the double fact that we are separated in Him, and we receive of His power a new life. What He is as man, we are by the new life in us. When on the earth He was dependent on His God, obedient, separate from evil, etc.: we are such also by a moral fact, and become so practically.

6 "Are all of one." We are in the same condition as the Head of this new family, which could not be the case with angels. The first time we see Jesus identifying Himself with man is when entering His public career. At John's baptism He identified Himself with those in whom grace had produced the first movement of faith in answer to the testimony of God. He did not place Himself with the infidels who despised the testimony of John and refused His baptism, but with the pious remnant in whom, though very weak at the beginning, grace was operating. That class of people, put aside by John's baptism, formed at the time the sanctified ones, "the saints in the earth" on whom the good pleasure of the Lord was resting; Psalm 16. But it is not said of Jesus and of men, that they are all of one: it is said, "He that sanctifieth and those who are sanctified are all of one."*

{*This contradicts the doctrine of the Irvingites, whose error is to identify Christ with sinners and not with the sanctified.}

"He is not ashamed to call them brethren." Jesus gave this title of 'brethren' after His resurrection, not before. He has put us into His position, but not when He came down to ours.*

{*To shew the preference He had for His disciples when on the earth, the Lord said, "My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God"; but it was not for them a title of relationship with Jesus.}

Verse 12. "I will declare thy name to my brethren, and in the midst of the church will I praise thee," Ps. 22.* Jesus knows so well the Father's favour towards anyone who finds himself in the grasp of death, that He can declare to His brethren the name of a Saviour-God and reveal all His kindness.

{*We remark in Psalm 22 three classes of people associated with the joy of Messiah delivered from death. In verse 22 are those whom Jesus names His "brethren," and of whom He makes a congregation - the "little flock" - "Go and tell my brethren." In verse 25 is "the great congregation": Judah and Israel; in verse 27 "All the ends of the earth." The title of "brethren" belongs to the remnant which will be on the earth after the rapture of the saints, also to the one which exists now, and the blessing of Hebrews 2 will be free to have its course in favour of the saints till the moment of Christ's appearing.}

Verse 13. "I will put my trust in him," as God. Taking the position of man, He had necessarily to take this condition. He walked as a pious man in the dependence of faith. These words "I will put my trust in him" correspond to the expression "all of one" (v. 113. They shew that walking by faith and realising the life of the remnant were in Jesus who identified Himself with the rescued ones of His people. The two things, the life of faith in Messiah, and His association with the remnant of Israel, are found in Psalm 16: 1-3.

7 Verses 14, 15. Jesus had to meet Satan in the very circumstances where man was. The adversary, in stamping death upon man's conscience, kept him in entire captivity. The law did nothing less than add to the power of the enemy on the conscience; but Jesus comes forward, and the enemy sees himself compelled to throw against Him this dreaded death. Jesus received the blow, overcomes death, and delivers His own.

Verse 16. "The seed of Abraham." It is always the same thought: Christ identifying Himself with the sanctified.

Verse 17. "The sins of the people." It is an expression of the Old Testament. The Jews are kept in view all through this epistle.

Verse 18. "He himself hath suffered being tempted." Christ Himself has experienced our trials; He has endured the temptations, etc. But let us not forget that He was found there not by necessity but by the Spirit of God.*

{*"Being tempted" is to be induced to act beneath the position in which we are before God. There man fell. Jesus alone could stand. The Christian is also tempted; the worldly man, as slave, is the more easily carried away by Satan.}

"Himself has suffered." There is no suffering when one gives way to temptation, but there is suffering if one resists it. In that case, the more there is of suffering, the more of spiritual life is revealed. Christ was really tempted; and though for Him the evil could come only from outside, still He suffered under the pressure of temptation. Having known temptation, Christ can sympathise with those who suffer being tempted, and He can come to their help. He does not bring any help to innocent man, nor to man in sin, but He brings succour to the saints in their struggle with sin. The power of temptation is less when it is felt than before it is felt or discerned. But when the struggle comes we find Christ to sustain, however serious may be the case. If one has fallen, two things remain to do; to extirpate whatever opened the door to the enemy (in other words, to judge the evil to the root); and in the future to leave oneself in the Lord's hands. The two things are seen in Peter's case; John 21.

8 Chapters 3 and 4 are a digression; they present a subject totally different, which, though not the apostleship nor priesthood, is nevertheless attached to these two subjects. There are literally two digressions: the first (chap. 3) looks at the Son as set over His house, and is linked to the glory of God in chapter 1; the second (chap. 4) takes up the promised rest, and links itself to the glory of the Son of man in chapter 2.

Hebrews 3.

Verse 1. This chapter begins by presenting an outline of the two first chapters. It follows from the apostleship and priesthood of Christ that there is for the saints a heavenly calling. 'You, brethren, who are partakers of it, consider the One in whom we possess such high privileges.'

"Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the holy calling." It is only in chapter 3 that the author of the book speaks to the Hebrews. It presents many indications that the epistle was by Paul; but, not being an apostle of the circumcision, he does not mention his name. He writes not as an apostle but as a teacher. The expression "holy brethren" indicates here individuals called from heaven, and walking towards heaven without meaning the church, although that is composed of persons equally called from on high. The holy calling admits, with the saints of this dispensation, those of the Old Testament, and probably also the saints which will be on the earth after the rapture of the saints. In the course of the epistle the holy calling is put in contrast with the earthly calling of the Jews.

Verse 2. "As also Moses was faithful in all his house," Christ is faithful to the One who appointed Him.

Verses 3-6. In contrast with the lawgiver, who had only the place of servant in the house which pertains to God, Jesus is counted worthy of a glory so much the greater, for He is the One to whom the house belongs; He is appointed over His house, and He occupies that place as Son. He Himself rules His own house that He has built. And more than this, this Son is God Himself: "he that buildeth all things is God."

9 This house, as we see, answers to the tabernacle formed in the wilderness, and presents its two features. It is first the house of God as uniting the whole of creation (v. 4). God dwells amid His works. It is in that sense, and alluding to the High Priest passing through the tabernacle with the blood, that it is said of Jesus, "He has passed through the heavens."

Secondly, It is also the house of God as gathering the called ones. God resides in the midst of His saints. We Christians are "his house," the family He governs. This, though gathering those who are called, does not present itself under the special conditions of the church as a body. It is one thing to say of a man he is the head of a house, and another to say he has a wife. The called saints form the house of God existing now, as the house of Israel formed the previous one. The expression "house of Israel" signifies the posterity of Israel, but considered in the conditions and collective privileges of the whole family. It is in the same sense that it is also said, "the house of David," and "the house of Aaron." There is this difference between the house of Israel and the house which to-day unites the holy brethren: the one was formed by descendants, and the other is by calling. Peter speaks also of the saints as being the house - a spiritual house; the edifice. The Epistle to the Hebrews views the house in the members which composed it.

Verse 6. As it is by calling, it is necessarily by faith that this house is formed. If faith is forsaken, the house exists no more. This is what the Holy Ghost is putting before the consciences of the Hebrews to encourage them to persevere: "Dwell in faith, else you will not be recognised"; for they were always inclined to keep to things that were visible. "If we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." This advice, given for the interests of the house, is nevertheless given to individuals. Responsibility is always individual, even when it is meant for common interests. We must keep firm confidence and rejoicing of the hope. Glorious privileges which bind us together! The security of the saints is in no way touched by this; for the advice is for each individual practically, and not on the doctrine of security.

If there is a real giving up on the part of any one, it just shews that the plant has no root; Matt. 13: 21.

10 Verses 7-19. In these verses are many exhortations to the Hebrews to warn them of the dangers of a fall. These exhortations are founded upon the declarations in Psalm 95, where the Holy Ghost puts before them the misery of those who, after having left Egypt, murmured and fell in the wilderness. To prevent such an end we must guard the way. Verses 7-11 are a parenthesis, we must read, "Wherefore . . . take heed, brethren."

Verse 13. "While it is called to-day." It is "to-day" as long as the word of God is proclaimed, and there is a call on God's part; the judgment will be the close of this calling.

Verse 14. Instead of the word "confidence," we may read "substance," "assurance." It is a figure to explain something so very sure that we might think we could take hold of it materially. This word occurs again in chapter 11: 1.

Verses 16, 17. The Greek is indefinite in this passage, but it is only a question of punctuation. The principal object of the counsel is to point out, that those who had sinned in the desert did not enter into Canaan. In consideration for the Hebrews, and not wishing to be too hard upon them, Paul gives us to understand that but few among them entered the promised land. The warning which precedes leads us on to chapter 4, where rest is spoken of.

Hebrews 4.

Verses 1-11. The first portion of the chapter is occupied with two subjects: one is the revelation that those who fell in the desert fell by unbelief; the other, a demonstration that a rest is still before us. From which a new warning comes to us to be careful, to live a life of faith. "Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief . . . let us labour therefore to enter into that rest lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief," verse 11. There are privileges which we possess; let us fear to lose them: we are His house, and to keep to that state, let us take fast hold of what placed us there - the assurance and glorious object of this hope. We have privileges set before us - the rest of God and His glories; "Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest," not missing the walk of faith. It is always faith which sustains and takes us out of difficulties in reference to the place of testimony, or as belonging to that house which professes the hope, or our individual portion, or our possession of that rest. The rest that remains, into which we enter, is God's rest.

11 Verses 12, 13. All that does not agree with that rest, to which we are walking, must be judged on the way. We are judged by the word of God. He Himself, by His searching word, discovers to us the state of our soul, and probes it to its deepest and dearest feeling. All that is within us must be revealed before Him. God, in reference to His government, generally judges only the outward state of things; but when it is His intercourse with His people, or His rights of love towards them, He judges more deeply. We are shewn by the historical books of the Old Testament how the merciful Lord renewed His blessing whenever the people returned to Him; but if we read the prophets, we shall see how God searches deeply and judges the evil which must not remain after the blessing has returned. During the time of Josiah we see a good return of the people towards God, and there was also abundant blessing; but this does not prevent Jeremiah saying to the people by Jehovah's orders, "Acknowledge thine iniquity," Jer. 3: 13.

Verses 14-16. Though we have the word of God to keep us when in danger, we have also the priesthood of Christ to help us through the difficulties of the way. His word judges in us what shews itself as the principle and will of the flesh. The priesthood comforts us in what is weakness or infirmity. Verses 14-16 are the beginning of chapter 5, without detaching them from chapter 4; it is indeed very precious to see the connection of the priesthood with our trials in the wilderness.

Verse 16. We go to the throne of grace, and not to the High Priest; because there is on the throne of grace a High Priest; and we draw near to God with assurance full and free. If we cannot approach God with the assurance of His love towards us, we are not yet made free. We address ourselves to the Lord in reference to the testimony, His church, and His work; or to the Father, in His relationship to His children; to God, when referring to the state of man, or creation - what belongs to the relation of the creature with God.

12

Hebrews 5.

We enter here into the main subject of the epistle, namely, the priesthood of Christ. The developments of it extend to chapter 10: 22. During the course of these developments a contrast is drawn between Christ and Aaron, and also between the two priesthoods with the view of unfolding how the new institution is far superior to the old one.

Chapter 5. The principal subject brought to view is the glorious introduction of Jesus into the priesthood, and the appreciation of the qualities with which our Lord entered into this new office.

Verses 1-4. The priesthood being a mediatorial charge, established to maintain the relationship of the weak and the infirm with God in His majesty, it was necessary that the high priest should be endowed with qualities which enabled him to shew compassion to those who were weak and infirm. Aaron as a man subject to infirmities as other men, would have failed in this condition of the priesthood if he had not found in the priesthood itself what fitted him for compassion and sympathy. He was to offer sacrifices not only for the people but also for himself, and these offerings produced feelings towards others; for at the same time that they established his position before God, they were also the commemoration of his own infirmities. Qualities then were necessary in the high priest's person. But Aaron was trusted with the charge solely on account of God's call. "And no man taketh this honour unto himself but he that is called of God, as was Aaron." The high priest was called of God to that charge, and was formed by Him to maintain it. These are the two principles unfolded to us by the Holy Ghost in the Levitical priesthood.

Verses 5, 6. But if there are qualities and titles belonging to the dignity of a high priest, it is Jesus who possesses them and unites them gloriously in His own Person. In Him it is not a high priest as an infirm man under the obligation of offering for himself before offering for others; no, but we have the Son of God proclaimed High Priest by God Himself - Him to whom God said, "Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee. . . . Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec." Jesus has before God a position entirely His own, a position which belongs to Him as Son. And more: His Person presents the high dignity that He could not only offer the sacrifice, but could offer Himself. It is according to these personal perfections that Jesus was entrusted with the priesthood, and is now before God. Blessed be God! who has given us for High Priest the Son of His love, He who gave His life for the life of wicked man, and whose mercies towards the infirm could not fail us whose weakness demands of the High Priest every day new supplies of compassion and mercies!

13 Verses 7, 8. Nevertheless, if Jesus did not require to be formed in order to shew compassion, He had to learn something: "He learned obedience through the things which he suffered." He learned, not to obey, "for the law of God was in his heart," but He learned obedience, having been obedient in circumstances the lowest and most painful which it was possible for man to pass through, for He went down to death. If Jesus suffered, it was not for Him a necessity which He could not avoid: it was according to the will of God who had appointed Him that portion in the world. The Holy Ghost makes us feel the right Jesus had not to pass through death, when He says, "though he were Son." Jesus passed through all the degrees of man's sufferings, so that there is nothing in the sorrows of His saints which He does not know, and is unable to sympathise with them in. But this school of suffering He went through, before being made High Priest, "during the days of his flesh"; and now that He has gone through it all He succours us. This is a case very different from that of Aaron and his sons. It was needful that they should be in the same circumstances as their brethren, infirmity being necessary to them for the fulfilling of their functions, whilst in the new priesthood the One who exercises it is not a man in infirmity. It is the Son without weakness, who knows by past experience the whole truth as to the state of man.

"Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplication with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death." At this time the enemy, who at the outset had sought to seduce Jesus by offering Him the things that are agreeable to man (Luke 4), was presenting himself against Him with the terrible things. Jesus never asked that any cup should pass from Him, save that one which meant that God would hide His face from Him. He felt in His soul at that hour of Gethsemane all the pangs attending the reception of the blow which God Himself was about to direct against Him. However, when He enters into the thought that it is the Father who has prepared the cup, He accepts it and offers Himself. In Gethsemane Jesus had to contend with the power of the enemy: "This is your hour and the power of darkness." On the cross He bore the wrath of God, and cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

14 "And was heard." Jesus was heard, in the first place, by an internal deliverance, inasmuch as He was enabled to take the cup from His Father's hand, and not from the hand of Satan. In His struggle in Gethsemane He overcame the direct power of the adversary. The latter, conquered in the conflict he had entered into against the soul of Christ, was powerless when he came in his instruments. The hour of the power of darkness was not entirely spent; but Jesus, delivered from the terrors the enemy had pressed on His soul, and free to escape death if He chose, gave Himself up. He advances towards the wicked and delivers Himself into their hands. Evidently His soul was no longer under the pressure of the enemy. But He was more entirely heard in His resurrection. "He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days, for ever and ever," Psalm 21: 4.

"And was heard in that he feared." It may be quite as well rendered "on account of his piety" or "of his respect." It is the same word as in chapter 12: 28, "with reverence and godly fear." "By the things which he suffered." Instead of fulfilling righteousness in an even path, He met with constantly growing difficulties. He suffered in order to learn obedience.

Verses 9, 10. All trial being ended for Jesus, God brought Him to perfection by placing Him in a condition where no trial is possible and into which Jesus entered; being acquainted with the suffering of a holy man, struggling with this world, and the power of darkness. It is in this position that God has proclaimed Him High Priest. Thus Jesus, far from being with us in a fellowship of suffering, is the One who is with God (having overcome everything) and who gives us the help needed to bring us out of our distresses. It is as Man that Jesus exercises the priesthood, but, what is very remarkable, it is as the Son that He has been declared Priest.

If, by the very nature of this office, it was needful that He should be the Man-mediator, it was necessary also that His work should commence with God, from whom all grace flows. But the Son, before receiving the priesthood, was led by God through suffering in order to prepare Him for this office. This sums up into two leading subjects the truth concerning the priesthood of Christ which are put forth in this chapter.

15 Verses 11-14. Before presenting fuller details on the subject of the new priesthood, the writer of this epistle stops to exhort the Hebrews, whose slowness in the faith made the unfolding of this truth difficult.

Considering the time that had already elapsed, they should have been in a better condition to bear the word of the doctrine of Christ. This warning takes up the end of chapter 5, and the whole of chapter 6.

Hebrews 6.

Verses 1-3. Leaving the weak notions of Christ which a Jew or a Pharisee could have understood and admitted, "let us go on to perfection," receiving the testimony of God respecting the Christ whom He has raised to a heavenly glory. Why cleave to these Jewish notions when in possession of the precious revelations which belong to the heavenly calling?

"Let us go on to perfection," to the perfect man, to that stage in which our faith lays hold of Christ in His present glory and cleaves to the blessing which flows to us from this Christ in heaven.

Verses 4-8. To return to these early Jewish notions, after having received a promised faith in a heavenly Christ, is to be in the road to forsake Christ Himself. Now, from such a fall there is no recovery. All the characteristics mentioned in verses 4, 5, may be possessed in the church without being born of the Spirit. One may be a partaker of the Holy Ghost, that is to say participate in His operations, without necessarily having received the Holy Ghost who dwells in the saints and is in them the seal of their faith and redemption. Indeed, it was by the Holy Ghost that Balaam, viewing from the heights the beauty of the camp of Israel, rejoiced and exclaimed: "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!" and yet the sequel shews that he was not a child of God.

"If they shall fall away" - have forsaken Christ - a warning similar to that in chapters 3 and 4; but with this difference, that the warning of chapter 6 looks at the Hebrews as in a lower and more general condition. In the former case they are exhorted to press forward and not to stop in their way. Here they are reminded of their responsibility as having been the objects of God's care. Such care should be responded to.

16 Although we do not now see the glorious operations, which in the beginning accompanied the testimony of the gospel, by which through their merely external effects individuals were often led to profess the faith, yet things remain in principle the same.

A man may find himself in the sphere where God is acting in grace, he may go so far as to profess the faith and may after all remain unconverted, in spite of the share which he has had in the blessings God was pouring out for the conversion of souls. Grace has lavished her riches upon him, but in vain. At last the time comes when it is shewn that, though it has received the rain from heaven, this soil has remained barren. It is then nigh unto cursing and its end is to be burned.

Nevertheless their state gave reason to hope better things than this sad picture. The rain of the blessing of God which had fallen on them by the word had produced fruit. God could acknowledge their work and labour of love.

Verses 11, 12. But it was desirable they should shew fresh diligence to the full assurance of hope.

Verses 13-20. This warning being given, the Holy Ghost presents to their view the glorious certainties which God has given for the hope of His own - hope founded on God's promise and oath, and secured in Jesus within the veil, whither He has entered as our forerunner. This is how the grace of God acts towards the saints; it sustains their faith and their courage by directing their gaze to the things which are before. If godliness declines, there is a temptation to go back to works, to return to Judaism, which can give no help, but which on the contrary is a plague in the heart, - yes, in the very heart. But Christ seen in His fulness and glory gives fresh energy to faith.

Hebrews 7.

We now return to the subject of the priesthood. Christ having been declared a Priest after the order of Melchisedec, His introduction into this new office is now considered in its relation to the principles of that priesthood, and in respect to the change that results in the priesthood.

17 But first there are some general remarks.

Verses 1-3. Priesthood and royalty were combined in Melchisedec. He was priest of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. This name Most High God is that which God takes in the millennium, and the royal priesthood is also that which Jesus will exercise in the times of the restitution of all things; but it is not under this aspect that the priesthood is unfolded in the Hebrews. With regard to the type of Melchisedec it is shewn that Jesus was appointed High Priest after that order; but where the present exercise of the office entrusted to our Lord is spoken of, the Holy Ghost takes the type from the priesthood of Aaron.

"Without father, without mother, without descent." Melchisedec, though a typical man, is nevertheless a real personage whom sacred history brings on the scene in circumstances calculated to set forth the great principles of the glorious priesthood of our Lord, who is shewn exercising a priesthood as endless as His days. Scripture does not speak of his birth, death or pedigree, thus making an exception, for usually in the Old Testament, when persons having a prominent place in the ways of God are spoken of, we get their genealogy, etc.

Verses 4-10. This king, priest of the Most High God, is a greater man than Levi, the root of the priestly family established under the law; for when he met Abraham, the father of Levi, he received tithes from the patriarch and blessed him: a first proof of the superiority of Christ as priest after the order of Melchisedec over Aaron, priest of the lineage of Levi.

Verses 11-19. The bringing in of Jesus as priest after the order of Melchisedec involves the substitution of a better priesthood than that of Aaron.

Verse 11. It is evident that this old priesthood was not perfect, since God, after having instituted it, speaks of another.

Verses 12-17. The order being changed, the new priesthood is necessarily founded on new principles. Christ, consequently, is not subject to the Levitical ordinance by which the priests entered into office in virtue of their hereditary right as sons of Aaron, and that only for a limited number of years.

After the similitude of Melchisedec He is in the priesthood, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. He possesses an intransmissible office and holds it in the power of an endless life.

18 Verses 18, 19. By reason of the connection between the priesthood and the law, if the first is changed, the second must be affected by it. "For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof [for the law made nothing perfect], and the bringing in of a new hope by the which we draw nigh to God." A perfection never to be obtained by the law is now enjoyed through the excellency of the new priesthood; besides the privilege of drawing nigh to God - a blessing never even suggested by the law.

"A better hope," that is, the hope of heavenly things and the favour of receiving them, not by righteousness of man but by grace. See chapter 6: 19, 20. Our hope adds, to the privilege of inheriting heavenly things, that of being brought nigh to God. There was nothing of this kind under the Levitical economy; all was connected with the possession of Canaan and the government of Jehovah. Far from admitting man into His presence, God remained hidden in the sanctuary. But the excellency of the priesthood of Christ further appears by many more privileges.

Verses 20-22. Christ is honoured by being made a priest by the word of the oath of God, and by being declared by His word to be a surety of a better covenant.* Keep in view the parenthesis and read: "And inasmuch as not without an oath, . . . by so much was Jesus made a surety of a better covenant."

{*A testament (or covenant) is an ordering, an appointment of God for man, by which man maintains intercourse with God.}

This covenant derives its dignity from the oath of God. It is as sure and stedfast as the oath of God is weighty.

Verses 23-25. The perpetuity of Christ's priesthood keeps our interests permanently in the same hands, for we have not to fear that our Priest should fail and leave the work of our complete salvation unfinished.

"He is able to save them to the uttermost," to save us in the difficulties we meet with in the wilderness. He is able to make good to us from day to day the value of that eternal redemption accomplished once for all. The priestly service is to save us in passing through the wilderness.

Verses 26-28. The position of Christ as High Priest made higher than the heavens, His blessed and holy Person, His finished work, are all in harmony with the grace which has brought us to God. But more, the care He bestows upon us here below maintains us practically in that position. Instead of leaving us in a stifling atmosphere He raises us (that is, the new man) to the level of our heavenly hopes.

19 "For such a High Priest became us." Because our calling gives us a place far above the heavens, it becomes us that our High Priest should have His place there also. In chapter 2 we have already noticed that it became God that Christ should pass through sufferings; and in this chapter it becomes us that He should be lifted up higher than the heavens. How much this exalts our heavenly calling!

"Such a High Priest who is holy, harmless, undefiled." Appearing in the presence of God for us, it is necessary that all the qualities answering to the divine majesty should be found in His Person. Before God Jesus is a High Priest, holy, harmless, undefiled; towards us He is a merciful High Priest, having compassion on the weak.

"Separate from sinners and made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the people's, for this he did once when he offered up himself." In the glorious place which our Priest occupies, He is entirely separate from sin, and He occupies this place after having accomplished on earth a perfect redemption, having abolished sin and overcome Satan and death. From the heights of His glory He helps His distressed saints on the earth, but He Himself is never in distress.

It is important for us to discern this position of Christ and to see that the priesthood has for its basis the complete victory over everything with which we struggle here below.

If priesthood is a mediation rendered necessary by the glory of the God who holds intercourse with His own down here, it is also the means whereby God unfolds towards them His tenderness and all the riches of His grace. It is the channel through which blessing is poured upon us from above. Here arises the question: How far is my infirmity the subject of priestly service? It is well to know at once that Jesus never intercedes for the flesh. His care has its object, the maintenance of the new man in the height of the standing He is in Himself before God; and He leads the new man in the path of submission and dependence in which He walked Himself when down here. He is the head of the new man in us as being essentially in Himself the new man.

20 The necessity of priesthood is owing to our weakness, to the flesh being still in us. Accordingly priestly service dispenses to us mercy and grace: mercy which bears with us, and grace to help us. If it is a question of weakness or infirmity, Jesus comforts us, but never does He pity the flesh. It is written, "Ye are dead."

Now, outside of this state of death for the flesh, there can be no occasion for intercession. Are we out of the path, walking after the flesh? Christ will then require that the two-edged sword, which discerns the state of the soul, should pierce us and mortify in us those roots of carnality within. This discipline will have its effects, and then it will be followed by the intercession of Jesus in favour of the new man; and God answering by the Holy Ghost will act in power to give the new man victory over the flesh.

Hebrews 8.

Having seen in the preceding chapter the substitution of the priesthood of Christ for that of Aaron, we get in this chapter the position of the new priesthood and the change in the covenants which it involves.

Verses 1-5. The Priest of the new priesthood does not exercise His office on earth. He is in heaven at the right hand of Majesty, a minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man. Here the Holy Ghost points out to us that the administration of heavenly things by the hands of Jesus is the principal subject of the teachings of this epistle.

Verse 4. For if He were on earth He should not be a Priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law. Therefore, at the very time when the heavenly priesthood was being unfolded to the Hebrews, there existed on earth another priesthood, which though no longer recognised, was yet in operation. This was a time of transition between the two dispensations. We gather from this that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written before the fall of Jerusalem. For what object? First, to shew the Hebrews their heavenly privileges; but also to bid them go forth without the camp. When the link of Christians with the world is morally broken, final separation is easier, whether the path is trod quietly in obedience to the word "come out," or if it is a question of acting when events compel us to do so.

21 Verses 6-13. The priesthood of Christ brings in also a new covenant more excellent than the first, and grounded upon better promises. When God gave the first covenant, He also gave a priesthood which was the key-stone of the whole economy. This being changed, there is consequently a change of covenant; the first falls with its obsolete priesthood, and the second takes its place.

Verses 8-12. God had declared by His prophets that the day would come when He should bring in a new covenant different from the first.

Verse 13. However, touching the old covenant, the Hebrews are treated with consideration in this epistle; for the only conclusion expressed is that the promise of a new covenant makes the first one old and ready to vanish away. Yet the cross had actually abolished it, the blood of Jesus being the blood of the new covenant.

Hebrews 9.

The covenant being changed by the bringing in of the priesthood of Christ, the whole system undergoes the change; the sanctuary, offerings, worship, the state of the worshippers - everything is altered. Here the question arises: How near can we approach to God through the new priesthood? The answer is: We draw nigh even to God Himself. This privilege is founded on the perfect value of the blood of Christ; which value is unfolded in these two chapters.

In chapter 9 the special subject is atonement; the blood shed and carried into the sanctuary. In chapter 10 it is the application of the blood to the individual, conscience being perfected through sprinkling of the blood.

Verses 1-10. Under the first covenant there was an ordinance of service with regard to the worship which Jehovah received from His people. A tabernacle had been made in which God concealed His glory; and sacrifices were offered, the blood of which was carried into this tabernacle by the high priest.

We must notice that it is the tabernacle pitched by Moses in the wilderness which is spoken of here. There is no mention made of the temple built by Solomon. The temple was not the shadow of heavenly things; but a figure of the government of God during the millennium. When the ark of the covenant was placed in it, it contained neither the pot of manna nor Aaron's rod, which are both symbols of the resources displayed by grace in the wilderness. But the tabernacle, with its furniture and service, set forth the provision of the grace of God to help us during our journey here below. In fact this tabernacle belongs to a higher order of things; for it was not, like the temple, the expression of a terrestrial rest; it exhibited the grace of God going with His people till their introduction into the heavenly rest.

22 Verse 2. The table of shewbread and the seven-branched candlestick in the sanctuary set forth the manifestation of God in man. God revealed in Christ the anointed man and by the Spirit, according to the riches of a grace which opens its treasures to man.

Verses 3-5. The arrangement of the holiest of all set forth the supreme God in the immediate manifestation of His divine Person: God manifested in testimony to man, as well as in government and judgment in the midst of His people; but remaining in darkness and keeping man at a distance.

Verses 6-8. The priests went daily into the holy place, accomplishing the usual service; the high priest only went into the holiest of all. He carried blood in, that God should not come out in judgment.

The Levitical service was for the children of Israel the means of approaching God. In the state they were in they never could have approached God in the light; therefore it was necessary that there should be this order of things between them and God. Evidently in an earthly system of religion, and under a regimen in which God reveals Himself to man in judgment and providence, God must remain veiled: only the grace which is in Jesus is that which fits man to approach to God without a veil.

Verse 9. "Sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience." It cannot be said that, under this order of things, the conscience of the Israelite remained deaf to the communications of God; but by the sole effect of sacrifices, it was never in a state to bear the presence of God. Their conscience was formed more by personal communications with Jehovah. David, for instance, in his wandering life had found God; and he was nearer to Him in the wilderness than the Israelites were when approaching the altar with the tabernacle and the ordinances, between themselves and God. This advantage was also limited: certain springs of conscience remained inactive. In that state they could not have sustained communion with God in that full light which penetrates man and searches into the motions of his soul. Never would a Jew have been heard speaking of the flesh, saying that it is opposed to the Spirit. In summing up what we learn in these verses of the priesthood under the first covenant, we find that there was a tabernacle in which God was hidden in obscurity, and sacrifices which were not able to perfect the conscience of the worshippers.

23 Verses 11, 12. But the contrast of the new priesthood presents a much more excellent order of things, "Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands . . . but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." O! how far Christ surpasses that which was greatest under the Levitical economy. Heaven is the sanctuary into which He has entered; and the blood which He has carried in is His own, the blood which has obtained an eternal redemption.

We notice that the truths declared in these verses present the value of the blood of Christ according to the efficacy of the day of atonement. The unfoldings which follow are, generally speaking, given from the same point of view.*

{*Chapter 9 of Hebrews takes us back to Leviticus 16 and, though not a complete exposition of its contents, presents the leading features. On the great day of atonement the service of the priesthood consisted in this: the sacrificing of the goat offered to Jehovah and whose blood was sprinkled upon the mercy-seat; the sprinkling of blood on the tabernacle; and the sending off of the scapegoat to the wilderness, bearing away the sins of the people. We find these three actions in this chapter now before us: the blood put upon the mercy-seat (v. 12); the sprinkling on the tabernacle (v. 23); and the scapegoat bearing sins (v. 28).}

"By his own blood he entered in once, having obtained eternal redemption for us." The sacrifice is shewn here as forming part of the glory of Christ; the humiliation of the cross, and suffering for sin, do not appear here. But Christ having obtained eternal redemption by His blood entered into heaven carrying the value of that blood into the presence of God. Moreover the relation of the blood to the state of man, its application to the sinner, is not unfolded here.

24 It is primarily for God that this sacrifice took place; to Him. was the blood offered; and before Him, in redemption, as in all His works, things are set in their proper place before reaching down to man.

Verses 13, 14. If the blood of Christ belongs to God, it is nevertheless on man's account it was shed. Christ, the anointed Man, offered Himself without spot, and His blood purged the conscience of the believers. But what perfection is in this work of salvation! There is no room left for man to take a part in the divine operations; a redemption which saves him is accomplished, but this work is entirely of God. Christ offered Himself by the eternal Spirit. The work of the cross is perfect and absolute; wrought wholly between Christ and God, to the exclusion of all outside. Christ in His death has been lifted up from the earth. "How much more shall the blood of Christ . . . purge your conscience?" The purification of the conscience by the blood is simply maintained here. The effect of the blood of Christ unfolded in its extensiveness will be the subject-matter of chapter 10.

Verse 15. The blood which Jesus has shed gives Him a title to be the Mediator of the new covenant. This blood could not belong to the first one under which purification only applied to defilements of the flesh; but it belongs to the second: it is the foundation of this covenant under which sin is no more before God. "That by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant." This first covenant brought in consequences for which it was not provided: for law makes sin to abound and only acts towards transgressors by punishing them with death. But here is another covenant founded on the value of the blood of Christ and this blood answers for the transgression committed under the first.

It is a retro-active effect applying itself to transgressions committed beforehand, as it applies now to the state of the called. "They which are called might receive the promise of an eternal inheritance." Everything in this present dispensation is done by calling. Calling opens the door of the new covenant to those who found themselves under the grave consequences of the first, even as also to those who did not belong to it at all. Nevertheless it is with reference to the first of these classes that these truths are unfolded.

Mark how the expressions "entered in once," "an eternal redemption," "through the eternal Spirit offered," "an eternal inheritance" contrasted the heavenly priesthood, and the new covenant with the earthly privileges of the Jews and their conditions under the first. Yet these expressions are still Jewish, they describe very little of heaven; the privileges of saints united to Christ on high are not touched upon.

25 Verses 16, 17. As the death of Jesus is the redemption of transgressions committed under the first covenant, it is also the surety of the inheritance promised under the second. The word inheritance of verse 15 seems to bring in the idea of "testament" for verses 16, 17. These two verses may be read as a parenthesis. Translating by "testament" the Greek word, the expression "there must also of necessity be the death of the testator" is made to signify there must be the death of the testator to make sure the provisions of it; for as long as he lives he can alter them. Elsewhere in the epistle we always translate the Greek word by "covenant."

Verses 18-22. The second covenant grounded on the value of the blood of Christ is not on this basis without having a type answering to it in the first. This one, of whom Moses was the mediator, was inaugurated by blood; it had also, by the sprinkling of the blood, means of purification connected with worship.

Verse 22. "And without shedding of blood there is no remission." There are purifications made by water; also the purification by sprinkling of blood made once; but for the remission of sins the shedding of blood was necessary: blood must flow, some one must die. It is important to notice this; for it often happens that a soul without peace sighs for fresh sprinklings. That soul might as well ask God to renew the sacrifice, for without shedding there can be no sprinkling. It is on the value of the shed blood that the peace of the soul rests. Now the shedding of the blood of Christ has taken place, and it can only take place once. So is it also as to the sprinkling granted to the believers.

Verses 23, 24. The blood of Christ purifies the heavenly places; even as the blood of bulls and of goats did purge the tabernacle. The reason of this rite for the tabernacle in the wilderness is given in these terms, Leviticus 16, "the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness," v. 16. By this we understand the purification of the heavenly places. God has established His dwelling-place amidst His people. We are in contact with His tabernacle. Our transgressions and our sins are named there. What a thing for sin to be named in heaven! Perhaps there is more general reason for the purification of the heavenly places: the defilement of creation by the entrance of sin into the world. Creation seen as a whole is unclean by reason of the presence of sin.

26 Verse 24. The entering of Christ into the heavenlies, also His appearing in the presence of God, correspond to a privilege infinitely blessed to our souls. Not only is Christ seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, but in this place of perfection He "appears in the presence of God for us" and represents us there.

Verses 25-28. The end of the chapter is specially given up to shewing that Christ could suffer but once.

Verse 26. For then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: the offering could not take place without Jesus suffering. This connection of the offering with suffering is remarkable; the Holy Ghost does not separate them. Some speak of "unbloody sacrifices," but sacrifice only takes place through the sufferings of death. If then the sacrifice has not been effected, it never will: for Christ cannot suffer any more.

"But now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Until Christ, the question of sin had not been settled, but every trial of man under responsibility was being made; in the case of man without law or man under a law, sin had come to maturity. Besides, there was no more occasion for the existence of an age with man in the same way as before, under the same responsibility: the ages were accomplished; Christ appears; He closes the preceding period by abolishing sin, and opens new ages for the glory. Therefore He can now call souls to enter into this heavenly glory. During the call the "present evil age" continues for this world, but the called partake already of the blessing of the ages to come. He appeared (the Greek verb is in the perfect tense); the fact has passed and still subsists.

Verses 27, 28. The offering of Christ made once answers to the condition of man as son of Adam. The fate of sinful man is once to die, and after this the judgment. But Christ offering Himself once hath put away sin and removed the judgment for His own. He will be seen a second time by those who wait for Him, it will be unto salvation.

27 "Unto salvation." This expression is in contrast with the judgment to come for man, after death. He has for his end two terrible passes: death and judgment. On the contrary, the Christian possesses two boundless privileges: he partakes of a Christ who died for his sins; and he waits the coming of this Christ in glory unto salvation. Jesus having abolished sin on the cross, the only thing that remains to accomplish after His death is His return to bring His own into the glory.

Hebrews 10.

Having shewn in chapter 9 the value of the blood carried into the sanctuary, the Holy Ghost in chapter 10 considers the application of the blood to the conscience of the saints and the price of the sacrifice for their introduction to God.

Verses 1-4. The sacrifices offered under the law could not give a perfect conscience; "for the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin"; and those offerings repeated year after year, far from taking them away, were, on the contrary, their commemoration. The people were always conscious of sins.

Verses 5-7. In contrast with the sacrifices in which God took no pleasure, Jesus Christ presented Himself to God to do His will, and this will required a sacrifice which could take away sin. It is beautiful to see Jesus, when coming into the world, presenting Himself to obey, and speaking to His Father, saying, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!"

"In the volume of the book it is written of me." Books at that time were rolls of parchment with a label on the outside to indicate the contents; it helped to find the roll when it was on the shelf with others. Well, the spiritual label of the sacred roll, the summary of the scriptures, is that Jesus Christ would come to do the will of God. The offering of the body of Jesus Christ answers to all the sacrifices offered under the law. "Sacrifice [peace offering], and offering [meat offering], and burnt offerings, and offering for sin." The different sacrifices are gathered together here to shew under all aspects the efficacy of the one sacrifice by which there is not only purification of conscience, but liberty and privilege to approach to God.

28 Verses 8-10. Two principal effects result from the will of God being accomplished in the offering of Christ Himself. First, the work of the obedience of Christ takes the place of the Jewish system. Secondly, a new people, sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, is brought forward in connection with the new order of things.

Verse 10. There is here a principle of the highest importance: "We are sanctified by the will of God," and this will Jesus Christ alone has accomplished. This leaves no room for the will of man: the work by which we are sanctified is absolutely, wholly, of God.

Verses 11-14 are effects more particularly for the conscience. The offering which separates a people also renders the sanctified ones perfect; it places them before God with a perfect conscience. The proof given to us is that Jesus Christ having offered one sacrifice for ever sat down at the right hand of God, until the moment He will rise against His enemies. It is not necessary for Him to come out of the sanctuary to offer fresh sacrifices.

Verse 12. "For ever sat down," read, "sat down in continuity" (eis to dienekes).*

{*See Notes in the New Translation of the Bible, Hebrews 5: 6.}

Verse 14. Perfected as to the conscience; it is the subject presented in the beginning of the chapter. In verses 1 and 2, we read that the sacrifices offered repeatedly could not "make perfect," also that the fathers had always "conscience of sins," and in chapter 9 we also saw that gifts and sacrifices of that period could "not make perfect as pertaining to the conscience," but in this verse of chapter 10 we read, By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Our position before God is final; "perfected in continuity," is the same word as in verse 12. As truly as Christ's session at the right hand of God does not change for an instant; so truly does our position through grace remain unaltered.

Jesus will rise from His throne once, and it will be to come against His enemies; but the first thing He will do on rising will be to take us to Himself. There we shall no more require a priest to appear for us in the presence of God, nor the Epistle to the Hebrews to shew us our privileges and to encourage us.

Verses 15-18. The testimony of the Holy Ghost confirming the position in which the sanctified are through the offering of Jesus Christ. It is not a question here of the work of the Holy Ghost in the believer, but of the testimony which He gives to the work of Christ accomplished down here. There are three things to be noticed with regard to grace in what precedes: the will of God resolving on the work to be done for us; the sacrifice of Christ accomplishing this divine will; and the testimony of the Holy Ghost given to this will of God accomplished by Christ.

29 Verse 17. "And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." According to these words it was necessary that the question of sin should be solved, for God does not say, "I will not remember," but, "I will remember no more." He saw our sins and remembered them, since He determined upon the death of Christ to abolish them. And now that they are abolished He remembers them neither to-day, tomorrow, nor for ever.

Verses 19-22 are application. The way into the holiest being open to us by the blood of Christ, let us realise our privilege of drawing near into the presence of God; but let us approach in the condition in which the sacrifice has placed us.

Verse 22. "Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." The sprinkling of blood is an introductory privilege accomplished once for all. "And our bodies washed with pure water" is also an introductory privilege, but which extends also to daily communion, making allusion to the washing of the priests; Lev. 8; Ex. 30. On the subject of the perfect sacrifice, we find many unfoldings to exhibit the value of the blood of Christ, and our acceptance through it, but we have relatively little as to the daily exercise of the grace which is based upon this offering. Why? It is in order to keep our thoughts and communion up to the height of our privileges, and to remove from us any occasion of delighting in our wretchedness. If we suffer in our souls, let us turn to that perfect grace, let us go to God directly through Jesus Christ.

Verses 23-31 are warnings. "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith; . . . let us consider one another, to provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking the assembling of ourselves; . . . but exhorting one another." We must be bold enough to profess with all the saints the hope which God has put in us.

In verses 26-31 the author of the Epistle presents the other side of the truth. The sword which he uses is indeed a two-edged sword. What he says signifies, you are perfected through so perfect a sacrifice that there is only one such. If you despise it, there is no other to which you may turn. The Jews, under the law, were always able to return by new sacrifices; under the gospel this possibility does not exist.

30 Verses 32-39. Besides the perfection of the grace in which God had placed them, and also the warning they received concerning the irremediable state of those who abandon Christ, the Hebrews had other motives for persevering in the faith. They had walked in that path amidst difficulties, and the Lord had given them the victory. A few more steps in the same path, and the Lord will have come. We must not draw back when so near the end of the journey. The just shall live by faith.

Hebrews 11.

Following on the exhortations and encouragements which close chapter 10, we find in chapter 11 a review of the illustrious lives of the Old Testament, with the object of putting before the eyes of the Hebrews all the resources of faith. The subject is thus brought forward: "We are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul"; chap. 10: 39. Now this is what faith is.

Verse 1. Faith produces two principal effects in the believer: first, it gives to the soul a full certainty as to the object it lays hold of; secondly, it puts the soul in the enjoyment of the object.

Verses 3-7. To know creation is the work of God, to trust in the sacrifice, to walk with God on the earth, and be a witness for Him. Such are the great principles of faith. This comprises the whole Christian system.

Verses 8-16. The child of faith is heir of the promises of God. These promises are for the future, he possesses them only in hope; but God takes care of him and by marvellous ways leads him through this world towards the goal where they will be accomplished.

Verses 8-10. At present the heir possesses nothing, save the earnest of the Spirit. Abraham, though heir of Canaan, dwelt there as a stranger; but he set his estimation of the promises high enough, so as to meet with Him who built the city.

31 Verses 11, 12. The power of faith acts in the things which are necessary for the accomplishment of what is promised. We must wait by faith for the blessing of the church in another world, and realise now by the same faith the things which work together to the accomplishing of this hope, for instance, the work of ministry.

Verse 13. All these died in faith; in an attitude of faith waiting for the promises. This is how the Hebrews should die if death overtook them before the accomplishment of their hope.

Verse 16. Because these men of faith formed a heavenly people, God was not ashamed to connect their name with His. The same thing occurs for the saints of this dispensation; therefore this is said to the Hebrews.

Verses 17-19. Meanwhile faith is tried, Abraham had to sacrifice the one on whose head the promises had been put, so as to hold them from God only. There is much power in this example set before the Hebrews, for they also were to follow Abraham; they were to leave the Jewish Christ to receive a risen and heavenly Christ.

Verse 19. In the trial one always makes new discoveries as to the resources which are in God. The measure of grace which sustains us in ordinary times is not sufficient in the day of trial; but then the glorious God unfolds new riches of His grace, to make a way out for His child. It is when death was ready to strike Isaac that Abraham tasted the grace of God who raises the dead. His faith was not confounded.

Verse 20. Very little is said of Isaac himself. This agrees with the place given him as type of Christ in the resurrection state, where He makes sure the promises and receives the church. Jacob, seen as a typical person, represents more Israel.

Verse 21. The blessing given to the sons of Joseph conferred upon them a double portion; Gen. 48. In fact, that portion is the birthright (Deut. 21: 17), the portion of Christ. Therefore there is worship on Jacob's part, Christ being discerned in this prophecy.

Verse 22. Lastly one simple principle of faith is shewn us in the life of Joseph: his faith looked to the future. The various examples taken from the life of the patriarchs, present to us faith in connection with the promises of God. The life of Moses, related in what follows, presents faith, in connection with the system appertaining to these promises.

32 Verses 23-29. The testimony God gives of the faithfulness of Moses in Egypt is, that he illustrated the faith which stands true in the presence of evil, and firm before difficulties. We learn by this example that providence is not the rule of conduct for faith: for if ever providence was clearly seen, it was indeed by Moses being placed in Pharaoh's court. Was he to remain there?

Verses 32-40. The list of the men of faith under the Old Testament is not yet exhausted; but the example of those who served the Lord after the establishment of the people in the promised land would be less appropriate to the need of the Hebrews, so the author of the epistle confines himself to presenting them in a summary way, and citing only the names of some. They also were commendable for their faith, and have not as yet received the promise. There are better things for us, and though they do not appear to inherit all of them, they have nevertheless a part in them; they wait to receive them with us.

Chapters 12 and 13 are exhortations and encouragements given to the Hebrews. Wishes made in their favour.

Hebrews 12.

Verses 1, 2. A cloud of witnesses bear witness to the success of faith; and it is for us an encouragement to run the race. But, far above all these witnesses there is One who has shewn faith in its perfection, it is Jesus; and the word directs our eyes towards Him. "The race that is set before us." Allusion is made to the games of the Greeks; these games were contests in which there were different exercises, such as wrestlings, racings, etc. Responsibility attaches to the race of the Christian, and the Lord will deal in judgment with our race. "Jesus the author and finisher of faith." In all that touches faith, Jesus has had the pre-eminence, having passed through all difficulties and having overcome them all.

Verses 3, 4. If we have to bear with the contradiction of men, it is no reason for fainting. Christ has met and vanquished this contradiction; in Him we shall also be conquerors. "Resisted unto blood." In persecutions; Luke 12.

33 Verse 5. But persecution may assume the character of discipline from the Lord. If so, there are two things to heed: not to despise it, for it is chastening; not to faint, for it is sent in grace.

Verses 6, 11. Satan is the instrument of the troubles we suffer, be it under persecution or under the discipline of God; but it is from God Himself we receive the strokes. Job received the blows God had intended for him, by the instrumentality of the enemy. Jesus bore the power and wickedness of Satan in the act of drinking the cup of His own death, and yet He took this cup from His Father's hand. We find the same connection of facts in Psalm 118: 10, 13, 18.

Verses 17, 18. Several warnings are given to the Hebrews in verses 12-16. Here are now two motives given to support them: "For you know how that afterwards when he would have inherited the blessing, he [Esau] was rejected. . . . For ye are not come to the mount that might be touched." You are waiting for a fine inheritance: would you make light of it as did Esau? And consider also that it is not the case with you as with those who were at Sinai; you are come unto mount Sion, you have to do with grace which is followed only by judgment.

Verses 22-24. The enumeration of the families which compose this glorious company gives to us the whole history of the last days. The order to be traced seems to me to be this: the enumeration begins at the first step of the ladder to go up to its highest step, even to God, and comes down again to the millennium. There are eight particular subjects. The conjunction "and" which unites them, being repeated each time, serves to distinguish them.

"Unto mount Sion," the seat of royal grace. When all was lost and the name Ichabod [the glory is departed] was written on Israel, God intervened for His people. He gave prophets to bring back this erring people; but especially David, the king, through grace. It is by his service the Lord established His ark in rest in Sion. There was through grace the mount of deliverance for Israel after they had failed in everything. This grace abides for the future: Christ shall reign in Sion. "And unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." The church in its heavenly position is seen in contrast with Sion on the earth.

34 "And to an innumerable company of angels, the general assembly." It is the universal congregation of the heavens, seen as a whole. "And to the church of the firstborn which are written in heaven" is the church in particular. "And to God the judge of all." It is God in His character of Judge, for the bringing in of the millennium. The church being mentioned, we reach to God the centre of everything.

"And to the spirits of just men made perfect": the saints of various dispensations before the church. Having ascended up to God, we find the saints of the Old Testament. They are "made perfect," they have run the race, but have not yet received the crown. It is with them as with those who, among the Greeks, had won the prize in the stadium; the reward was not given immediately. They had to wait for a special festival on that occasion.

"And to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant." Jesus pressed to accomplish the promises and to bless Israel.

"And to the blood of sprinkling" is the blood of the new covenant. Although it has an application at this present time, this blood belongs especially to the millennium.

Verses 25-27 are a very remarkable testimony to the authority of Christ. He who speaks from heaven now is the One who shook the earth in the day of Sinai, and who will soon shake the heavens and the earth.

Hebrews 13.

Verses 20, 21. God is He "that brought again from the dead that great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant." The blood shed by Jesus gave Him the right to rise from death with the same efficacy for others.

All of One

Hebrews 2

J. N. Darby.

<28002E> 35

We never know our place rightly till we know Christ's place. What we find in this chapter is, that we are completely associated and identified with Him. "For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." Then God's way is to settle our relationship with God Himself first, and then to pass us through the wilderness, till the time comes for the full accomplishment of His purpose in glory. If we do not connect our place with Christ, we do not get the key to it. He passed through the wilderness, dying for us too, and He is now crowned with glory and honour. This chapter puts Him in this place.

The wilderness is no part of God's purpose for us at all; it is a part of His ways, not His purpose. Christ could take the thief straight to paradise without any wilderness at all, so absolute was that work of His in its efficacy. Bringing us to God and into the wilderness is the same thing. Christ's work is complete, and the effect of redemption is to bring us into the wilderness. The Israelites began the wilderness, properly speaking, after Sinai. As soon as they had passed through the Red Sea, they could say, "Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them by thy strength unto thy holy habitation," Ex. 15: 13. At Sinai Jehovah said, "Ye have seen . . . how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself," Ex. 19: 4. They were brought to the wilderness and to God.

Exodus 15 goes on to shew God's purpose: "Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Jehovah, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary, O Jehovah, which thy hands have established," Ex. 15: 17. That Israel had not got, and we have not got it, but Christ has entered in, and that is the difference.

If you look at Exodus 3, you will see that the wilderness formed no part of God's purpose: "And I am come down to deliver them, and to bring them up out of that land, unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." In Exodus 6 you find the same, and in Exodus 15, where faith celebrates redemption, you have the same thing. "Thou hast guided them by thy strength unto thy holy habitation." This leaps right over the wilderness. He did bring them through the wilderness, but it was no part of His purpose for them. Redemption was accomplished when they were brought through the Red Sea. In that way the Red Sea and the Jordan coalesce: in both there was the passing on dry ground through the water that formed the barrier, the real difference of meaning being, that in the Red Sea we get Christ's death and resurrection - not merely blood-shedding, we had that in Egypt - and in the Jordan, our death with Christ.

36 The blood at the passover kept God out, but the Israelites were in Egypt all the while. In Christ's death and resurrection there was the bringing us out of the state we were in into a new one; in Christ risen we have a totally new position. Christ coming and taking our place died to that, not merely bearing our sins - though that is true too - but He was made sin for us; and now He is risen up into a new place as Man, a place that is the effect of redemption, and He is gone into glory too. This brings us into this totally new place, which forms part of the counsels of God.

The first man was the responsible man; the second Man was the man of God's counsels. At the beginning all depended on Adam, and he totally failed: then Christ becomes Man, according to the counsels of God, and in His own Person He takes manhood into the place of God's counsels about man. The wilderness came in by the bye, very profitable, but only by the bye.

I have got God perfectly glorified in a Man - much more than man, for He is "God over all, blessed for ever" - but still in a man. "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead," 1 Cor. 15: 21. He comes into this scene of ruin, manifests God in it, and then manifests man to God. God raises Him from death, and puts Him into His own glory as Man. In virtue of the work which has glorified God, man is at the right hand of God. "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself [the second step down], and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name," Phil. 2: 6-9. Because of that He is in glory. As the eternal Son He was always in glory, and He could speak of Himself as "the Son of man who is in heaven." In John 13 you find it there. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him," John 13: 32. He cannot wait for the kingdom and glory that are coming, but personally He glorifies Him at His own right hand.

37 Then, redemption having been accomplished, the people are brought out through redemption. We get in Jordan, not Christ dying for us, as at the Red Sea, but our dying with Christ; consequently there is not the smiting of the water, as at the Red Sea; there is no judgment, but the ark stood in the midst of Jordan till all the people passed over.

Canaan was a rest in the purpose of God, but instead of that the Israelites found it a place of fighting; Joshua met there the man with a drawn sword in his hand. What characterises heaven now is fighting.

Therefore there, and not till there, we get circumcision: the manna ceased, and they ate the old corn of the land. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand," Eph. 6: 12, 13.

We get the two things: the accomplishment of redemption brings us into the wilderness, and the purpose of God brings us into heavenly places. Faith realises these, redemption perfectly accomplished, and Christ sitting at the right hand of God because it is accomplished. He is not on His own throne at all; "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool," Psalm 110: 1.

Then the Holy Ghost comes down, and connects us with Him in that place. The believer, therefore, if he knows his place, says, "Thou hast guided them by thy strength unto thy holy habitation." That is all settled, but we are not there, except in spirit; we are in the wilderness all the way.

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come . . . can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins," Heb. 10: 1, 2. "And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins." They were always at it, clearing people of sins; every sin committed required a fresh sacrifice. This is in contrast to Christianity, though people do not see it; for inasmuch as Christ is sitting down, the believer, not like the Jews, has no "more conscience of sins." Then, as Christ is sitting there because He has finished the work, our conscience is perfect, not we: it is "once" and for all. If failure comes in, "we have an advocate with the Father"; but the Christian who knows Christ's place has "no more conscience of sins." "For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," Heb. 10: 14. "For ever" here is a specific word, meaning continuous, not eternal, though, of course, it is eternal. The point here is, that as Christ is always, continuously, sitting there, my conscience is continuously perfect, because it is the Person who bore my sins that is sitting there. The Christian is not in his right place till he is there - he may be on the way. "No more conscience of sins" - that is what I get in scripture. "Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not iniquity," Psalm 32: 2. He has not got the blessedness, if he thinks it possible that sin can be imputed to him. Such is the basis - that, and the Holy Ghost coming down from heaven - of our whole Christian place. "Without shedding of blood is no remission," Heb. 9: 22. It does not say, "without sprinkling of blood" (though the blood is sprinkled); but if anything is to be done for sin now, you must get the blood shed. "For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself," Heb. 9: 26. If we are believers, we are under the effect of the work of Christ that never changes. We shall know more of its blessedness and value, but there is no renewing of this work of Christ in any sort.

38 This is only the entrance into the wilderness. He does not bring us into the desert till we are out of Egypt; until Christ has met God for us, we are not brought into the desert at all. We have trials and exercises there, but it is redemption that brings us into it; our path flows from that. In telling of redemption in Egypt, there is not a word about the wilderness; but when the Israelites have gone through it, then, in Deuteronomy 8, the wilderness is reviewed. He talks of the forty years there. "And thou shalt remember all the way which Jehovah thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no," Deut. 8: 2. There we find all these ways of God proving the heart, yet He was watching their clothes and their feet all the time. He adds another thing - "to do thee good at thy latter end." Redemption was at the beginning, Canaan at the latter end; the wilderness comes between the two. Through the wilderness we have God with us, and for us, not imputing anything to us, but exercising our hearts. These are the ways of God, the government of God, and so on.

39 He begins by leading a redeemed people to God. The force of Romans 8: 9 is, that we are in a new place: "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." The flesh is not your standing or place before God at all: before God you are not a child of Adam, but a redeemed child of God.

Hebrews 2 puts the world to come in connection with Christ. "For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak." We speak of a world where Christ shall reign; that is God's purpose, and it is not come at all. "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?" Job says the same thing; he wonders why God takes such trouble about him. "What is man that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment? How long wilt thou not depart from me, and let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?" Job 7: 17-19. Here is the answer: "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thine hands. But now we see not yet all things put under him, but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour." Christ, who is the Man of God's counsels to be over all things, is now sitting at the right hand of God, "expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." He has accomplished redemption, and gone to the right hand of God as Man, and He is sitting there till the time comes when He shall take His great power, and reign. All things are not put under Him yet, but He is crowned with glory and honour.

40 In Psalm 2 you find Christ spoken of as come to this world, and rejected, and then it goes on to say, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, Jehovah shall have them in derision. Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion." In that character as King in Zion, and Son of God, as born into this world, He was utterly rejected; yet God will set Him on His holy hill in Zion. Psalm 8 tells us what He will be when He is rejected.

To shew how in scripture all hangs together, when Nathanael owns Him as Son of God and King of Israel according to Psalm 2, the Lord answers, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man," John 1: 51. Psalm 8 comes in, and we see the highest creatures subject to the Son of man. He was Son of God and King of Zion (Son of God, even as born into this world). It was all right for Nathanael to own Him as such, but that is not going to be now; so He speaks of Himself as Son of man. In Psalm 8 you get the purpose of God; the Son of man is to be set over all the works of His hands. We do not see the works set under Him yet, but we see Him crowned with glory and honour; half the psalm has been fulfilled, but not the other half. He is waiting, and we wait; meanwhile we have the wilderness, where we have to learn ourselves and God, because we are redeemed.

Therefore, to shew the perfect completeness of Christ's work, He could take the thief straight to paradise. The thief was looking to share in the glory when Christ came: "Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom," Luke 23: 42. 'Oh,' says the Lord, 'you shall not wait for that.' "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Luke 23: 43. It is more blessed to wait up there, than to wait down here: "To depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better," Phil. 1: 23. The apostle says, I do not know which to choose, but if I am beheaded, I can do no more work for Christ: it is better for you that I should remain - so I shall remain. He decided his own course; it was Christ who settled those things, not Nero.

As regards acceptance, it is a settled thing. Giving "thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," Col. 1: 12. Even in Colossians you get them passed through the desert. "You are reconciled, but you must hold fast to the end." Whenever a saint is looked at as going through the wilderness, you get "ifs," only with a promise that He will keep us, but we have to be kept. Why is it said that no man is able to pluck the sheep out of Christ's hand? Because, if He were not there, they would be plucked. "The wolf catcheth them"; this is the same word. The wolf may come, and scatter the sheep - that he has done; "but," says Christ, "not out of my hand."

41 Now see where in the chapter before us we come in. "For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one." There is never such a thing in scripture as the thought of Christ being united to men by incarnation. "He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one." Here we have that blessed truth which is at the root of all these thoughts and purposes of God, but you never get this without His personal pre-eminence; you will never find His personal glory compromised. As another has said, 'He never speaks to His disciples of our Father'; but He has brought us into His place as Man. "All of one," all one set, kind, and state-an abstract expression. Adam was the head of the mischief; he and his descendants were all of one: now "He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." In wonderful grace He takes us into union with Himself - "My brethren." There we come in, and we come into the desert. Christ has gone through the desert before us, that He might understand what we have to go through.

There are four reasons why He became man:

1. Because of what becomes God;

2. What was necessary as to Satan;

3. Then as to our sins; and

4. As to His sympathy with us.

The glory of God required it; therefore, if Christ took up our cause, then God had to treat Him accordingly. If God had cut off Adam and Eve, it would have been righteous, but there would have been no love in it: if He had passed over all, there would have been no righteousness. In the cross God's majesty was made good as nowhere else. Christ there perfectly glorifies God as to His majesty, His righteousness against sin, His love, and His truth: all that is in God was perfectly glorified in the cross; therefore the Man that did it is in glory. That is the righteousness of God. He has set Christ at His right hand: the Person that glorifies God goes, as the only adequate measure of His work, into glory. "For it became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The consequence is (that being the grand basis of all), "For both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren."

42 Then I get Satan in view (we had God in view before): "That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." It was through death that Satan exercised all his power; He committed Himself wholly to that, and in the resurrection of Christ all Satan's power was over - that is, it is Christ's work that annuls it.

The next reason was for our sins: "To make reconciliation (or, atone) for the sins of the people." We have got God glorified, Satan destroyed in his power over us, sins - those of all believers I mean - gone. All that is not wilderness work, it is accomplished work. God is glorified; Satan's power destroyed: our sins all borne: that is all done - if it is not, it never can be.

Then comes the wilderness. Therefore He has not only made "reconciliation" or propitiation "for the sins of the people," but He has "suffered, being tempted," that He may be "able to succour them that are tempted." This is the fourth reason why He became man. He has gone through every trial, everything that could hinder or be opposed to Him; He has gone through ten thousand times more than we can do. "He is able to succour them that are tempted"; He has experimental knowledge.

There are two kinds of temptation. Look at James 1: 2: "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations"; this means trials in fact. Lower down, at verse 14, you will find quite another kind of thing: "But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." This is what is in my own heart. If we confound the two kinds of temptation, we either put Christ into this evil condition, which would be horrible blasphemy, or we take away the bad kind of temptation from ourselves. That is the reason it is said, "but was in all points tempted like as we are, except sin," Heb. 4: 13. We are tempted by all trials from without, and by sin within. He was tempted by all, sin excepted. I get by redemption into this totally new place, but I am waiting for the redemption of the body. I am in spirit in heavenly places with Christ; my body is not there yet, it belongs to the old creation; I belong to the new.

43 In Numbers we get, consequently, the red heifer, the provision for the wilderness, which is not among the sacrifices in Leviticus. If you touch death, you want your feet washed. The ashes of the heifer came in for restoring communion, when they had lost it in going through the wilderness. We have an immensity to learn about ourselves, and about God too: we have been left down here, being redeemed, to know ourselves and God, in His own faithful blessed ways with us.

In Joshua, circumcision comes in (when there was circumcision before, they simply followed their fathers); as merely redeemed in the wilderness, they were not circumcised. It is a different thing to say, "I am safe, and my sins are gone," from saying, "I am dead to the world." It is only as sitting in heavenly places that I do not belong to the world at all. In Ephesians only we have God's purpose completely; and there, consequently, we have Christ raised from the dead, and seated in heavenly places; while we are with Him there, and there only, we have conflict properly. We get the three things - Ye are dead," "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth," Col. 3. We have not got there yet. In Romans 6 faith is told to reckon self as dead, and in 2 Corinthians 4 we get the carrying it out in practice: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you," 2 Cor. 4: 10-12. They were so bona fide realising this death, that nothing but the life of Christ comes out in them.

"We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake," Paul could say: he was really carrying it out. When God puts him right in the face of death (2 Cor. 1: 8), he could say, "You are killing a dead man." "But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead."

44 I do not know that I could quite say that in Hebrews we are walking down here, while Christ is up there. Hebrews gives us the desert rather than the Jordan. Deliverance has nothing to do with sins, but with sin working in the believer. Then I get, not forgiveness or justification, but deliverance from sin. "For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death," Rom. 7: 5. "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit," Rom. 8: 9. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor. 3: 17) - liberty with God, and liberty from the power of sin. The way you get it is in having died with Christ. When I rejoice in forgiveness through the work of Christ, then I am sealed with the Spirit; and this makes me know I have died with Christ, and am risen with Him. We get there, in Romans 4: 25, "who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification"; and in Romans 8: 1, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus"; this is a new place. Could you charge Christ, who is on high, with sin? You cannot separate "the law of the Spirit of life" from the Spirit in Romans 8. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," Rom. 8: 3. Where was the condemnation? In the cross. He did condemn sin in the flesh; when Christ was there for sin. This goes with it, that, when it was condemned, it died there; that is all right - then I am dead. Death and condemnation came together; Christ took the condemnation, and I got the death. "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God," Gal. 2: 19. I have got now not only that Christ lives in me, but that I have a title to reckon myself dead because I died with Him. There is a great difference to note between guilt and nature. That state of which I have spoken is the consequence of the Spirit of God dwelling in us, not of our being converted merely. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin," Rom. 8: 10. If I let the body live in that moral sense, it is all sin. Suppose a person was lying dead on the floor, could you charge him with evil lusts and a wicked will? He is dead. We are dead by faith, though not in fact, and we have a new life in Christ. "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit."

45 "No more conscience of sins" would be true if the believer were falling into sin; which makes it ten thousand times worse. None but a purged conscience can ever be a bad conscience.

The priesthood of Christ in Hebrews is never for sins, except where He offered Himself on the cross. It does people a great deal of mischief to think of Christ as a Priest for sins. I get in John another thing: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous," 1 John 3: 1. If there is even an idle thought, you have lost communion with the Father and the Son; but then you have Christ as the Advocate on high. "And he is the propitiation for our sins," 1 John 2: 2. He acts as Advocate, and the soul is restored as to its state; the conscience is purged, and we are brought into the light, as God is in the light. As long as there is a question of guilt, I cannot go to God; I cannot have boldness; therefore I do not get into the place where holiness is unfolded, and where there is the Advocate. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin," 1 John 1: 7. This is an abstract statement; John always gives us abstract truth. "We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not" (1 John 5: 10) - he has nothing for the new nature.

We are in the light as God is in the light: if I cannot stand before God, where the light is, I must be off. What is the consequence of being in the light? Fellowship one with another. Divine things are totally distinct from human things. We must have mine and yours down here; if I give you this book, I have it no longer; but if I enjoy fellowship with God, do I lose by bringing you into it? There common joy and common blessing characterise the Christian state; and you are always perfect because you are there in virtue of the blood that cleanses from all sin.

We have these three things: 1. We are in the light, as God is in the light. 2. We have fellowship with the Father and the Son, and with one another. 3. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." This is an abstract statement, as if I should say, "Quinine cures the ague."

46 Propitiation in John is in no sense a present thing: it is all finished. The blood was on the mercy-seat for a year; now it is with us for eternity: that is what I get in Hebrews. Romans 7 is not Christian state at all; it is no proper conflict, for I am there a captive to the law of sin and death. In Romans 7 you never find a man doing right; neither Christ nor the Holy Ghost is mentioned until you reach the end: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The moment I am in chapter 8, it is all about Christ: conflict begins then in one.

"What is man?"

Hebrews 2: 5-18

<28003E> 47

A wonderful inquiry this is, which is quoted from Psalm 8: "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" It is an inquiry founded upon his nothingness in himself, but bringing out, in God's answer to it, all His own counsels in Christ. "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" Such is his littleness; yet, when it comes to be answered not according to what man is but in the counsels of God, we find him to be the one in whom all the wisdom of God is displayed. Nor is it the display of power merely - creation shews that - but all those qualities in God where His nature comes out, which are more than attributes. Power can say a word, and the thing is done: very wonderful, of course; but there is a great deal more than this. Man is the one in whom angels have to learn what God is in His ways and counsels, for the simple reason that the Word of God was in those counsels to become a man - that He who created angels does not take up angels, but takes up man.

Thus necessarily all the ways and qualities of God (I use these words as distinct from mere attributes, such as of power, and the like), His holiness, love, and righteousness, all these come out in man; because they were associated with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is this that gives man such a wonderful position. And then it is not like the angels - glorious creatures, but preserved by the power of God unfallen, while that shews His ways in this respect, His power to do so, if He please. But men are taken up when they are sinners to display the glory of God in them; and this is another matter. Things that are in the highest (a revelation of the character of God) do not come out in angels. No doubt angels in a certain way want mercy; no creature can even stand without being sustained. This is quite true, as I am sure we all know; but they do not want redemption, and as regards grace, mercy, love, all these come out in man. As Paul says, "We are a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men." In carrying all this out, we have the special testimony of the responsibility of man as an unfallen creature, one who was made in the image of God, which is never said of angels; but in that, when he did fall, we find grace and power coming in and connecting him with the Creator Himself, so that Christ is not ashamed to call them brethren.

48 This is what is brought out so wonderfully by the question - "What is man?" It was a testimony to man's lowliness, taking him in himself, crushed; but the moment we have the thoughts of God (v. 7-9), this puts us in a wonderful place. Angels excel us in glory and strength; but they are not said to be in the image of God, and there never was any being set up to be the centre of an immense system that was to turn round himself, till man was (Adam, of course, I mean); but this is fallen now, and every one is seeking to be a centre for himself. The whole system therefore is under the bondage of corruption now. But in the Lord Jesus man will be the centre of everything that God created. He has put under the Lord all the works of His hands; yet when He said "all things," it is manifest that He is excepted who put all things under Him: God alone is the one exception. The statement of the exception proves that all else is put under Him. But man in the Person of Christ is Lord of all.

Thus the lordship of Christ over everything is not only dominion, but this in a Redeemer, in One who keeps it safe, One who descended first into the lower parts of the earth, to death, but who descended that He might ascend up far above all heavens and fill all things. But He fills all things in the power of the redemption He brought out. God will gather together in one all things which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him, even in Christ. They were created by Him and for Him, but while presently He becomes Head, He does not take them until He can take them as Man. And then too what is brought in is that we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; as He says again in John 17, "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one." These are to come in, though, of course, He is the firstborn amongst many brethren. He brings us in every respect into the relationship in which He stands Himself as Man. Son Himself, He makes us sons, and He takes His place in resurrection that it may be made ours: for He tells us, "I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."

Then there is another thing to weigh that is so wonderful - it is all by redemption. How could He take sinners and put them in such a place with Himself? Not as sinners; and so He comes down where the sinners are, and puts Himself (sinless, of course) in their place: and in this I learn where I am. "If one died for all, then were all dead." God "made him to be sin for us." He came down to the place of death and judgment, passing through all the toil and difficulty of this world as we do, but perfect in it all, that He might take our hearts up where He is, giving a title by redemption and a condition by grace in which we could be associated with Him as the firstborn among many brethren. It is not merely the fact that I am saved, which is true; but He has associated Himself with us down here, in order that He might take up our hearts there by the love He has brought down into them - up into the very place where He is gone, making all the Father's love known to us; for the word is "Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." It is not only that I have a place in glory in consequence; but Christ is come for the purpose of associating us with Himself in heart and spirit and mind, so that He should not be ashamed to call us brethren. He might well be ashamed if He took us as we are.

49 We see the various characters of the way God brought Him through, and He could say Himself, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." He was in Himself a sweet savour to God, beyond the putting away of our sins. In this chapter are given the various grounds upon which He had to go through this place of sorrow in order that we might have this blessing with Him. "It became him in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The truth upon which it is all founded is this - the great original truth - that He was rejoicing in the habitable parts of God's earth; that is, Christ Himself was wisdom in Proverbs 8, and "his delights were with the sons of men." Thus Christ is the wisdom of God, and He was God's delight from all eternity. "I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." There I get the link formed with the eternal objects of the Father's delight. Where did His delight go out? Into the habitable parts of the earth before even they were made. "I was by him as one brought up with him"; but if we look where His heart went out, it was into the habitable parts of the earth and with the sons of men.

Also in due time He became a man: that is the source and foundation of it all to us. He took up the seed of Abraham, who are the heirs of faith. Then comes the purpose and plan, His gathering together in one all things which are in heaven and earth put under His hand as Man. The ground given in Hebrews 1 is that He is Son; in Colossians 1 it is that He created them; and in Psalm 8, Ephesians 1, as well as Colossians 1, it is that all things are put under Him according to God's counsels and plan. As Son, as Creator, and according to God's counsels, He takes all. "To the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak"; but "thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." "But now we see not yet all things put under him."

50 Such is the purpose and intention of God. There comes in the additional notice that "we see not yet all things put under Him." There is only half of the Psalm fulfilled. He is crowned with glory and honour; but we see not yet the things put under His feet, for He is waiting for His joint-heirs. The time now is the gathering by the gospel the joint-heirs, that He may take His power and reign. As Paul says, "I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you." There was another set of promises belonging to this earth, and this we get in Psalm 2, where God sets His king in Zion, and says, "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." This will be "the world to come"; but it is not the higher position of Him who is to have the world to come; and therefore in that connection we read of Christ's rejection, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against Jehovah and against his anointed" - the very passage Peter quotes in Acts 4.

But, being rejected, Christ takes another place - on the Father's throne, where He now is: He is not on His own throne yet, but as He says, "to him that overcometh will I give to sit with me upon my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father upon his throne." He sits as Man at the right hand of God, not having taken His own throne; and this He does not take until the joint-heirs are ready: Psalm 8 comes in (v. 6-9). Nathanael owned Him as Son of God and king of Israel; but to him our Lord replied: "Thou shalt see greater things than these. Henceforth [so it should be] ye shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." It is a small thing, My title in Israel; but you shall see Psalm 8 fulfilled. He was rejected as the king of Zion, but He was cast out of the world that God's righteousness might be accomplished; and He was answered according to the value and virtue of what He had done in God's setting Him at His own right hand; and so it is said, "Sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." This has not yet come; and therefore we must suffer with Him, because His enemies are not made His footstool. The world is round us, and Satan is not bound, and everything has been spoiled that God set up good; and so it will be until Satan is bound. So that plainly Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, not having taken His own throne, but with title over everything, not only as Creator but in redemption, having first descended into the lower parts of the earth; I say, with title over all things, but having taken none, with His enemies still in power and to rise up more dreadful than ever; and then all will be put down.

51 Now here it is that people are so deceiving themselves - Christians too. They are trying to improve man and improve the world. Why, He was in the world and could not improve it; but Christians are going to try! This is the folly of even real Christians: when Christ has been rejected by the world, they would make it all right! But it is only the time for gathering those who are to be Christ's companions. Of course light does improve the world in one sense: men are ashamed to do in the light what they would do in the dark. But this is all. They are themselves the same, not better.

Now we find this blessed One, of whom Adam was a figure, going to be centre of all things, though not yet. We find Him made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour. Then we find the next point - the way in which He was bringing others into full association of heart with Himself. All the glory was His; but He does not go and take His place at the right hand of God as Man until He has accomplished redemption, tasted death, gone down to the lowest place and condition to which man can go. I speak now of sufferings rather than atonement, though this is in the chapter. But He tastes death. He goes down to that in which the curse was expressed on the first man, and a great deal more, as we shall see. But it is here the great and blessed testimony to the way in which He took man up to glory. He came into the world and left it to go to the Father, but not by the aid of twelve legions of angels; but He as man goes through where we are, on His way as man to glory. I speak of the road He took. He tasted death. The great general fact is that He who created everything, and who is now sitting at the right hand of God, did not take that place until He had gone down to the lowest place, down to death: and this without speaking of atonement. Two things are there: the fact of the death and the life spent where hatred and death reigned. He came to destroy Satan's power; He came to glorify God; He came to be able to sympathise with every trial and difficulty and sorrow of my heart while trying to walk rightly. There are therefore objects: the glory of God, the propitiation for sin, the overcoming the power of Satan, and the entering into all our sorrows. This is what He does as Priest. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. We see Him, "Who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour." "It became him [that is, God] in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." He was perfect Himself. He came from God, and went to God, and still was the Son of man who is in heaven; but He had come to obey, to serve us, and bring us there also; and if this were the case, He must take the consequences. The moment our blessed Lord had undertaken our cause, it became God to deal with Him according to the place He had taken.

52 The majesty and righteousness of God must be maintained, and none could have vindicated them but Christ: there never could have been security for God's glory otherwise. It became Him to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings - "perfect," that is, in the full result of glory - to bring Him into the state of a glorified Man if He would bring sons to glory. In Himself He was the perfect One; He always is in the bosom of the Father; and all that He did was the Father's delight, so that, if I may reverentially use the expression, the Father could not be silent, but opens the heavens and says, "This is my beloved Son." But in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is a question of the majesty of God, and we do not find "Father."

Hence, if Christ takes up these sinners, He must take the consequences of taking them up. God's glory must be maintained. If He was to clear us from our sins, He must deal with God about them and be made sin - He must die. It was His own blessed grace to do it, but through the eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God. It is not spoken of here as clearing us, but as called for by God's glory; and the more we look at the cross, the more we shall see God could not be glorified any other way. If He had cut off all men as sinners, there would have been no love in it; but the moment Christ gives Himself up for the glory of God, there is perfect dealing with sin in righteousness and perfect dealing with the sinner in love - infinite love in the sacrifice for sin, and infinite righteousness. Of course, all this is in God's nature; only it is here displayed, so that there is nothing like the cross. Nobody in what he is himself could be there in the glory with Christ. Therein is expressed all that God is, every character of His, and Christ giving Himself up in perfect love to His Father, in love to us, and in obedience to God. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but He is made perfect through sufferings; He goes through the effect and consequence of having taken up our case, so that He could say, "Now is the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in him." He has that place, is a glorified Man now, and will be displayed in glory when He comes again. God would straightway glorify Him. Only faith sees this. The world will be judged when He comes again; but faith sees it now and sees it at once, not when displayed in judgment. As He glorified God perfectly on the cross, so He is gone as Man into the glory of God. It became God to deal with Him thus. And what a thought it gives to the depth of the place Christ was in, that in the depth of the place among sinners He was making good the glory of God! It was amongst sinners, yet He was the sinless One.

53 The first ground laid here is that "it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the church will I sing praises unto thee. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me," Heb. 2: 10-13. Now we find the association of His people with Himself - He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified. It is not simply the fact of incarnation, but this in resurrection. They are "all of one" after His death; for He was heard from the horns of the unicorn. He declares His name after He has accomplished redemption. He had said, "Behold my mother and my brethren" in a vague way: but now He calls them His brethren and not before. "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." This name is expressly declared after redemption was accomplished. These then are His brethren, made "all of one" with Him. Here we have it in a poor earthen vessel; but it is so. Those who are His own are all of one before God, they are Christ's brethren, and they are entirely and for ever associated with Himself, they the redeemed, and He the redeemer; we the recipients, and He the exerciser of the grace, it is quite true; but this is what is done.

54 We are "all of one." The more it is looked at, the more striking it will be seen to be. All through the life of Christ He does not once say, "My God." He lived in the perfect relationship He was in, and says, "My Father"; but on the cross, when He was drinking the cup of wrath, He says, "My God." This was His perfectness; it was not the expression of relationship: but it was the expression of infinite suffering, and of infinite claim. But when this was accomplished, so that we could be brought in, He uses both names; and on those names of God our whole blessing rests. If we look at God as He is, we can delight in that name; for we are made partakers of His holiness. We are made the righteousness of God in Christ; of course, we are so suited to God; while we have also the blessed relationship of sons, and say, each of us, He is my Father too. And so we read in Ephesians 1: 3, "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" has blessed us. Of course Christ is a Man, and so God is His God; and because He is His Son, God is His Father. Grace has brought us perfectly to God, and this is the blessedness which is wrought for us. Then the whole place is perfectly settled.

I do not say we may not have trembling faith in our hearts; but the place is settled - "my God and your God." We have not the full results of it all yet, but the grace which gives us the full consciousness of it. In three ways we have it. If I take John, I say, Christ is in me, and I in Him; if I take Paul, I say I am a member of Christ's body; but if I take the question of coming to God, which the Epistle to the Hebrews treats of, I can go into the holiest. I do not call this priesthood; but it is the place where we go through redemption. And it is important to understand this, because it is often used as if priesthood was to bring us there, and therefore persons go to the priest. Surely He will hear them in His mercy, though they are wrong. But it is not right: we are there, accepted in the Beloved. By one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

55 But is this all? It is not all the truth. Did not Christ live on earth? Was He not perfect on earth? Are you living on earth? Are you perfect on earth? That is another story. It is not all the truth to say, "I am in Christ before God"; it is the foundation of all, but it is not all the truth of what is passing in your hearts. Have you not difficulties? Do you not find you give way sometimes through want of faith? This is not suited to heaven: the more you consciously belong to heaven, the more unsuited you feel it to be. And God deals with this. It is a tremendous mistake to think that, because I have a place in heaven with Christ, God is not concerned in my path down here. In this respect I am present in the body and absent from the Lord; and God deals with us in this condition. He brings practical death on all that is in us (on the flesh I mean), and not only where there is failure (this is met rather in 1 John 2). And in all the weakness here, I have the blessed sympathy of Christ with my heart in all I am passing through, where I need help, and He obtains help for me. I am before a throne of grace, and there is righteousness truly - grace reigns through righteousness. But what is the confidence I have? "If we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us; and if we know that he heareth us, we know that we have the petitions we desired of him." I am talking to God, and getting answers from God.

This is not perfection. Certainly if there were not perfection, I could not go on; but now, mark, it continues, "seeing we have a great high priest" (Heb. 4: 14-17); and so I go boldly and find grace. I have standing there a witness of righteousness and propitiation. He is there; and this because He is both these. Then in 1 John 2, "If any man sin, we have," etc. He is my righteousness, and all this is settled: if not, I should have the sin imputed to me. But I stand in Him as my righteousness before God; and He is there according to the value of His propitiation; and if I fail, He there has taken up my cause. Grace comes to deal with my heart and spirit and restore me, my righteousness never being touched. It is because my righteousness can never be touched at all, that I go on. This is not my highest place, but to be members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones - in one word, to be in Christ; but it is the highest character of His grace now to help us when we are in weakness and infirmity. If God has commended His love towards us, it is when we were sinners, but I learn it all in joy in God. He loved me when there was nothing in me to love; and the grand testimony of absolutely divine love is that God loved sinners. So the grace of Christ to me is not my highest place; but it is the highest place of Christ. It makes me little and Christ great. To be put into Christ makes me great; to find Christ going the same path as myself that He may understand every feeling I have makes His grace great. And this is most precious.

56 The next point is - "I will put my trust in him." He passed through the whole scene, it was part of His perfection, dependent on His Father; when going to appoint the twelve, He prayed all night, and so on. Then we see Christ treading this path of opposition and insult; and we know that we have not one who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. But in my infirmity, as Paul says, I can glory that Christ's power may rest on me. You know what the Lord does there - He sends a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him: but He says "my grace is sufficient for thee." He answers, deals with him, understands him; and this is all he wants. It was the humble weak place of the believer, but the constant and touching exercise of Christ's grace towards him.

Another reason why Christ took this low place (not part of priesthood exactly, though the priest took it) was to annul the power of Satan - in order to be able to die and destroy Satan, that is, his power. First, it became God to lead Christ through this path in regard to His own glory; then Christ was there putting His trust in Him while going through it. Then He destroys Satan's power. And next we come to the more proper and immediate exercise of priesthood, and He says, "For verily he took not on him the nature of angels," etc. (v. 16-18).

First. the children were partakers of flesh and blood in trial and difficulty (it does not say sin, though they might sin). He calls them His brethren, and sings in the midst of the church. Think what it is! - not, you may sing now, for I have accomplished redemption, though this is true; but I will sing! Christ leads our praises; He has associated us with Himself now that He takes up all our thoughts and feelings. It is praise for redemption, but it is every thought and feeling I can express to God. For He is a Man; He knows what it is, as none of us ever will know, to bear God's wrath. It is over; it is gone for Him on the cross; and it is gone for us by His having taken it. When risen, He declares the Father's name to His brethren, and leads their praises. It is from below the praises go up, founded on redemption and atonement; but the expression of every thought and feeling that can be in my heart, as an exercised man down here, goes up in praise. Christ has gone through all this, enters into it all, and sings in the midst of the church - a figurative expression, but true. That is, He is the Person who leads every feeling and thought of exercised persons, because He has gone through it all.

57 And when it comes to the accomplishment of the way, it is the same thing, "in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." He understands it. It is not a question of perfectness or acceptance before God, but the heart of the Lord entering into every trial and difficulty I have. As He might ask, "Do you think I was not tempted and have not gone through sorrow?" He could say, "Now is my soul troubled: and what shall I say?" There was the constant passing through this world with all that is in it. And there He is understanding every thought of the exercises through which we pass as belonging to God. He belonged to God, and as such was made perfect through sufferings; and if we belong to God according to His acceptance, we must pass through sufferings. It is in this respect He can help us. He succours them that are tempted. There is the link of our weakness and dependence and exercises and trials we go through here. They have an echo in Christ's heart and are a link between our hearts and His.

It is not a question of righteousness, but belongs to the righteous. That is the difference. It is not the question of sin, but it is having our whole heart, as a man's down here, brought into the tune and tone of Christ's feelings, who went through it here that He might call our hearts into the current of His own. He is a merciful and faithful High Priest. It was a strictly priestly act: the high priest did it. It was not the going between the people and God at all. He was victim as well as High Priest. But Christ did not exercise His priesthood on earth, for if He were on earth He could not be a priest; but the people must have a ground on which they could stand in such a place. Christ made propitiation before beginning His ordinary exercises of Priest. He stood as representative of the people. Christ was both. There is this blessed truth in it. There is the perfectness of the work, but the full confession of the sin. Christ was owning all my sins upon the cross. He was the victim and scapegoat that bears them; but as the high priest He confesses them. And so He charges Himself with them all, the basis of all the rest. "He is able also to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him" - not only scapegoat, but this thought too (and that even of Christ as man), that He it is that confesses all my sins. He is scapegoat as well as high priest.

58 Then I learn that He suffered, being tempted. That is not atonement; it was part of His trial, and it enabled Him to succour them that are tempted. It is not atonement but succouring. And, I repeat, though God does not make an offender for a word if the heart is right, it is not that we go to Christ, but Christ goes to God for us, and we go to God by Him. The Spirit of God groans in us. The word "Advocate" is the same as Comforter. The Holy Ghost carries on in divine sympathies, as dwelling in us, and takes up all our sorrows; while Christ takes them up for me in the presence of God, and the effect of this is that the blessing comes down on my soul by the Holy Ghost. In this connection it is said, "He is able to save to the uttermost" - unto the end. He is talking of all this, of our going through the wilderness. It is not union that we find spoken of here in the wilderness, but exercises and trials. Christ enters into all these, and there is grace to help in time of need. His death has perfected us for God; His life carries us on with God until we reach Him. He ever lives for this; and in this we have a blessed consciousness of our weakness, and quite right too; so that with the weakness we look to One and lean on One who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

Do you believe that this is Christ's heart now? I do not believe it has its place until we have righteousness, for it is a mistake to think that we go by the priest to get righteousness. Christ is there, and, believing in Him, we are made the righteousness of God in Him. But this leaves us free, in perfect acceptance with God in Christ, to learn all that He is by the way. God is thinking of us too in His own heart; and we have a Man sitting at His right hand touched with the feeling of our infirmities, One who takes every sorrow, weakness, and difficulty, as the occasion of ministering grace bringing us into the presence of His faithful love. It is not mere righteousness; it is a Christ I can trust. And I admit, and press it too, that it is not our highest place; but it is blessed, precious, perfect grace that we learn. My weakness makes me insist on what the grace and tenderness of Christ are. By Him I am perfect before God; but while I am absent from Him, I never lose the exercise of His heart for me before God to secure for me grace and strength. This carries our souls on with Him. I would have you feel that it is a low place, but it is true. It is your weakness and your infirmity, and it may be a thorn in the flesh; but it is to put you in the place where the grace of Christ can meet you, and His strength be made perfect in your weakness. It is a great thing to learn the constant exercise of grace, as it is our highest duty to shew the life of Christ; but it is the daily exercise of Christ's grace that obtains for us grace to help in time of need. The time of need is the time of grace. The Lord give us to know it in power!

Perfection

Hebrews 6

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Nothing seemed to be a greater burden on the heart of Paul than to keep the saints up to their privileges. The Hebrews saw that Christ had died for them, though this had not the power over them which it ought to have had; but they were risen with Him also. They were in Christ in heavenly places within the veil, and the question was, were they realising that?

There is great force in the expression he uses in chapter 5: 12, "ye are become, such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat." "Are become" marks the process by which they had reached the state they were in.

Freshness of affection, and quickness of understanding go together. There is less spring, less apprehension, less clearness when our hearts are not happy. On the other hand, my judgment is clear when my affections are warm. Motives that acted before cease to be motives when my affections are warm. Freshness of affection being lost, the Hebrews were "dull of hearing"; and so were "become such as had need of milk, and not of strong meat." And then the apostle explains that those who use "milk" are unskilful in the word of righteousness and are babes; while "strong meat" belongs to those, not who have made great progress, but who are of full age - men in the truth in opposition to being children or babes - and who have "their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

But how can I separate the "knowledge of good and evil" from the knowledge of Christ? If I were to try to separate between them of myself, shutting Christ out, how could I? He is my standard of good; and it is what I find in Him that gives me power to judge what is evil. How can I walk as He walked without Him? "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ [or, the word of the beginning of Christ], let us go on to perfection."

Instead of wasting your time with what has passed away, go on to the full revelation of Christ. Be at home there, and understanding what the will of the Lord is. For how can I walk as He walked without Him? I know not how to attempt it. The secret of everything is found in that truth, "Ye are complete in him." As Christ Himself also has said, "At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me." But what is that? and where is Christ now? In heaven. Then I am there too, and my affections should be there also. My hope is to be thoroughly identified with Him. For the portion I have is what He has - life, glory, all that He has risen to - and all my associations are with Himself. There is the difference between "the principles of the doctrine of Christ" and the full perfection. Of Christ Himself it is said (chap. 5: 9), "Being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him."

61 Now He was not made perfect down here, but in being glorified in heaven. He went through the experience down here; as it is said, "He learned obedience by the things which he suffered," and then went into heaven to be Priest, because our blessings and associations and hopes are all up there. He is "made perfect" as our High Priest in heaven and not down here. He had not reached that point in the counsels of God in glory, when He was down here. Now He is there He has associated me with Himself in that place. I can see that Christ has been through this world so as to be able to sympathise with me in all my sorrows and all my trials; and He has also borne my sins in His own body on the tree. But where is He now? He is in heaven; and I am there too in spirit, and He will soon bring me there in fact. Where He is, is His being "made perfect." The work is done, and now He is shewing me the effect of its being done; and is teaching me the walk that belongs to the redemption He has wrought out. He has taken my heart and associated me with Himself, and He says that is the perfection I am to go on to.

Where did Paul see Christ? Not on earth; for long after He had left the earth Paul was a persecutor; but he saw Him, as we all know, in heavenly glory. His only knowledge of Christ at all was of a Christ in heaven. His course on earth he might learn; but the revelation of Christ that brought his soul into the presence of God in the power of an accomplished redemption, was the revelation of Christ in heaven and in glory. Hence he says, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." The Christ he wanted to "win" (as he says in Phil. 3) was a glorified Christ. It may cost me my life, but never mind. That is my object; after that I am reaching. I am alive from the dead, because Christ is; and I want to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. I am not in the flesh, but in Christ. I have the consciousness that this work of Christ has put me in a new place (not yet glorified in body, but) in a new place as to my life and associations and home; and this is the perfection we are to go on to.

62 It was this that ruled the apostle's affections, as he says, "that I may win Christ." This was his object, to "bear the image of the heavenly." His mind was full of it. The Holy Ghost has come down to bring all these things to our remembrance. Believers are united to Christ in glory. It is never said that Christ is united to man; but believers are united to Christ. Then the apostle was living by the power of the Holy Ghost; so that one may conceive what a trial it was to him to see these people going back to the first principles. They were all true, but if people stop there they stop short of a glorified Christ. To the Galatians he says, "who hath bewitched you?" speaking of himself he says, "I know a man in Christ." "A man in Christ" is a man risen out of all that connects itself with the law and ordinances, as well as with sin and death, and all that is sorrowful or attractive in this present evil world. His spirit is broken to find the saints resting with things on earth about Christ. The Holy Ghost was come from heaven to make them partakers of a heavenly calling; to associate them in heart and mind with Christ, and to shew them things which would not only keep them from "the evil which is in the world," but from the world itself.

The Hebrews had a temple standing when Paul wrote, where Christ Himself had been. Why, then, should they have left it, if Christ had not judged the flesh, and shewn that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God"? "The middle wall" had been put up by God Himself; how should they dare to break it down, if God had not done it? If God had not said that He would not have to do with flesh any more, how could they dare to leave the camp, and go outside? Christ glorified is the end of all the first principles, and we have to go through the world as strangers and pilgrims. The only thing God ever owned in religion was Jewish, which had to do with the flesh - with men here in the world - but that is gone by the cross. All is crucified; "the handwriting of ordinances" has been blotted out - "nailed to the cross" - and thus taken out of the way; and in a glorified Christ we see the end of all that is abolished. Henceforth our life, our home, our associations, are all in Christ.

63 But the doctrine of the beginning of Christ was not that.

What do we find as long as Christ was upon earth? Why, the testimony of the law and the prophets, which taught righteousness and called the nation to repentance and faith. Christ Himself also speaks of a judgment to come, which they believed. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection of the dead. Baptisms or washings, and the laying on of hands, they had them. They constituted the elements of a worldly religion, and were sanctioned by God until the cross. The Messiah coming on earth is the "doctrine of the beginning of Christ"; but now I leave that and go on to perfection. I do not deny these things, but I go on to the fuller revelation of Christ. These first principles are all true, but then I have other and far better things.

Saul might have been the brightest saint living under the old order of things, but not knowing Christ. But supposing a person got into the heavenly things and was "enlightened" and had "tasted the heavenly gift, and was made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and had tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come," and then gave it up - what could he do then? What else was there to present to such an one? There might have been a going on from faith in an humbled Christ to a glorified Christ, but there is nothing beyond. For it should be observed there is nothing of life signified here. The expressions do not go beyond the indication of truth that might be received by the natural mind, and the demonstrative power of the Holy Ghost, which persons might partake of, as scripture shews, without being participators in eternal life.

There may be light in a sense without the smallest trace of life, of which Balaam is an example. Of the stony ground hearers also it is said concerning the word that "anon with joy they received it" - they "tasted the good word of God." Moreover, Judas could cast out devils as well as the rest: he was a partaker of these "miracles of the coming age." And Christ had said (Matt. 7: 22), "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name cast out devils? and in thy name have done many wonderful works?" Still they are disowned of Christ as "workers of iniquity."

64 But there is this farther in the case supposed: "They had crucified the Son of God afresh," by turning back again from these heavenly things, and therefore could not be renewed to repentance. The nation had indeed crucified Christ, but they did not know what they were doing. This could not be said of those of whom the apostle is speaking. This was not ignorance, but will.

There is a great difference in what is expressed by "anon with joy they received it," and the word ploughing up the soul, giving the sense of sin and bringing into subjection to God's redemption. The result of life is seen in fruit, not in power. In the parable of the sower the seed received into good ground "brought forth fruit." In the other cases there was no "fruit brought to perfection." If there is any fruit, the tree is not dead. Hence the apostle says, "We are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation." These were not power merely nor joy; for these might exist and there be no life. Judas could cast out devils as well as the rest; but Jesus said, "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." The connection of your heart with Christ - the consciousness of God having written your name in heaven is the blessed thing. The fruit which the apostle takes notice of in verse 10 is love to the brethren. This was there, and shewed itself in the active ministering to the saints, out of love to the Lord's name; while full assurance of hope to the end was to be desired. There might be working of miracles without knowing or being known of God; but fruit-bearing in grace is the token of being branches of the true vine.

In the example of Abraham, the apostle presents an encouragement to their faith, which needed to be strengthened. Abraham had the promise of God, and he believed it; he had His oath, and he trusted it: but we have more. It is not to us that God presents a promise of future blessings, and adds an oath to assure us of their accomplishment; but He has performed all that He calls us to believe. We have a redemption now in the presence of God. Christ, having wrought the work, is sitting down in the presence of God, and in spirit has brought us there. But we have more than that; for, in hope, we are partakers of all the glory which belongs to that redemption. We have life, redemption, the Holy Ghost as the seal, and more. The forerunner is gone in, and the Holy Ghost gives us the consciousness of our union with Him, and not merely that our sins are put away through the blood-shedding of Christ. We have the Spirit in virtue of Christ's redemption, and He is come to tell us that we are in that Christ, who wrought the redemption, and is now in the power of an endless life within the veil.

65 But what is the practical consequence of all this? Why, if the glory He has is mine, and I am going on after Him, then all the world is but dross and dung in my esteem. This will be faith's estimate of everything in the world, when Christ is filling the heart's affections, and when the soul is pressing on after Him, in the certain hope of being for ever with Him. One moment's real apprehension of Christ in the glory is sufficient to dim the brightness and glitter of every earthly thing; but the soul must be occupied alone with Christ for this.

If our affections and desires are lingering on earth, or stopping short of a glorified Christ in heaven, as the one in whom our life is hid, and to whom we are presently to be conformed in glory, and that in the glory where He is, we shall find soon that earthly things are something more than dross and dung. Leave a stone on the ground for a time and you will find that it will gradually sink into it. And our hearts, if they are not practically in heaven with Christ, will soon become attached to earthly things.

There is a constant tendency in earthly things to press down the affections. Duties are more apt to lead away the soul from God than open sin. Many a Christian has been ensnared by duties, whose heart would have shrunk from open sin. But we have only one duty in all the varying circumstances of life - to serve Christ. And we should remember that if things on earth are dark and the heart is tested in journeying through the world, all on the side of God is bright. "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection."

Christ's Work and its consequences

Hebrews 9 and 10

J. N. Darby.

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The thought that runs through all this part of the scriptures, beloved friends, is this: our entering into the holiest, the true holiest, of course. The Spirit now referring to the tabernacle, was writing to the Hebrews, who were accustomed to it. The Christian is given boldness to enter into God's own presence, the holiest now, with a purged conscience. Here he unfolds what that is, to which we will turn with God's help. God has brought me in there by dealing both with sin, and with sins, so dealing with them as to put them away according to the exigency of what His holy nature is. God has stepped in and done that once for all: it consequently is an eternal redemption. There is that which is necessarily connected with this, and that is not only that the sins are purged, or else I could not come into the holiest.

That is brought out in the next chapter in a singularly gracious way, that we may understand the divine source of this salvation and have a divine knowledge of it, divine certainty. If God had spoken, it is not I think, or I hope, but, I have set to my seal that God is true. The work is divine, the knowledge of it is divinely certain, and we are brought into the divine presence; this flows from God taking up the question of sin and sins. The conscience takes it up when the Spirit of God works in the soul, and our reasoning upon the possibility of being with God is always upon this footing, and must be so. This is the effect of reasoning from what we are to God. If I am a sinner, well, I say, how can He receive me? If I were righteous, He might receive me. We always reason from ourselves and our state to God; the Holy Ghost never does. He reasons from our state to condemnation; but in reasoning as to salvation, He always reasons from what God is and has done to this effect upon us, and never from what we are to God. I speak of salvation in speaking of the reasoning.

I am saying this because, beloved friends, you will find it a constant tendency of your hearts to reason from what we are to what God will be for us. It will be fancied "humility," just like the prodigal son when he had not met his father, he was reasoning from what he was. When he had tasted God's goodness in a measure, reasoning from what he was, with some little glimpse of what God was in goodness, to what he would be when God met him in judgment. When the conscience is awake, I say, how can God meet me with all those sins? Quite true, that is judgment. Judgment is according to works; but as to that. the sinner is brought to own that he is lost. God is of purer eyes than to behold sin, and man finds that he is a sinner. What the gospel comes and reveals to us is God's intervention for those that are such, so that we reason from what God has done to what He will do. For instance "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" The Spirit of God reasons from what God has done to how He will act. "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." He reasons down from what God is and has done to what we are to God. Now, the Spirit of God leads so; but we continue that same thing until we have learnt that the simple result of what we are with God must be condemnation. Then we give it up, it is no good going on then: the case is settled. The gospel, when we are sinners, lost sinners, comes to reveal to us what God has done. The language and experience here take that very point, that it would have been judgment, if God had not interfered in grace.

67 You see, beloved friends, that as a sinner, I am really brought to the sense that I am lost, and I am cast upon what God has done for me. The real question is as to the efficacy of that work. That is what He has been unfolding, and insists upon. It is that I will look upon a little, for it changes my whole condition with God. I have God as a Saviour, not as a judge; as to my state of relationship with Him, He is always that for me. And He is that, because I was lost. The work of Christ has purged my conscience and put away my sins. I affirm that the rather, beloved friends, because there is the constant tendency to mix up the two, because we are apt to mix up the state of our souls with the sense of the completeness of the work God has wrought for us in Christ. I would not hinder exercise of conscience, but there are conclusions drawn from the state we are in, to question the completeness and the efficacy of that work. That is the mischief. We cannot press the devotedness and full following of the Christian too much; but if I mix up what I have felt with what God tells me of the efficacy of the work of Christ, I am mixing water with good wine, and both are spoilt. We never get right till we have got the thorough effect in our souls of our sins, and our sinfulness too. "I find that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."

68 Well, when I learn that they that are in the flesh cannot please God, that the flesh has lusts and the law condemns them - the flesh has a will, and the law forbids its desires; I find that I am lost. Man finds that there always is a will of his own and lusts. The Christian condemns them, and judges them; still that which is born of the flesh is flesh. I may reckon it dead, and hold it dead, but that is what it is. If I am looking at myself as a child of Adam standing before God, I have lusts and a will that is evil. Well, is He going to justify evil? No. What God does, beloved friends, is to bring in Christ. If the man is a sinner, He judges his sins; but the work is often deeper when the man is a fair honest character, as Paul was. Why, the man could not eat for three days! As to conscience, he thought he ought to destroy Jesus of Nazareth, religiously misguided as he was - all his religious leaders sent him forth to do it, and he had been trying to make out a righteousness by it; and supposing that he could - those things that were his righteousness just brought him into open enmity against God. He was consciously trying to destroy Christ! God has taken care that, when man fell and was turned out of Eden, he should carry out a conscience with him. A thief, or a murderer, or a fornicator, whatever it might be, he knows it is wrong, not only that God does not allow it. I find the struggling of these lusts; the moment I find this in the spirituality of the law, I see I have a bad nature; the tree is bad. Well, then, the man is brought to complete condemnation, not a pleasant thing at all. He comes to see that he cannot please God. Why the heart of man rebels against it in an awful way - thinks it a cruel thing to say that he cannot please God. Therefore God does bring me (a person like Paul perhaps, in three days; where sin has been in a grosser shape, the conviction may not be so deep) to the consciousness not merely of what I have done, but of what I am. I find not merely that the fruit is bad, but that the tree is bad. Why have we committed sin? Because we liked it. A man is morally what he likes; a man who loves money is a covetous man; if he likes amusements, he is a man of pleasure. We like sin; that is what we are. Christ changes this.

69 I say so, because we must be brought clearly out of this mixing up of what we are with what God has been for us in grace, this looking at God as one that judges instead of one that saves; and saying: "Well, if I am all this, how am I to get salvation?" There must be this change effected. Put a man of the world in heaven, and he would get out of it if he could; there would be nothing he would like there; there would be none of the pleasures he cares for; there would be no money there, and the things that are there he would not like. Well, that is an awful thing to find out. It is not merely a question as to the imputing of my sins. Everybody in his senses would say: "Of course, I should like to go to heaven." Well, if it is a thing you really wish, of course you would like to have it as soon as you can. When would you like to have it? To-day? To-morrow? When you cannot help it! I say this, beloved friends, to discover not what sins are, but what the flesh is. There is no good thing in it at all.

I repeat it, beloved friends, there is often a deeper work goes on which judges the movements and principles of the heart, in one who is naturally an upright man, than there is where there is merely judgment passed on outward sins. I should be in despair about myself if I learnt my condition before God, and did not see the work of Christ for me; yet not quite in despair. Wherever God works in the conscience, there is always more or less of the sense of love in it. There is a conflict goes on, but always a sense of the love of God maintained. The man is in conflict between the sense of God's goodness in the heart, and the consciousness of the holiness of God's nature. It is a blessed truth that, wherever there is a work of God in the soul, there is always a clinging to the sense of His goodness, let the work of conscience be ever so deep. In the beautiful narrative in Matthew of the Syrophenician woman, she says: "I know I am a dog, but I know there is goodness enough in God to give even to a dog." He cannot say there is not. There is one overleaping the barriers of dispensation in the sense of the goodness of God.

Well, having just said that, see what the work of Christ effects, beloved friends. God turns to that which meets this lost condition. It is the grace of God that brings salvation. Now there are two parts in that; there is a quickening power in the Spirit of God, that I have already supposed. The Spirit of God works, the soul gets to see something of the love of God, but quickening does not clear the conscience. Quickening does not make me say, "I can go into the holiest," but "I cannot." Now, beloved friends, you may have a great deal of gracious dealing, a great deal of the revelation of God's ways; but until the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ there was the veil, behind which God was, and nobody could pass it. The testimony was there, "I cannot let you into the holiest; you are not fit for the holiest." "The way into the holiest was not yet made manifest."* The Holy Ghost meant by saying so that the work was not yet done. When Christ died, the veil was rent from the top to the bottom, God saying, "Now you can draw near." When the veil was there, even with the typical sacrifice, you could not go in, not even the priests.

{*This is a solemn truth. It is not that there were not good people hoping for Messiah; they feared God and walked in the commandments and ordinances of Jehovah. But law was there requiring what he ought to be. There was the veil saying, You cannot come into My presence.}

70 Now in the consciousness of what God is, "we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." I have now the very opposite thing as to the new nature and its desires, as to my condition and relationship with God: that as it was then signified I could not go in, now it is signified I can. Now he shews how this has been brought about, beloved friends. There is more than one thing needful for this access to God. I must get my sins purged. Sin cannot come into the holiest. And further, I must have my conscience purged, or else I shall not venture in. If a man has debts, he does not like to meet his creditors; but if his debts are paid, and he does not know it, he does not like to meet them either. We must know that the conscience is cleared if we could go right up to God. If God is dealing with us (perhaps I should rather say, for us) He brings us into His own presence with our conscience cleared.

Now note what a remarkable expression we have here in contrast with those Jewish things. "For Christ being come, an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and of goats - and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean - sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? . . . For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of others, for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once in the end of the world has he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." We are not come to the end of the world yet - the full force is "the consummation of the ages." That is, the consummation of the whole thing that man had been tried and exercised by, to bring out what I have been speaking of, "that the natural mind is enmity against God."

71 It was not only that man had sinned, that he had broken the law, and been proved guilty before God; but when the Saviour came in grace, man refused Him. God came into the world - "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." That is the sense, that full trial had gone on without law, under law, and in the trial of His love they had rejected Him in love. That is what the cross was. "They hated me without a cause." Christianity starts from this: that God had been in the world in love, and that man had turned Him out. It is not merely that God has turned man out. This was the case in Eden. But when He came into this world of sin, man said, 'We will not have Him, even if it is in love!' The Lord Jesus Christ said, "If I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." If I am a Christian, it is that Christ has been rejected. What was Christ? "Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." It is blessed to see it. Perfectly holy in all His ways, He could not be defiled, and therefore He was able to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. Nature cannot stand here; let it be honest enough. It must be all grace, nothing else will do. This light detects a Pharisee. The scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman taken in adultery - in the very act. If He says, "Stone her," He is no Saviour. If He said, "You must not," He has broken the law. "You must either give up grace, or you must give up the law," they urge. 'Stop,' says the Saviour, 'I am going to apply the law to all of you.' "So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said to them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it being convicted by conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest unto the last, and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst." The eldest had most character to lose, and he went out first. It does not make a bit of difference, whether a man has ten sins or five hundred. A wretched sinner she was - nobody excuses her. God says: It will not do to bring up this one, and leave you hardened ones behind. God takes them all into the light. Who will stand that? No one in Leamington, or anywhere else! Now come, He says, I can shew grace, I am not come to judge, I am come to save. The sin was completely proven, and in that moral sense it was the end of the world. Leave man to himself? Why, God had to bring the flood in, he was so bad. As to Israel, attaching the name of Jehovah to their sins, they only made the name of Jehovah blasphemed amongst the heathen. Love they rejected, and this is the end of man's history, and the beginning of God's declaring for Himself - Now we have the end of what you are, what I am must come out. You have brought out enmity against God, and I am going to shew you that I love you. The individual sinner is brought to conscience about himself. We have to begin the history of God's way as a Saviour; when my own conscience comes to own this, not only that I have broken the law, but that I am a lost sinner: Well, God says, Now you know yourself. I come that you may know Me, and I say you are a lost sinner, and Christ has come into the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. The cross was the turning-point to God. He bore on it our sins, and the hatred that crucified Him was all we had to do with it. The thing that saves me is His own. What part have we in it? None else besides our sins, and the hatred that crucified Him. God's part was giving His only-begotten Son. I have God's blessed part in it to save me; whereas the work of the Spirit of God in quickening his conscience makes the sinner see and hate the sin. We have now to see what God can do for man; not from reasoning as to what he is for God, but by believing what God is to him.

72 When the prodigal son had the best robe on, he could not say: "Make me as one of thy hired servants." His father was treating him as a child. He was come into the new condition. It was not merely the desires he had, it was not merely the repentance, but it was what the father had done for him, so as to bring him into his own presence. There was I, a sinner, loving any trifle rather than Him. He who has so loved me as to give His own Son for me! "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." There I get in my heart and mind not simply a general vague sense that God is love, but I learn that in that love He has done a work for me.

73 We have this blessed comfort: you will see it as it is said here, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures." He has so loved me as to give His own Son for me! Well, I believe, Christ died for my sins. Had He to die often? "Oh, no!" says the apostle, "that could not be." It was not like one of these Jewish sacrifices, in which there was a remembrance again made of sins every year. Mark how strongly it is put: "For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world." He had really to drink the cup. He sweat great drops of blood when thinking of it in the garden of Gethsemane. He suffered. Well, if it is not done perfectly, done once for all, Christ must have suffered often. This cannot be. He cannot come down again, become a man, and die over again. If He has borne my sins in His own body on the tree, He has done once and for ever the thing that puts them all away. If that putting away all my sins is not done, it never can be. Individual after individual is brought to acknowledge it, but if the work is not finished and done, it can never be done.

Therefore Christ says, in John 17: "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." He said, "It is finished; and bowed the head, and gave up the ghost." Those priests were "standing often, offering up the same sacrifices which could never take away sin." Sin came up, they had to do it again: it was a perpetual remembrance of sins made again every year. A year goes round, the sacrifice must be repeated. Sins were there. It was a continual memorial. "But this man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God. From henceforth expecting, till his enemies be made his footstool." He for ever "sat down." It was after standing. The work was completely and fully done, once and for ever, and He sits down, the work accomplished once for all, completely, according to the glory of God.

74 Woe to him who neglects this great salvation! It is a finished work. You cannot have a stronger expression of it than this, that the worshippers "once purged, should have no more conscience of sins." The Lord Jesus Christ has offered himself by the eternal Spirit, without spot to God." He drank that bitter cup for me, and the next point He brings out is this, that having done that: "He appears now in the presence of God for me." Who, "being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high"; and when I go to God I find Him sitting there, the perpetual witness that He has cleared my sins away, and that He is in the presence of God for me. I find Him who has done it, sitting there. "Else he must have suffered often, since the foundation of the world." The sins could not be put away if He had not finished the work. He has. If not, it never could be done. It is settled peace when my soul receives the testimony of the Holy Ghost to this. "For by one offering he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified." "He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." "He is the mediator of the new covenant, that, by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."

Then you see, beloved friends, supposing through grace I say, "Well, I am a poor sinner, I hate those sins, the root and principle in me; how can I be in the presence of God?" I find Christ there, who has put away those sins; I find this blessed truth of a risen Saviour in the glory. I follow Him up to the cross, I see Him there under my sins, I see Him now at God's right hand in the glory! O! I say, He has not got my sins there! If I see Him in the glory, I say, "Well, my sins are gone." That is the practical word. "When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." I see Him in the glory who bore my sins, and I know they are all gone. Well, my conscience is purged, when, in the simplicity of faith I see that God Himself has put away my sins, that the Lord Jesus Christ has drunk the cup for me, that He Himself bore my sins in His own body on the tree. I know they are gone. The worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins. When I look up to God and see Christ in glory, is there a question of imputation of my sins to trouble me?

75 Mark, beloved friends, I do not speak of "past, present, and future" sins, I cannot say "future." I never ought to think of committing a sin again. I do not put my state at this moment before God into question. I see souls saying, "Oh, I know my sins up to conversion are gone!" Did Christ bear your sins up to conversion? What is the meaning of that? It is confounding the sense of it brought home to my soul, with the efficacy of the work by which He appears in the presence of God for me.

How comes it all about? It is by God's blessed will, He willed my salvation. He has given me the Saviour. There are three things connected with the work of which I speak. There must be some one having the kindness to do it. It must be done. And I must know that it is done. Of these three things in Hebrews, the first is that it is by the will of God: we see the blessed Son "was made lower than the angels for the suffering of death, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man." "Then, said I, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God." "By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." He was crucified. It is done. It is not only that there was the goodwill of love, to be willing to do it, but it is done. I get the divine good will of God in it. It is a divine work, done and finished, so that Christ, who bore our sins, "has sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high." Now, I want to know it. The Holy Ghost tells me of the eternal efficacy of the work. I have got the blessed will of God that gave Christ. I have now the work finished, and I have also the divine testimony to it by the Holy Ghost. I have got the three things, the love that was willing to have it done, I have got the work finished in that which was done once for all upon the cross, and I have got the testimony of God Himself that He no more will bear my sins in mind. My sins are purged by the work of Christ, and my conscience is purged by the testimony of the Holy Ghost.

Mark the effect that flowed from it. The veil was rent from the top to the bottom. The work has put away my sins that shut me out, and it has opened the door to let me in. I go right into the presence of God Himself in the holiest, and I go in white as snow. The very thing that let me into the presence of that holiest of all was the very thing that put all my sins away.

76 Now, beloved friends, a step more for those who have got that conscious access to God. The apostle goes a little farther. We find our nature an evil tree; we have got the sins put away. "Christ appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." That is, that the work of the blessed Lord, besides the bearing of the sins, is so perfect, perfect in everything, that He was made sin for us; and that there sin was dealt with absolutely. "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." It is not only that my sins have been borne, but that God Himself has been perfectly glorified in Christ who died. "Now," he says, "the Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in him." That is, He stands there as made sin, not only as bearing my sins, but as the Holy One; the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Not only as the obedient One; God has been perfectly glorified in Him. I have no doubt the full result does not come out till that day when there will be the new heaven and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. "The Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world" - that being so, the whole question has been settled with God, so that finally we shall have the new heaven and the new earth.

In everything God has to do now, He has to do with sin; supposing He judges, it is against sin; supposing He shews mercy, it is because sin has come in. He has to deal with it in everything, either in mercy or in judgment. The time will come when there will be no sin, and that founded on the cross of Christ; founded upon the efficacy of His finished work, wherein He perfectly glorified God. The effect is that there will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The work has put away sin, I know now, and I get by faith this blessed result. I know it in myself; I have Christ as my life. The practical result is to reckon myself dead. He has borne my sins upon the cross. He has died and glorified God perfectly. He has risen up in a totally new state. The old Adam state is done with. For everyone that believes on Him He is the beginning, the Head of that new creation of God; and I find, myself, that my part is with Him, and not with the old sinful world. As to my body, I am in the old creation still. I stand before God in the effect of His work.

77 Christ stood before God taking the effect of my work; I am before God taking the effect of His work. That is where the believer has overcome death. Death is all gain to me - I shall only go to the Lord - there is complete and absolute deliverance; I have been taken out before God, and as to my standing before God out of the position I was in, and put into another, not only under shelter, and not only like Israel at the Red Sea, but taken out to go into a new position before God. This is expressed in Romans: "For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." By the presence and power of the Spirit of God, He can dwell in me because I am cleansed by the blood. I am united with Christ; He can dwell in me because I am united with Christ; and if dwelling in me, I am united to Christ. "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." There I get practice too. I cannot be in Christ, without Christ being in me. Well, let me see Him in you; God and the saints and the world too, have the right to expect to see Him in me. If I am accepted in the Beloved, Christ is in me, and as the apostle says, it is "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in our body." Therefore he says to the Christians: "Ye are the epistle of Christ"; Christ is to be read in you; He is graven upon your hearts by the Spirit of the living God. As to my standing as a Christian, Christ is before God for me, and my place is settled; I am to bear Christ about in the world, and there is my responsibility.

You will see, beloved friends, how the apostle puts it plainly here. "He appeared once in the end of the world, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." When my heart is before God, I can say: Well, not only Christ has put away sins; I stand before God in the result of what He has done! I do not call myself a child of Adam; I am a child of God. He has put away sin, and our place is in Christ. Mark then the contrasted fact that follows therewith. "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation." There is the entire effect of sin, I mean according to God's order. If God enters into judgment with sinners, all are condemned. "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified."

78 Well, as Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, so to them that look for Him shall He appear the second time. What to? To salvation. Now I get the place of the Christian, and I feel happy. I begin at Christ's first coming, and I say, Oh, He has put my sins away, He has made an end of sin once for all, and I am before God in Him, and I have got the Holy Ghost as the blessed consciousness of it. "At that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you." Death is gain to me, if I get that; and as to judgment, the Person who is my judge is the Person who has put away all my sins for ever. He cannot charge the sins upon me that He has put away Himself. God has taken care for your peace in that way, that the Person who is to be the judge, was first the Saviour. No fear at all: God has dealt with our sins. He sends out the tidings of it. All the world has the testimony by the Spirit to it now, testimony received by faith. God has dealt with them already, put away instead of leaving them to the time when He comes to deal with them in judgment. Has He not come the first time? To be sure. Is He not coming again? "To them that look for him, shall he appear the second time, without sin unto salvation." "Without sin," having nothing more to say to it. When He comes the second time, He comes having nothing to say about sin. Why? He came to put it away the first time by the sacrifice of Himself. "Unto salvation." That is to bring them into the glory, "that where I am, there they may be also."

Such is the place and the blessedness we have. Do I fear the Lord's coming? The very opposite. Do you think He was coming to receive men there, in their sinful state? He came to put it away. He makes us feel the sins, makes us hate sin, but God has dealt with our sins in Christ, and to bring them up again, would be to deny the efficacy of Christ's work. If a man neglects this great salvation, he is doubly guilty. "How shall we escape if we neglect this great salvation?" Well, what is this great salvation? He has borne away my sins by the sacrifice of Himself. I believe He has done it. He had to do with sin before. He has nothing to do with sin the second time. His whole business was with sin in a certain sense before. It was just the thing He had to do with, but really to put it away by the sacrifice of Himself; because He put it away the first time, He has nothing to do with it when He appears the second time. The more you look into Scripture, the more you will see how clear it is. How does the resurrection of the saints take place? We shall be raised in glory. We go in glory before the judgment-seat. How can you have a man in glory, and raise a question about judgment there? God will have you to be conformed to the image of His Son. There has Paul been these eighteen hundred years with Christ. Are you going to take him out for judgment? There is the perfect work accomplished, and hereby also Christ in you the hope of glory.

79 Your responsibility is not mixed up with your acceptance, but with your glorifying God. Quickened and born of God, you are responsible to act accordingly. If you were my children, I should expect you to behave as my children: you must first be children. All our responsibilities, whatever they be, flow from the places we are in. Duty flows from the place we are in. When you are a child of God, your duty to act as one begins. It will not stop of course in heaven. It is the consequence of the place I am brought into. And now I have it in a poor earthen vessel, but being sealed by the Holy Ghost, I can therefore look with delight and joy for Christ's coming. His time is best. "God is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." The saint can rejoice in the trial of his faith, but in it all the Christian is looking for the coming of Christ. See how a mother watches for her child because she loves him.

The Christian believes that the blessed Son of God became a man on purpose to be able to die and suffer for him. He has been judged for him, has put away his sins, and I say, O that I could see Him as He is! and more, when I do see Him, I shall be like Him. God's purpose is not merely to save you by Christ, but to bless you with Christ! We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son. "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." How can we think of such a thing? And if I know it is grace (as is expressed in Ephesians, that in "the ages to come, he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus"), I see that He must do something wonderful. If I am reasoning from what I am, it would be impossible. But if I am reasoning from God's work, if He has given His own blessed Son to be a curse for me, I can expect anything. And I expect to be like Christ. Why? He has told me so. "When he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

80 And see how God has taken care to shew me what sin is. But see how He has taken care, if through grace your hearts hate sin, to shew you how He has made an end of it, and "brought in eternal righteousness." You are guilty? Very well, you are justified by blood. Defiled? Cleansed from all sin by the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son. You have offended God? You are perfectly forgiven. "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace." Well now, says God, you must try My love. You cannot have thoroughly happy and blessed affections with God till your conscience is purged. Let your father be the kindest in the place, and the child know it, if he has been naughty he will skulk away. He gets a good conscience, and will run into his arms. When the conscience is purged, who did it? Why, God did it. He has made me His child, given me the very same name. Christ has called me His son, and therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.

Oh, beloved friends, have you got the consciousness that God has interfered on your behalf; that God has not spared His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all; that Christ has come to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself? Have you the consciousness of that? Hating the sin of course. But have you known and believed the love God has toward you, and the efficacy of the work that love has done? I understand your not having hold of it. For many a year I had not hold of it myself; but if Christ has not put away your sins He never can! If He has suffered once for all, He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; and He is seated at the right hand of God until He comes to bring us unto glory.

Beloved friends, if Christ were to come to-night, and I do not know when He may, at even, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning - He is like a man that has his hand on the door to open it at any moment. If He were to come to-night, where are you? Would you say, Oh, that is the Lord that gave Himself for me, come to take me to Himself? Or is there some fear in your heart about Him? Well, if there is, you have not got hold of the perfectness of His work in putting away sins. Would you like to be with Jesus? Can your heart say, Well, I am a poor helpless thing, but if He hung on the cross for me, I am certain of His love. I cannot doubt the perfectness of His love. Through grace, I say, your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. Do not you do anything to grieve Him. Whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord. Do it in the Spirit. It does not matter what it is: a child wanting to please his father would want to please his father in the trifles. A holy life comes with practice. It is perfect peace, perfect joy; joy because I am waiting for Jesus to receive me to Himself; and a perfect measure of practice, because I see that I am to be conformed to Him now, if I am to be like Him when I see Him as He is. The Lord give you to be able to say, "Come, Lord Jesus." To you who believe, He is precious.

Christ's Coming, Faith's Crowning

Hebrews 9: 27, 28

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The apostle after speaking of Christ's first coming, and the work accomplished by Him, as the sacrifice for sin and of His having entered in once by His own blood into the holy place (heaven itself), "having obtained eternal redemption," sums up the whole doctrine in the closing verses of this chapter, and there contrasts, in a definite way, the portion of the first Adam and those who belong to the first Adam, with the place and expectations of the believer. "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after that the judgment [that is what we have to say as to men, that there their history is ended], so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many [for the believer death and judgment have been already met - Christ having died for him and borne his sins]; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation."

A word in explanation of a portion of this passage. The Lord Jesus, as regards Himself, appeared the first time, as truly "without sin," as He will the second. But then He appeared the first time, though without sin, yet about it (v. 26); He came to bear it. The second time He has nothing more to do with sin; it will be unto salvation," as He says, "I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also," John 14. His second coming is to fulfil in the result all the designs of His first coming for those who believe. This makes it their hope - "that blessed hope," Titus 2: 13.

This event has nothing whatever to do with death (with which it has often been confounded): so far from it, that, when the Lord Jesus Christ appears, if a believer be alive, he will never see death. See 1 Cor. 15: 51, 52; 1 Thess. 4: 15, 17. So little has it to do with death, that the apostle declares expressly, "we shall not all sleep." Here it is contrasted with death.

Another thing note. It is said, "unto them that look for him shall he appear." It is not a question about Christ's appearing to us at death; we "depart to be with Christ." So Colossians 3: 4, "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory"; not only He appears, but we appear with Him. Again, 1 John 3: 2, "We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him," etc.; at His coming we are to be conformed to the image of God's Son in glory; Rom. 8: 29.

83 See too Philippians 3: 20, 21, "Our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body." Many other scriptures might be quoted, but these will suffice to shew that His coming has nothing to do with death. It is the power of the living Saviour taking us out of the reach of death.

If the Spirit of God works in our hearts with power, this gives us present fellowship with Jesus glorified at the right hand of God. The heart of the saint is fixed on Christ Himself. This is what sanctifies: "We all with open face," etc. What then is our hope, connected with this? Our hope is to be conformed to the image of God's Son in glory. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly," 1 Cor. 15: 49. Such is the desire, the object of hope in the soul. Now we are bearing the image of the earthy, but we hope to be made like Christ on high. "We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." It is not that there is not a moral change wrought now, but the effect of this is to produce the desire to be conformed to the image of God's Son in glory.

This being so, God could not have given us a more glorious hope or one more practically powerful in disentangling from the world. But when is it we are to be conformed to His image? At death? Clearly not, for then the bodies of the saints are in the grave, and our hope is to have them fashioned like unto Christ's glorious body. Scripture speaks of men being glorified, but nowhere of glorified souls. It is "far better" to depart and to be with Christ; Phil. 1: 23. I would not weaken that. "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened," says the apostle (2 Cor. 5), "not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. [That is what I want, to have this mortal body changed without seeing death.] Now that he hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given us the earnest of the Spirit; therefore we are always confident," etc. The confidence I have is not interrupted at death; the life in my soul will not be affected. If I depart, it will be to be present with the Lord, and I am "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." But I want "mortality to be swallowed up of life"; I want this to be accomplished in myself, I am to be conformed to what I have seen of His image by the power of the Holy Ghost, and I want to be "like him."

84 There are but four passages in the New Testament which speak of the joy of the disembodied spirit: Luke 23: 42, 43, where the dying thief says to the Lord, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom," and the Lord replies, "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise," Acts 7: 59, where Stephen says, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit"; then 2 Corinthians 5: 8, and Philippians 1: 23. We see in these passages that the soul, on departing from this world, freed from sorrow, placed out of the reach of sin, enjoys the Lord apart from it; but this is not the object of our hope - our hope is to be conformed to the image of God's Son in glory. We are to be "like him." "Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that has this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." There is the practical effect of this expectation. It is never said (blessed as that is), 'he that hath the hope of going to heaven purifieth,' etc. What am I expecting? To be like Christ. What is the effect of this? I am trying to be as like Him as I can now. This is the present practical effect of the certainty of being like Christ, when He appears.

But it is a hope which I have in common with all saints, not merely my individual hope. It is the church's hope. And therefore, as regards the Lord's supper, it is said, "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death [not, till death, but] till he come," 1 Cor. 11: 26. There is the basis of our common hope - the death of Christ, and we go on shewing this till He comes again to receive us unto Himself. If I think of death, of my departing to be with Christ, it is myself that I am thinking about; I shall be happy, but not the whole church glorified. When Christ comes, every saint will be there, and Christ shall then see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. The bride shall have the Bridegroom, and the Bridegroom shall have the bride. It is not merely that I shall be happy. The Spirit of God carries me out of myself, in thinking about it, to the whole body of Christ. Christ shall have that church which He loved, and for which He gave Himself (Eph. 5), with Him in the glory.

85 See another thing. It fixes the heart on Christ Himself. I am looking for a Person whom I love. He, who has loved me, died for me, is coming again to receive me to Himself, and I am looking for Him. The angels said, "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven," Acts 1. The Person whom they loved they had lost; they stood looking stedfastly towards heaven, longing after Him, and the first thought God brings upon the heart is, He will come back in like manner. They were to expect His return. It was a grand truth to be kept as a present thing before the soul. I see it all through the epistles, mixed up with every present feeling, whether of joy or of sorrow.

For example, turn to 1 Corinthians 1: 7. They were all there together "waiting [it was an individual thing, it was a common hope] for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; not all waiting to die, but "waiting for the revelation," etc.

And mark another thing. Many have supposed that we are to be waiting for another outpouring of the Holy Ghost. A very characteristic and essential feature of the church of God is the fact that the Holy Ghost dwells in it. This is not our hope, but what we have already. The Holy Ghost came down on the day of Pentecost, that "other Comforter" to "abide with us for ever," John 14. "I thank my God," says the apostle, "always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you," etc.

If we turn to the first Epistle to the Thessalonians, we find everything there having reference to the coming of Christ. It is mixed up with all the constant daily thoughts, hopes, affections, motives (with every element in the daily life), of the saints. As to their conversion itself (chap. 1), the power of the word had made them so like what Paul preached, that their neighbours could not help seeing it. The very world was speaking about them (perhaps saying, "How foolish," yet still bearing witness). And what did they say? That they had "turned to God from idols" and were "waiting for his Son from heaven." That is, that they had left their idols, the stocks and stones they had formerly worshipped, and were waiting for God's Son to come down from heaven. And the apostle Paul sanctions it. It was so little their death they were expecting, that he says (chap. 4), "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord," etc. Let us be only, as an habitual thing, waiting for God's Son from heaven, it would cut short the links that bind us to the world, and knit us in heart to Him and to one another.

86 Look at Christian affections in the apostle; chap. 2. What a picture of careful tending of the flock! And he concludes, "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? for ye are our glory and joy." That is the time (he says), when I shall get all the joy of Christian affections.

Again (chap. 3), it is associated with holiness in the saints - "to the end he may stablish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." Again (chap. 4), what comfort at the death of brethren! where it is still more remarkable. They were uneasy at seeing Christians die (so present a thing was the hope of the return of Christ) and it was therefore a mutual comfort at the death-bed of a saint to be enabled to remind one another of a mutual meeting. "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [go before] them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words." The apostolic consolation to saints mourning the death of brethren was not, "Be content, they are gone to heaven," then it would have been "You will go to them"; but so did the coming of the Lord fill the soul, as a present thing, that he gives this comfort, as it were, at the dying-bed of a Christian, "Be content, God will bring him back, when Jesus comes." It need not be said that it is not death, for it is comfort against death.

87 In the second epistle we get it linked with comfort in trial and persecution. They were in terrible trouble (though exceedingly patient under all; their faith growing exceedingly, and their love one towards another abounding). What comfort does Paul give them? "You will go to heaven soon?" No! there will be respite, when Jesus comes. Again, it has no connection with death.

These passages have been quoted, and it may be added, that all through the epistles we find the same thing, in order to shew that this grand truth (not death) is kept as a present thing before the soul, mixed up with the whole course of feelings amongst them in their everyday condition. Thus it enters into the whole framework of Christian service. It is quite evident if this be left out there must be a gap, a spiritual gap. And this becomes even still more evident when we consider (as properly characteristic of the saint) such passages as, "Unto them that look for him," "Unto all them that love his appearing."

At the close of Matthew 24 the Lord mentions the sign and characteristic of the "evil servant," and what I find there is that, the evil servant says in his heart, "My Lord delayeth his coming, and then begins to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken." Were we going to trace to its source the evil, ruined state of the church (considered in its relations and responsibilities here below), we should find that the putting off of the Lord's coming brought in all kinds of evil.

See in connection the beginning of Matthew 25: "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom [death is not the bridegroom]," etc. "While the bridegroom tarried," it is said they all slumbered and slept. The whole were asleep - the wise as well as the foolish, and both awoke together. While the wisdom of the first was in having oil in their lamps (the Spirit in the heart), when the others had not, there was forgetfulness of their hope, and consequent slothfulness. They had gone to sleep. What brought them out of this condition? What roused them? "At midnight there was a cry made, Behold the bridegroom cometh," etc. That was what was to rouse the slumbering church. Time sufficient is given to prove if there is oil in the lamp, but not to procure it.

88 Passages might be multiplied from the Gospels, as from the Epistles, one more however will suffice; Luke 19: 12-27: "And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come," etc.

We cannot mistake, if we really attach importance to the word of God, the vital importance of all this.

The resurrection of the saints (the "first resurrection") takes place at Christ's coming; as it is said, "Every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming." This resurrection is altogether another thing from the resurrection of the wicked. There will be a resurrection, both of the just, and of the unjust, but on different principles. The former have life in Christ, which life has nothing in common with the world around. Moreover, they have the Spirit of God dwelling in them. "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you," Rom. 8: 11. "The body is . . . for the Lord and the Lord for the body; and God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power," 1 Cor. 6: 13, 14. The body is the Lord's as well as the soul. As to the wicked, Christ raises them up for judgment, but not at the same time. Christ will accomplish, for the bodies of the saints, what He has already accomplished for the soul; the wicked will be called up for judgment, and forced to honour Christ in spite of themselves; John 5. In Luke 20: 35, 36, there is a remarkable distinction. As regards all my sins, He put them away at His first coming. I am going to appear before Him who has already died for me.

But then there is another aspect of the coming of Christ, and a most important one as regards the present interests and operations of the church; namely, the way in which God is going to accomplish, through it, His purposes towards the world.

I quite understand a person saying, "I do not see this"; but I do not understand the saint saying, "I do not see the importance of it." Christ is soon coming again, and He is coming to judge the world. Now is not that important? A man may not believe it, but it is folly to say that it is unimportant. The world is going on in a rapid progress of evil, concerning which Scripture gives abundant testimony, and the preaching of the gospel is not that which is to convert the world which is all ripening for judgment. And here it would be well to guard against a false thought, namely, that to insist upon this would hinder the preaching of the gospel. Quite the contrary. It would urge to it with more power and energy, with more of the activity of love to go and say to poor sinners, "Save yourselves from this untoward generation." Did the sure knowledge of judgment coming hinder Noah? It is admitted on all hands that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will one day fill the earth, as the waters cover the sea. But the question is, how is this to be brought about? In Scripture this event is attributed to the glory of Christ. Nobody can be saved unless born again, unless washed in the blood of Jesus, but they may believe through seeing Him, like Thomas.

89 If we turn to Isaiah 26: 9-11, we there find it said, "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let favour be shewn to the wicked [the character of the gospel], yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of Jehovah. [Grace does not produce that effect.] Jehovah, when thy hand is lifted up (just ready, as it were, to strike), they will not see: but they shall see," etc.

Habakkuk 2 speaks of the universality of blessing: "Behold, is it not of Jehovah of hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?" Is that the success of the gospel? yet it makes the prophet say, "for the earth shall be filled," etc.

So Isaiah 11, and here again it is connected with His glory. In Isaiah 25: 6-8 we read, "And in this mountain shall Jehovah of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, etc . . . . and he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory," etc. Doubtless, it is the desire of our hearts that this terrible veil might be taken off, and we get (1 Cor. 15: 54) a positive revelation as to the time at which it shall be so taken off. "Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." We must be subject to the word of God as to when, and how.

90 We ought (as regards responsibility) to have filled the earth with the knowledge of Jehovah; but we have not! And what have we done? We have let the enemy into the church of God. See the parable of the wheat and tares, Matthew 13: "While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way." Through the carelessness of men Satan could come and spoil the results of Christ's sowing. Could this be repaired? are we to undo it? No! we cannot undo it. The mischief is done, and there they must stay until the harvest (v. 28-30). It will be rectified by a dispensation of judgment - a harvest, not a re-sowing of the field. We ought to have filled the earth with the knowledge of the Lord, but we have failed; and here we get a truly sorrowful revelation (blessed be God! He can come and set all to rights); the mischief done, where good was done, is irreparable.

God, in the accomplishment of His purposes, is gathering out, through the gospel, the co-heirs of Christ; but there is a sorrowful side of the picture. It is blessed to preach the gospel to sinners; but it is profitable for us, as saints, to own where we have failed. "In the last days," says Paul to Timothy, "perilous times shall come"; and again, "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."

If we take two other passages, we find the same testimony as regards the carelessness of man in responsibility, and the continuance of evil (so introduced), up to the time of Christ's coming, leaving no room for intervening blessing.

First, 2 Thessalonians 2: 7, 8: "The mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." The principle of evil is already working in the church - it has begun, and it will go on working till Christ comes: there is now a hinderer; but when this is taken away, the man of sin will be manifested; and then it will be put an end to by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The same truth is revealed in the Epistle of Jude. When Jude gave all diligence to write about the common salvation, he found it needful to exhort believers earnestly to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; "for," says he, "there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; their character is described in detail, v. 4-13. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these saying, "Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints," etc. He identifies these very men with those whom the Lord is about to destroy.

91 Let us now turn to God's dealings with the nations.

When "Lo-ammi" was written upon Israel, God gave power into the hands of the Gentiles; Dan. 2. How is it that the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ? Is it by the preaching of the gospel - a clear duty, whether the earth be filled by that, or whether judgment is to come first? The word says, "Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them [there was the most complete and utter destruction of the whole system of the image]; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth," v. 34, 35. There again I get a positive revelation that the universal prevalence of Christianity will be preceded by the execution of the judgments of God. The little stone cut out without hands does not become a mountain, etc., until it has executed judgment upon, broken in pieces, and destroyed the image. And, note, the act of smiting the image and then filling the whole earth is not the setting up of Christ's kingdom at the day of Pentecost. It is not an influence that changes the gold, the silver, etc., into the character of the stone; but the sudden execution of judgment upon the image - a blow, which breaks in pieces, and leaves not a trace of the existence of the image, so that we read, "no place was found for them."

If I turn to Revelation 19: 11-22, and compare it with Isaiah 63: 1-6, I get a striking testimony respecting the judgments of the nations. "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I, that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me [it is not here "He that was trodden in the wine-press," but "He treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God," Rev. 19: 15]; for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment [not whiten theirs]. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." Revelation 14: 17-20. The clusters of the vine of the earth are gathered, and cast into the great wine-press of the wrath of God.

92 One passage more, Zephaniah 3: 8: "Therefore wait ye upon me, saith Jehovah, until the day that I rise up to the prey; for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy." Verse 9 brings out subsequent blessing. This needs no comment.

Whatever part of scripture I turn to, bearing upon these things, I find the same uniform testimony.

There is another part of the subject, for which there is not space now beyond a brief notice: namely, its connection with the destinies of the Jewish people, "as concerning the gospel, enemies for your sakes, but, as touching the election, beloved for the fathers' sakes" (Rom. 11: 28); "of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came," Rom. 9: 4, 5. We say, with the apostle, "Hath God cast away his people? God forbid." Israel, as a nation, will be saved, and planted in the land. "There shall come out of Zion the deliverer," etc. "The gifts and callings of God are without repentance." The promises have never been accomplished. God gave certain promises to Abraham, unconditionally. Israel got into the land conditionally under Joshua, failed, and were turned out of the land. The promises are taken up under the new covenant, and connected with Messiah. Their return from Babylon was nothing in that sense; Neh. 9: 36. And Messiah was not there. When He came the first time, they rejected Him. But even this, while it filled up the measure of their guilt, did not touch the promises given without condition. If this be so, it must be under a new dispensation. It is another state and condition of things altogether.

93 "In the dispensation of the fulness of times," God will "gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him," Eph. 1: 10, 11. When Christ, who is "heir of all things," takes the inheritance, we, as joint-heirs with Him, shall be brought into the same glory.

In conclusion, as it regards Christ's coming to judgment: I find there a very solemn testimony against being identified with the world in its interests, its pursuits, expectations, etc. The world - aye, and the church (in the general vague sense of the word) too - is ripening for judgment. "In such an hour as ye think not, the Son of man cometh." How can I be found identifying the interests and objects of the world with my interests and objects as a saint? making myself a nest in the place where Christ has been crucified, and where He is coming to judge?

But here is another thing. If I look up, "Glory is coming! there is the Bridegroom! I am going to see him as he is, to be with him in the glory, to be like him." "Every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure."

The Lord give you to search the word, and see if these things be so. May you receive them, not merely as matters of knowledge, but of faith and of hope. This plants a thousand joys.

Faith

Hebrews 11

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We find in this chapter not exactly a definition of faith, but the effects of its power, brought before us; and this is to make things so present as that they should be real to the soul. The things looked out for are as substantial to the soul as if possessed, and this which are not seen are as vividly before us as if they were seen. This is what characterises a believer. He is a person who has such an evidence of things not seen as to govern his thoughts and affections, as his motive. The world in which he lives is seen and felt by faith.

This is calculated to bring home that question in a man's soul which God Himself answers. Is there any substance in my soul? are things unseen as real to me as if I saw them? Faith is opposed to law; for "the law is not of faith." Law brings out the rebellion of the will. The carnal mind is opposed to God's law; and, therefore, there is disobedience wherever there are self-will and law. If I have no law, I may do my own will; but if there is a law, it is the will of someone else I must do.

There is another character of sin brought out here. It is not rebellion against a law, as in Adam. There was the absence of faith in Cain: while it is said of Abel, "by faith he offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." What substance have you of things hoped for? This question does not disturb one who has real faith. I do not ask if you live up to these things - that is another question; but have you faith? The Jews had killed the Holy One and the Just, but they believed that He was the Holy and the Just One, for if they had not, they would have said, when they were charged with having killed Him, Oh, He was not the Holy and the Just One at all; but their very confession of "What shall we do?" proves that they did not deny His being so, and it made them fear. They were not what they should be, but they were pricked to the heart; and the effect of it is they cry out, "What shall we do to be saved?"

The conscience may be frightened about sin, but that is not faith. There is no power in natural conscience to acquire life, but there is fear of punishment - "a certain fearful looking for of judgment"; but this is not faith. There is nothing "hoped for." Have you such a sense of the reality of future things on your heart? Is it a reality in your souls, so that it controls your thoughts and feelings and habits? If not, you have not faith. In the end of John 2 we see a class of persons on whom there was no insincerity charged, but there was no faith in them. They saw the miracles and they marvelled; but Christ did not commit Himself to them.

95 All through this chapter (Heb. 11) faith is spoken of in a practical way. "By it the elders obtained a good report"; and in all the instances mentioned, it was such a real and practical thing that it characterised the man.

If your soul is distressed with the thought that you have not the outgoing of soul answering to what Christ is to you, it is a proof that you have faith. Christ has such a substance in your heart. There is something wrong, something not given up - some levity, carelessness, vanity, etc.; but still you have got some substance. There is a connection between these four first examples of faith. The first shews us its exercise about the sacrifice, on which Abel rests. The second is, the walk with God consequent upon this. The third is, the knowledge of the future which actuates. The fourth opens the special subject of walking as pilgrims and strangers; but all following each other in order.

The moment a soul is brought home to God, it changes everything to him. "The fashion of this world passeth away." He sees God through it all, instead of seeing it as He did before, only as man's world with none but man through it all. You cannot bring God into a world which has rejected and slighted Christ, without altering everything to the heart and judgment. You are not in paradise now, and you know and feel that you are not. There is not a circumstance in the world, but in it we see the results of our having broken with God, and God having broken with us. The very fact of our dress reminds us of it; it is the consequence of sin.

Cain went out from the presence of God, and what does he then? He builds a city: and what next? You cannot have a city without having something to amuse. Then comes Tubal-Cain with the arts and sciences, and Jubal with pleasant sounds - "he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ." There was no harm in the music, etc., itself; but why did they want it? What was the source of it? What use did they make of it? It was to make them content in being away from God. Is not this "harm" enough? Adam, after he sinned and heard God's voice, hid himself among the trees in the garden: there was no harm in the trees, but there was harm in his hiding himself. There is harm in man's trying to make himself comfortable away from God. The prodigal went and joined himself to the citizens of the far country: but when he was in want, no man gave to him. There is none to give him where the devil reigns. Man never can satisfy himself in that country. Bring God in; and what is the result? It gives the consciousness of the truth. It makes him feel and say, "I am perishing with hunger." This is the first effect of faith coming in. Mark, too, the next consequence. How thoroughly he would hate all those things which governed and attracted his heart before! There is nothing a soul will detest so much as the very things he loved most before. When a soul comes to God, he finds out what it is to have left God - that he might do according to a will that is utterly corrupt - his own will. This is the effect of such a discovery. He thinks of the contrast and of his father's house: "How many hired servants of my father's," etc. The sense of the contrast comes in when God is made known. Then comes the sense of sin - I am this wicked person. There is not only wickedness, but it is I that am this wicked thing; and then the discovery of ourselves, just as we are, would be more than we could bear; we need the revelation of God's grace. We could not bear to see all otherwise. There was One and only One who could. The conviction of sin comes into the soul in the sight of the blessedness of Him who is without sin.

96 Let us look a little at these religious characters brought before us. Cain and Abel were both alike as to outward character and circumstance. They were both under the sentence of banishment from the presence of God. They both had employment, and both seemed to have been outwardly decent characters. They both came to worship, too, and Cain brought that which cost him most, that for which he had worked. God had sent him forth to till the ground, and he tilled it; that was all right, and it was right for him to bring an offering. The difference between them was not in all that. In outward character, too, Cain was just like Abel; nothing came out amiss until he killed his brother. What was the mistake in Cain? There was no sense upon his heart that he was driven out of paradise because he deserved it: he might not have known that he was driven out even, for he thought he had nothing to do but to go to God, as if he was all right with Him. This is just what men are doing now. They are driven from God's presence and favour, going on with their occupations, tilling the ground and the like, and, when the time comes round, thinking to come and worship! What would a father feel about his child who had been disobedient to him one day, and coming the next, just as if nothing had happened, expecting to be received as though all was right between him and his father? This is just what men are doing with God. But, dear friends, you are out of paradise, and can you think to come and worship God as if nothing had happened? Are you expecting to get into heaven just the same as (not one whit better than) Adam was when he got out of paradise? If you got into heaven, you would spoil it; but the truth is, you are making your own heaven down here.

97 Abel was not a bit better than Cain as to his position and nature; but there is one great difference - he owns it all, and obtained testimony that he was righteous. "By faith he offered to God a more excellent sacrifice," etc. It might have been said he was not so right as Cain in a natural sense, as to his calling, for God had not set men to keep sheep, and he had to till the ground; but he brought a sacrifice from the flock, a bloody sacrifice. He had a sense of being out of paradise; but, more than that, he had a sense of being an outcast for sin. He felt he was a sinner. He had a sense of having broken with God and God with him, and he knew Him to be of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. He owned that God had not done wrong in turning man out, and that it would be wrong to let him in. He owned that death hung over him as his proper desert.

It is God's sentence upon me, and my ruin is my desert. These things had such a reality to his soul that he would have known it would have been presumption for him to go to God as though nothing had happened. Then he had something more still; for he had learnt, through the grace of God, that there was something needed between him and God, and that this something was there. Sacrifice was the only way. See the other side of this blessed truth. Not only could he not go without a sacrifice, but, beyond this, it was there: and we know who this is - the Son of God. God says, I cannot look at sin; but there is one thing I can look at - an offering about sin, and that is my Son as a sin-offering. Faith apprehends this, and there was no thought of coming in any other way. "There will I meet with thee," God said to Moses. And what did he put at the door of the tabernacle? The altar of burnt-offering, the sacrifice for sin God had there; and faith rests on this as the only possible way of approach.

98 There was no climbing up some other way. There is but this one door by which to enter, and it is through that sacrifice, by which the holiness of God is fully maintained, as well as His love manifested, in the highest way. I want to see my sin put away in His sight, just as I see it brought out first in His sight; and here is the perfect sin-offering, and there is no place where this wonderful question of good and evil has been judged as at the cross of Christ. The sacrifice is fully accepted. He has borne all the wrath and put it away. Hear Him saying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There was perfect obedience and perfect love. He was a perfect sin-offering; and there He is now at the right hand of the Father. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." His offering for sin has for ever settled the question of sin. He has made peace about my sin and for my sin; and has He done it in part? Would that be like God? No; it was complete. "When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high." When I see that, I cannot go to God as Cain, just as I am; and yet I must go to Him if I am to have happiness or blessing. But I also see that God has provided Himself with a burnt-offering. It is taken out of our hands, as it were; it is God's own perfect work; it is His settling of sin, and I can rest in the result of what He has offered. This is faith. Now we go to God by Him. This is, as it were, offering Christ. God gives me the resting-place; and the convinced sinner cannot come to Christ without finding all his sins put away for ever. The sacrifice of the burnt-offering is there, and the moment I am there I come with the sacrifice, and can be happy in His presence, though with a perfect knowledge of His holiness.

"Abel obtained witness that he was righteous": not merely that the sacrifice was perfect, but he had the witness that he was righteous. It was not only true that he was righteous, but that he also had the witness of it, and this gave him peace. The gospel is God's witness to His acceptance of Christ. See how this is "God testifying of his gifts." If you bring that Lamb, I accept you according to all the value of that Lamb.

99 The next effect of faith we see in Enoch, walking with God when brought to Him, and it is with a God who has found a propitiation in the blood of Christ. "Am I accepted in the Beloved?" I have no hope but in Christ; but He is my hope. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow," etc. God's holiness is the measure by which He has put away sin, and there is not a spot upon him that believes in Christ. Then I can walk with God. It is not only peace, but walking with Him till I am in heaven with Him. How can I have all this? Christ is my title. I may expect all that God can give as the fruit of the travail of Christ's soul. I know God and am known of Him; and walking in the comfort and peace of His grace and truth in Christ, I trust Him.

Burning and Eating the Sacrifices

Hebrews 13: 7-19

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There was a twofold character in the offering which has its counterpart for us in Christ: and the want of firm grasp of this, to distinguish and yet maintain them together, lies at the root of much want of enjoyment and of feebleness in the children of God. The first and most fundamental point was that in the offerings there was that which was consumed. Being identified with the sin of man, it was consumed under the wrath and indignation of God; or it went up as a savour of rest, as that which was sweet and acceptable to God, as for instance in the burnt-offering. In the sin-offering there was God's judgment of sin, and therefore the greater part was burnt outside the camp. But, besides this, there was another character that entered into the sacrifices. In very many cases men partook of them. In the meat-offering and peace-offering such was the fact: and even in the offering for sin the priest had a portion.

And I believe that this is what is referred to here. These Jewish Christians were in great danger of forgetting their privileges. They had abandoned everything that they had once revered as the religion given them by God: they were no longer gazing on things that shadowed His glory. The grandeur, the magnificence, the glory, of the Levitical institutions - all was left behind. God was not now, as of old, thundering from heaven. He had wrought with infinitely greater moral glory. He had sent His Son from heaven: pardon and peace had been brought, and joy and liberty in the Holy Ghost; but all this was unseen. It is, however, one thing to enter into the comfort of the truth when all is bright and fresh, and another thing to hold it fast in time of reproach, shame, derision and the falling away of some. When the first joy is somewhat lessened, the heart naturally returns to what it had once rested on. And there is always this danger for us - when evil is felt, the blessing not being so present to the soul. Who among us that has long known Christ - known His ways - has not felt this snare?

And what is the divine remedy? It is just that which the Holy Ghost here uses - "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." We must not sever this verse from the succeeding one: "Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines," etc. The Holy Ghost would guard these Jewish believers against that which, compared with our own proper Christian blessings, is mere trash, earthly priesthood, holy places, offerings, tithes, etc. These things, after all, were but novelties compared with the old thing, which is Jesus.

101 Looked at historically, Christianity might seem a new thing. He had been but recently manifested; but who was He? and whence pad He come? He was "the first-born of every creature" - yea, the Creator! "All things were created by him and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." He was the One whom God intended to manifest from all eternity. And here we see Him in His complete Person - "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." Through Him God could bless. With Him He would have us occupied.

We are told a little before to remember them that had the rule over us - to follow their faith, even if themselves were gone. But these all pass out of the scene, while "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." This is the only thing that abides unchangeably, and establishes too. "Meats have not profited those who have been occupied therein." Many might have abstained - it was God's bidding that they should; but if occupied with the thing, it was not for their profit. Christ was the substance: all else was shadow. Therefore He goes on to say, "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." If others have the husk, we are feeding on the kernel. (The "tabernacle" was used to express the Jewish system.) Everything had passed away in Christ. In Philippians the apostle could speak contemptuously of circumcision in contrast with having Christ, even though it was of God. To be occupied with it, now that Christ was come, was to be outside, to be of "the circumcision."

"To eat." It was not merely the offering, nor the burning of the offering, but the partaking of it. We have got Christ Himself, and our sins put away - sin, root and branch, dealt with by God. There is not now one question unsettled for us who believe. Has He one question unsettled with Christ? and if not with Christ, He has not with us, for He died and rose for us, and we are one with Him. As in the Jewish system, God and the offerer had their portions in the sacrifices, so now we may say that God has His own portion in the same Christ on whom we feed. The entrance into this exceedingly blessed thought is one of the things which the children of God greatly fail in - that we are seated by God Himself at the same table where He has His own joy and portion. Of course there is that in which we cannot share. In the burnt-offering all went up to God. The sweet fragrance of all that Christ was goes up to Him. We must remember that God has His infinite joy in Christ; and not only for what He is in Himself, but for that which He has done for my sins. When we think of this, all of self is absorbed, and must sink before it. The old nature we have still; but it is in us to be crushed We have to treat it all, its likings and dislikings, as a hateful thing. But the new life needs sustaining. It grows by feeding. As in natural life, the mere possession of riches will not sustain life, but it has to be nourished; so in spiritual life, it is not only true that Christ is my life in the presence of God, but I must make Christ my own for my food - eating of Him day by day; John 6. He is in very deed given to us, to be turned by faith into nourishment for us. And the sweet thing is that we are entitled thus to think of Christ, given by God to be this food for us. It is not only that Christ is God's, but He is ours too: our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

Obedience: the Saint's Liberty

Hebrews 13: 17-25

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The spirit of obedience is the great secret of all godliness. The spring of all evil from the beginning has been independence of will. Obedience is the only rightful state of the creature, or God would cease to be supreme - would cease to be God. Where there is independence, there there is always sin. This rule, if remembered, would wonderfully help us in guiding our conduct.

There is no case whatever in which we ought to do our own will; for then we have not the capacity either of judging rightly about our conduct or of bringing it before God. I may be called upon to act independently of the highest authority in the world, but it ought never to be on the principle that I am doing my own will, which is the principle of eternal death.

The liberty of the saint is not licence to do his own will.* If any thing could have taken away the liberty of the Lord Jesus, it would have been the hindering Him in being always obedient to the will of God. All that moves in the sphere of man's will is sin. Christianity pronounces the assertion of its exercise to be the principle of sin. We are sanctified unto obedience (1 Pet. 1: 2): the essence of sanctification is the having no will of our own. If I were as wise (so to speak) as Lucifer, and it administered to my own will, all my wisdom would come to be folly. True slavery is the being enslaved by our own will; and true liberty consists in our having our wills entirely set aside. When we are doing our own wills, self is our centre.

{*An entire self-renunciation (and this goes very far when we know the subtlety of the heart) is the only means of walking with the full blessing that belongs to our happy position of service to God, our brethren, and mankind.}

The Lord Jesus "took upon himself the form of a servant," and, "being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," Phil. 2: 6-8. When man became a sinner, he ceased to be a servant, though he is, in sin and rebellion, the slave of a mightier rebel than himself. When we are sanctified, we are brought into the place of servants, as well as that of sons. The spirit of sonship just manifested itself in Jesus, in coming to do the Father's will. Satan sought to make His sonship at variance with unqualified obedience to God; but the Lord Jesus would never do anything, from the beginning to the end of His life, but the Father's will.

104 In this chapter the spirit of obedience is enforced towards those who rule in the church - "obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves," v. 17. It is for our profit in everything, to seek after this spirit. "They watch for your souls," says the apostle, "as they that must give account." Those whom the Lord puts into service He makes responsible to Himself. This is the real secret of all true service. It should be obedience, whether in those who rule, or those who obey. They are servants, and this is their responsibility. Woe unto them if they do not guide, direct, rebuke, etc.; if they do not do it, "the Lord" will require it of them. On the other hand, those counselled become directly responsible to "the Lord" for obedience.

The great guardian principle of all conduct in the church of God is personal responsibility to "the Lord."

No guidance of another can ever come in between an individual's conscience and God. In popery this individual responsibility to God is taken away. Those who are spoken of in this chapter, as having the rule in the church, had to "give account" of their own conduct, and not of souls which were committed to them. There is no such thing as giving account of other people's souls; "every one of us must give an account of himself to God," Rom. 14. Individual responsibility always secures the maintenance of God's authority. If those who watched for their souls had been faithful in their service, they would not have to give account "with grief," so far as they were concerned; but still it might be very "unprofitable" for the others, if they acted disobediently.

Wherever the principle of obedience is not in our hearts, all is wrong; there is nothing but sin. The principle which actuates us in our conduct should never be, "I must do what I think right"; but, "I ought to obey God," Acts 5: 29.

The apostle then says, "Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly," v. 18. It is always the snare of those who are occupied with the things of God continually, not to have a "good conscience." No person is so liable to a fall, as one who is continually administering the truth of God, if he be not careful to maintain a "good conscience." The continually talking about truth, and the being occupied about other people, has a tendency to harden the conscience. The apostle does not say, "Pray for us, for we are labouring hard," and the like; but that which gives him confidence in asking their prayers is, that he has a "good conscience." We see the same principle spoken of in 1 Timothy 1: 19; "holding faith, and a good conscience, which some having put away, concerning faith have made shipwreck." Where there is not diligence in seeking to maintain a "good conscience," Satan comes in and destroys confidence between the soul and God, or we get into false confidence. Where there is the sense of the presence of God, there is the spirit of lowly obedience. The moment that a person is very active in service, or has much knowledge and is put forward in any way in the church, there is the danger of not having a good conscience.

105 It is blessed to see the way in which, in verses 20, 21, the apostle returns, after all his exercise and trial of spirit, to the thought of God's being "the God of peace." He was taken from them, and was in bondage and trial himself; he enters, moreover, into all the troubles of these saints, and is extremely anxious, evidently, about them; and yet he is able to turn quietly to God, as "the God of peace."

We are called unto peace. Paul closes his second epistle to the Thessalonians with, "Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means." There is nothing that the soul of the believer is more brought to feel than that he has "need of patience" (Heb. 10: 36); but if he is hindered by any thing from finding God to be "the God of peace," if sorrow and trial hinder this, there is the will of the flesh at work. There cannot be the quiet doing of God's will, if the mind be troubled and fluttered about a thousand things. It is completely our privilege to walk and to be settled, in peace; to have no uneasiness with God, but to be quietly seeking His will. It is impossible to have holy clearness of mind, unless God be known as "the God of peace." When everything was removed out of God's sight but Christ, God was "the God of peace." Suppose then, that I find out that I am an utterly worthless sinner, but see the Lord Jesus standing in the presence of God, I have perfect peace. This sense of peace becomes quite distracted when we are looking at the ten thousand difficulties by the way; for, when the charge and care of anything rests on our minds, God ceases, practically, to be "the God of peace."

106 There are three steps:

1. The knowledge that God has "made peace through the blood of his cross," Col. 1: 20. This gives us "peace with God," Rom. 5: 1.

2. As it regards all our cares and troubles, the promise is, that, if we cast them on God, "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." See Phil. 4: 6, 7. God burdens Himself about everything for us, yet He is never disturbed or troubled; and it is said, that His peace shall "keep our hearts and minds." If Jesus walked on the troubled sea, He was just as much at peace as ever; He was far above the waves and billows.

3. There is a further step, namely, He who is "the God of peace" being with us, and working in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. See verses 20, 21. The holy power of God is here described as keeping the soul in those things which are well pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ.

There was war - war with Satan, and in our own consciences, but it met its crisis on the cross of the Lord Jesus. The moment that He was raised from the dead, God was made known fully as "the God of peace." He could not leave His Son in the grave; the whole power of the enemy was exercised to its fullest extent; and God brought into the place of peace the Lord Jesus, and us also who believe on Him, and became nothing less than "the God of peace."

He is "the God of peace," both as regards our sins, and as regards our circumstances. But it is only in His presence that there is settled peace. The moment we get into human thoughts and reasonings about circumstances, we get troubled. Not only has peace been made for us by the atonement, but it rests upon the power of Him who raised up Jesus again from the dead; and therefore we know Him as "the God of peace."

The blessing of the saint does not depend upon the old covenant to which man was a party, and which might therefore fail; but upon God who, through all the trouble and sin and the power of Satan, "brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus," and thus secured "eternal redemption," Heb. 9: 12. All that God Himself had pronounced as to judgment against sin, and all the wicked power of Satan, rested on Jesus on the cross; and God Himself has raised Him from the dead. Here then we have full comfort and confidence of soul. "Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," argues faith (see Rom. 8: 31-39), for, when all our sins had been laid upon Jesus, God stepped in, in mighty power, and "brought again from the dead that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant." The blood was as much the proof and witness of the love of God to the sinner as it was of the justice and majesty of God against sin. This covenant is founded on the truth and holiness of the eternal God having been fully met and answered in the cross of the Lord Jesus. His precious blood has met every claim of God. If God be not "the God of peace," He must be asserting the insufficiency of the blood of His dear Son. And this we know is impossible. God rests in it as a sweet savour.

107 Then, as to the effect of all this on the life of the saint, the knowledge of it produces fellowship with God and delight in doing His will. He "works in us," as it is said here, "that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ."

The only thing that ought to make any hesitation in the saint's mind about departing to be with Christ is the doing God's will here. We may suppose such an one thinking of the joy of being with Christ, and then being arrested by the desire of doing God's will here. See Phil. 1: 20-25. That assumes confidence in God, as "the God of peace," and confidence in His sustaining power whilst here. If the soul is labouring in the turmoil of its own mind, it cannot have the blessing of knowing God as "the God of peace."

The flesh is so easily aroused that there is often the need of the word of exhortation - "I beseech you, brethren, suffer the word of exhortation," v. 22. The spirit of obedience is the only spirit of holiness.

The Lord give us grace to walk in His ways.

Brief Exposition of the Epistle of James

J. N. Darby.

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Introduction

The Epistle of James is not one in which the doctrines of grace are developed, although sovereign grace is clearly recognised; chap. 1: 18. These doctrines are presented to us under the form of the work of God in us, not under that of redemption through the precious blood of Christ, which is His work for us. It is a practical epistle - the holy girdle for our loins, in order that the external practical life should correspond with the inner divine life of the Christian, and that the will of God should be for us a law of liberty. Redemption is not spoken of in this epistle, neither is faith, as the means of participation in the fruit of this accomplished redemption. But since many had already made profession of the name of Christ, the writer desires that the reality of this profession should be manifested by works, the sole witness to others that true faith is working in the heart; for faith works by love; Gal. 5: 6. James sets forth the true character of this new creation, and the way in which it is manifested in practical life, so that others are able to see it.

James remained at Jerusalem to tend the flock which was found there - more especially the Jewish portion of the church. We find him in the history of the gospel, but always as presiding over the Jewish flock, and that before it had become distinct from the Jewish nation. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the Spirit of God exhorts them to go forth without the camp, that is to say, to separate themselves from the unbelieving Jews; Heb. 13. Up to that time they had remained together, and Christians offered sacrifices according to the law. There were also many priests who were obedient to the faith (Acts 6: 7) - a thing incredible to us, but the fact is clearly proved by the word. Moreover they were still all zealous for the law.

Let us trace the history of James as we find it in the Acts. But first we get him specially mentioned in Galatians 1: 19, as having been seen by Paul, who, at that time, with the exception of Peter, had not seen the other apostles. Then we find him in Acts 15, presiding if we can so say, in the assembly of the apostles and elders, for deciding whether the Gentiles ought to be subjected to the law of Moses. His decision is final, though Peter and Paul as well as the other apostles were present, with the exception of James, the brother of John whom Herod had slain.

109 The decrees ordained by the apostles and elders were a testimony from the Jewish church. God had not allowed Paul and Barnabas to decide the question at Antioch: such a decision would not have ended the controversy; it would have made two assemblies. But the moment the Jewish Christians and the assembly at Jerusalem allowed liberty to the Gentiles, none could oppose themselves to their deliverance from the law. It was not a point determined by the apostles in virtue of their apostolic authority, although that authority confirmed the decree. They disputed much in the assembly. The decision is afterwards sent in the name of the apostles, the elders, and the whole church. Judaism had allowed to the Gentiles liberty from the Jewish yoke.

Here again we find James. He ended the discussion by saying, "Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God." It is not certain that he was an apostle. Probably he was not. He was at the head of the Jewish church at Jerusalem. For this reason the angel of the Lord, when he had brought Peter out of prison, restoring him to liberty, says, "Go and shew these things to James and to the brethren," Acts 12: 17. Again, at Antioch, "before that certain came from James, Peter ate with the Gentiles, but after they were come, he withdrew and separated himself," Gal. 2: 12. We see how James is linked in the minds of the Christians, including Peter, although an apostle, with the Jewish feeling that still held sway in the hearts of the Jewish Christians, especially at Jerusalem.

Again, when Paul went up to Jerusalem for the last time, "he went in," it is said, "with us to James, and all the elders were present," Acts 21: 18. James was evidently at the head of the assembly at Jerusalem, and expressed in his own person the strength of that principle of Judaism, which still reigned in the church at Jerusalem, God bearing with it in His patience. They believed in Jesus, they broke bread at home, but they were all zealous for the law. They offered sacrifices in the temple, and even persuaded Paul to do the same (Acts 21), and they were in no respect separated from the nation. All this is forbidden in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but it was practised up to the last days of Judaism.

110 This principle reappears in the Epistle of James - a true presentation of the state of the Jewish Christians, James himself being in his own person its representative and embodiment. As long as God bore with the system, the Spirit of God could work in it. We learn from profane history that James was killed by the Jews amongst whom he bore the name of "the just"; and Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us, that for this crime Jerusalem was destroyed. After the destruction of Jerusalem the system disappeared. We can well believe that the true Christians acted upon the testimony given in the Epistle to the Hebrews. However that may be, there remained only one or perhaps two small heretical sects, who held formally to Judaism, and they also soon vanished. They were called the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. But we need not occupy ourselves with these things.

The position of James, and the state of the assembly at Jerusalem (that is to say, of the Christians who were externally linked with the unbelieving Jews, although they might break bread and worship apart), makes it easier to understand this epistle. It is no question of its divine inspiration, but of its character. God in His goodness has given us all the forms with which Christianity has been clothed, and among others this first Jewish form, when the Christians had not yet separated themselves from the nation.

We do not, therefore, here find the mysteries of the counsels of God, as in Paul; nor redemption as set forth in his writings, and in those of Peter; nor the divine life of the Son of God, in Him and then in us, as we find it described in the writings of the apostle John; but his subject is the practical life of the poor of the flock, who still frequented the synagogue, and denunciations against the rich unbelievers who oppressed the poor, and blasphemed the name of the Lord.

James 1.

The epistle is addressed to the twelve tribes. The nation is not yet looked upon as finally rejected of God.

James writes to the dispersion, that is to say, to the Israelites dispersed everywhere in the midst of the Gentiles. Faith recognised the entire nation, as did Elijah in 1 Kings 18: 31, and as did Paul in Acts 26: 7. Faith recognised it, until the judgment of God was accomplished. In order to understand the counsels, the purposes of God, His assembly, the glory of Christ, and our place now in Christ, and hereafter with Him, we must read the writings of Paul.

111 The patience of God with His ancient people is here shewn, although James warns them that the Judge is before the door. He carefully distinguishes the believers (chap. 2: 1), though not yet separated from the people. Their privileges are not found in this epistle; they could not enjoy them in company with the unbelieving Jews; but he could point out to them - though in the midst of such - the difference of the Christian life, and it is of this James speaks.

He does not style himself an apostle; yet he was in a practical manner - not as an ordained elder, but from his personal influence, at the head of those Christians who were not separated from Judaism. He always thinks of Christians, and of the walk which became them in the midst of the nation. Peter, who wrote to a part of the Jewish dispersion, does not speak of the Jews, but calls the believers the nation, and addresses them as in the midst of the Gentiles (1 Pet. 2: 10-12); but by James the Christian walk is described in terms which seldom go beyond what ought to have been found in a man of faith under the old covenant.

We see that he has Christians in his mind, but Christians who are on the lowest step of the ladder which reaches towards heaven. Yet, since in point of fact, we are upon the earth, this epistle is most useful, as pointing out the walk and the spirit which become us, however great our heavenly privileges may be. Although the light of our hearts is there above, a lantern for our feet is not to be despised, and it is all the more valuable, because we are in the midst of a Christian profession - of people who say they are believers. The epistle puts the truth of this profession to the proof. Whatever may have been the connection of the believers with the people, the writer of our epistle supposes faith in those to whom it is addressed - a faith which perhaps might have been practically found in a Jew before he believed in Jesus - therefore, with the addition of this belief, a true faith which had been produced by the word of God in the heart. As Paul himself, coming down from the height of the revelations granted him by God, recognises the faith of Lois and Eunice, and likens the faith of Timothy to that of these women.

112 Let us now examine the epistle itself. At its very commencement, temptations, the discipline of God in favour of the believer, are the test of faith; chap. 1: 2-12.

As to their position, they were associated with the people; the state of things which the writer has before his mind is a profession of the faith and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall see that he addresses others with whom they were found linked, and warns believers against the spirit in which such walked.

The Jewish Christians were tried and persecuted. Peter also speaks of this in his epistle, encouraging them to suffer with patience. James exhorts them, as Paul also had done in Romans 5, to esteem persecution as all joy, and for the same reason that Paul had given. The trial of faith works patience; the will of man is broken; he has to wait for the operation of God; he feels his dependence on God, and that he lives in a scene where God alone can produce the result desired, overcoming and arresting the power of Satan. Often we may wish when occupied with good, that the work should be hastened, that difficulties should disappear, and that we should be freed from persecution; but the will of God - not ours - is good and wise: the works that are done upon the earth, He does them Himself Patience is the perfect fruit of obedience.

See what is said in Colossians 1: 11: "Strengthened with all might, according to the power of his glory" - what mighty deeds should not such strength produce! - "unto all patience and longsuffering, with joyfulness." All might, according to the power of His glory, is needed to enable us to bear everything without murmuring, and even with joy, since all comes from the hand of God. It is His will, not our own, which sustains the heart. When Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12: 12, gives us the signs of an apostle, the first is patience with all longsuffering. Paul also gives us the key to this apparent contradiction: "We rejoice in hope of the glory of God; and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us," Rom. 5: 3-5.

When the love of God is known, and the will broken, there is confidence in God. We know that all comes from Him, and that He makes all work together for our greatest blessing. Thus the trying of our faith works patience. But patience must have her perfect work: otherwise the will revives, also confidence in self, instead of having it in God. We act without God, and apart from His will, we do not wait upon Him, or in any case impatience and the flesh shew themselves in us. Job was subject for a long time, but patience did not have her perfect work. Saul waited long for Samuel, but he could not wait quietly till Samuel came, and he lost the kingdom. He did not wait for the Lord, conscious that he could do nothing of his own will, and apart from God: patience had not her perfect work.

113 Now affliction, the dealing of God which acts for us externally, and inwardly too, by His grace, puts patience to the proof; and when this work is accomplished and we are wholly subject to God, desiring nothing apart from His will, we are perfect and entire, lacking nothing. Not that we have nothing to learn as to acquaintance with His will; we find the contrary in verse 5, which follows; but the state of soul is perfect, as to the will, as to our relations with God; and He can reveal His will to us, for it is the only thing we desire. See 1 Peter 1: 6, 7.

Patience had her perfect work in the Lord. He felt deeply the affliction He passed through in this world, and felt it more than we do.

He could weep over Jerusalem, and at the sight of the power of death over the hearts of men. The refusal of His love was a perpetual source of grief to Him. He upbraided the cities in which most of His mighty works were done, but He is perfect in His patience, and in that hour He said, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes," Matt. 11. He gives thanks at the same moment that He upbraids. We see the same thing in John 12. In both cases His soul, being perfectly subject to His Father's will, expands with joy at the prospect of all that which is the result of submission.

Christ could never lack divine wisdom. But with us it is very possible that wisdom may be lacking, even when will is subject, and we truly desire to do the will of God. Therefore the promise follows, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not." Absence of will, obedience, and the spirit of confiding dependence which waits on God, characterise the new life. We pass through tribulation in the world; but this life develops itself in these qualities. But it is necessary this confidence should be in exercise; otherwise we can receive nothing. It does not honour God to distrust Him. Such a man is double-minded, like a wave of the sea driven by the wind. He is unstable, because his heart is not in communion with God; he does not live in a way to know Him; such an one is, of course, unstable. If a believer keeps in the presence of God, near Him, he knows Him, and will understand His will; he will not have a will of his own, and will not wish to have one; not only on the ground of obedience, but because he has more confidence in the thoughts of God concerning him than he has in his own will.

114 Faith in the goodness of God gives courage to seek and to do His will. We have in Christ Himself a perfect and beautiful example of these principles of the divine life. Tempted by Satan, He has no will of His own; it does not stir; but He shews that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It is absolute and perfect obedience. The will of God is not only the rule but the sole motive for action. When the tempter desires Him to throw Himself down from the temple, to see whether God will be true to His promises, Jesus will in no way be tempted; He cannot question His faithfulness. He waits quietly for the power of God, whenever the occasion may present itself for manifesting it, in the path of His will.

Such faith and confidence are indeed a sign that the soul is near to God, living in intimacy and fellowship with Him. Such an one will be assured that God hears him. This is what forms the soul in the difficulties and trials of this present life, so that it can be said, "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation."

Verses 9-11 are parenthetical; The new man belongs to the new creation; he is its first-fruits, but he nevertheless finds himself down here in a world, the glory of which passes away as the flower of the grass. Thus the brother of low degree is exalted to have fellowship with Christ, and to share His glory. However humble he may be, he becomes, even in this world, the companion of all the brethren. "God hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him." The rich own them as brethren, and they meet together at the Lord's table, as possessors of the same privileges. On the other hand the rich man, if he is faithful, cannot walk in worldly grandeur, in the pride and vanity of a world which has rejected the Lord. He makes himself - God has made him - the brother of the poor man who loves the Lord. They enjoy the communion of the Spirit together, and share the most precious and intimate things of life. They rejoice together; the poor man in his exaltation - Christ is not ashamed to call such 'brethren' - and the rich man glories in that title much more than in all those that belong to him in the world. That title is despised in the world, and counted for nothing; but he knows that the glory of this world passes away as the flower of the grass, and he rejoices in being the companion of those whom the Lord of glory owns as His. The world will pass away, and the spirit of the world is already passed from the heart of the spiritual Christian. He who takes the lowest place shall be great in the kingdom of God.

115 All this is very far removed from the spirit of envy and jealousy, which would like to pull down all that is above it. It is not selfishness, but the Spirit of love, which comes down to walk with the lowly, who are not little in the sight of God; like Christ, who indeed had the right to reign, and to be first, but who came down, in order to be with us, and made Himself a servant in the midst of His disciples. For us the glory of this world is only vanity and deceit. Love likes to serve, selfishness to be served.

The apostle returns to the character of the new man, for whom life down here is a test. He is blessed when he passes through temptations, and bears them with patience. This is the normal state of the Christian; 1 Pet. 4: 12. The desert is his pathway, his calling is patience here and glory hereafter. Tested here, through grace he abides faithful and unmoved in temptation and trial, and afterwards he shall inherit the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him. The life that has no trials is no life, but he who is tried is blessed. The life is not down here, though it is indeed passing through the wilderness. We are on the journey, not in the rest; it is not yet the life in the rest and glory of Christ.

In order to develop this life, the affections must be set upon the promised crown and blessings. When we have the life of Christ, we need to be exercised in order that the heart may detach itself from things around, which constantly invite the attention of the flesh, and that the will may not yield. Resisting the allurements of vanity, the heart should habitually keep itself by grace in the way of holiness, and in the enjoyment of heavenly things in communion with God. Now trials borne with patience help greatly to this result. A heart weaned from vanity is an immense gain to the soul. If the world is dry and arid for the heart, it more readily turns to the fountain of living waters.

116 There is, however, a second meaning to the word "temptation." Though it often signifies trial from outward circumstances, it is also employed for another sort of trial - that which comes from within, the temptation from lust, which is entirely different. God can try us externally, in order to bless us, and He does so. He tried Abraham, but He cannot in any way tempt by lust. When it is a question, not of putting obedience and patience to the test, but of sin, the condition of the soul is dealt with, for its correction and advancement. But as regards the calling forth of lust, it cannot be said that God tempts. "God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man, but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."

Christ Himself was tested of God throughout His whole life, and nothing but a sweet savour came forth. Always perfect in obedience, having come to do His Father's will, He yet learned obedience in this world of sin and enmity against God. Satan desired to rouse self-will in Him, but in vain. He was indeed led of the Spirit to be tempted of the devil, but that He might overcome him for us, who, through sin, are subject to his power.

No lust was found in Him; but He was capable of being hungry, and He suffered hunger. He had been declared by the Father's voice to be the Son of God, and Satan desired that He should leave the place of servant, which He had taken in becoming man, and do His own will: therefore he suggests to Him to make bread of the stones. Here we have a temptation of the enemy; but the Lord abides in His perfection; He would live by the word which proceeded from the mouth of God. God put Him to the proof through suffering, but no lust was found in Him; and when Satan would make use of hunger - which is a human need apart from sin, and was found in Christ as a man - He remained in perfect obedience, and had no other motive for action than His Father's will.

117 With us there are temptations springing from the inner man, from lust, altogether different from the trials coming from without, which test the state of the heart, detecting selfwill, if we are not perfectly subject to the will of God, or if we are actuated by other motives besides His will.

Now James is always practical. He does not search out the root of everything in the heart, as Paul does; he takes lust as the source which produces actual sin. Paul shews that the sinful nature is the source of lust - an important distinction, which also illustrates the difference between the two writers, or the object of the Holy Ghost in the Epistle of James, namely, the outward practical life, as the evidence of the character of that life, which owes its origin to the word of God, that had wrought through faith. With James, lust - the first movement of the sinful nature which discloses its real character - having conceived, brings forth sin, and sin being finished, brings forth death. It is the history of the workings of the evil nature. James is occupied with its effects, Paul with its source, in order that we may know ourselves; Rom. 8: 8.

Then in opposition to lust, and shewing the action of God, which is not to tempt, but, on the contrary, to produce good, James tells us that "every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures," v. 17, 18. As I have said, he owns grace as the sole and divine source of the good that is in us, as born of God, and that through faith, since it is by the word of truth. By it we are born again; it is a new life, and that by the will of God. We belong to the new creation; we are its first-fruits. Immense blessing! which belongs not only to a new position, though it is that, but also to a new nature which makes us capable of enjoying God. James does not speak of righteousness through grace, but of an entirely new nature, which comes from God.

Thus, self-will being broken, and self-confidence destroyed, he exhorts us, as those who receive all from grace, to be willing to hear rather than to speak, to be slow to wrath, which is but the impatience of the old man, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. He who is taught of God is subject to Him. He lays aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receives with meekness the ingrafted word. This is an important passage, for it presents the condition of the man of God, and that which acts upon him. The will of the flesh does not act in him, nor does self-will; he hearkens to what God says, he receives His [word] with meekness, and is subject to it. Then God engrafts the word in his heart. It is not knowledge merely, but the truth of God, His word which is able to save the soul. It is both the seed of the divine life, and that which forms it.

118 The sanctifying word is ingrafted in him; the graft is introduced there by God, the new man which brings forth the desired fruit. But this life must be expressed in practice. A man must be a doer of the word, not a hearer only; otherwise, there is no longer reality, but he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass; he goes away and all disappears, all is forgotten. "But he that looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein - he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word - this man is blessed in his deed."

We find here an important expression - "The law of liberty." If I tell my child to remain in the house when he wishes to go out, he may obey; but it is not a law of liberty to him; he restrains his will. But if I afterwards say, Now go where you wish to go; he obeys, and it is a law of liberty, because his will and the command are the same; they run together.

The will of God was for Jesus a law of liberty. He came to do His Father's will, He desired nothing else. Blessed state! It was perfection in Him, a blessed example for us. The law is a law of liberty when the will, the heart of man, coincides perfectly in desire with the law imposed upon him - imposed in our case by God - the law written in the heart. It is thus with the new man as with the heart of Christ. He loves obedience, and loves the will of God because it is His will, and as having a nature which answers to what His will expresses, since we partake of the divine nature; in fact it loves that which God wills.

Verses 26, 27. But there is an index to what is found in the heart, which, more than any other, betrays what is within. This index is the tongue. He who knows how to govern his tongue is a perfect man, and able to bridle the whole body. The appearance of religion is vain if the tongue be not bridled; such a man deceives his own heart.

119 True religion is shewn by love in the heart, and by purity - keeping himself unspotted from the world. It thinks of others, for those who are in distress, in need of protection, and the help and support of love, as widows and orphans. The truly religious heart, full of the love of God, and moved by Him, thinks, as God does, upon sorrow, weakness, and need. It is the true Christian character.

The second mark of Christian life, given by James, is to be unspotted from the world. The world is corrupt, it lies in sin, it has rejected the Saviour - God come in grace. It is not only that man has been cast out of Eden because he was a sinner - which is true, and suffices for his condemnation - but there is more. God has done much to reclaim him. He gave the promises to Abraham, He called Israel to be His people, He sent the prophets, and, last of all, His only Son. God Himself came in grace; but man, as far as he could do it, cast out the God who was in the world in grace. Therefore the Lord said, "Now is the judgment of this world." The last thing God could do was to send His Son, and He has done it. "I have yet," He said, "one Son, my well-beloved; may be they will reverence him when they see him. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard."

The world is a world which has already rejected the Son of God, and where does it find its joy? In God or in Christ? No; in the pleasures of the flesh, in grandeur, in riches; it seeks to make itself happy without God, that it may not feel its want of Him. It would not need thus to seek happiness in pleasures, if it were happy. Formed by God with a breath of life for Himself, man cannot be satisfied with anything less than God. Read the history of Cain. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod.* Then he built a city, and called it after the name of his son, Enoch. Afterwards, Jabal was the father of such as have cattle (the riches of that day), and his brother's name was Jubal, the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah bare Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.

{*Nod is the same word as vagabond (Gen. 4: 14). He built a city, where God had made him a vagabond, and this is what man has done.}

We have here the world and its civilisation complete; not having God, they must make the world pleasant and beautiful. It will be said: But what is the harm of harps and organs?

None, surely; the harm is in the heart of man, who uses these things to make himself happy without God, forgetting Him, flying from Him, seeking to content himself in a world of sin, and to drown the misery of this condition of alienation from God, by hiding himself in the corruption that reigns there. The elegance which man affects makes him, only too often, slip insensibly into this corruption, which he seeks to conceal with mirth.

120 But the new man born of God, partaking of the divine nature, cannot find its delight in the world; it shuns that which would separate it from God. Where the flesh finds its happiness and its pleasures, the spiritual life finds none. James speaks of actual corruption; but he does not speak as though one part of the world were corrupt and another pure; on the contrary, it is defiled and corrupt in its principles, and in every way. He who is conformed to it is corrupt in his walk. The friendship of the world is enmity against God. Whoever will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God. We must keep ourselves pure from the world itself. We have, indeed, to pass through it, and to be in passing through it the epistle of Christ, undefiled by the world which surrounds us, as Christ was undefiled, in the midst of a world that would not receive Him.

James 2.

In chapter 2 believers are clearly distinguished; they are not to have the faith of the Lord of glory with respect of persons. To despise the poor was contrary to the law, which regarded all Israelites as objects of the favour of God, and considered the people as one before Him, each one being a member of the same family. It is also entirely contrary to the spirit of Christianity, which looks for humility, and calls the poor happy, which gives us to seek greatness in heavenly glory, shewing that the cross here answers to the glory above. Faith has seen that Lord of glory in humiliation, not having where to lay His head.

Moreover, the rich had, generally speaking, remained the adversaries of Christianity; they blasphemed that good name by which Christians were called; they drew them before the judgment-seats. God has chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to them that love Him. Paul also gives the same testimony. Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble, are called 1 Cor. 1: 26.

121 These things - riches, family, power - are claims which bind the soul to this world. Grace can indeed break these chains, but it does not often happen. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." These chains are too strong. but with God all things are possible.

James contrasts the glory of the Lord, with the false glory of man in this world; for the fashion of this world passes away. He insists much on this point, as does Peter likewise. If they made a difference in the assembly between the poor and the rich, they became judges of evil thoughts. Blessed be God, we can live together for heaven and in heavenly things, at least in the church, where true difference consists, not according to the vanity of this world, but in degrees of spirituality.

Remark here, that the assembly is called the synagogue, shewing how the mind of James ran in Jewish habits of thought.

Now the fact that a difference was made between the rich and the poor, by which they were convinced of the law as transgressors, leads James to speak of the law. He speaks of three laws: the law of liberty, of which we have spoken; the royal law; and the law in its usual sense. The royal law is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." He who does it does well. Then he adds a very important principle-that, if we have kept the whole law, and yet have failed in one point, we are guilty of all. The reason of this is simple. When lust has actuated us, we have transgressed the law, and have despised the authority of Him who established it. It is not supposed that a man has broken all the commandments in detail, but He who gave the one gave all, and where the flesh and the will in concert with it has been in activity, we have followed our own will, and despised the will of God. His will has been violated.

Christianity requires that we should speak and act, as those who have been set free from the power of sin, to do the will of God in all things, His will being ours. He has delivered us from bondage; we are truly free to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Precious and holy liberty! It is the liberty of a nature that finds its pleasure and joy in the will of God and in obedience. Now the Christian is always free to do the will of God; he may, indeed, get away from God, and through carelessness and unfaithfulness, lose strength and zeal; but still, all he says and does will be judged according to this law of liberty. Important truth! He grows in the knowledge of the will of God, and he is free under grace to practise what he knows. The needed strength is found in Christ.

122 To this thought of judgment James adds the necessity of walking according to grace. "He shall have judgment without mercy who hath shewed no mercy." The Lord had already established this principle, that sins should be forgiven to him who forgives. If the spirit of grace is not in the heart, we cannot be sharers in that grace which God has manifested towards man. According to the government of God, he who does not act with mercy in the details of this life may taste the severe chastisement of God; for God finds His delight in goodness and in love.

Now he insists upon works - an important part of this epistle - not that in itself it is more important than other parts, but it becomes so on account of the many reasonings of men.

The principle that love has to be shewn, not in words but in deeds, introduces the question of works. The spirit of James is practical; he is occupied with the evil produced by a profession of Christianity without a practical life in accordance with this profession; and the two principles - that love should be real, and that faith should manifest itself by the works it produces - are mingled in his observations. "If one of you say, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled, notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit?" Certainly, this is not true Christian faith. Faith is a powerful principle, the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart, a spring which moves all the wheels of the heart, a principle which raises it above selfishness and all the base motives of the world, attaching its affections to Christ. Christ becomes our true motive; living in us, He is the source whence our actions flow, so that we walk as He walked. We are far behind Him indeed, but the principle of our life is the same; it is He Himself who lives in us.

It is evident then that true faith works by love, and produces good deeds; it cannot be otherwise. But we have still another principle in this passage, which is expressed in the words, "shew me." It is clear that faith is a principle hidden in the heart, it cannot be seen; even as the root which causes the plant to grow and bring forth fruit is not seen, though it draws nourishment from the soil, as faith draws from Christ. As without the root the plant cannot bring forth fruit, so without faith good works cannot be produced. Some things outwardly good may be done without having any value. Much may be given, much may be done, without true love, without faith; but a life of love which follows Christ, and does His will, because it is His will, not seeking anything else, cannot be without faith. Now the one who claims to possess faith owns that it alone is good, or can produce what is good.

123 James therefore says: "Shew me thy faith without works." But this is impossible. It is plain that it is a hidden principle in the heart, a simple profession without any reality: yet we need not always connect this with hypocrisy, because education, the influences which surround us, and external evidence, may produce as a habit of mind belief in Christianity, and its fundamental doctrines. But in such faith there is no link with Christ, no source of eternal life. A man may not be openly unbelieving, he honours the name of Christ, but such faith produces nothing in the heart: Christ cannot trust it. See John 2: 23-25.

When true faith, the effect of grace by the action of the Holy Spirit, is produced in the heart, there is felt at once a personal need of Christ, of possessing Him for oneself, of hearing His voice. We find this in the case of Nicodemus. He goes in search of Christ; and, mark well, he quickly feels that the world is against him, and so he goes by night.

Now, as true faith cannot be seen, he who claims to possess it, has nothing to reply to him who says, "Shew me thy faith." But he who has genuine works of love cannot have them without faith, which is the divine motive power of Christian life in the heart, working patience, purity, love, and separation from the world, whilst walking through it. We cannot move without a spring. The faith which truly looks to Christ, and finds all in Him, manifests itself in this life, which is the life of faith.

It is a question of shewing faith, and to whom? To God? No surely. It is "shew me," that is, man who cannot see the heart as God sees it. The whole reasoning of James, all its force and meaning, is in this word, "Shew me." He does not speak to us of peace of conscience, being justified by faith because the Lord, the beloved and precious Saviour has borne our sins, being given for our offences. Faith believes in the efficacy of the work of Christ, it knows that God has received it, has accepted it as a perfect satisfaction for the sins of believers, a work which will never lose its value in the sight of God, there where Christ is gone in, not without blood that is to say, His own blood, where He always appears in the presence of God for us, set down at His right hand, because the whole work as regards our sins was finished upon the cross, according to the glory of God.

124 Here, on the contrary, James speaks of vain and empty faith of the profession of the name of Christ, of calling oneself a Christian, without having Christ in the heart: true faith shews itself by works, by fruit. It is seen from the fruit that the tree lives, that the root which draws its nourishment from Christ is there. The justification of the profession is made before men, to whom it must be shewn, by means of the fruits which are produced. When we closely examine the examples here given, we shall see plainly, that it is a question of the proofs of faith, not of good works in the ordinary sense of the term. Here faith is shewn by works in the same persons as those instanced by the apostle Paul: by the act of Abraham, who was ready to sacrifice his only and beloved son, when God required it of him; and by that of Rahab, who hid the spies and sent them away in peace, a witness of her faith. There can be nothing stronger than these instances. Not only was Isaac an only son, but in him all the promises of God were established, so that absolute confidence in God was called for. See Heb. 11: 17-19. Humanly, there is nothing good in slaying a son. In like manner Rahab was a traitress, unfaithful to her country, if we think of her act as a natural one. But she linked herself with the people of God, when His enemies were in full power, and when His people had not as yet gained a single victory, or so much as passed the Jordan.

Such is faith, which confides in God at whatever cost, and links itself with His people, when all is against them. Abraham's faith was simply faith in God and His word; but it was manifested absolutely, and without hesitation, when he offered up his beloved son, in whom all the promises were established. The faith of Rahab was also a simple faith in God, but it was displayed when she linked herself to the cause of God, when all the power was apparently on the other side: for God does not make Himself visible. In fact to call oneself a believer and to produce nothing, is not really faith. Faith realises its object, and the object produces its effect as a motive in the heart.

125 He who receives the word, is born again of incorruptible seed, is a partaker of the divine nature, and obedience, purity and love are reproduced. We have, it is true, still to overcome temptations and difficulties; we are not what we wish to be, nor even what we might be: still, more or less, the life does produce its fruits. And though the heart may through carelessness be sometimes unfaithful in the path, faith, nevertheless, always produces its own proper fruits. The Christian well knows, that the faith which produces nothing, is not true faith. Faith realises the presence and the love of God known in the new nature - it enjoys both, and reflects, though feebly, the character of Him in whom it inwardly delights. We are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

It is from faith, though it be human faith, and not that of the inner divine life, that everything is done, that does not find its motive in the purely animal instincts of our nature. Why does the husbandman sow his seed? Because he believes it will produce a harvest: it is thus as to everything except eating and drinking. In order to have divine faith, it is needful that the things of God should be revealed to the soul; this is the work of the Spirit of God. Faith in God is that which is acceptable to God: but such faith, we being quickened of God through His word, brings forth the fruits of divine life.

By means of this faith, we have fellowship with God, with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and He is not ashamed to call us His friends (John 15: 15); as Abraham was called the friend of God. In business with the world, we say what has to be said of the matter in hand, as courteously as we can; but this said, there is an end of it. With a friend, we open our minds, we speak of things that have no connection with business, of all that is in our hearts. God was not talking with Abraham of the promises made to himself, when he was called the friend of God; but He was telling him all His intentions as to the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him." It is beautiful to see the intimacy of communion with God, when the walk is in faithfulness before Him. See Gen. 18: 17-20.

126 The believer who was in Sodom was saved, though with the loss of everything; and he lived in disquietude and trouble, fearing the mountain where Abraham was (for the place of faith is always terrible to unbelief), fearing Zoar after he had seen the terrible overthrow of the other cities, and finally fleeing to the mountain of which he had been previously afraid, and living there in misery and shame.

We have in Abraham the picture of a believer who lives by faith; in Lot, that of a believer who takes the world, beautiful to the outward eye, for his dwelling-place: he inherits judgment, though he was saved; whilst as for Abraham, after that Lot was separated from him, God told him to lift up his eyes and behold all the land of promise, to realise its extent and to know that all was his.

Faith gives fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ; the participation and realisation of all that belongs to us. It is not to be wondered at, if this faith produces fruit according to God. God grant that we may live so close to Himself, that unseen things may act upon our hearts, and that we may go on in patience and with joy until the Lord come, who will introduce us there where we shall need faith no longer, but shall be in the full enjoyment of that which faith had believed, when the things themselves were not seen.

James 3.

James would have humility in speaking, and that we should not be many teachers. When we do not know ourselves, it is far easier to teach others than to govern self. Now the tongue is the most direct index of what is in the heart. We all fail in many things and if we assume to teach others, our offences are the more serious, and all the more deserve condemnation. Humility in the heart makes a man slow to speak: he waits rather to be taught, and for others to express their thoughts; he is more ready to learn than to teach.

With this exhortation, James begins an important dissertation on the dangers of the tongue. No one can tame it, it is in fact as I have said, the most immediate index to the heart. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Many people do more with the tongue by hard speeches, than they would do with the hand. Besides, light and empty words are often spoken.

127 James always desires that the will should be bridled, that we should not be self-confident, and that the lightness of the flesh should be held in check by the fear of God. And first, he would not have the Christian lightly put himself forward to teach, nor that there should be many teachers, knowing they would receive the greater condemnation. Love prompts to build up the brethren, and the Spirit leads the lowly in the exercise of their gifts. But it may be that a Christian likes to make himself heard, that he is not lowly, that he speaks because he has confidence in himself. Now this is not brotherly love, but rather love of self.

Moreover, we all fail in many things, and if we teach others, or at least assume to do so, we are clearly more responsible and our faults become more serious. How teach others, when we know not how to walk in faithfulness ourselves? This is not the fear of God. If the conscience is not good before Him, we cannot possibly set forth His grace and truth in His power, for we are not in His presence and He is not with us. The first effect of His presence would be to arouse the conscience. He who teaches ought to maintain true and deep humility, and to watch that he may not stumble in his path.

Such a spirit of humility is not lack of confidence in God; it is on the contrary linked with this confidence. The humble one will not say to the Lord: I know thee that thou art a hard man. But he has no confidence in self, he speaks only when it is the will of God; then he speaks in the power of His Spirit. He is slow to speak, he waits for God, that he may do it with Him.

Some other important truths are connected with these words. And first, we all offend in many things. He who calls himself perfect deceives himself. This does not necessarily mean that we commit any scandalous offences, but we do and say what is wrong in the sight of God. Our speech is not always with grace, seasoned with salt: failure is found in it. We cannot excuse ourselves, for the Lord has said, "My grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is made perfect in weakness," nevertheless we fail, sad as it is, and we are compelled to own it, if we are walking with God; grace will make us feel and own it, and we shall walk more closely with Him, with more watchfulness and lowliness, and in greater realised dependence upon Him.

128 But we find yet another truth in these words. The exhortation would not have been needful, had not the liberty to speak, when God willed it, belonged to all the brethren according to their gift, and according to the direction of the word, since such directions are found in it. If one person had been appointed to speak, such an exhortation would have been quite useless.

Thus there is a moral exhortation to humility, quietness, distrust of self, and the fear of God; for the danger of offending and our responsibility are spoken of. The passage also excludes any thought of ministry by one person only in the assembly. It is not here questioned that a single individual may exercise a ministry which God has confided to him - on the contrary, such a ministry is permitted to any to whom the Lord has imparted the needful gift - only under the direction of the word. The activity of the flesh is rebuked, and the liberty of the Holy Ghost is set forth. The Lord makes use of each one as seems good to Him; whether by those permanent gifts of teacher, pastor, and evangelist, which are to continue with us to the end, or by the ministry of each member in the place where God has set it.

Now what is said as to offending, leads to a continuation of the discourse concerning the tongue; that most direct index to the heart, which is so easily set in motion, and which follows every impulse of the heart. All things, even wild beasts and serpents, have been tamed; but the tongue can no man tame, it is full of deadly poison. This is very strong, but alas! it is very true: nevertheless, let us remember that if the flesh is practically held for dead, and we are living by the Spirit, the tongue will become the expression of His impulses, or there will be silence, because grace has nothing to say.

Many according to the flesh would avoid giving a blow, who cannot restrain a passionate or hard word against a neighbour. But if no man can restrain the tongue, the grace of Christ can do it, for the inner man on one side is under the yoke of the Lord, and is meek and lowly in heart: Christ fills the heart, and thus precisely because the tongue follows the impulses of the heart, the speech will express this meekness and lowliness. For this, it is needful that Christ alone should dwell there, and the flesh be so held in check, that when temptation comes it may not stir. It is difficult not to fail, but it is very useful to see that the tongue shews what is working within, just as the hands of a clock shew the hidden workings of its wheels.

129 Such is the beautiful portrait of divine wisdom. It is well to note how James always desires that self-will should be silent, in order that we may be capable of doing the will of God, and, as partakers of the divine nature, of manifesting His character - the character of Christ, God manifest in flesh. He came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. He ever submitted Himself even to wrongs and injustice, doing good and walking in calmness and love. To do well, to suffer, and take it patiently, this (says Peter) is acceptable to God. Love is free when self is dead. We walk in peace, we make peace, and the fruits of righteousness in peace are sown for them that make peace. (It is thus I understand these few words.) "Blessed are the peace-makers; for they shall be called the children of God." It is a reproduction, in the walk of a man, of the peace and love of God as it was manifested in Christ down here.

James 4.

Having commended the spirit of peace in the Christian's ways, James now asks, "From whence come wars and fightings among you." But here we must inquire what is meant by "among you." It is not necessarily among Christians. Meekness of wisdom, wisdom that is gentle and easy to be entreated, became them. But, as we have seen, they found themselves still in the midst of the twelve tribes, who are, I doubt not, included in this "among you." And the Christians might find themselves implicated in these disputes, so that the exhortation is addressed to them also. These fightings came from their pleasures; the will was unbroken, lust distracted their hearts; they desired to have what they did not possess; conscience was silent, overpowered by lust, and the desires (unchecked by the will) gave the rein to the passions: "Ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war, and yet ye have not."

Dependence on God was forgotten; will acted for itself; they did not ask of God, or if they asked, it was but with the desire to make God Himself the servant of their pleasures. God does not respond to such prayers. Sad state of man! God was forgotten, and still worse, the heart was the slave of pleasure, and under the yoke of its passions, far from peace and quietness: war within, and open sin without, afar from God in the world - this passing scene in which such desires find their sphere - or, at least, if God was known, He was forgotten by their rebellious hearts. Therefore the friendship of the world is enmity with God. Such a Christian, conformed to the world, forgets that he is purged from his old sins. He walks in forgetfulness of God, in the path of the unbeliever, and conscience retreats driven back by lust. When he asks of God he does not receive, because he asks, as a worldling might, to spend it on his pleasures.

130 We need not suppose that all those whom James calls "adulterers and adulteresses" were actually such. Many were really such sinners in the world; and others, even though Christians, walked in the same spirit of unfaithfulness to God, and gave the rein to their pleasures, walking with the world. This, surely, is not the path of the Christian; but when he abandons the ways of God and finds himself mixed up with the world, he is often ashamed of his Christianity, he dares not confess the Saviour's name. Then conscience becomes hardened, and thus he becomes like the world or worse, having overleaped every barrier. Satan rejoices then to see the name of Christ dishonoured by those who bear it.

Now a principle of great importance is found in this passage, "The friendship of the world is enmity with God; whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." Powerful testimony! which judges the walk and searches the heart. The world's true character has now been manifested, because it has rejected and crucified the Son of God. Man has been already tried without law, and under law, but after he had shewn himself to be wholly evil without law, and had broken the law when he had received it, then God Himself came in grace; He became man in order to bring the love of God home to the heart of man, having taken human nature. It was the final test of man's heart. He came not to impute sin to them, but to reconcile the world to Himself. But the world would not receive Him; and it has shewn that it is under the power of Satan and of darkness. It has seen and hated both Him and His Father.

The world is ever the same world: Satan is its prince; and all that is in it, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. The heart of man, the flesh, has since the fall been always enmity against God. It is often thought and said that, since the death of Christ, Satan is no longer the prince of this world; but it was precisely then that he declared himself as its prince, leading on all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, to crucify the Saviour. And although men now bear the name of Christ, the opposition of the world to His authority remains the same.

131 Only observe and see if the name of Christ is not dishonoured. Man may indeed be taught to honour it, but it is none the less true that where he finds his enjoyment, where his will is free, he shuts out Christ, lest He should come in and spoil his pleasures. If left alone, he does not think of Him; he does not like to be spoken to of the Saviour, he sees no beauty in Him that he should desire Him. Man likes to do his own will, and he does not want the Lord to come and oppose it; he prefers vanity and pleasures.

We have the true history of the world and its practical principles in Cain. He had slain his brother, and was cast out of the presence of God, despairing of grace and refusing to humble himself. By the judgment of God, he was made a vagabond on the earth; but such a condition did not suit him. He settled down where God had made him a vagabond, and he called the city after the name of his son to perpetuate the greatness of his family.

That this city should be deprived of all the delights of life would have been unbearable; therefore he multiplied riches for his son. Then another member of the family invented instruments of music; another was the instructor of artificers in brass and iron. The world being cast out from God sought to make its position pleasant without God, to content itself at a distance from Him. By the coming of Christ the state of man's heart was manifested, not only as seeking the pleasures of the flesh, but as being enmity against God. However great His goodness, it would not be disturbed in the enjoyment of the pleasures of the world, nor submit itself to the authority of another; it would have the world, for itself, fighting to obtain it, and snatching it from the hands of those who possessed it. Now it is evident that the friendship of this world is enmity with God. As far as in them lay, they cast God out of the world, and drove Him away. Man desires to be great in this world; we know that the world has crucified the Son of God, that it saw no beauty in the One in whom God finds all His delight.

132 The scripture says, "Does the Spirit which has taken his abode in us desire enviously?" On the contrary - and herein is found the means of overcoming it - "God giveth more grace, he resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." This is the true secret of strength and victory, and likewise of peace of heart, in the midst of the difficulties and contrarieties of the world.

James again insists on humility; that man's will should be broken, and that he should be subject to God. For obedience, and having no will of one's own, is true humility; and to this the goodness and grace of God invites man. Confidence in God leads the soul to submit itself to Him. This is both a duty and a necessity, but it is done heartily where confidence exists. It is the truth of our relationship with God, and the soul is happy. We do not need to have a will for ourselves; if God who loves us has a will for us in all things, we ought to commit ourselves to Him. What grace that the omnipotent God should be always thinking of us in all the details of our lives!

The devil is an enemy; he tries to deceive us, he lays snares, he seeks to act upon us by means of our lusts. He may also indeed raise persecution to arrest us in the path of faith, but in ordinary life he deceives us by the things that suit the flesh.

If we are persecuted, it is our glory. "To you," says the apostle, "it is given . . . not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." But this danger from the will of Satan is constant; it is continually around us. The important thing is that, living after the new man and in communion with God, we should be able to discern the deceit of Satan, which is never obedience to the will of God. Very possible the evil may not be apparent. When Satan suggested to the Lord that He should make bread of the stones and eat, it was not apparent evil. To eat when hungry does not seem a wicked thing; but it would not have been obedience. Satan could do nothing. To eat simply because one is hungry is an animal action, which does not refer to God. We ought to do everything, even eating, in the name of Christ, giving thanks to God. Everything is sanctified to us if we realise the presence of God.

133 Satan then cannot hide himself, if in obedience we resist; he flees, conscious that he has met the One who overcame him - Christ in us. The word of God suffices to make us walk in a path, in which Satan has no power, where he is compelled to leave us, in which also we detect his deceit, and discern that he is the enemy. The Saviour walked thus; He quoted the word of God, and the devil was silenced, and sought to deceive Him by other means; he did not openly shew himself, but the perfect obedience of Jesus made his snares powerless. When Satan shewed himself to be such, offering Him the glory of the world, Jesus commands him to depart, and he goes. The Lord's path is ours, His strength is ours, and if we walk with Him in obedience, His wisdom will be ours: only He has already overcome the tempter. The difficulty is, so to walk in communion with Him, as to discern the deception. We must have the whole armour of God.

In short, if the presence of God is realised in the heart, if the Spirit of God rules there, and the sense of dependence is active in the soul, we shall feel that what the enemy presents to us is not of God, and the will of the new man will not desire it. Satan once detected, the new man resists him, and he has no strength. Jesus has overcome him for us. We learn here that, if we resist him, he will flee; he finds that he has met the Spirit of Christ in us, and he flees. The evil is, that we do not always resist him; we accept his enticements, because the will of God is not everything to us: in many things we still like to please ourselves. If grace is known, obedience and dependence guard us from the wiles of the devil. He has no power against the resistance of faith; he is manifested as Satan, the adversary, as he was when Jesus suffered Himself to be tempted for us, and Satan fled before His resistance. He knows it is the same One whom he meets in us.

This is not the place to speak of the armour of God, yet a few words as to it may be useful. With the exception of the sword, all refers to the state of the soul. The effect of the truth to keep the soul in order, its affections regulated, and conscience having its due power according to the will of God; the breastplate of practical righteousness, so that conscience is good: in the path, the feet must be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace - that is, the behaviour bearing the stamp of that peace which we enjoy in Christ; then, confidence in God, which these things produce, and which prevents the suggestions of the wicked one from reaching us. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" We shall not be wounded by the fiery darts of the enemy; doubts and evil thoughts about God will find no entrance into the heart; then the certainty of salvation, which enables us to lift up the head in battle with the enemy. Then we can take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and use it in the conflict; shielded by the armour of God from the enemy's assaults, we can be active in employing the word in the service of the Lord, though ever dependent upon His help. This dependence expresses itself in prayers and supplications. Let us then resist the devil, and he will flee from us.

134 Verse 8. Let us "draw near to God, and he will draw near to us." In this is shewn the active dependence of the heart. Thanks be to God, we can draw near to Him! His throne is for us a throne of grace: we may come into His presence without fear, because of His love, and enter into the holiest by the precious blood of Christ. When near Him, we learn holiness, we discern His will, the eye sees clearly in this pure atmosphere; the heart is subject; the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. They walk with God, but as taught of God, and the whole body is full of light. Then He is with us, He draws near to us, He inspires us with confidence. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" says the apostle. It is not only that the strength of God is with us, but His presence produces liberty and confidence in our hearts, for we feel that we have the knowledge of His will, since He is with us. The sense of His presence gives joy, calmness, and courage, in presence of the enemy, and in the difficulties of the way we rest in Him. "Thou wilt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man; thou wilt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." The presence of God, a true and real thing for the heart, keeps the conscience awake, and the heart filled with quiet confidence. Draw near unto Him.

But to do this, the hands must be cleansed, and the heart purified, that in nothing we may be double-minded. God is light, He will have purity and integrity in the inner man. Full of goodness and condescension, He is swift to help the weak, but He closes His ears to all who are double in heart. He looks for a pure walk and a sincere heart in those who seek to draw near Him. It cannot be otherwise; He  holds Himself aloof from those whose hearts are not open in His presence; He sees everything, but for Him to hearken, the heart must be sincere.

135 James also touches upon the foolish joy of this world, which leads to eternal ruin, and he calls on those who have ears to hear, to be afflicted, to mourn, and weep, and to change their laughter into mourning. The heart that has intelligence, that thinks of others, and is stirred by love - the Christian, who partakes of the Spirit and thus of the mind of Christ, will have a sense of the moral and actual misery that is around him. He will have joy in Christ, but sorrow as to the condition of men of the world.

Sin has made the world unhappy and miserable; it is itself the greatest of all miseries and one sees on all sides the ills it has brought in. Nevertheless the heart will feel the love of God in the midst of all; it will rejoice in eternal salvation, and in His goodness which has obtained it. It will also rejoice in the daily mercies of God; but this will not be the foolish joy of the world, which seeks to hide its emptiness, and with laughter to stifle the sense of its misery. Now in solitude, emptiness, and often pain, makes itself felt, which in the company of others is forgotten in laughter. Men do not like to burden others; they must make them believe they are happy. The world cannot be real with itself; yet sorrow and affliction are but too real. The Lord could weep but not laugh; Christian love and feeling follow His example; they follow it heartily, and from a like feeling. James desires that worldly joy should give place to Christian feelings, sentiments of love, and wisdom. Moreover, in chapter 5, we see that judgment is soon to put an end to the false joy of the world. Here the exhortation is moral; there it refers to the cutting short of this joy by the hand of the Lord.

Then he exhorts them to humble themselves in the sight of the Lord and He would lift them up. It is what Christ did (Phil. 2), and He has said, "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humility becomes man; it becomes his littleness before God, in the sense of the greatness of His grace, and of all that man is in himself. The great glory which the believer waits for is also the occasion of humility to him when he considers his unworthiness: he knows that he can understand and do nothing in divine things without God.

136 But James, having in his thoughts the pride and haughtiness of the spirit of the world, which is also in the Christian, desires not only humility, but the humbling of self. If one is humble, there is no need to humble oneself; but in reality the spirit of man rises up again so easily, that we do need to humble ourselves, and to realise the presence of God. In His presence we are always humble; we have the sense of our own littleness; we think of Him, not of ourselves. To exalt the proud would only be to encourage that pride which becomes neither sinful man nor pious man; moreover, piety and pride cannot exist together. But God delights in exalting the humble, and such an exaltation, coming as it does from God, is a source of gratitude and joy, not of pride. The heart is with God in the sense of His goodness.

Remark, that the humbling oneself is in the sight of the Lord, not of men - a real inward work which destroys self-esteem; realising the presence and the greatness of God, it gives Him His true place in the heart, and gives us ours also. Then all is real, and then alone we can act for God according to truth. Verses 9, 10 are the effect of the realised presence of God in a world of sin and misery, on a heart which is there, and which feels both the one and the other.

"Speak not evil," says our epistle, "one of another"; a formal precept, which ought to restrain many tongues if they were obedient, and which would put an end to much evil. Love would not do it; but as we have seen, the tongue is a fatal evil, full of deadly poison, and it kindles a great matter.

But there is more. He who speaks evil of his brother, and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law, and judges the law. For the law, on the part of God, presents our brother to us as an object of love and affection, not to be persecuted, ill-treated, and disparaged in the eyes of others. By so doing, we forget the place in which the law has set our brother, and our duty according to the law, and our position as brethren. If we set ourselves as judges and law-givers over the law, we transgress it, we do not obey it, nor follow its precepts; but we assume to be above it. There is one Lawgiver and Judge who is able to save and to destroy. Who are we that we should judge one another?

The word again condemns false confidence as to the intentions of our own hearts. The heart of man afar from God thinks to direct his own steps, and decides what he will do, without thinking of the will of God, or even of God at all. Possibly the thing intended may not be evil, it may not wound conscience, nor make it uneasy; but God is entirely forgotten; the man acts without God, as though the earth had been left to man, and God had withdrawn, and as though His will counted for nothing. Such a man, as far as regards religion, in the practical things of everyday life, lives in atheism. God is not in his thoughts; money and worldly ambition govern his heart, though he may not be exactly living in sinful pleasures. He has no sense that he belongs to God - bought, if he be a Christian, with the precious blood of Christ. He lays out his plans according to his own will, his own wisdom, and his worldly interests. God has no place in them, he is without God in the world, he seeks earthly things, and truly it is not in them that God is to be found. It is according to the will of God that we should labour to obtain what is necessary, and His blessing can be sought because it is His will. But this is not the question here. James speaks of one who would dispose of his time, and go and seek gain for himself without thinking of God, or looking to Him for guidance and the manifestation of His will. He does not know what the morrow will bring forth; he does not know whether his life will be prolonged until the next day; it is as a vapour which vanishes away. Such is life down here. It becomes us to say, "If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this or that."

137 James always and everywhere opposes the pretensions of man's will; he would have the will broken, that man may take his true place, and be in his true condition of obedience and subjection. God must have his place and man must be dependent and obedient. All the activity and all the pretensions of man's will are evil.

Another important principle is found at the end of this chapter. Man's own will is always evil. Where there is the knowledge of good, the heart, or at least the state of man is evil, if he does it not. Grace and love are lacking. To seek self-interest, to do one's own will, to satisfy one's own desires, characterises the natural man. To do good, to seek the good of others, and to serve them, is the fruit of love. Now, if, when there is the knowledge of what is good, and the opportunity of doing it occurs, man does it not, it is a sign that the heart is evil; love for others, and the desire to do good is lacking. Not to do good is sin; it shews the absence of grace and the activity of the natural will.

138 James 5.

The portion of believers is not in this world. Christ has won them for Himself, that they should be in His likeness in glory, co-heirs with Him; for His love would have them enjoy all that He Himself enjoys. His love is perfect. But if so, they must suffer with Him. If it is given to us to suffer for Him, it is a great privilege, but it is not the portion of all. Nevertheless all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution; 2 Tim. 3: 12.

But it is impossible to escape suffering with Him; if we have the Spirit of Christ, we feel as Christ felt. Holiness suffers at the sight of the sin which is around, and in seeing the condition of the church of God and of His people; besides which there is sorrow on all sides, and the need of souls who will not have Christ or salvation. Each one ought to take up his cross, and besides this, God permits us to suffer, because in so doing, we learn patience, and that our inheritance is not below. Experience, which is the realisation of practical truth, is confirmed in the heart, and hope becomes much clearer and stronger. This, it is true, supposes that the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost; and if this is not the case, God allows suffering, and also sends it, to renew the heart. He chastens whom He loves.

James addresses the rich, who have possessions in this world, and who do not consider the poor, whilst "blessed is the man that considereth the poor," Psalm 41: 1. He who despises the poor because of his poverty despises the Lord Himself. "As for me," says the Lord, in the psalm preceding the one from which I have quoted, "I am poor and needy," Psalm 40: 17. The Lord had pronounced His blessing upon the poor; to such the gospel was preached; it was a sign announcing the Messiah. We all know that a poor man may be just as wicked as any other; but riches are a positive danger for us, because they nourish pride, and tend to dispose the heart to keep aloof from the poor, with whom the Lord associated Himself in this world. "He who was rich for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich."

139 But here the rich had been foremost in evil. They oppressed the poor, they kept back from them the wages for which they had laboured. James places us in view of the last days. The cry of the poor had entered into the ears of the Lord of hosts. He exhorts the rich to weep and howl for the miseries that should come upon them. They had lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton. But not only this: when we live in pleasure, we do not like anyone to come and disturb our happiness - they had condemned and killed the Just, who had not resisted. They wished to secure the enjoyment of the world in a false tranquillity, which thinks neither of God, nor of judgment, nor of death.

If conscience was aroused, they were disturbed, and they hardened themselves as far as possible, that it might not be aroused.

God does not for the present alter the course of this world. If He did so, He must execute judgment, instead of working in love for the ungodly and sinners. He is not willing to smite them, nevertheless He is not slack concerning His promise, but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish. The Christian then must take courage, must be patient and submissive to outward evil, until the coming of the Lord; even as Christ Himself, who did well, and suffered, and waited patiently; thus the Christian should walk in His steps. Our portion is not in this world. If we suffer for well-doing, this is acceptable to God, and still more so, if it is for Christ Himself that we suffer.

The life of the Saviour was all suffering and patience; but now He is glorified with God the Father. Soon He will come a second time into the world, in the glory of the Father, and in His own glory, and in the glory of the angels; and then He will be glorified in His saints, and will be admired in all them that believe.

In that glorious day, when the poorest of His own - Christians, oppressed by the enemies of the truth - will be like the Lord Himself in glory, we shall make our boast in having been permitted to suffer for Him, and in having maintained patience and silence through the unjustly imposed sufferings of the Christian life. Then, "blessed are they who are found watching; he will gird himself, and will make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." What joy! What grace! It will be the glory of the Saviour Himself to give us to enjoy the blessings of heaven in the Father's house, ministering all with His own hands. It is well worth while to suffer for Him a little, and for a little while, and then to possess heavenly blessing, communicated by the hand and the heart of Jesus Himself. We shall reign with Him, and enjoy the fruit of the work which we have been permitted to do for Him; if it is only a cup of water given in the name of Jesus, it shall not lose its reward. But far better still will it be to sit down in peace, enjoying those eternal blessings in the Father's house, which Christ will abundantly minister to us - precious testimony of His approval and of His love. See Luke 12: 35-44.

140 Remark here how the coming of Christ was a present hope. The oppressed one was to have patience until that coming. "Be patient," says James, "until the coming of the Lord." Some one may say, then they were deceived. By no means. We may indeed die before the Lord's coming, and in fact, we know that these saints did die. But they will reap all the fruits of their patience, when the Lord comes. And till that moment they are with the Lord - absent from the body, present with the Lord - and they will come with Him, and will then enjoy all the fruit of those sufferings, in which they had been patient, for the love of His name, seeking to glorify it down here.

But this exhortation clearly shews how this hope was a present thing, which was interwoven with the entire thread of Christian life. It was not a theory in the head, a point of acquired knowledge, or a dogma of belief only. They expected the Lord in person. What consolation for the poor and the oppressed! What a check upon the rich to be constantly expecting the Lord! To know that He will soon come, that troubles will cease, and that we shall be with Him who has loved us! Nothing produces separation from the world like waiting for the Lord - I do not say the doctrine of His coming, but true waiting for Him. His coming will separate us from it for ever; the heart waits until He come.

The Lord's supper expresses the Christian state - the Lord's death at His first coming, which we celebrate with thanksgiving, remembering Him who has loved us, and feeding on His love until He comes to take us to be with Him. It is the formal expression of the practical state of the Christian as a Christian - of Christianity itself. Let us add, that it is by the Holy Spirit alone that we are able to express this in truth.

141 But remark yet another thing in this exhortation. "Be patient, brethren." We are always waiting for the Lord, if we really understand our position; but whatever may be our desires, we cannot command the Lord to come, nor know when He will come. And blessed be His name! the Lord is patient; as long as there is yet one soul to be called by the gospel, He will not come. His whole body, His bride, must be formed; every member must be present, converted and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Then He will come and take us. Christ Himself is seated on the Father's throne, not on His own throne. He also is waiting for that moment, with more desire surely than we are; and therefore the patience of Christ is spoken of: this is the true meaning of Revelation 1: 9. Thus also in Revelation 3: 10, "because thou hast kept the word of my patience"; also in 2 Thessalonians 3: 5, "the patience of Christ."

We are taught also in Hebrews 10: 12, 13, that Christ is seated at the right hand of God, waiting till His enemies shall be made His footstool. We may well wait if Christ is waiting; but we wait in suffering and conflict. He is waiting to reign, and then He will cause full blessing to flow forth for His own, whether in heaven or on earth, and will banish evil from both.

Thus we need patience, that neither self-will nor weariness of the conflict should take possession of our souls; but in the confidence that the time God wills is best (for it is that which divine wisdom and His love for us have ordained) let us fix our affections on the Lord and on things above, because we wait for Him with desire of heart, with broken will, and unwavering faith, leaving His return to the decision of God. In fact we cannot retard it, but the heart has entire confidence in His love, assured that the Lord waits for us with greater love than we for Him, calm in confidence, patient in the wilderness journey. How sweet to wait for Christ - for the fulness of joy with Him! Thanks be to God, He says, "it is at hand."

Moreover, James draws two practical consequences from this expectation of the Lord. First, then we ought not to resist evil; the Just One did not resist. We must wait with patience, as the husbandman waits for the precious fruits of the earth, until he have received the early and the latter rain, the means which God uses to bring the fruit of harvest to perfection. The Christian should stablish his heart by this expectation, while passing through the troubles of this life, and the persecutions of the world, which is ever the adversary of the Lord.

142 Next, he warns the disciples against walking in a complaining and quarrelsome spirit, one toward another. If we are waiting for the Lord, the spirit is calm and contented, it does not get irritated with its persecutors; moreover, we bear with patience the ills of the desert, and resist evil as Christ resisted, suffering, and bearing wrongs and committing Himself to God. We are contented and quiet, with a happy and kindly spirit, for kindness flows easily from a happy heart. The Lord's coming will put everything right, and our happiness is found elsewhere. This is what Paul says in Philippians 4: 5: "Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand." Let us repeat it. How real, how mighty and practical, was this expectation of the Lord! What power it had over the heart! "The Judge standeth before the door."

Then he gives examples. The prophets were examples of suffering affliction, and of patience, and they counted them happy in their sufferings. And they have not been alone; others also have endured, and have been counted happy. For example, if we see one suffering unjustly for the name of Jesus, and he is patient and meek, his heart called out on behalf of his persecutors, rather than irritated against them, then we recognise the power of faith, and of confidence in the love and faithfulness of the Lord; he is calm and full of joy, and we say, See how grace makes that man happy! And we too are happy when we suffer; at least, we ought to be so. But it is one thing to admire others who are sustained by the Spirit of Christ, and another to glory in tribulations, when we are in them ourselves. We need a broken will, confidence in God, communion with Him who has suffered for us, in order to be able to glory in sufferings.

Job is another example; but he is introduced here, to shew the end of the Lord, that He is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. Yet the example is most instructive. Job was a perfect and upright man, who feared God and eschewed evil; but he had begun to take pleasure in himself; he did good, but he was occupied with his goodness; it was hidden self-righteousness, but it marred his piety. God withdraws not His eyes from the righteous. He saw Job's danger, and drew Satan's attention to him. It was God who began all. Satan, the accuser of the saints, insists that Job should be sifted, and God permits him to tempt Job, to do as he would with him, but sets a limit to his malice. Satan did all that he was allowed to do, and Job remained subject, and did not sin with his lips. Satan persists in his accusations, insinuating that, if the trial were increased, Job would curse God. God gave all into his hand except Job's life. Job remained faithful; he did not sin; he had received good at the Lord's hand, and should he not receive evil? His wife also tempted him in vain.

143 Through grace Job's patience triumphed over Satan, who was unable to shake him. Through the grace of God, the efforts of the enemy were overcome: "We have heard of the patience of Job." But the work of God for Job's blessing was not yet accomplished. He had by His grace sustained Job's heart against the enemy, and Job had shewn his faithfulness. Satan, as the instrument of God's ways, had done much through the sorrow he had brought upon Job; but Job's heart was not yet reached; he did not know himself; on the contrary, although the preparation had been wrought by means of Satan, Job was, by the grace of God, practically justified from his accusations, and if the matter had ended there, his state would have been worse than before - at least he would have been in greater danger than ever; he could have said, I was meek and upright in prosperity, and now patient in adversity. God must do His work, in order that Job might know his own heart.

Job's friends come to see him. They remain seated, amazed at the condition in which they find him. Alas! pride is often roused in the presence of man, and wounded pride irritates the heart; firmness gives way in the presence of sympathy. However that may be, the presence of his friends lays bare the depth of Job's heart. He curses the day of his birth. Now his heart is laid bare, not only to God, which it always must be, but - which is so deeply painful - to himself. Where is now his gracious meekness? He contends with God; he says he is more righteous than God. Nevertheless it is beautiful to see that at the bottom of his heart he had just thoughts of God. If I could meet Him, he says to his friends, He would not be like you, He would put words into my mouth. His friends alleged this world to be a perfect display of God's government, and that consequently Job must be a hypocrite; for he had made a profession of piety. Job resists this unjust decision, and insists that, although the hand of God was occasionally manifested, yet evil often ran its course in the world, God taking no notice of it, for the wicked often prospered. But Job allowed the bitterness of his heart to come out. Elihu reproves him for making himself more righteous than God, shewing that there is indeed a government of God over His own. He withdraws not His eyes from the righteous; He chastens because He loves them. Then God manifests Himself, and shews Job the folly of contending with Him; upon which Job owns his vileness and his nothingness, and instead of saying, "When the eye saw me, it blessed me," he says, "Mine eye seeth thee, therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." He knows himself in the presence of God. After that God was able to bless him, and He did so more than at the first. This was "the end of the Lord." Job had been patient under the greatest afflictions and trials; God searched his heart, and then abundantly blessed him.

144 In verse 12 James continues the subject which forms the burden of his teaching. He will not have the will to act, nor the flesh to appear, but the activity of nature restrained, and the heart learning not to give way to those impulses of impatience to which it is so prone.

When a man swears, he allows this impatience of the heart to act; he forgets the glory and majesty of God, irreverently introducing His name with unbridled flesh to confirm an assertion, or to give force to a vow, or in His place he puts some creature whom he invests with the authority and power that belongs to God alone. The root of all is the unsubdued will and unbridled passions of man's heart. Only, with an intuitive sense of his impotency to ensure the fulfilment of his desires, he irreverently brings God in, or, as a heathen of old was wont to do, he introduces some creature practically deified for the occasion. It is not lust, but the unbridled impetuosity of the flesh (see Col. 3: 8), the irreverence, presumption, and independence of the man carried to its utmost extent.

Therefore James says, "Above all things." He would have us, in calmness and quietness, affirm what we have to say with a yes or a no, in the fear of God. It is of all importance, that we should hold in check the movements of nature. We should do it if we saw God before us; we should certainly do it in the presence of a man whom we wished to please. Now God is always present; therefore, to fail in this calmness and moderation is a proof that we have forgotten the presence of God.

145 Verse 13. James frees the mind from worldly habits. Men seek to deceive themselves by avoiding thought; they would foolishly forget the cares and troubles, from which they cannot escape, and amid which, thanks be to God, He gives a refuge to the heart in His love, and in the sense of His care for us. He would not have us insensible to the troubles of this life. God, who never withdraws His eyes from the righteous, sends them for our good. Even a sparrow does not fall to the ground without our Father - not only without the will of God, but not without that God who loves us as a tender Father, who may indeed chasten us, but who thinks upon us while chastening, in order to sanctify us, and to draw our hearts nearer to Himself.

By drawing near to God in affliction, the will is subdued, and the heart consoled and encouraged. God Himself is revealed to the soul, and works by His grace; and in the sense of His presence we say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted." And not only are we near to God, but we also open our hearts to Him. He would have us do so, for He is full of grace. He desires our confidence, not only that we may be subject to His will, but that we may present our cares to Him.

"Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus," Phil. 4: 6, 7. Paul is speaking here of cares, but comfort and rest are equally found there in affliction. "Who comforteth us," says the apostle, "in all our afflictions," and he appeals to God as "the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation." At Philippi they were filled with peace, through the consolation poured into their hearts. This may also be through circumstances; for Paul says, "God, who comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus," 2 Cor. 7: 6. He had been utterly cast down, because he had not met Titus, who had been sent to the Corinthians when they were walking very badly. He had abandoned the open door for the gospel at Troas, and his heart had even gone the length of regretting that he had written his first inspired epistle. His faith had sunk below the level of the power of God, which had impelled him to write it. Arrived in Macedonia, still on his way to meet Titus, though testifying to Christ as he went, his flesh had no rest; he says, "We were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears." God allowed the apostle to feel his weakness; but it is worth while to be afflicted, if God Himself becomes our comforter. Titus arrives bringing good tidings to the effect of his first epistle, and the apostle is full of joy. God often takes away the affliction itself and fills the soul with gladness, pouring His consolations into the heart which thus becomes more matured for communion with Himself and for heaven. In every case of affliction prayer is our resource; we own our dependence and we confide in His goodness. The heart draws near to Him, it tells out to Him its need and its sorrow, laying it down on the throne and the heart of God, who answers either by circumstances which make us happy, or by pouring in His consolation - an answer which is still more blessed than outward happiness - but ever by that which is best for us, acting according to His perfect love.

146 The pious heart, under the influence of grace, refers also to God in its joy. If the heart dwells only on the cause of its joy, this becomes a danger for it. But if God is a refuge in distress, so is He the portion of the soul in joy. When I have a subject of happiness, I tell my intimate friend, that he may rejoice with me, and this doubles my own joy. But in this passage there is something more; for the heart feels that God is the source of the blessing and the cause of the joy. Even when there is no special reason for rejoicing, the heart is happy, and the pious soul, living in communion with God, desires to have God with it in its joy. Moreover, if the soul gives itself up to joy, it becomes empty and light; the heart gets estranged from God, and folly takes possession of it. In trouble dependence upon God is realised, but in joy there is a danger of forgetting it, and joy often ends in a fall; at any rate, the flesh is then in activity, and God is forgotten. This exhortation of James, to mingle joy with piety, is therefore most important for the Christian.

If the thought of God is there, it expresses itself in psalms and thanksgivings to Him. God is present to us in our joy, and faith, communion, and spiritual power are increased by the sense of His goodness. Thus we apply ourselves to the toils of life, encouraged and strengthened through the sorrows of the wilderness, by a deeper conviction that God is for us.

147 Verse 14. The thought of affliction and joy leads James to another condition of the Christian, namely, sickness, which is often, though not always, the effect of the Lord's chastening. Sickness, as well as death, came in by sin; and we find it now throughout the whole course of man's history. But a sparrow falls not to the ground without God our Father, as the Lord says, and although these ills now belong to the natural condition of man, yet God uses them for the correction of His children. "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous," Job 36: 7. In either case, whether as ills natural to humanity, or the direct chastisement of God, God now makes use of sickness, when the heart, instead of considering all that happens to it with indifference, draws near to God, who thinks upon the sufferings of His own, and has respect to the submission and to the cry of those whom He chastens.

The prayer of faith heals the sick, and if the sickness is the consequence of sin, the sin which occasioned it shall be forgiven; the sufferer has owned the hand of God in his sickness, and God answers to the faith of him who prays. There are two kinds of forgiveness in the ways of God. Eternal justification - according to Romans 4 and Hebrews 10 - is the blessed portion of those who believe in the efficacy of the blood of Christ; that is to say, their sins are imputed to them no more. "Whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified." God took up the question of their sins at the cross, and He has made an end of them for ever; He will never remember them again. But there is also the government of God - the government of a Father, but of a holy Father who loves His children too well to allow them to walk badly.

When in the book of Job Elihu says that God withdraws not His eyes from the righteous, and shews the blessing which naturally flows from His favour, the effect of His goodness, he immediately goes on to speak of chastening - an explanation clearly of Job's case.

The Spirit of God here again supposes the possibility of such a case, speaking of my faults. But it is not always so. In Job 33 it is said that God speaks and seals their instruction, that He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He prevents the evil, as in Paul's case; 2 Cor. 12. He humbles man to prepare him for blessing. In every case He makes all things work together for good to those who love Him; Rom. 8: 28.

148 Now, if the will be not broken, we complain, and murmur, and lift ourselves up against God; but if the heart refers to Him, owning His hand, whether in suffering which is the natural heritage of sinful man (though it can never be apart from the hand and will of God), or in positive chastisement, or again, though it may not know why the suffering is sent, it turns to God, owns that its condition is the result of His will, and seeks the remedy in His grace, as subject to and dependent on His power and His will. Now the faith of true Christians alone can call down from above the answer and the blessing.

James no longer speaks of the synagogue, but of the assembly. There must be true faith, in order for blessing: now God has set blessing in the assembly of true believers; in His government and discipline it is found there for faith. When sin is openly manifested in such a way, that it can be said of one called a brother that he is a wicked person, it is the duty of the assembly to put him away from among themselves. The sins are bound upon the one who is thus put away. But if he humbles himself, and from the bottom of his heart owns his sin, then the assembly ought to restore him (2 Cor. 2); in this administrative sense, the sinner is pardoned, the bonds are loosed.

And this is valid for two or three who are gathered to the name of Christ in the unity and in the power of the Holy Ghost (Matt. 18); for it is by the Spirit alone that this can be done in reality. It must be done also by the assembly as such, not only because the promise belongs to it, but also that it may clear itself. It is to the assembly that the exhortation of 2 Corinthians 2: 7, 8, is addressed. The sanction of this solemn act is in the presence of Jesus according to His promise.

In this passage in our epistle, it is not a question of sins which draw upon the individual the judicial action of the assembly, but of the ways of God Himself, in the ordinary circumstances of life, and more especially as regards the chastening of God. Now the individual seeks the intervention of God, according to His grace, not viewing what has befallen him as an accident, but owning the hand of the Lord. The assembly is the place where He has set His name, and His blessing, and the general administration of His grace. Christ is there; and when the assembly was in order, the elders, those who watched over it, were sought by the sick person, in order that he might enjoy the grace and the blessing of God.

149 Nevertheless it was personal faith, which by prayer drew down the special blessing of heaven - "the prayer of faith," as it is said. The elders were but a sign of the special intervention of God, as we see in Mark 6: 13. There it was a miracle performed by those who were specially sent by Christ to do them, with power given for that purpose. Here it is the blessing of God in the bosom of the assembly, administered through its elders, if faith was there. The original order now exists no longer; but Christ does not forget His assembly. The promise of two or three gathered to His name, according to the unity of His Spirit, remains always sure; and if there is faith in those who watch over them, the answer of God will be found in a like way. Though we cannot expect that the blessing should flow in its natural current, when the channels are broken and spoiled, the case remains the same, and His power is unchangeable. It is precious to know it! When the Lord rebukes the disciples for their unbelief, He says at the same moment, "bring him to me": and the child was healed; Mark 9: 19.

Therefore James recalls the example of Elijah, who was a man of like passions with ourselves; yet in answer to his prayer it rained not for three years and six months. The external order of the assembly is lost, but the power, love, and faithfulness of the Lord are unchanged. He may let us feel that, through the sin of the assembly, we are not as we were at the beginning: nevertheless, where God gives faith, the answer on His part will never fail. That is not godliness, which does not feel the loss that has come upon us since the time of the apostles, through the unfaithfulness of the assembly; neither is it godliness to doubt the power of Christ, if God gives faith to make use of it.

When it is said, "if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him," it means, that when such a brother has come to himself, owning the hand of God, if sins have drawn upon him the chastisement of God, and have hindered the healing of the sickness, they shall be forgiven as regards the discipline of God in His government. This discipline had manifested itself in the chastening, that is to say, in the sickness: if this is removed, the discipline is ended, the sins are remitted.

But here we find another and more general instruction, which, however, also depends upon the state of the assembly. We have seen that, when all was in order, the sick person was to send for the elders; and this can still be done by calling for those who practically are elders. Only it is needful that faith wrought of God, and those acting on His part, should be there. But, whatever may be the state of ruin in which the assembly of God is found, we can always confess our faults one to another, and pray for one another, that we may be healed. This does not require the existence of official order, but it supposes humility, and brotherly confidence, and love.

150 We cannot indeed confess our faults without confidence in a brother's love. We may choose a wise and discreet brother (instead of opening our hearts to indiscreet persons), but this choice alters nothing as to the guilty person's state of soul. Not hiding the evil, but opening his heart, he frees his troubled conscience; perhaps also his body.

Truth is wrought in the heart; the guilty one does not seek a good reputation - which after all, can only be a false one - but an upright conscience, upright before God. God takes pleasure in setting the conscience at liberty; He also frees the body from the sickness if necessary; then the heart grows happy in the sense of His favour. A pure and upright conscience is a source of joy in God's presence.

It is most important to remember that there is a government of God with respect to His children. It is no question whether they are justified and forgiven; for this government supposes that they are righteous in His right, as to salvation; Job 36. But then the Lord ever keeps His eye upon them, blesses them, and makes them conscious of His favour when they are walking aright in the enjoyment of God. But if we do not walk aright, we are warned, and if we do not take heed to the voice of God, He chastens in order to arouse the soul that is falling asleep and has begun to forget God. And His goodness, His wondrous patience, His love for us, are never weary!

Verse 19. Finally, James adds an exhortation to encourage our hearts to seek the blessing of others. He who brings back a sinner from the error of his ways is not only the means of saving that soul, whether it be a sinner walking in his sins, or a Christian walking badly, but also of hiding a multitude of sins. That the soul of an unconverted man should be saved is simple; in the case of a Christian pursuing an evil way, he is at least arrested in the road which leads to perdition.

151 But this second point calls for a little more explanation, and it is not without importance. Sin is hateful in the sight of God; He sees everything. When we think of the state of the world, we understand how wonderful is His patience. Now the conversion of a sinner removes all his sins from before the eyes of God. As though they were cast into the depths of the sea, He sees them no more; as it is written. They are immediately cancelled. It is in this sense that "love covereth a multitude of sins." They are no longer there as an object hateful to God. If we do not forgive the sins of a brother, the enmity remains before God as a wound in the body of believers, something that is not healed. When forgiven, love is the object that presents itself before God - a thing pleasing to His heart. Thus when the sinner is converted - brought back, the love of God finds its pleasure in this, and the offending object is removed from His sight.

In the Epistle of James we find but little doctrine; it is rather the girdle of righteousness, the manifestation of faith in works, in the Christian character. Submission under the hand of God, and patience under His government, are developed in a way most useful to the Christian.

Notes on the Epistle of James

J. N. Darby.

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James addresses his epistle to the twelve tribes of Israel; but whilst owning the people that are beloved for the fathers' sake, he takes the ground of faith. "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes."

At the time this Epistle was written, the gospel, which was first preached in Judea, had produced great results amongst the Jews; many churches had been formed, multitudes of Jews had believed (Acts 21: 20), and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith; Acts 6: 7. In those early days the believing Jews still held to the old order of things, they were zealous of the law and some even offered sacrifices. Jerusalem itself was in a peculiar position; through the bringing in of Christianity and on account of the faith entrusted to the holy city at this the starting-time of the gospel, she was under fresh responsibility. But this privilege was lightly esteemed of her children, and was about to pass from her hands into those of the Gentiles. In the midst of these circumstances James, though having chiefly the believers in view, nevertheless writes his Epistle to the twelve tribes, the whole of Israel, giving a last warning before God severed the church from the Jewish system. James does not deal with Israel as Paul, who, when in conflict with the synagogue, would separate the disciples from it and at a distance continue the work of the gospel in favour of the Gentiles.

There is even a noticeable difference between the two apostles of the circumcision, namely, Peter and James, in the way in which they look upon Israel in their Epistles. Peter is occupied chiefly with the faithful remnant and views it in those who, among the Jews, had received the faith; he sees Israel only in this remnant, whilst James takes in the whole of the nation. Doubtless the faithful remnant therein comprised is the only living portion wherein the great truths of faith and life are realised, still James writes to the whole people. He looks upon the nation as under the favour of the promises of God, then being presented in the gospel.

As to doctrine, the Epistle of James sets forth as much as any other the great truths of the gospel of God; but it goes no farther than the first elements; we do not get unfolding of truth as in Paul. Nevertheless it does not follow that the things written in James are of less absolute authority. For instance, what more positive than this statement - "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creature?"

153 When reading these elements of the gospel, we are surprised at not finding therein all that the Spirit of adoption has revealed to us; but let us acknowledge that such unfoldings do not come within the scope of the Epistle, and moreover that the condition of those to whom it was written did not admit of such. If this Epistle does not shew all the riches of the revelation of the gospel, yet is it none the less useful as a girdle of righteousness, as a voice of warning which keeps the conscience awake. It requires that the faith and life of the Christian should be visible to the eyes of men by these effects. The Epistle of James is simple enough when we understand the circumstances of Christians in the midst of the Jews in those days when Christianity was not yet defined in all its points.

The level it maintains is that which may have been the moral state of the faithful in all ages; namely, God known by them according to His eternal truth, either outside or above the particular characteristics which the various revelations of Himself impressed upon them. Dispensations have differed, they have brought out in succession various characteristics of God; but God in Himself does not alter.

James 1.

Verses 2-15. From the outset James lowers man, he puts him in a place of dependence upon God, he sees him submitted to the trial of faith. But trial works its results; it bears the fruit of patience; it leads to the prayer of faith; it causes us to value a low degree, and lastly, makes us worthy of the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.

Verse 4. "But let patience have her perfect work." Patience sustains and enables us to wait according to God for the issue of the trial, without availing ourselves of speedy deliverance out of it, suggested by the flesh. For instance, Saul was not able to wait patiently.

Verse 5. "Let him ask of God." When trial comes the first resource of the Christian, as also the first motion of the new man, is prayer. God always hears the prayer of His saints. Thus strengthened from above, the Christian is enabled to go through the trial in the spirit of obedience. In Gethsemane Christ prayed before being in the trial; then in obedience He took the cup from the Father's hand. If we neglect prayer and the difficulties come upon us unawares, we enter into temptation and we fall. Peter slept when he should have prayed, drew the sword when he should have submitted, denied Jesus when he should have confessed Him. God "upbraideth not." God gives without reproaching our state.

154 Verse 6. "Let him ask in faith." God desires that we should cause our prayers to ascend in a spirit of confidence in His goodness.

Verses 9-11. A low degree is that in which alone God is willing to meet us in this world.

Verses 12-15. Trial (or temptation) may come to us from two sources: from God, when heart and faith are tested - "God tempted Abraham"; from the adversary when it reaches us through lust, and flesh is allured. How much better is it to have to do with God in the trial than with Satan!

Whoever knows himself will pray, "Lead us not into temptation." May the grace of God so work in us that we may not need to be sifted by Satan in order to be stripped of our pretensions. When Jesus prayed for Peter, whom He knew to be self-confident, He did not ask that His disciple might be spared the sifting of the enemy, but only that his faith should not fail him.

Verse 15. "When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin." Paul speaks in the inverse order in his Epistle to the Romans; chap. 7: 8. "Sin wrought in me all manner of lust." The difference between these two statements is this: Paul confines himself to spiritual principles; whilst James desires to shew their effects. One completes the other; sin, in the nature of man produces lust (Rom. 7), and lust produces sin in the conduct; James 1.

Verses 16-18. The Epistle of James acknowledges regeneration by the power of the grace of God, even as it owns also faith in Jesus (chap. 2: 1) - two fundamental truths of the gospel. "Begat he us with the word of truth," 1 Peter 1: 23-25; John 3.

"That we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." God will reconcile all things to Himself; His creation and His elect. We, the begotten of the Father, are the firstfruits of that reconciled creation. In a certain sense, Adam after his sin may be said to have been the firstfruits of fallen creation.

155 Verses 19-27. Patience and obedience are two practical graces, two of those perfect gifts which the Father gives and which He delights to see developed in us. The new life is always dependent: too much or too little energy is worthless. As soon as self-will manifests itself, as soon as the man wills, there is sin.

Verse 21. "The engrafted word." As a graft becomes an integral part of the subject into which it is engrafted, so the word becomes a part of the Christian. This is not the case with a law which remains a command outside of us. Let the word produce its effect in us, still its authority over us remains, an authority which is of God. The word builds up, enjoins, or condemns, as the case may be.

Verse 25. "The perfect law of liberty." In James, the divine nature in us is always seen to be in perfect conformity to the law of God. That nature loves what God enjoins. When it so happens that the person to whom a command is made desires to do the thing commanded, he is pleasing himself whilst obeying the command. Such is the law of liberty. We see it exemplified in Christ; in order to attempt the hindrance of His liberty, it would have been necessary to impede His obedience. So it is with the divine nature in the Christian, it is always free, that is to say, ready to do the will of God. The conflict of the Christian does not destroy this truth, the principle in such case being "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

Three laws are mentioned in James:

Firstly, the law of Moses in chapter 2: 10, 11.

Secondly, the royal law, which is love to one's neighbour in chapter 2: 8.

Thirdly, the perfect law of liberty, in chapter 1: 25; chap. 2: 12. The two last resemble each other.

Verse 26. "And bridleth not his tongue." The tongue is that which divulges most promptly the state of the soul. When abiding in the presence of God we have not an evil, or over-abundant, speech. "The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him," Hab. 2: 20.

156 Verse 27. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father." When abiding in subjection to God, life manifests itself, selfishness disappears, and we keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

James 2.

Verses 1-13. It is quite useless to pretend to acquaintance with the Messiah (our Lord Jesus Christ in glory), when the conduct does not answer to the profession. Here, as in the course of the whole Epistle, James inveighs against the spirit of the world. Human grandeur, the attractions of the rich, respect of persons and despisal of the poor, all such things agree not with faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, for "God hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom." Yet James does not level all ranks; what he requires is that there should be no preference given to the rich. On account of his position, the latter may have more needs; but it is needful to distinguish when such are genuine, or when arising from the tendency to pretend to riches, to appear grand, etc.

Verse 12. Judged by the law of liberty, that is to say, I according to this nature imparted to us. That nature is holy: we ought therefore, according to this nature, to speak and act holily and so judge ourselves. Woe to him who to excuse evil would say, "I do that which I would not," for although flesh is in us, we are not debtors to it.

Verse 13. "Mercy rejoiceth against judgment" - the same expression as in Exodus 8: 9, "Glory over me."

Verses 14-26. Faith is shewn by its fruits. James demands proof of professed faith and the answer if there is faith should be, "Behold the fruits." That word "shew me" is the key to the subject. You say, I am a Christian: very well, but I cannot see the faith which is in your heart; shew it me by your works. The works required by James as evidence of faith are not such as are generally termed "good works." He calls for works of faith, works similar to those of Abraham and Rahab. Such actions as putting one's son to death, leaving one's country, are not generally called good works, but they are works of faith. When Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his only-begotten son, he still believed he should have the numerous seed promised him by God. Rahab believed the Canaanites were cursed and that God had given their land to Israel, and she cast in her lot with the destiny of the people of God. These works, which manifest faith, are acts in which flesh can have no part.

157 James 3.

Verses 1-12. James reaches the pride of man in another way, and combats against it: the endeavour to shine by fine speeches, to speak without restraint, does not agree with the respect due to our God and Father. If it is evil not to bridle the tongue in daily life, it is also evil to be itching to speak before an assembly. Be not many teachers. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, for the tongue is the instrument in man which is most ready to serve good or evil, it reveals the state of the soul. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."

Verses 13-18. A wise man endued with knowledge will display himself, not by words, but by good conduct with meekness and wisdom, he will shew himself modest without hypocrisy, sowing the fruit of righteousness in peace.

Verses 14-16. There is a wisdom which is not from God, but which is seated in the human intelligence; it is earthly, sensual, devilish, and it is false to the gospel, because it professes to appertain to it.

Verses 17, 18. But the wisdom which is from God is first pure, then peaceable. It is the effect of the word when received; it makes us pure and peaceable.

The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace. Christ obeyed the will of God spontaneously without experiencing any inward resistance. Not that He was insensible to the suffering resulting from His faithfulness, for He felt it; still the motion of his soul was obedience only. So with us, although we have sorrow in persecution, or in the various troubles that come upon us, yet we should fulfil the will of God without internal conflicts; and this would be so, were our hearts more weaned from the rudiments of this world.

James 4.

Verses 1-10 speak against lust. The apostle has just said that the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace, but lust is the enemy of all peace. It works perturbation in the saints and in their intercourse with God; they pray, but God does not hear them.

158 Verse 4. There is no agreement between the love of the world and the love of God, one destroys the other.

Verse 6. God it is who gives, but He gives to whom He chooses, namely, to the humble.

Verses 7-10. Do you desire to avoid the danger and the evil consequences of lust? Humble yourselves, submit to God, resist the devil, draw near to God, purify your conduct, feel your state. These things wound the pride of the flesh, but are able to keep us in a true state in the presence of the Lord who Himself will lift us up, and then it will be without danger.

Verses 13-17. We are again reminded of dependence and submission to God. It is not for us to choose our ways. To do so would be forgetting the authority of the Lord, obeying our lusts and acting in a boastful spirit.

James 5.

Verses 1-6 are another censure upon the rich. James calls to mind the oppression of the great, and it is remarkable to see that he identifies those who seek after riches with those who condemned and killed the Just One.

Verses 7-9. "The Lord is coming." Waiting for Him keeps the heart from the love of riches. We must wait in patience, and live in peace.

Verses 10-20 give various consolations and changes. Those that have suffered by the will of God are now blessed. If we suffer, we must follow their example, namely, suffer patiently.

Verses 14, 15. God in government sometimes afflicts by sickness, we must then judge ourselves; but He hears the prayers of the saints, forgives and heals.

Verses 16-18. The prayer of a righteous man availeth much Elias is a proof of this.

Verses 19, 20. The love of souls is very precious; to turn a sinner from the error of his way is to save a soul from death, to cover a multitude of sins and to be doing as God does.

Reading on 1 Peter 1 and 2

J. N. Darby.

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Peter is only laying the foundation here; you do not get anything of the proper subject of his Epistle until "Dearly beloved, I beseech you," in chapter 2. In each Epistle he lays the foundation of redemption. They give the government of God that the Jews were put under. "He that will love life and see good days," that is not redemption for heavenly glory. Or, again, "The eyes of Jehovah are over the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers." As far as I have seen, the first Epistle is government in favour of saints, telling them they will suffer, and so on; and the second is government in respect of the wicked. In this chapter he tells first of redemption, and then how judgment begins at the house of God. And it is very instructive as to the order of the revelations and dealings of God. It is addressed to the scattered Jews through Pontus, etc.: "sojourners of the dispersion" it really is. "Will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles?" is the same. They are Christians, converted Jews, though scattered, before the destruction of Jerusalem. Peter was put to death before Jerusalem was destroyed, according to common chronology. You never find anything about the church as a body in Peter, but as a house. Paul alone speaks of it as the body of Christ; this was his special ministry. Peter does address them in their new standing, but it is individually in accomplished redemption, not as in the one body united to Christ.

At the end "the church that is at Babylon," I doubt. "Elected" is in the feminine, and no word is given for "church" at all; many have thought it refers to Peter's wife - a sister. Only Paul touches the subject of the body of Christ, and so he alone speaks of the rapture. There is in John's Gospel, "I will come again, and receive you unto myself," but nothing more. As to the house it is in chapter 2. They were converted or Christian Jews, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father; it was any quickened soul among the dispersion. Peter was specially the minister of the circumcision.

James writes on a larger scale. He says "the twelve tribes," and he talks about anyone coming into their "synagogue"; it is like a national body, but he singles out those who are believers. And he says "twelve," though ten are in captivity; this is faith. Like Paul, "Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come"; and like the twelve stones of Elijah at Carmel. He could say "instantly," as it was so, though they were doing it very ignorantly and badly; just as Paul himself had been doing when he was Saul. All really honest Jews were doing so. They might have done it in a bigoted way; still they were serving. Just as you may have a church so-called kept open night and day, it is kept open whatever may be there beside the truth itself.

160 The cross really ended Judaism, though it continued after. You see "how many thousands of the Jews there are that believe, and they are all zealous of the law," offering sacrifices, etc.: and you get Paul going on to do as much. What is striking enough is, that in James you never have a word about redemption; grace you get, "of his own will begat he us by the word of truth." It fits in pretty close to the conscience, if you will only let it. It does not allow will in man at all, but patience. Its general character is practical righteousness, the total destruction of self-will in the Christian, and the renouncing of the world. He takes them where they avowedly are, and says, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations," and so on. He takes the cross for granted; but you get the grace that quickens us. And it is all the putting down of the working of evil in every shape. In James you get positive grace, but there is the judgment of all a man's heart.

Peter goes farther than that; he takes up the sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. "Jesus Christ" applies to both those. Is it the obedience of Jesus Christ instead of the law? No; I take it, the obedience of Jesus Christ is not merely that there is a rule given, but rather His own. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." There is a whole life which has no spring of action except the will of God; and if there was no will of God, He did nothing. At the beginning the Lord says, as it were, to Satan, "I am come to live by the word of God." He could have turned the stones into bread, of course, but He had no will of God for it, and so He did nothing.

There are two characters of it - obedience such as Christ's, and confiding dependence (or dependent confidence, if you like). "Through sanctification of the Spirit" means that the Holy Ghost has wrought in us to put us apart for these two things. You are elect to both, but the way by which you are brought into them is by "sanctification of the Spirit." Thus the Holy Ghost has come and taken man out of the flesh altogether, and put him into this place. And then these two things are, if you please, His life and His death. It is a different kind of obedience from that of an obedient child now; my child wants to run out, and I say, "Sit down, and do your lesson." Well, he does so, and that is very pleasant and right. But Christ never obeyed thus, He never wanted to be stopped; He says "I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." In 2 Thessalonians 2 you get "sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" together - the same thing pretty much.

161 You must begin practical sanctification by setting me apart first. The Holy Ghost comes, and sets us apart to God, separated out of the flesh to obedience. It is not so much the fact of the new life, as it is that the word has wrought in me; "being born of the word of God that liveth and abideth for ever." In Hebrews sanctified by the blood of the covenant is another aspect of sanctification. Here the Spirit is the one who brings it into actual operation. In "by the which will we have been sanctified," you get that which sets us apart judicially; but the direct action of God at all times is by the Holy Ghost. So we are born of the Spirit; there is a new life communicated, the Holy Ghost giving me a renewed mind, bringing that into me, whereby my thoughts and feelings are all changed. It is God's purpose to set me apart by the Spirit. God's purpose is in His own mind, and God gave His Son that we may be, in a redemption way, set apart to Him. But we all the while are still sinners. Then comes the Holy Ghost, who operates in us, and sets us actually apart. Sanctification of the Spirit is actual operation. All the working of God is by the Spirit. We are born of the Spirit, born of the Father in one sense, and the Son quickens whom He will. And the Holy Ghost still operates, for He takes the word, and He makes the children grow.

Sprinkling is the application of blood, in opposition to what we had under law. There was a certain sanctification of Israel to God, but not by the Holy Ghost, and they had the blood of sprinkling in a way; but it is Christ's blood that we are sanctified to, and not that of bulls and goats. Obedience comes first, because you get the actual thing that I am sanctified to - the obedience of Christ. But if I am to be before God, it must be by His blood; the one is for cleansing, and the other is His life. It is general, but more the person that is in view, because the blood has been put upon the mercy-seat, and this made God approachable.

162 It was Jehovah's lot, and without that we could not have had the sprinkling. John uses the fuller word, and says "washed." If God had not been glorified as to the question of sin, which is specifically Jehovah's lot, you could not have had this; the two goats make one Christ. It is the general idea here of sprinkled blood; sometimes it was on the person, sometimes on the altar to God, but then the person got the benefit of it. When it was sprinkled on all the people, it was to hold them though under the penalty of death. It is the legal character of it there, but this is not for us. It is not the new covenant here, but just what it says: I am set apart to obey, and to all the value of Christ's blood. It is a great thing not to bring into a verse what is not in it. You get other verses and other truths, and clearer light by putting them together, but it is an amazing help to keep clearly what a verse gives. There is nothing about the covenant here, but a set of people, elect, chosen, and set apart to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. "Sanctified by blood," in Hebrews, applies strictly to Jews, though we come under it in the fatness of the olive-tree.

A person could not walk practically in the path of obedience without the sprinkling of the blood; we should not be set apart to God at all without it. It is in contrast with Judaism, where, as a matter of fact, they were brought through the Red sea, and so separated from Egypt. Here it is the Holy Ghost that does it, and it is a real thing in the soul. In Hebrews you do not get the sanctification of the Spirit at all, though you get holiness; they are sanctified by blood, and are warned not to fall away. Where there was faith, they, of course, had the actual value of it all; and where it is individual, it says, "perfected for ever." It is a great thing to take our verse up absolutely and simply. Here am I set apart to have no will at all, only God's; obedience is not having a will of my own, and that is the law of liberty. Just as if I told my child again to go off and play in the street, he would go off, and be obedient in doing so, but it would be what he liked to do. Here, He says, I am bringing you out of a sinful world, where the carnal mind is enmity against God, and I set you apart to do my will in the world, and nothing else. And then comes the second blessed thing, all the value of Christ's blood.

163 "Blessed be the God and Father," - you often get that, Christ as Son, and as Man, "my Father and your Father, my God and your God" - "of our Lord Jesus Christ." Lord is another title: "God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ." "Hath begotten us again unto a lively hope." We had got into this state of death and sin, and Christ came there, and took us out of it, so that I have a living hope, and there I get the key of all this government. "Reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." I am not to be catching up theories, but have a positive thing from God, kept there for me, and I am kept while down here by the power of God through faith. God's power keeps me, but it is keeping me by faith, unto a salvation ready to be revealed. The salvation here is the full description of the status of a Christian, and he is kept by the power of God. Peter is shewing the way of the government of God; there is nothing about advancement in this world.

Hebrews is very much upon "Peter" ground, chapter 12: 22-24 describing all the millennial blessedness from top to bottom, but you do not get "union." "Fellows" is not union. If he speaks of the Father and of Christ, then he can speak of first-born among many brethren, but it is individual still. John, too, is always individual, and yet he carries us quite as high, dwelling in God, and God in me, but this is not union with Christ. When I get union with Christ, it is God raising Him from the dead as a man, and putting Him at His right hand, and He takes and puts me into Him there. Christ as Head (Eph. 1) is looked at as a Man whom God has raised. Peter answers to wilderness experience in measure, but "ready to be revealed" is a different thing. Paul's revelation in Colossians is more like Peter, and so you get only, "we shall appear with him in glory," but not the rapture; "called in one body" you have, and "not holding the head," but even that is not developed at all. Peter here is the contrast with having Canaan and all that on earth. Here the inheritance is in heaven; the difference in Ephesians is, that there I am seen sitting in heaven in Christ, that is, in Christ in glory. He says, "inheritance incorruptible, undefiled," and so on. The one thing you do not get here is the union with Christ by the Holy Ghost.

164 Would you say that you have eternal life in Peter? It is not developed in Peter. You never get a hint about God's love in Peter, though you get the things that flow from it. It is, God has wrought this, and has given that, and He keeps us safe, and so on; but you never have what you find in Paul and John, "God so loved the world." It is a governed world, people in view for whom redemption has been wrought, the perfect standing of a Christian with an inheritance in heaven, and the Holy Ghost come down from heaven. You get the fact of redemption and actual standing, but you never find Peter saying, "Ye are dead"; he does say, "He that hath suffered in the flesh." Paul says, "dead to sin," and goes to the root. Peter says, "dead to sins," which is another thing, being practice, and not root.

The moment I am in Christ, I am in a totally new place, where man looked at as born of Adam is done with. But Peter gives you the whole statement of my relationship to God, as redeemed, and quickened, and walking down here, but with a hope up there. And then government comes in - I am kept by God's power through faith. The rapture is not mentioned, for it is not an act of government, but of sovereign grace. But 2 Peter 1: 19 is a most interesting passage, for you have this dark world - Satan's darkness - and this light of God, which shews how all here is going on rapidly to judgment.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians is the most extreme contrast that can be conceived: "Be ye followers of God as dear children, and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour" - "but fornication, and all uncleanness." Paul goes down from my being an imitator of God Himself down to all that is vile in a man. Verses 6, 7 are government again, but it is as to men who are walking down here, yet redeemed and having this inheritance above. In verse 7 the fruits of all these dealings in government will come out. It is not that you find a poor sinner, who is taken up and put up in glory with Christ, that is not Peter.

What is the salvation of soul? It is in contrast with the deliverance that Israel had, I think. Soul-salvation is contrasted with temporal deliverance. Then comes an orderly statement in verses 10, 11. The prophets which were before speak both of the sufferings of Christ, and of glories which were to follow; but we now stand in between the sufferings finished and the glories not yet come.

165 The prophets were telling of both; neither had yet come, and they searched to see what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, and it was revealed to them, when they studied their own testimonies, that they ministered not to themselves, but to us. This is very striking; for, so far from its being the expectations of their own minds that they were telling, they had to study their prophecies to understand them if possible. But now the Holy Ghost come down reports these things to us, things which are to be brought unto us, but are reported now.

It does not state that we have got them, but the glory is reported, and by the Holy Ghost sent down. The Holy Ghost was not until Pentecost, but the thing that distinguishes Christianity is the Holy Ghost down here; just as of old Christ, looked at as coming down here, was not yet. All this does not go on into Paul's statement, nor into John's. Peter's is complete and perfect in itself.

I have soul-salvation and eternal life, and Christianity makes me wait for glory. It is a report now. I am changed, but I have not a single thing but life and the Holy Ghost. Of the things that belong to me as being alive, I have nothing but the earnest of the inheritance. You have the new nature? Yes, this is eternal life, and yet, in the full purpose of God, the end is everlasting life. God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, He has called me to His kingdom and glory, but I am not there yet. I am waiting for that. The grace of God has appeared, teaching me to wait for the glory; it is all revealed, and I have the life that enjoys it as a revelation, but I have not come into the estate yet. When the revelation comes by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, other things are brought in. As the Lord says to Nicodemus, "If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things?" It was necessary, even for the Jews, to be born again for their earthly things. In John's "last time" you get Antichrist, the day of the Lord; and yet the days immediately preceding are the last time. Messiah is come, and yet He is not come: Elias is come, and he is not come, and you never see clearly in this kind of statement until you see that. Messiah shall be cut off and have nothing, He has none of the things that belong to Him yet. But the moment the Son was there, the Father's name was revealed, though they did not understand it. And when the Holy Ghost came down, you get the Spirit of adoption, and Christ's place where we are heirs; all that was not in the Jewish promises, any more than the church was. The whole state in Peter is different, without going to Paul, because the veil is rent.

166 Present relationship with God is made perfectly clear by redemption and the new nature, and the Holy Ghost too, and this is an immense thing. We read in this very chapter, "Who by him do believe in God that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory." Do you mean to say that God gave His Son for you? Then there is perfect love in the sight of God. I believe in God by Christ, and I say, God out of the depth of His own heart would have me with Him. He shewed it by rending the veil from top to bottom. Certain privileges were not thereby revealed, but my soul's relationship with God, as brought to Him, is revealed. "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end," v. 13-17. So I am calling upon the Father as a child during the time of my sojourning here, and such is my place of relationship with God during that time. This is practically where we are. "In fear" is a very good thing; "Blessed is he that feareth always." "Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?" "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It has nothing to do here with final judgment, of course - Peter does not think of that with fear. But if you are calling on the Father, and His name has been revealed, and the Holy Ghost has come down from heaven, and the Father is keeping His children, still it is as a holy Father - so mind what you are about.

Judging according to every man's work is a present thing; otherwise, "the Father judgeth no man." Then he goes to the foundation of it: "Forasmuch as ye know ye were redeemed." Silver and gold are the general character: the infinite price with which we have been redeemed is contrasted with poor corruptible things - silver and gold. The Jews understood it very well.

You get in Jude the corruption of the church brought in by false brethren, and in John you get them going out in apostasy. The two characters of the last days are, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and apostasy or giving it up. These are all going on to this day; they crept in then. Though the last days be spoken of and perilous times, yet the Lord let it come out in germ at that time, that we should have the word of God about all. Enoch prophesied about them. The moment Christ was rejected, all was closed, except the present time of mercy. As Christians we do not belong to this world at all.

167 "Who by him do believe in God." The statement is general, and the effect is that their faith and hope are in God. I know God through His means; this gives a distinct aspect of God altogether. It is trust in God in everything, for I know that God has come into my case. I know the love of God in giving Christ, and I know that all my sins are gone, and God Himself is God my Saviour. He is not in the character of Judge there; nor is it faith in Christ before God, but in God Himself who raised Christ from the dead, so that it takes in everything between me and God, and alters His whole character from Judge. I may believe God as a righteous Judge, and so He is; but this will not save me, though there must be that for salvation. Abraham believed God, that is, believed what God said, and you get various forms of that. There is the Jewish expression, "hope"; but hope is used as confidence, as "in him shall the Gentiles trust," that is, hope. "Hope thou in God." Hope is used as counting on a person; but He will give us glory too; here it is the general thought - we reckon on Him. Believing on Him, and in Him, are different. "I believe in God" is a different thing. This is the object and the confidence: God is the object of the faith. It is the Red Sea. God raised Christ from the dead. There is no knowing God any other way, except as Creator. I do not know God really, save as I know Him in Christ. "This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent," is knowing God the Father, not merely God. The other names of God do not give eternal life, but the Father sent the Son that we might live through Him, and He gives eternal life. Then comes another thing - first, the revelation in Christ, and then, obeying the truth through the Spirit. This is what sanctifies the soul.

"Unto unfeigned love of the brethren." It is wonderful how purifying the heart, and love, go together. You may get hold of truth, but it is always imperfect, badly put together, and that kind of thing, in man's hand; but here it is obedience to the truth through the Spirit - another thing. You see selfishness is at the bottom of all sin; the opposite of selfishness is love, and we are purified from selfishness by this love. It is love of the brethren, and love which brings in holiness. You get the two things so in 1 Thessalonians 3: 12: "The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one towards another, and towards all men, even as we do towards you, to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God." Love and holiness - it is a wonderful power which has come out in Christianity. Paul adds, in Thessalonians, "at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints." It is not, establish your hearts here, but he is looking at it in all its fulness when Christ comes. It is the power of the hope too, "He that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself even as he is pure." And therefore it is in John 17, "Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth; and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." It all takes us up into the other world. "As we do towards you" is the pattern of it, but it is towards one another, and towards all. Observe, you never find that Christ loved the world, nor that God loved the church, because that is the relationship of Christ and the church, His body and His bride.

168 When you get "love as brethren," it is again relationship, love unfeigned. It is the opposite of feigned; it is not "putting it on," as you say, but real. It is the converse here of what it is in Thessalonians. It is the bringing in of divine life, and the Holy Ghost was there, and He is the spring that is in my heart. So it is not talking about inconsistencies, but what is love, and what is God's nature. It is a wonderful thing for us to look at in all our path - Christ, and then in that sense we could not know any man after the flesh. Purity and love is what God is looking for here. Self is dead, and consideration for others is what reigns in the heart according to God. And the recognition of God's presence is the great secret of that. I was struck some time back with this, that when the apostle describes what love is, it is all subjective. In 1 Corinthians 13 you do not get one atom of activity in it; it bears, endures, hopes, and so on. and that is all. Love is not always subjective, but it is so in 1 Corinthians 13. Disappointing! You go and live it out, and see if other people will be disappointed. Activity, of course, is all right too. God gives to us in the blessedness of His nature, He makes us enjoy Himself, and, besides that, He gives us a share in the activity of His love. "See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." These instructions are drawn from the very depths of God's nature, and you get God and grace instead of self. Suppose a man is giving way to bad feelings, the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. I ask myself how should I feel if I met that man at the door of heaven, going in - supposing I had met a heretic, or anything else. Would it not be nice to meet people here as you will meet them there? Only when you have to meet opponents, take care that it does not connect itself with anything of feeling as regards the individual. Look at Christ in Gethsemane in an agony. He asked His disciples to stay, and He went farther, and when He comes to them again, He finds them sleeping, but He only says, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" and He goes back again into His agony; and this was His way to them when He was thinking of meeting God in judgment!

169 Verse 22 is love "fervently." "Seeing ye have purified," etc., is the principle; now let us have the practice in all its extent. He is looking for fervent love in a pure heart, seeing that they have been brought into this relationship. God is light, and He is love, and He has come down in light and love, and He wants this divine nature which has root in us to come out. "Increase and abound" is to be brought about by keeping nearer to God. I have often thought that it requires great grace to see a little grace. If you go out in love, it will find some response. At one place they complained that all was so dreadfully cold, and I could only say, Why do you not go out in love, and warm the rest?

"Born again." This is divine life, for this connection of purity and love is by the Holy Ghost. John 3 is the same truth, but more specific. John says "born anew"; he insists on its being altogether new, and so it is more emphatic. Here it is connected with the word; in John with the Spirit. In John, too, you get the positive communication of the new life, in Peter you get the practical effect and working, not the source. It is similar in 1 Peter 4: 1: "He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin," but in Paul I get "He that is dead"; it is the same truth, only the one is the principle, and the other is the outward practical carrying of it out. Again the Jews must be born again. We are born of the Spirit, and get a new life, but it brings in divine thoughts, so that I am cleansed. The sin in them, then, remains, as in Ezekiel 36, and so it does in us now.

170 It is a great thing that the word lives, it comes from God, and is really in the power of the Holy Ghost, but then it brings in the things it tells about. In John 8: 25 the Lord tells them what He was - in principle (or altogether) what I also say; in our version it is, "even the same that I said unto you from the beginning." His word expressed Himself. And the word not only lives, but it judges what is in us too, because it is true.

Sanctified, Purged, and Kept

1 Peter 1: 1-9

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Sanctification of the Spirit is spoken of before the "blood of sprinkling." Israel in Egypt were taken and set apart (which is the same as sanctification) for God while they were in Egypt. This sanctification is spoken of in Jude's Epistle as the Father's work - "sanctified* by God the Father." In Hebrews Jesus is spoken of as sanctifying - "That he might sanctify the people with his own blood." Here, in Peter, it is spoken of as the Spirit's work. The setting apart to God is a different thing from having forgiveness, and it is the accomplishing of God's purposes, though not the purposes themselves. The prodigal in Luke 15 turned back in the far country, and then he was set apart for God. There was a total and utter change, but not all the effect yet. When he began to return, his face was turned towards his father; while, when he went away his back was towards him. So the soul set apart by God is livingly turned to God in power; it may be, as the prodigal, in rags and want; but there is the turning of heart, and, like Paul who was converted on his way to Damascus, there is a new creation. The will is broken. There will be conflict afterwards as the result, but the whole man is changed. It is not that there are not difficulties to be overcome, but the object before the mind is different.

{[* The critical reading in Jude 1, is "beloved in God the Father." - Ed.]}

The soul is thus said to be "sanctified unto obedience." It is not a question of being better or worse, but it is turning to God; and if it is sanctification to obedience, it is also to the "blood of sprinkling." Now I have to learn the value of that blood. He has brought me under the sprinkling of blood, as Israel was by coming out of Egypt; and what was the sprinkling of blood then? It was the seal, while liable to the sentence of death, of the covenant which they were to obey; Ex. 24: 6, 7, 8. If they obeyed, they stood, but if not, the penalty of death was their portion. Is it so with us? No. We have disobeyed, but He (Jesus) has suffered for us, and we are sealed under the covenant brought in by Him for the disobedient. We are brought under the blood of sprinkling, whatever its efficacy is. Nothing has power against this tide. Does my guilt rise up? or Satan come against me? All is gone, because of the value of His blood. I have, as the first thing, redemption through His blood, perfect deliverance from all that was for my condemnation. I am, in my whole condition as a sinner, redeemed out of it for ever. The covenants, we know, were sealed with blood. Abraham and Jeremiah killed a calf, and the blood was a witness to the covenant. This covenant differs from former ones, inasmuch as it is not binding as to guilt if we fall; on the contrary, it discharges us from guilt by the blood that was shed for it.

172 Another kind of purging is that of cleansing from defilement, so that by the blood we are not only acquitted of guilt, but made absolutely clean. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." Another effect is, that it brings us into wonderful nearness of thought with God. The blood has been already spilt. Christ has done it and I see in it that He has taken the deepest interest in my soul, and given Himself that I might be delivered. Was He all alone in it? As regards man, He was; but God the Father had to do with it. He spared not His own Son, and I am reconciled to God by His death. That is more than being merely turned, in will, to God. Where is my assurance of its efficacy? God Himself having done it, who "hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," we have, then, a dying Saviour, but a living hope. We have life in Him, power in Him, through the Holy Ghost. The Second Adam, the Quickener, is He who went into death for our sins, but who came out of death, and is risen in the power of an endless life. This life then makes us pilgrims and strangers down here, and there is not a single object here for the Christian but to please God. With Jesus it was ever His delight to do His Father's will. "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me," etc. This puts the heart to the test. Do you say what harm is there in this or that? Your flesh is after it, and that is the harm! Are you to live after the flesh? If the old man is working in you, that is the harm. We are "begotten unto a living hope," etc., "to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away" - just the contrast of everything here. If the divine nature is in us, it has divine tastes suited to that to which it belongs. My heart's affections have found a home, where God has found His rest, in Christ.

Besides, it is "reserved in heaven." No moth or rust can corrupt there, neither thief break through to steal. It is preserved by God, and "I know in whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that which I have," etc. It is safe. Another thing is, we must wait for it; but we know it is well kept, if God keeps it. "Reserved . . . for you who are kept." The inheritance is kept for you in heaven, and you are kept on earth waiting for it. He will keep you for the inheritance and the inheritance for you. It is then not a question of my perseverance, but of God's faithfulness. Do any say, Oh! I shall never hold on to the end? But God has said, "They shall never perish." Ah! but it may be said, there is all the power of Satan! Again, "None shall pluck them out of my Father's hand." "I and my Father are one." There is one common counsel between them. "Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed."

173 There is not something to be done, something not yet accomplished. No! it is done, and that is what could not be said when Christ was upon earth. But now He has passed through death, risen out of it, ascended to the right hand of God, where He is waiting until "his enemies be made his footstool." It is ready to be revealed, and is only delayed while souls are being brought in for the completion of His body. That is matter of joy to wait for; though, in one sense, we should desire that it were already completed, that glory may be revealed. But there is rest to the heart in the consciousness that the salvation is ready, and that we are kept through faith. There is blessing in that, through exercise, because the flesh never has faith; and if a single worldly or careless thought comes in, faith is not in exercise, and the image of Jesus is dimmed in us. We do not live, except when and so far as faith is in exercise; for all that is of the flesh perishes. "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." Another blessed thing for us is, that everything becomes matter of exercise. We must never do a thing we have not faith for.

This makes us feel the need of having the affections "set on heavenly things." "Keep yourselves in the love of God." "Wherein ye greatly rejoice," etc. Are you greatly rejoicing in this salvation? "It shall be in you a well of living water" was the word. There are none so subject to inertia as the Christian who is halting between two opinions. If worldliness, love of ease, self in this or that form come in, who are so weak and wretched? We cannot find happiness in the world and be rejoicing in heavenly things. If the soul is occupied with this great salvation, it will rejoice therein. There will be heaviness through manifold temptations, but the valley of Baca will become a well, the rain filling the pools.

174 We now have the "earnest of the inheritance"; not the earnest of God's love, for this is fully our portion now, and not merely the earnest of it. The "trial of faith will be found unto praise," etc., at the appearing of Jesus Christ. He has entered within and has His crown; and now at the thought of that, we can rejoice with "joy unspeakable and full of glory." It is "unspeakable" because it is Himself, and "full of glory" because He is in the glory: and lest the fire which tries should cast the least cloud over the hope and the joy, it is said, "receiving the end of your faith." I have received the salvation of my soul, and that is really the end of my faith, though I may have to go through trial to purge away the dross.

Is your face turned upward to God, and not as the beast's which goeth downward? or is your back towards God, as Adam turned when he had sinned and was ashamed?

The Spirit of God in the Epistles of Peter does not contemplate the Christian as united to Christ in heaven, but as running the course through the trials of this world toward heaven. Both things are true, and we need both. We are running through the wilderness towards it, and at the same time we can say through the Spirit that we are one with Christ in heaven. It is in the former of these two ways that the Christian is looked at here. The inheritance is reserved for him, and then we get the application of the truth and grace of God to the condition we are in. It is exceedingly precious to know that, no matter what the trials may be or the difficulties, we are to expect that down here. It is merely a passage through the trials and difficulties (which are useful to us after all), and there is "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled," kept safe in heaven for us; and, as he adds then, we kept for it by the power of God through faith. That is the position in which he sets the Christian. We are "begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." It is not exactly that we are risen with Him, but he looks at Christ as risen and gone in, and therefore that He has begotten us again to a lively hope and that hope "an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away." There it is, kept safe in heaven for us. As Paul said, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." All his happiness was safe in heaven, and the Lord could keep it safe for him; and then we get the blessed truth that we are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation."

175 We get the character and path of the Christian - both these things. The blessed faithfulness of the Lord in keeping it for us and us for it, and at the same time the character of the Christian as passing onward toward it, and a little of the trials of the way. We first see that here. You will find it in the striking contrast with the law and the position that Israel had under it. Indeed this runs through the whole - constantly in the New Testament. He says, "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father." He settles them on this blessed truth - their being elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Not merely a people chosen out as a nation, but it was that foreknowledge of God the Father through which they had this place: and then the Spirit of God comes and sanctifies or sets them apart. We get then what they are set apart to practically, as a present thing, and that is, the obedience of Jesus Christ, and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. These are just the two essential points of the life and path of Jesus, one running into the other: and, in this case, if I may so speak, the one completing the other. For us the great thought is the obedience of Jesus Christ and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ applies to the obedience as well as to the sprinkling of the blood, and both are in contrast with the law, whether as regards what the law required, or as regards the sacrifices of the law - the obedience and sacrifice of Jesus Christ are in contrast with both.

As regards our obedience it is essential for the true character of our path as Christians that we should get hold of what this obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ was. Legal obedience in us is a different thing. We have got a will of our own; that was not true of Christ. He had a will in one sense, as a man, but He said, "Not my will, but thine, be done." But we have got a will of our own, it may be checked and broken down. But if the law is applied to us, it is as stopping this will, but finding it here, and our notion of obedience constantly is that. Take a child - there is a will of its own: but when the parents' will comes in and the child yields instantly without a struggle, and either does what it is bid or ceases to do what it is forbidden, you say this is an obedient child, and it is delightful to see such an obedient spirit. But Christ never obeyed in that way. He never had a will to do things of His own will in which God had to stop Him - it was not the character of His obedience. It is needed with us, and we all know it, if we know anything of ourselves; but it was not the character of His obedience. He could not wish for the wrath of God in the judgment of sin, and He prayed that that cup might pass from Him. But the obedience of Christ had quite another character from legal obedience. His Father's will was His motive for doing everything: "Lo, I come, to do thy will, O God."

176 That is the true character of the obedience of Jesus Christ, and of ours as Christians. The other may be needed for us - the stopping us in our own will; but the true character of our obedience, and that which characterises the whole life of the Christian is this - that the will of God, of our Father we can say, is with us, as it was with Christ, our reason, our motive, for doing a thing. When Satan came and said to Him, "Command that these stones be made bread," He answers, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." His actual life as carried out in conduct flows from the word of God which is His motive for doing it; and if He has not that, He has no motive. You will find that it alters the whole tenor and spirit of a man's life. We have to be stopped in our own will, that is true, because we have the old nature in us; but it alters the whole spirit and tenor of a man's life. If I have no motive but my Father's will, how astonishingly it simplifies everything! If you never thought of doing a thing except because it was God's positive will that you should do it, how three-quarters of your life would at once disappear! This is the truth practically as to ourselves; yet we clearly see that such was the obedience of Christ.

This, too, is the principle of real piety, because it keeps us in constant dependence upon God, and in constant reference to God. It is an amazing comfort for my soul to think that there is not a single thing all through my life in which God as my Father has not a positive will about me to direct me; that there is not a step from the moment I am born (though while we are unconverted we understand nothing about it), in which there is not a positive path or will of God to direct me here. I may forget it and fail, but we have in that word and will of God what keeps the soul, not in a constant struggle against one thing and another, but in the quiet consciousness that divine favour has provided for everything - that I do not take a step but what divine favour has provided for. It keeps the soul in the sweet sense of divine favour and in dependence upon God, so that like David we can say, "Thy right hand upholdeth me." Moses does not say, Shew me a way through the wilderness, but, "Shew me now thy way." A man's ways are what he is: God's way shews what He is.

177 The heart gets separated in its path more and more intelligently to God, and gets to understand what God is. If I know that God likes this and likes that along my path, it is because I know what He is; and besides its being the right path and causing us thus to grow in intelligent holiness of life, there is piety in it too. The constant reference of the heart affectionately to God is real piety, and we have to look for that. We have it perfectly in our Lord; "I know," He says, "that thou hearest me always." There is the confidence of power and reference to God with confiding affection. If I know that it is His path of goodness, His will that is the source of everything to me, there is the cultivation of piety with God, communion is uninterrupted, because the Spirit is not grieved. This is the obedience of Jesus Christ, to which we are set apart.

Then there is the other blessed truth. We are set apart through the Spirit for, and to the value and the sprinkling of, the blood of Jesus Christ. We know that, when the priests were consecrated, the blood was put upon their right ear and upon the hand and foot, as a token that all the mind and work and walk should be according to the preciousness of this blood. In God's sight there is not a single spot upon us because of the blood that has been shed, and we have to walk according to the value of that blood before God. In the case of the leper the blood was to be sprinkled upon him seven times. He was set apart to God (in type) under the whole, perfect efficacy of what the work and blood of Jesus are in God's sight.

Such was the double character of Jesus, whether throughout His life or in death. Even in dying His obedience was His life in that sense. And that is what characterises the Christian. This introduces us at once into the unclouded apprehension of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, reserved in heaven for us. He has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I see His path down here - He has gone up there - death has no power over Him. And now through Him nothing stands in the way between me and the incorruptible inheritance. Death itself is totally overcome - so entirely, that if the Lord Jesus were to come soon enough, we should never die at all. In any case, we shall be changed and glorified; but I speak now as shewing the way in which the power of death is set aside, so that, instead of our belonging to death now, death belongs to us. All things, the apostle says, are yours, "Whether life or death, or things present or things to come." Christ having come in and having gone down to the full depth of everything for us, He has gone through it all and has left no trace of it in the resurrection. It is not merely that the blood has been sprinkled, but He has left no trace of anything. Therefore, though we may die, it is gain if we do. It is to an inheritance incorruptible.

178 Then we come to a third point in the chapter, that is, the being kept through the way. There are difficulties, and trials, and temptations - it is well we should look them in the face. Everybody is not passing smoothly through this life, though some may be more so than others. There are plenty of difficulties and trials, and we have to make straight paths for our feet. Still, we are "kept by the power of God," but, mark this, it is "through faith." We have to remember that, and this is why the trials come in. We can count upon the whole power of God, but it is exercised in sustaining our faith in God, as the Lord says to Peter, "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." He does not take us out of trial; on the contrary, it is said, "Ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations." There may be this heaviness through trial; no such thing as doubting God's goodness, but the pressure, whether of sorrow or of that which might tend to make our feet slip, may produce heaviness of spirit. But after all it is "only for a season," and "if need be." Do not make yourselves uneasy: the One who holds the reins of the need-be is God. He does not take pleasure in afflicting. If there is the need for it, we go through the trial, but it is only for a moment. It is a process that is going on, and do you fancy that you do not want it?

The great secret is to have entire confidence in the love of God, in the certainty that He is the doer of all - not looking at circumstances or at second causes, but seeing the hand of the Lord in all, that it is the trial of our faith, and that it is only on the way. When the day comes when God has things His own way (He does His own work now, of course, but when He has things His own way), these very trials will be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. It is a process that He is carrying on now, it may be even the putting into the furnace to bring out the preciousness of the faith. It is not a question of being cleansed, but He does cause us to pass through all that which He sees needed for discipline. He uses the things that are in the world. The evil, the sin, the ill-will of others, all the things that are in the world, He uses simply as an instrument to break down and exercise our heart, so that our obedience may be simple, and that our faith may be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus.

179 We see thus what a strengthening thing is the waiting for Christ. It is not spoken of here in the highest way, but it is the same general principle. I am waiting. I do not think much of an uncomfortable inn if I know that I am only there for two or three days on the way. I might perhaps wish it were better, but I do not trouble myself much about it, because I am not living there. I am not living in this world, I am dying here; if there is a bit of the old life, it has to be put to death. My life is hid with Christ in God. I am waiting for the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ - waiting for God's Son from heaven, who is going to take us there, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away; and all that we pass through here is merely this exercise of heart, which God sees to be needed to bring us there where the Lord Himself will have us with Himself and that for ever. And there is nothing more practically important for every-day work and service, than our waiting for God's Son from heaven. If you want to know what this world is, and if you want to get comfort for your soul, you will be waiting for God's Son from heaven. If I am belonging to the world, I cannot have comfort. The apostle says, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." And if we are getting into ease in it, we shall find His discipline. But the moment I am waiting for God's Son from heaven, my life is but the dealings of God with me with an object, and that object that it should be to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

180 Let me ask you all to search and see what would be the effect of Christ's coming on your souls? Would it be this? Here I am passing through in heaviness because of manifold temptations, but He will come and take me out of it to Himself? Or would it surprise you? Would it find you with a number of things which you would have to leave behind? As to your heart, where is your heart with respect to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? Young or old (there may be more to learn if we are young; but), would the coming of the Lord Jesus find you with plenty of things that you would have to throw overboard? or with this feeling, Here is an end of all the exercise of heart? He for whom I have been waiting is coming to take me to Himself. There is the difference between Christians. If my whole life is founded upon this, that His will is the motive and spring of it, I shall find the exercises and the needed trial; but the coming of the Lord would be simply this to my soul - He is coming to take me away to Himself.

The Lord give us to be of a true heart, and to remember that if we are Christians, Christ is our life, and Christ could not have a portion down here. Joy and peace and quietness of spirit go with it, and real happiness; only we must have faith. Abraham found in the mountain a place where he could intercede with God, while Lot was saying, "I cannot escape to the mountain lest some evil take me and I die." Unbelief always looks at the place of faith as the most awful thing possible - all darkness. The Lord give us to know what it is to live the life which we live "by the faith of the Son of God!"

Our Pilgrimage, Priesthood, and Suffering

1 Peter 2

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Peter looks on the Christian as one redeemed and set out on his pilgrimage on his way to the inheritance. Having redemption, the forgiveness of sins, knowing they are not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, they were reminded that there was an inheritance kept for them, ready to be revealed, and they set out on the journey as pilgrims and strangers here. This is very precious, especially when we see Christ before us in it. None was so thoroughly a pilgrim and stranger as Christ, and He says of the disciples, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." His life becomes our example. This path to glory, following in His footsteps, is founded on redemption being fully accomplished. This is very different from the truth, brought out in another place, of our being "seated in heavenly places in Christ." This we have in Ephesians.

In the beginning of chapter 2 there are some things I desire to notice. Chapter 1: 17 speaks of passing the time of your sojourning here in fear. This is not heaven; there is no fear in heaven: but when I talk of sojourning here, I have cause to fear. The saints know at what a price they have been redeemed out of the world. Then go and act as those redeemed.

Verse 21. "Who by him do believe in God." Many souls believe in Christ, but hardly know what it is to believe in God by Him: it is to get a knowledge of what God Himself is in Christ. It is not any knowledge of salvation through interest in Christ's blood, but to know God's thoughts in connection with His Son. There is not only His goodness, but great depth in it: for He thought of me before I thought of Him. He takes every-day interest in me; He is going to conform me to the image of His Son, the Firstborn among many brethren. The soul confides in God: "that your faith and hope may be in God" (not in Christ, which is true too). But I believe in God by means of Christ. I do not think of Him as a Judge, but as a Saviour God. I have come in spirit to God and would walk with Him: as of Israel, God says, He brought them on eagles' wings to Himself. Thus we are put into relationship with God, who has begotten us again in Christ raised up from the dead out of the whole scene. Flesh is all gone: "the grass withereth and the flower thereof fadeth away" (v. 24) - the people as well as the nations. Take any - all - flesh: it is entirely worthless. It seems hard to say it is gone when we pass through all the bustle and vanity of the world; but to faith it is done with already. New life is received through the incorruptible seed of the word. We are set in a new place - going through a world we do not belong to, as pilgrims and strangers. Christ is our pattern.

182 In chapter 2 we first find what we are as priests in a double way.

Verse 4. Christ came down from God, and He must be disallowed of men. Everything seen in Christ was the perfect reflection of God, and we who are now seen before God in Christ have therefore all Christ's perfectness in His eyes. We are "living stones," having the very same nature and life within: here is the first thing noticed. We are built up "a spiritual house, an holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices." Our function is to be constantly worshipping God. "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me." We are before God in the holy place - "a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices." Aaron's priesthood shews it in a figure. None but a priest had a right to go before God at all. We are a consecrated people - yea, a priesthood - having "hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10 alludes to this consecration of the priests, sprinkled with blood. Offering up "spiritual sacrifices" is our service (I speak not now of intercession for others), the consequence of being born of God and consecrated to Him. We are spiritual and not mere carnal priests, and have something spiritual to offer up. It is an immense and very distinct privilege of all Christians, and this now. God owns no other priests, but all saints are priests - it extends to every believer in the world. There is no true priesthood distinct from this, save that of Christ for us. The priest is one brought nigh by sacrifice, bringing that which brings nigh.

"Behold I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious," etc. Unto you therefore which believe He is precious [or, is the preciousness]. This is sometimes looked at as an experience of feeling; but what is here meant shews the contrast between a believer and an unbeliever. Though "precious" to the believer, He is a "stone of stumbling" to the "disobedient," appointed not to disobey, but, being disobedient, to stumble at the word.

183 Verse 9 calls "that ye should shew forth the praises [virtues, excellencies] of him," etc. This is not offering sacrifices; it is rather the Melchizedec pattern than the Aaronic. When Christ takes His place as Melchizedec, He will lead the praises of the people, and it will be the manifestation of His excellence and the praise will be made good by what He is. Here, if all the saints were what they should be, His praise would be manifested. When we see Him, we shall be like Him, and His praise will be shewn. There is the priesthood of worship, as being brought nigh; there is the shewing forth of His worth as a kingly priesthood: this is the kingly part. In Revelation 4 the twenty-four elders, referring to the full courses of priests, shew forth His praises in glory. There is displayed glory in them, a wonderful testimony to the efficacy of the work of Christ. There is the throne of judgment set, and the twenty-four crowned elders sitting in peace, associated with Him in the judgment. Their position shews the completeness of the work that has set us to shew forth His praises. Then they prostrate themselves before God, and that is worship. In the judgments they are associated with Him; when His praise is sounded, they worship. Worship is the highest display of what God has done and is, shewn out. It goes out to God and owns what He is. There is this double blessing come with a royal priesthood.

Shewing forth the praises of Him thus does not mean preaching the gospel. Peter speaks of what they were as a royal priesthood, and going in as a holy priesthood. Shewing forth His praises is down here, and does not carry with it so much the stamp of thanksgiving, gratitude, but it equally takes in the thought of redemption. We are brought into "marvellous light" to shew forth that light. While Christ was in the world, He was the light of the world. Now we have to shew forth His light. We have an interested heart in it - the interest of those who have been and are the objects of His love. "Return to thine own house and shew how great things God hath done for thee." Called out of darkness into His marvellous light, we stand before the world as witnesses for God. In the first, the priest belongs to the holy place, as going in to worship God. In the second, on the other hand, he is called to shew forth His praises to the world. A priest is consecrated as well as redeemed. So we now worship, and have to shew forth Him who has called us. We know Him by what He has been to us and done for us. We "are not of the world." Looking at Christ as specially gone in and as coming out, we follow Him in spirit going in, and anticipate His coming forth by now shewing forth His praises. He sets the saints to do first what He will do Himself perfectly. The church has failed. He set it to shew forth His praise. What has broken down He, however, will accomplish Himself in power, when He comes forth in glory. This gives a peculiarly distinct character to our call. He said, "I have sent them into the world." Were they not in the world? Not in the fullest, truest sense, for they were by grace taken out of the world. They were a peculiar people "that they should shew forth." Of Israel God said, "This people have I formed for myself" - a peculiar people to Himself; they for earth and we for heaven. This gives a distinct character to the walk, which should speak of Him who has set them so to live. Why can we do this and that? Because He has done this and that for us. Our position and ways should speak for Him.

184 The "marvellous light" goes with sin all put away, and not a spot left on us. Our whole business in the world (in going through labour and toil, it may be), the one thing to do is to shew forth the praises of Him who has called us thus. The blind man thought it wonderful; if they could not see, yet He had opened his eyes. It gives us a deep responsibility to be put in such a place. Begotten again by Christ's resurrection, we are not men in the world; as redeemed persons we are, of course, born again, but to be a holy priesthood near Him, so as to worship Him, and a royal priesthood to shew forth His praises. There are also the joys and privileges of the heart right with God through Christ and His work.

But what have they to do in the world? "I have given them thy word, and the world hateth them." That is a part of Christ too. Now we see what it is to be a witness for Christ - the world hates them.

Verse 20. "If ye do well and suffer for it and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." What would the world say to this? What! let every one trample on you? The world trampled on Christ. I am not speaking of this country or any other in particular, but, in the world all over, oppression, misery, discontent, are going on. I am not of the world, though I may mourn over it. To see men devouring widows' houses is a terrible thing, especially under religious pretexts: but we have not to set things to rights. We have a peculiar place as Christians. We have immense privileges and consequent position in the world. "If ye do well, and suffer for it, and take it patiently," etc. This is Christ reproduced in His members. These are the praises of God shewn forth by them, not lights in the world. One may as a Christian go through the world very quietly in a general way; but if there is the contrary, and one takes from me my coat, shall I not give him my cloak also? If I have lost my coat and kept Christ's character, I see nothing to regret. The effect of being put into the world as a peculiar people, begotten again, redeemed, priests holy and royal, is to present His character in the world; and the measure is according to our faith. The sufferings of Christ went much farther than any little we may suffer. "When he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not." These sufferings of Christ give another character to all I may have to go through. When Christ is before me, I have another object, another motive. The early Christians took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. Why? Because it was for Christ's sake. We have very little of this in England, more in some other countries. Christ being stamped upon all characterises our shewing forth what He is. We have a natural sense of righteousness, quite contrary to the spirit shewn in Christ which we have to follow.

185 There are two very distinct kinds of suffering that Christ endured. In redemption Christ suffered. See chap. 3: 9. If you suffer, let it not be for sins. Christ has done that for you. "He once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust." Do not talk of suffering for sin; that is not what a Christian has to do. Here is the complete contrast of Christ's suffering and the Christian's. Christ suffered alone in that, never to have a follower. He stood alone that there might never be an atom of wrath for us. From whom did He suffer this? From God. Christ suffered for sin from Him. He drank that dreadful cup at His hands; and the effect of Christ's suffering for sin from God is that all judgment is passed from them who believe. They have no fellowship in the cup of wrath. Their sins were therein, and that was all from them. The ark in the midst of Jordan typifies this. When I come to the other character of His sufferings, it was for righteousness' sake, and for love. Walking through the world and up to the cross, He suffered dreadfully from man, the contradiction of sinners, etc. There were "dogs," and "strong bulls of Bashan" staring upon Him at the last. He suffered from those around closing in upon Him. Even on the cross He had this kind of suffering as well as the others. Men were instruments of Satan to bring all kinds of suffering on Christ.

186 Suffering for righteousness' sake and for His name's sake are different. One person may suffer for a good conscience, and another may suffer martyrdom for preaching Christ. This last is for His name's sake. These two kinds of suffering are distinguished in the sermon on the Mount, and also here in chapters 3 and 4; that which is for His name's sake is a higher kind than for righteousness' sake. Christ was the light, and they hated the light. He was hated for His goodness and for the activity of His love also. Through His active life Christ had no suffering from God. When suffering from God, "the hour" was come. It was at the close He was under the judgment: and unmingled grace is the result. On the other hand, His sufferings from man for righteousness will be followed by judgment. "Let their table become a snare." Compare Psalm 69 with Psalm 22.

Christ is an example to us in His suffering from men. I am partaker of His sufferings. He suffered from the unbelief of those around Him. "He sighed deeply in his spirit," mentioned on one occasion, "because of the hardness of their heart," seeing how this wretched world goes on deceiving itself: we ought to feel it too. He suffered also perfectly with the feeling of a man. "Reproach hath broken my heart." "They may tell all my bones." "They look and stare upon me." Hanged up as a malefactor before the world, He felt it all; and the more refined the feeling, the more acutely His disciple's unfaithfulness was felt by Him. It was love to Peter brought him back.

The nature of man does not like to be reviled now for preaching the gospel or righteous ways. "Unto you it is given," Phil. 1. We do not ordinarily think of it as a gift at all, we do not like it. But Christ bore our sins, "that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness," even to the laying down our life. There should be no limit to suffering in the service of love. There is no suffering to get into the position, but suffering because of being in it.

187 This makes very clear the distinction between responsibility and grace. Duties flow from a relationship that exists already. If a man is legal, he expects to get something for his suffering. Grace teaches me that I am always to act as a child, because I am one. The believer is what he has to praise Him for. "We are made the righteousness of God in Christ." Therefore I can go and speak of it. Because of my lot in the blessing, I can go and shew forth His praises. What a blessing to carry the consciousness of what God is through this world!

In prayer I have not only to ask for things, but to realise the presence of Him to whom I speak. The power of prayer is gone, if I lose the sense of seeing Him by faith. Prayer is not only asking right things, but having the sense of the Person there. If I have not that, I lose the sense of His love and of being heard. We are brought into His "marvellous light," by which we are to test everything we do. Let us suffer for doing well. This is not easy unless Christ and the power of grace are dwelling in our hearts.

The word of God presents various relations - for instance, the bride of Christ, and brethren one with another. Affections and duties too belong to each relationship. Again, the Christian can be viewed as having to say to God while walking on the earth. Or the church may be collectively looked at as the fulness of Christ; we are thus members of His body; we are identified with Him in heavenly places (this position being revealed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven). In Colossians 1 the apostle speaks of his being minister of the church, "to fulfil the word of God." The word of God was completed when the church was brought out. All the truth of God was then revealed. It was looked at as needing nothing to be added. It had been given partially before; then all had come out.

There is the individual position of a child of God, wanting daily supplies from God, as His child. He loves His child, caresses His child, chastens His child; and then His patience and help are exercised over us. But we cannot lightly speak of His patience towards Christ's body as such. In Ephesians we have both aspects of our position, the individual and the collective, as in the first and last parts of chapter 1. Hence we may observe that Christ is not Priest to His body, for viewed as united to Him, it is perfect. Ephesians does not speak of this, for when priesthood is the subject, as in Hebrews, it is not the doctrine of the church which is brought out. We are regarded individually in respect of need and weakness. There is abundant sweetness in knowing that He takes cognisance of all our wants and failings. In Hebrews it is said, "Having boldness to enter into the holiest." We are not said to be seated there, as in Ephesians we are seated in Christ in heavenly places. In 1 Peter 1 we are said to be begotten unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; it is the ground of our setting forth on this pilgrimage of which Peter speaks, "strangers and pilgrims." We have to do with God and we have to do with the Father. God does not give up His claims as God because He is our Father, but deals with us as God in those things that relate to His claims as such. Christ walked in the perfectness of a man with God, and as a Son with the Father: through redemption He has brought us into the same position.

188 Never as priests have we to do with the Father. The near place we have as to God is priesthood: we are priests to God. Christ is not a Priest between us and the Father. We have an Advocate with the Father. In chapter 2: 5 the holy priesthood alludes to Aaron; in verse 9 the royal priesthood refers to Melchizedec.

The high priest went into the holiest alone, the law "having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things." There was an analogy, but rather contrast than exact similarity. The Lord Jesus, the great High Priest entered within the veil. But as to Israel, there is no priest to them until He comes out, as no priest witnessed to Israel of the acceptance of the sacrifice till Aaron came out on the day of atonement. So with Christ. He will come out to them: in the meantime, as a nation, they are maintained, kept, but must wait. For us it is different. He is gone in for believers. He Himself is not come out, but the Holy Ghost has already, I and we know by virtue of this the sacrifice accepted. "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more" is witnessed by the Holy Ghost; so "by whose stripes ye are healed." All the saints of God know Christ gone in and the Holy Ghost come out.

In Hebrews 10: 12 Christ is seen sitting in contrast to Stephen. He does not sit as it were till Israel has formally rejected the testimony, when the cry of Stephen reached His ear. He took His place, sitting down until His enemies are made His footstool, after their refusal to hear the Holy Ghost's testimony. Stephen being received by Christ in heaven, Israel as Israel must wait outside.

189 The consequence of Christ's priesthood is that He makes us priests. He has entered in once into the holy place. That relates to Himself, and He makes us children with the Father and priests to God. He has the pre-eminence of course. The moment the least thought of a priesthood comes in between us and God, the truth of Christianity is gone. There is only now the priesthood of all believers. We are priests by virtue of the competency to enter the holiest of all. There is as much liberty for us to enter into the holiest as Christ Himself. To deny the priesthood of all believers is to say that all saints cannot enter into the holiest by virtue of that blood. Israel could not go in because of that blood, and therefore they needed priests: but now the veil is rent and the way into the holiest is open. His death made all the difference as to our right to enter. It is the contrast of theirs.

In Hebrews 10: 22 the allusion is to the priests who were washed with water and sprinkled with blood before they were anointed. Christ has made us all priests to God, and with that we have the title to offer praise, "spiritual sacrifices to God." We go directly to God. In another character, again, there is the same principle: "I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loveth you," John 16. Going to God through priests was Jewish, this is Christian.

We get into a happy condition of soul founded on the work Christ has done: exercises (not legal) of soul with God begin, as going within the veil. We are all priests: then whom are we to go for? We go together - we are a holy priesthood. In a certain sense, the priest if he sinned was to have an offering presented for him by another priest - Christ the Priest. The priest offered burnt-offering and the fat of the peace-offerings for a sweet savour, without thought of sin in these, but representing worship. Zacharias in Luke I was burning incense within, while the people were without. On the great day of atonement the priest, as a guilty person, confessed the sins of the people. Christ on the cross stood for His people, as their substitute or representative priest. After that, when the blood was carried in, the priestly office began.

There is no veil now: we go in, whether presenting worship, praise, etc. Christ is gone in for us. I have nothing to do to offer for myself; I have an abiding title to offer sacrifice. What sacrifice? Praise, thanksgiving. Why? The only sacrifice fit for my place. I can praise God for His own glory as well as for my own blessing; but I cannot be in the holiest and mourn. If I am hindered in going in through failure, I mourn, and there is the working of His Spirit to restore the communion, but there cannot be worship, which is offered in the Holy Ghost. There is no veil that ever hides God at all now. My feet may have to be washed before I can go in rightly; John 13. We are not fitted for worship if our feet are unclean. There is the power of the Holy Ghost needed for that, and then His work is to tell us we are unclean - not to set us worshipping when we are unclean, but to make us wash. Christ, the Advocate with the Father, the High Priest over the house of God, washes the feet for the sanctuary. We have not ceased to be priests, but are unfitted for priestly work when we have failed; we are bathed, but we need the feet washed. There must be cleansing from all defilement, according to the purity of the place we are brought into. We can intercede for others. Not only are there burnt offerings, the food of God in the offering; there is another kind of offering for the saints, supposing failure in others. There is the spirit of intercession for one another, and not only offering sacrifices ourselves.

190 The blood has been put on the mercy-seat. We stand in its abiding (not renewed) efficacy. When we fail, it is not its renewed efficacy that we know. When did that blood lose its efficacy? Never. He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified. The application of the word, called the "washing of water," by the power of the Holy Ghost to judge us and to restore us and bring us back, is what we want. This is shewn, in connection with the sacrifice of Christ, in the "red heifer." The red heifer had been burnt long before; and they were to mix water with the ashes, so bringing the sacrifice to remembrance. The heart is brought back to remember what was done. The blood of Christ never can be repeated in its application.

Thus in verse 5 the holy priesthood is within the rent veil. The next thing (v. 9) is "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood" (Melchizedec). The nation of Israel will be a kingdom of priests compared with other nations. When Christ displays His Melchizedec priesthood, He comes forth as royal priest. He has it now, as we know by faith; but when He comes out He will be seen as Priest on His throne. The counsels of God for Christ in connection with the earth will be fulfilled. Christ will come out with all the glory He has taken in heaven and all will be in communion with the display of His glory. He will reign as a king, and everything will be cut off that is contrary to His glory; Lev. 9. Meanwhile we have this to do; we are set to shew forth His praises who has brought us into His marvellous light. We do it together and as individuals. It will make us suffer now.

191 Moses and Aaron came out, the fire shewing acceptance. It will be perfectly fulfilled in the world to come. Our privilege is to go in as worshipping priests in the holy place, and coming out of it to shew forth His praises in the world. In all this we find the office of the great High Priest to meet us - "find grace to help in time of need" (Heb. 4), this "need" being the consciousness of our inability to do anything.

All enjoyed privileges make us humble, because they bring us into the presence of One so infinitely above us. Theoretical knowledge only puffs up. All the praise in our hearts before God should flow from the Spirit, and this will bring us into the consciousness of being in the sympathy of those there - God and Christ. Knowing God as my Father, and going to Him with the knowledge of His countenance smiling upon me are very different: the one may exist without the other. Conscious acquaintance with the thoughts of those who are there (God and Christ in the holiest) is our privilege.

Are you brought to God?

1 Peter 3: 10-18

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The apostle leads us to expect suffering. There will be more or less of it; for though called to "inherit a blessing," it is through suffering here. This passage shews out the result of God's government, but, besides that, it shews that we are brought to God. This is the great central truth. Christ "once suffered for sins . . . that he might bring us to God." There is little doctrine laid down in the epistles of Peter, but strong and vivid bringing out of fundamental truths. At the end of 2 Peter we have God's government of all this present scene; and things that the world is trusting in are all to be consumed; for indeed "the world and all that is therein will be burned up." There is not a single shelter here to be trusted to: all is going to be rolled up as a garment. Peter does not here dwell upon what was done for believers by Christ at His first coming, but on God's government closing in the terrible judgment. Are we brought to God?

Verse 10. The moral government of God is not brought to an issue, and cannot be while grace is going on, but the principles of it exist. For example, a quiet, peaceful, upright man would be better off than a turbulent man, etc. "What a man sows that will he reap" even now. It is not that everything gets its just recompense now - quite the contrary; but there are certain consequences a man will suffer for his deeds. There cannot be in this world now the full final expression of God's government, because sin has come in; and if He were to act in judgment, He would cut it all off; but as a general thing the principle is true - "The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous . . . but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil"; and behind and within it all there is something more. His own power and grace are at work in the gathering out of souls to form His church. In the millennium evil will not be allowed, the sinner will be cut off. There is a secret exercise of this principle now. "If ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye." There is the working of sin and evil; but, though the terror of the wicked is here, "be not afraid." The only thing is to have the single eye and serve with a good conscience; but if you do, you will find plenty to oppose you. "Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled," "sanctify the Lord of hosts himself, and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread; and he shall be for a sanctuary." In spite of the blessedness of a peaceful walk, there may be the whole power of Satan brought out against you; but you have the whole power of God: therefore "be not afraid."

193 There are two characters of suffering noticed by the Lord in the sermon on the Mount, as here by Peter - suffering for righteousness' sake, and suffering for Christ's sake. The effect of being a Christian is to have a conscience exercised to know what is right for him as such: he walks in God's presence, and therefore in the light; he has his will thwarted. Thus many things in the world, he finds, will not do for him as walking in the path of righteousness; the world will not have this scrupulousness; and therefore trial comes from them for the believer. His hopes and joys being elsewhere, his treasure and his heart are elsewhere. "Blessed are they that suffer for righteousness' sake." Then the Christian must expect to suffer for Christ. And "blessed are ye when men shall revile you," etc., for my sake. When God becomes the object and motive, he takes suffering as a natural portion. Then it comes to be a question of testimony for God to those who are not with God; that is a different thing from suffering for conscience' sake, or righteousness' sake.

In chapter 4: 13, 14, it is Christ's sufferings, and Christ's glory. The same Spirit that makes me partaker of the suffering, makes me also partaker of the glory. I should be a witness of His power through the Holy Ghost, a witness for Christ, and not only keeping a good conscience. As a witness for Christ, in being a vessel of His testimony, you share the glory He is in.

Peter does not speak of the church's place. As in the church, we are all partakers alike of glory according to the gift of grace, we are all predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son. But here it is as individuals, and the glory is put before them as the reward of suffering. An energy of love ever goes out if the Spirit of Christ is really there. I cannot see a person perishing, and not feel it. The spirit of love cannot look upon perishing sinners, and not care for them. This becomes an occasion of suffering.

"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts." God must have His right place in our hearts in both these things; giving God in my heart His true character is sanctifying Him. In whose heart has God this perfect place of power and love? I do not mean in activity, that is according to gift, but in the heart. Where is the heart that keeps itself entirely for God, that is filled with God's love and holiness? All that is in the world, pleasure, vanity, etc., robs God of His glory in us. God is not then sanctified by us, and this is the secret of our weakness. Could you say today - yesterday - that God has had His right place in your hearts? What is the consequence? It ought to be a bad conscience. Ought I to forget my forgetfulness? I shall find it out in weakness, if I do not find it in confession. Power for testifying for God is not there, if I have been talking idleness or vanity. If I turn to anything for God, as if my whole heart were in it, I am in danger; I do not sanctify the Lord in my heart. There may not be insincerity or hypocrisy in it, but the lack of the sanctifying the Lord; and when He has not the place in us that makes us happy and that gives us power (for the joy of the Lord is strength), there is not the blessing flowing out to others. We want the practical power of the God that loves us, working in our hearts. What a thing this supposes! If I do not know God, I cannot sanctify Him. It is as being brought to Him I can sanctify Him. The thought of getting to God when I get to heaven, supposes that I have not come to Him now. All we have been speaking of flows out of giving God the place He really has. We are to sanctify the Lord because He is there, trusting in that love shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. Why is the conduct of one man different from another man's? One is without God, and the other has Him as a present spring of delight and strength, love, comfort - this is a total, immense, and infinite change. What a thing to be without God as regards the soul! Immortal beings without God! having faculty, intelligence, sagacity, but without God! Human affection is lovely in the creature, but it is not God. The objects of affection may come in between the creature and God, even what He has created in us; for blessing may be an occasion of idolatry.

194 It is not responsibility here. My leaning on a friend is not responsibility, my being happy with a friend is not responsibility. If I drink when I am thirsty, it is not responsibility; but God is there, when I drink of the living water which Christ gives me. He makes these affections to flow out to Himself, necessarily and divinely. He is working upon me, communicating to me in the sovereignty of His grace: therefore it is not responsibility. If God then can communicate Himself in our hearts, what a well of water is springing up! I have got trouble, but what is that? I have got that, yea, Him, to give me joy in the trouble, which the trouble cannot touch. I have a spring within and a sanctuary around me. If there is such blessedness in God being sanctified and enjoyed by us, perhaps some of you say, I know nothing about it. I do not speak of enjoyment now; but where a man is a believer, it is not a question of whether he has the relationship of grace, but whether he has failed in it. If I am unfaithful in this love, and unhappy in the consciousness of having done so, it is because I really have it. The thing he has to enjoy is what is in God Himself, and that is His own love. If we believe what God communicates to the soul, by dwelling in us, "we know and believe the love that God hath to us." A person may say well - I do not know, I cannot speak of the present, but I hope to get to God. The questioning how a man is to get it is very solemn and a sure sign that He is not there.

195 "That you may be able to give an answer to every man," etc. It is not you suffering for sins; but if the will of God be so, it is better to suffer for well doing than for evil doing; but do not suppose you are suffering for your sins: Christ has done that for you. If you suffer for righteousness' sake, it is all well, but for sins - Christ has done it for you, having left you nothing to suffer for them.

How mighty this inward purpose of God! This one act brings a man to God. Christ suffered all His life long, but from whom? Man. But there at the end, the centre of all this, by the cross, we are brought to God Himself. God is in a man's heart or He is not. But the suffering for sins Christ bore was from God Himself. Here we get the purpose of God, not His government; and notwithstanding such a death, all the wrath of God, all the power of Satan, all the consequences of sin brought to bear upon Christ on the cross (this was suffering for sin), He did it in respect of what man was, and in respect of what God was, and it was to bring them together. All that was in God was fully brought out. His love brought out suffering, wrath, etc. All that my heart must be rightly exercised about met there. I could not go to God without God knowing what my heart is; and (all the difference of good and evil being to Him) can He know the evil and be indifferent to it? Can He say it is no matter? Impossible! It would be unholiness in Him. Could He see all the levity, ill-humour, wilfulness, indifference in the presence of His cross and be indifferent? What is He to do with it? What is He to do with you? He must put sin away, and He must deal with it in the perfectness of His love and holiness. We have turned God into a Judge by our sins, and I find myself in the presence of the God whom I dreaded. He has put away the sin from my conscience, put His love in my heart, given me to delight in holiness. He who was just suffered for the unjust; and now, being brought to God, there is nothing in Him, with whom I have to do, but what I have been made acquainted with (not His glory yet, of course). I am the sinner He has been engaged about. He has made Himself known to me by what He has done. I know God. What a home I have! Its spring is the love in God's heart, and it has brought me back to the source of that love. I am brought home to the enjoyment of His love, and am partaker of His nature.

196 After this I need not say that there are all the exercises of heart in consequence, conflict with evil, etc.; but I can testify to sinners "God so loved the world." How do you know this? it may be said. I have tasted it. Thus we are fellow-workers with God. We have the immense privilege, according to the sphere given us, of testifying of the love that has saved us. But if I have not this love in my heart, how can I testify of it to others? If I say to one who is weary, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," says Christ, you will turn to me and say, Have you got rest? A person may warn another, and be exercised himself; but he cannot testify to the truth of deliverance. Could you go and say, He has received me? I can say He has received me, and none viler. Now if you have not got God, you have your sins, your will, your responsibility - but not God. Why did Christ suffer for sins? It was because you were away from God. Now have you the consciousness of having been away from God, and are you, like the prodigal, brought back? If not, it is very solemn. You have loved vanity, you have loved your pleasures, you have loved yourself, and have not God; not wilfully opposing, perhaps, but in the ignorance of unbelief, you are without God - the God of love.

197 If you have not yet come to God by the cross, may He give you to see it, that you may walk in the spirit of blessing, and sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, living a life of communion with God, and bringing forth the fruit of communion in ways according to it, till you come to the full enjoyment of eternal blessing in the Father's house on high!

Grace and Government

J. N. Darby.

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2 Peter 1

We were seeing a little lately the place of the glorified Man in heaven, and of those associated with Him in living union, the heavenly position of the saints; but in Peter's Epistle that subject is not touched. Saints are looked at as saved ones, of course; but the subject is the difficulties that accompany their condition, with the hope of being in the glory.

Peter takes up the saints as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, God Himself being their governor, yet not displaying His government as among the Jews. Still He is watching over them and caring for them. "Every hair of their head is numbered." Nothing is allowed really to harm them, although they may have to suffer; and "if for righteousness' sake, happy are ye." Thus it is not only as saved ones that saints are looked at here, but as under God as their governor: His ways towards His children are brought out. Peter does just hint that there is something beyond, for those set in association with Christ; but the main thing is divine moral government. In the close of this Epistle we find the end of all things glanced at, "when the heavens shall be dissolved and the elements melt with fervent heat," the whole scene closed, and the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness looked for.

But what the Apostle is occupied with is the thought of God governing His children in the midst of this world's system, a system of evil without a proof in it that He is the governor. When Jesus came, the thought of many a heart was, that He would reign in righteousness, knowing that God would not clear the guilty nor let the wicked go unpunished. Israel was set up as a present scene of God's government; but, instead of peace reigning, Christ was called to suffer.

The only righteous man, the alone One who could have met the claims of justice, was condemned by injustice on the one side and by righteousness on the other. Righteousness and peace had not kissed each other, but the contrary. It was doing well and suffering for it. And this aspect - the one in which Christ was seen on earth - is what we see Christians contemplated in here. They are looked at, in a double character, as suffering. It may be for righteousness' or conscience' sake, or for Christ's sake in other ways. Sufferings may come upon us through our ordinary occupations, the daily routine of business, or the actings of every-day life.

199 The Christian cannot do as the world does. It is more consequence to me as a believer to live Christ than all else besides. The Christian cannot resist evil, nor assert his rights, nor maintain his place in the world. It is more important to me to keep clothed in Christ's character than to wear any other mantle. The Lord Jesus does allow His saints to suffer. Their portion is in heaven. Suffering is good for them. Their salvation is perfectly accomplished. They are united to Christ. Is their suffering essential to salvation? No, salvation is Christ's work and outside the acts of the Holy Ghost altogether, who convicts of sin and bears witness of God's righteousness. The Holy Ghost afterwards operates on the new nature - the Christ within; and practically exhibiting Him will bring on suffering. "For me to live is Christ." Not only do I desire to be in the place where He is, as Zebedee's children did, but to live out what He is. All the exercises of my heart, all my desire for God's government to be displayed in power, give way to the longings for the affections of Christ. And now He is in heaven, my one aim should be to manifest Him.

So we read in 1 Peter 2, "This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God," etc. It is not the spirit of love yet. Again in chapter 3: 10-14 the great principle is brought out. In chapter 4: 12-17 we are not to think it strange if we have reproach and sufferings for Christ's sake, but to be glad with exceeding joy. Of course, none of us should suffer as evil doers. God will govern His children. Judgment must begin at the house of God. He will have His house clear. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is the only place God judges in; for He has committed all judgment to the Son. If the righteous are scarcely - that is, with difficulty - saved (it was with difficulty, but Christ overcame it), God never gives up what He is. He is the holy Father, and, when He saves sinners in sovereign grace, He makes them what He is. He will maintain His character. I may deserve chastisement and God may meet me in grace; but He will deliver me from my sin. He cannot allow evil, neither could Christ. He ever dealt with men according to their ways and the truth of their condition, while meeting them constantly in grace. It is true He could say, I am your perfect salvation, but it was on the ground of total ruin as the sinner's part.

200 The heart of God would give us everything: and the title to all is - we are in Christ, and He in us. You cannot say you have done a single thing perfectly, if there remains any part to be done. Salvation is fully wrought. It would be imperfect if there was one thing to be added. Christ keeps nothing back. He came to reveal the Father, and the Father He did reveal. "I have declared unto them thy name." "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them." "I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." Language is exhausted in trying to maintain us in the place we are called to. We are predestinated to be conformed to the image of the risen Christ. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ. We are sharers with Him in all His honour and glory, save that which is peculiar to His Godhead, while He always has the pre-eminence. God truly loves us. Not a sinner is saved, but therein the ways and dealings of God are displayed.

In John 15 the Christian is taken up as a branch in the vine. The word is, "Abide in me." It is not, I abide in you that you may bring forth fruit; but "If ye abide in me." He does always abide in us - that we know. But if I abide in Christ, I have the present enjoyment of the Father's love, and bring forth fruit to the glory of His name. "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." He does not say He will be our friend - this He ever was; but "Ye are my friends." Now, my dealing with my friend is after an order entirely different from what it is with my servant. I go and tell out my heart to my friend. Abraham was called "the friend of God"; and God says, "Shall I keep back from Abraham the thing I am going to do?" He tells and acts out His heart before His friend. This was what Christ did. In everything His end was to tell out the Father to those He called friends.

All Christians have their sins forgiven them. There is no uncertainty about that. The grace of God has brought salvation. The Father sent the Son. To be saved and to be a Christian is the same thing. Some will say, I know all men are called Christians; but am I a real Christian? See Acts 13: 38, 39. Exercises of heart in that state never get beyond the desire to know if I am a Christian. I believe, one says, that God sent His Son to save sinners; but I do not know that I am saved. What nonsense it is! "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life." Now all such exercises of heart, though they may be well enough in their way, will only prove just this - that I have nothing whatever to stand upon. If I have conflict, it shews there is evil, and evil cannot stand before the holiness of God.

201 Where, then, is my hope? "Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." There is nothing God does not do for me. The very thing that brings me into His presence without sin and without fear is that which He has done for me in Christ. In 1 John 2 we have three classes of Christians addressed. The "little children" of verses 12, 13, are quite distinct. The former (v. 12) embraces all Christians - the latter only babes, or young, immature saints. All Christians are forgiven - all needed the blood of Christ. The babes rest on it as much as the fathers. It is not what they think of it that is the comfort, but what God's thoughts are about it. It is through the blood of Jesus Christ His Son I get to the Father. And what is the Father? - what is God? He is perfect love. I see Him at the well of Samaria - taking up children - weeping at the grave of Lazarus. In Him there is no evil - no hatred; never rejecting one who comes - never condemning the self-condemned - "I judge no man." The Father was perfectly displayed in the Son. How can I make known to you what my Father is but by telling you what I have known Him to be - by living Him before you? This was what Christ ever did; and it is what we who have the Spirit of adoption should be doing.

In John 8: 19 we hear Christ say, "If ye had known me, ye should have known the Father also." He came not only to bring light, but "the light of life." If He heals the sick, or restores sight to the blind, the moment He touches them, there is light and life shewn in grace. If He is the Good Shepherd, He is the first out. He goes before the sheep; John 10: 4. He not only shews us God as the light, but He unfolds the Father. The babes in Christ have these two things - the new nature and the Spirit of adoption. So have the young men, and it is only in the energy of this Spirit they can overcome the world. When the fathers are addressed, it is "because ye have known him, who is from the beginning," and that is all he has got to say. It is not their experience he has to speak of, but Christ: He is the object, and He is the title to all blessing. If my failures grieve me (and they ought), my comfort is that Christ is not changed.

202 Even a revelation does not fit us for conflict. This we see in Peter. When he had a revelation from the Father of the very truth or confession on which Christ was about to build His church, in the self-same chapter he is treated as Satan! The flesh in Peter was not broken. The object before him was not Christ; he was not practically occupied with Him. If I come to Christ, I rest upon the love and power of One who has overcome. He has been tempted and knows how to comfort. I may have to suffer - He had. The Captain of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings. Our ways, too, may cause God to deal with us now (1 Peter 1: 17), for holiness the holy God must have. But if we are walking with the Lord, He will only bless. Suffering for Christ's sake, is a position of honour and favour; Phil. 1: 29. God cannot ever brook evil in His house. The ark and Dagon cannot dwell together. God will vindicate Himself. If there is an Achan in the camp, it must be known. No matter how bad things are around. God is still God. Compare the days of Solomon with those of Elijah. Was Solomon more to God than Elijah? No. The ark was once in the land of the Philistines, but God will not give up what He is, neither will He give up the objects of His love. If we do evil, His grace may meet us; but His love must deliver us from evil. If we are walking with Him, either as an assembly or as individuals, He will only communicate His love. The Father will discipline His children; if needs be, He will chasten them; but come what will, Christ is not changed.

In the chapter before us, the first thing we see is that those who have obtained like precious faith have all things that pertain to life and godliness, and are called to glory and virtue. It is too often the case, that the conflict takes place when Christ has not power in the soul; then we are overcome, for all power is in Him. Therefore, the need of giving all diligence; "add to your faith," etc. Whilst we are practically exercising these graces, we shall never fall. There will be no room for the flesh, but "there shall be ministered unto you an abundant entrance." We shall have the kingdom of our Lord in power in our souls. The third thing we have in this chapter, is that Peter had seen the glory and could say he was an eye-witness of His majesty. But did this save him in the hour of temptation? No. He had been sleeping instead of watching, and so lost all power of escape.

203 In verse 19 we find a sure word of prophecy, a lamp shining in a dark place until daylight dawn. Mark this. The lamp of prophecy shews the children what is coming on the world, the judgment of the quick, etc. And surely in this our day we see these two things (though so contrary the one to the other), men's heart failing them for fear, and yet saying peace and safety. Thus is an important testimony, to which we do well to take heed. The loving Father has told us of a coming kingdom. Then will shine the broad day, which the world shall see; but the dawn is for those who, through the darkness of the night, are watching. The day-star here is for the saint's heart, not for the earth.

In Revelation 2: 26, not only is there a promise to the saint of power over the nations, but "I will give him the morning star." Blessed portion with Christ! Yes, those who have believed on Him who is not seen shall be with Him where He is not seen. I will give him the morning star - a portion with Myself, and in Myself. I will give him Myself above, before I am manifested to the world. So in Revelation 22: 16, Christ is the bride's object; and the moment He says, I am the bright and morning star, she, directed by the Spirit, says, Come. "And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." The bride is not the water of life, but she has it, and can invite others. It is in Christ for the poorest sinner.

Partaker of the Divine Nature

2 Peter 1: 4

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Far from bringing into Godhead, which is incommunicable as supreme, because we are creatures, I do not even accept a common expression from Romanists and others - union with God. But the moral elements of what He is God can communicate in giving us life in Christ. Nature is properly what makes any creature what it is, as "angel," "man," "cow," or anything else. 2 Peter 1: 4 is not the simplest and clearest passage to explain the point, because it is properly moral, that is, specially what characterises the Christian as such. The reason I think so is, that it speaks of great and precious promises, which to me mean what John 3 calls "born of water," and "ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." Still it is not separable from the other point, life-giving. But it speaks of promises, and escaping corruptions which are in the world.

This truth of being born again, even Romanists, and also Arminians, and most evangelicals admit and confine themselves to, that is, an action of the Holy Ghost by the word by which man is morally purified. Nay, Wesleyans would say that it may be regained; and even those who do not go so far still hold it as only a purifying of what is. The Wesleyans say that man had body, soul, and spirit before the fall, and after the fall body, soul, and spirit corrupted; that, when one is born again, the corruption is removed; and hence that one may be quite perfect as man, if the corruption be wholly removed. But, without touching on perfection now, this is, to say the least, a most defective view of the matter. The Lord is a life-giving Spirit; and, operating by the Holy Ghost, "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" - not the Spirit, who is God; but one is by His divine power quickened, just as that which is born of the flesh is flesh. I receive spiritually life from Christ, as I receive naturally life from Adam. In this sense Christ is my life. He is eternal life (1 John 1), and "he that hath the Son of God hath life." It is not I as of the flesh, but Christ lives in me.

Hence, viewed abstractedly as thus born (for so John views things), it is said he cannot sin, because he is born of God. And this life we have in the power of Christ's resurrection; and it is acted in by the Holy Ghost given to us because of Christ's work. So after His resurrection, as God breathed into Adam so Christ breathed into His disciples. Through this it is said, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." A great accessory truth that comes in connected with this is, that, Christ having died, I am counted (Col. 3) of God dead as to the flesh, and am to count myself so (Rom. 6), and to realise it (2 Cor. 4), so that only the life of Christ should be manifested. This is the point to which my soul clings on the subject, the real communication of life in receiving Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost acting in it in power, created again in Christ Jesus, though the flesh still be there. But I am not in flesh but in Spirit, and am privileged and bound to hold it dead. Of course, this does practically cleanse by and according to the word. One may not be able to explain it physiologically, but it is quite plain in Scripture; and in Spirit the saint will live eternally with God. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" - partakes of the nature of that of which it is born. It is holy, loves, and, as in Christ as a man, obeys. In a word it is the reproduction as to its nature of Christ's life. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; the Spirit is life because of righteousness." It is as new a thing as a graft in a wild tree.

205 As regards using Old Testament facts as figures or types, our imagination is to be held in check, nor can we ever insist on such as doctrine. But there is a passage which may assist the mind on this point, 1 Corinthians 10: 11, where the word "ensamples" is types or figures. This gives the principle. Then we must only look to the Holy Ghost and divine guidance to use them soberly and aright.

The shade of different meaning in koinonia and metekos is, I believe, just; but it is a question of adequate observation of its New Testament use in Greek, and any adequate proof would make one abandon it. Koinonoi is really partners in Luke 5, then, metekoi the fact of taking part; but I have no anxiety to insist on this.*

{*See notes on 1 Corinthians 1: 9, in Volume 26, page 203, re "fellowship of his Son."}

Nature is moral in 2 Peter 1: 4, from the force of what is said in the passage. In divine things this is everything, as holiness, love, etc.; but the point to be insisted on is, that there is more than mere moral effect, though there be this - that Christ is for us a life-giving Spirit; as born of flesh involves a like nature.

206 I do not know whether the question has been met as you wish, for there is no effort to anticipate and answer the objections easily made by unbelief. But I think, if you take the passages, the life-giving [quickening], and Christ being our life will be very plain; and that is what to my mind is so important, though we never know what it really means till we know it as deliverance in power, the flesh being held as dead, according to Romans 8: 2, 3, having passed out of the state described in chapter 7 according to the doctrine of chapter 6 and the beginning of chapter 7.

Notes on the First Epistle of John

J. N. Darby.

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1 John 1.

The great leading truth of all this Epistle is what is expressed in verse 1, that eternal life has come down - a real positive life. The eternal life that was with the Father actually entered this world in the Person of Christ. The old thing - what the first Adam was - is entirely rejected. It is true, we have both in us as long as we are in the body. But there is the second Man, the Lord from heaven, who has come in, because the first man was turned out. In blessed grace He comes down. And we have seen it, he says, and heard it - the Word of life - that is, in Christ. He was walking about this world, another kind of life altogether. That is what he calls "from the beginning." It was an entirely new thing manifested here below. Wherever there is the fulness of grace brought in, that is, our privileges and relationships, we get the Father and the Son. Of course it is God, but God brought out in these relationships; verses 1-4.

The first thing we have here, in virtue of the life God has given to us, is the fulness of the privileges of the saints in Christ. They have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. But in the next place he brings a second point out, and it is this: If you say you have that kind of fellowship, and walk in darkness, it is all false, because darkness cannot have fellowship with light. If you have perfect grace bringing in divine life - the life that was manifested in the Person of Christ, and then communicated to us, he next says, It is light. God does not change the holiness of His nature; and therefore the pretence to have fellowship with it, if we are walking in darkness, is all false.

Connected with this he presents the remedy as regards our state; that is, that Christ cleanses us and makes us fit for the light. And the second thing which comes out in the next chapter is, that when, in our weakness, we have fallen into sin, "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Grace has provided for the evil, though there can be no communion with God in it.

First, we have the fulness of the blessing, eternal life in Christ; next its nature and character - God's light and purity; and then the means by which it is possible that such sinners as we can have all this blessing - first, by the cleansing, and then by the advocacy of Christ.

208 "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the Word of life." Christ is looked at in this world as the beginning of everything. It is not that the saints before had not received life from Him above, but the thing itself had never been manifested

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard," etc. It was in a man bodily. It comes by the power of the word now, but they had seen this eternal life in the Person of a Man walking about in this world. Just as we can see natural life in Adam, so we see divine life in Christ. If we look at the life in us, it is united with failure; but I can see and know what the perfectness of the life is by looking at Christ. "For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us." There we see and know it; and our spirituality depends upon the degree in which we realise it. They had seen it as come in flesh, and it is declared unto us; that we may have fellowship with them - and their fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. It is not merely a person justified before God by the work of Christ, but it is fellowship with God in virtue of a life which was in Him before God - a life perfectly conformed to all that God is.

Looking at the new nature given to us in its holiness, and its love, it is the same thing as that which is in God. He gives me this life that there may be power. He cannot reveal things to me, but it can give me fellowship with God. It is not merely that I am justified before Him, but I have the same thoughts and feelings: He has them in Himself, and, we having them from Him, they are the same. There is fellowship. There are common thoughts and joys and feelings with the Father and the Son, and these we know and have. He has given us the Spirit that there may be power, if the Holy Ghost works in us. All that was perfect in a man's feelings, according to the divine nature, Christ has had. If my soul delights in Christ, and sees the blessedness of what is in Him, do not I know that my Father delights in Him too? He delights in holiness and love, and so do we: this is fellowship. You get fellowship with the Father and the Son. This is the blessedness that I have got. It is not merely the fact that I am accepted, who was once a sinner, but that, Christ having become my life, I get the blessedness of fellowship with the Father and with the Son. The Father loved the Son - the Son loved the Father - and I get their divine affections and have fellowship with them. This is where He brings us; it is perfect blessedness.

209 Nor is this merely true in heaven. He served His Father upon earth, giving up His will in everything. The life was manifested to us here, not in heaven. Of course, the full blessedness of it will be known in heaven and therefore he says, "These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."We have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. There is nothing beyond that in heaven itself. Therefore it is, "These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." That is the blessing He puts us in.

Now he brings in the test, that there may be no self-deception. "This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." If He manifested this eternal life, He manifested God too. "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." With the thought of this life, He brings in that which tests everything in us too; this is the other side of it. It runs all through this Epistle. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Here it is said, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." The light is the purest thing, and it manifests all else. This was what Christ was - perfect purity, and as such He manifests everything. "If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth." It is impossible in the nature of things. If there is not the purity of this divine nature that is light in us, there is no fellowship with God. If we say that there is, we lie, and do not the truth. There is no limit short of God Himself. The thing that is revealed is God. You cannot give man light, nor find the light for yourselves. It was in Himself. Now God has been manifest in the flesh, and therefore you have to "walk in the light as he is in the light." And if we do, "we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

We have in verse 7 the three parts of our Christian condition, looked at as men walking down here. First, we walk in the light as God is in the light, everything judged according to Him with whom we have fellowship. Next, what the world does not know anything of, "we have fellowship one with another." That is, I have the same divine nature with every Christian - the same Holy Ghost dwells in me; so that there must be fellowship. I meet a perfect stranger travelling, and there may be more communion with him than with one whom I have known all my life, just because the divine life is there. It is a natural thing to the new creature: there is fellowship. But, besides these, I am cleansed - "The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." We are in the light as God is in the light; we have fellowship together; and we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

210 Then he enters a little more into the practical condition of our own conscience. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." That is where truth in the inward part comes out. The new nature in us judges all the sin that is in us. He does not deny that we have learnt the truth; but if Christ is the truth in me, it must judge all that is of the old man as sin. If a person has only learnt the truth outwardly, he may gloss over all the rest. But if the truth is in us, everything comes out. If I say, I have no sin, looked at as in the flesh, I deceive myself, and the truth is not in me. Yet it is not merely saying that there is sin in me that is the thing. It is when really the heart and conscience are touched, so that I own I personally followed the flesh. It is not a doctrine then. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." His bearing towards us is gracious and forgiving, and He cleanses us completely.

"If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." If we pretend not to have sinned, we make Him a liar: it is not merely that the truth is not in us, but I am making God Himself untrue in His word. To say that I have no sin is to deceive myself; but to say I have not sinned is to deny God's truth even outwardly, because He says all have sinned. I am denying really the whole truth of God.

But these are the two things that are called for; first, to know that the truth is in us; and then to confess our sins. A man may be dreadfully proud, and not like to confess it; but when a person has, through divine grace, got the upper hand, he hates himself instead of excusing his sin, he confesses it, he has got right with God, and God says, I will forgive you; it is all done with. We stand before God in the sense of His favour. But, besides that, we stand before God with the consciousness of being perfectly clear in His sight. If I get into the light, with any dirt upon me, I see it there; if I am in the dark, I see no difference. If we are in the light before God, all is seen. But if I am cleansed and in the light; I only see the more that there is not a spot in me. The two opening verses of chapter 2 are the means of maintaining us in the light.

211 Chapter 1 takes up these two things: first, the fulness of the blessing in fellowship with the Father and Son; and, secondly, the nature of the fellowship, and then how a sinner can have it - the individual state of soul as judging and confessing sins, and truth in the inward parts. I cannot say I have no sin and yet I say I am clean before God. There is where people mistake. They want a divine nature, which, instead of pretending to works, judges every thing according to the light. Wherever there is sin on the conscience there cannot be communion, though there is a blessed means of grace that does cleanse. "The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." In chapter 2: 1, 2, we have the remedy for daily defilement. There it is Christ, not to maintain righteousness, but to restore communion.

1 John 2.

The two first verses connect themselves as a kind of supplement to the preceding chapter. He had put before them this privilege of fellowship with the Father and the Son, which must be in the light; and there was this perfect remedy, the blood of Christ, which presents us clean in the light. Now he says, "These things write I unto you, that ye sin not." The object of all this was that they should not sin. "And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." It is not exactly the same thing as in Hebrews, where we find a priest with God, because there the question is of the possibility of our coming to God. There it is making good the truth that we can go to God, and it has that character throughout. But all through the Gospel and Epistle of John he speaks of more than merely going to God as a public worshipper. Here we are much more intimate with Him. It is a different thing that I can go and worship before God and approach Him, or that I am in intimate fellowship with Him. We get into relationship with Him. Whenever he speaks of grace, he speaks of the Father and Son, and when of light he speaks of God. In John 8, where they are all convicted of sin, it is God. "Before Abraham was, I am." When he gets to grace, He speaks of being a good Shepherd, who gives His life for the sheep, and whose voice the sheep know. He says there is as much intimacy between you and Me as between Me and My Father. There is the perfect revelation of love in an intimate relationship like that.

212 Advocacy here is connected with the Father. Where communion is interrupted, it is restored: we do not cease to be sons and to be accepted. It is not a question here of whether as a sinner I can come to God or not, but of the loss of this intimacy which the least idle word destroys. And this makes it still further plain that accepted persons are spoken of here. It is not a question now of God's accepting. Not even priesthood has to do with that, still less advocacy with the Father. It supposes that we are naughty children, and that the freedom of this intimacy is destroyed, and Christ takes the place of Advocate to restore it. Grace works, but there is never any mitigation of sin in itself; it is no allowance of evil.

The ground is thus laid in this remarkable manner. There are two things to consider; our standing in the presence of God, and, on the other hand, the evil which is inconsistent with it. Christ has met both. "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." This never changes. The place which we have with God abides there, because Christ, the righteous One, is there. The perfectly accepted Person is in the presence of God, and God is honoured about the failure. "And he is the propitiation for our sins." So that the advocacy of Christ with the Father is founded upon this acceptance, first of His Person, and then of His work for us. We are accepted in the Beloved, and this never changes, because the righteous One always appears in the presence of God for us. And yet the Lord does not allow anything contrary to Himself. Sin is not passed over. "We have an advocate." And yet if He is the Advocate for these persons who have failed, it is because He is the propitiation for their sins. There is perfect acceptance. Having met all requirements about sin on the cross, we are put in the presence of God in the acceptance of Christ Himself.

213 "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." This blood-shedding is put upon the mercy-seat, in virtue of which we can go and preach the gospel to every creature. It does not mean that all are reconciled, but that the testimony of God's mercy went out not to Jews only, but to every creature in the world. Through this blood we can stand in His presence; but there failure comes to be the question for the conscience of the saint, and then the advocacy of Christ applies.

But now he takes up another subject - the practical tests before men that we have got this life. In the main we may say that love to the brethren, and righteousness or obedience, are the grand tests. This eternal life we have seen in contrast with sin, sustained by the grace of Christ. Now we come to the same life shewn in its fruits down here; and they were calling in question whether they had this life or not. Therefore he gives, in order to keep them in the consciousness and certainty that they had that life, these traits of it, which some of those of high profession had not. "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments."

I would just observe here that throughout this Epistle you will find God and Christ so entirely united in the thought of the apostle, that he speaks of one and then of the other in relation to the same thing Look at the last chapter: "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." God is revealed to us in Christ. It may seem confusion, but it brings out the glory of the Person of Christ. So here (v. 28), "And now, little children, abide in him; that when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him." He begins with Christ's appearing, and the same sentence ends with God Himself. So here, with regard to God's commandments. "Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments." They are Christ's commandments, and yet they are God's too.

Next, we are told that "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." A man says he knows God and does not keep His commandments - the truth is not in him, because this life is an obedient life, and if Christ is our life, the principles of Christ's life are the same in us. If the principle of obedience is not there, life is not there. But this is not all. "Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in him." This gives a great deal more than the mere fact that he is a liar, if he says he knows God and does not keep His commandments.

214 Another thing to be remarked is this, that all John's statements are absolute. He never modifies them by bringing in the difficulties or hindrances that we may have in the body. "He that is born of God," he says in chapter 3, "does not commit sin." He is speaking there according to the very essence of the nature. The divine nature cannot sin. It is not a question of progress or degree, but "he cannot sin because he is born of God." "He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not," chap. 5. The wicked one touches the Christian often; but he never can touch the divine life: and John always states it in its own proper absoluteness, according to the truth itself. There are plenty of other scriptures that shew our inconsistency. But if the flesh acts, it is not this new life, but you get the measure of it in itself. "Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected," etc. That is absolute. If I am only saying an idle word, it is not keeping His word.

This is an immensely blessed truth. Because if I was under law and took His word in that way, I should have nothing to do with life. It tells me to love God, and in that I fail. But here the revelation I have of God in Christ is perfect love. The love of God is manifested, and if His word dwells in our hearts, His word is love and His love is perfected in us. "If a man keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected." In him - not only towards him. If the word is kept, that word is the power of Christ in us, and that is the perfect love of God enjoyed in the heart. We may fail in keeping it, but the Apostle does not give these kinds of modifications, but the truth in itself; and it is thoroughly true, and experienced in the measure that the word of God is kept in the heart. The Holy Ghost is the power, but we cannot separate this from the word. He is in us, and we have got that love in our souls - God's love as manifested in Christ. Supposing I am disobedient, I get sin in my heart instead of Christ.

"Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in him." Now he says we are in Him. We dwell in God. If I say I am in Him, I have got this strength and shelter in Him. Now you must walk as He walked. Christ is my life. Then I must walk like Christ. It is not be as He was; but we are not to walk according to the flesh. Therefore he does not say, You ought to be what Christ was; but "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he walked." If you say you abide in Him, you are there always: you should always walk as He walked. There is never any reason for walking after the flesh. The flesh is in us, but that is no reason why we should walk after it. I am always at liberty to walk spiritually. There is liberty before God as to the walk. If I have got a fleshly nature, a commandment comes contrary to the will of that nature. I want to go into town, and I am ordered off into the country. I do not like it. But supposing I was longing to go into town, and my father says, You must go into town; why then to do the commandment is liberty. So now all the commandments of Christ are according to the nature that I have got already. Christ is my life, and all Christ's words are the expression of that life. And therefore when Christ's words are given to me, they only give me the authority to do what my nature likes to do. All the words of Christ are the expression of what He was. They told out His nature and life and being; and, when we have that nature, they guide and direct us. Therefore it is real and holy liberty. We ought to walk even as He walked.

215 "Brethren I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning"; that is, from the beginning of Christ - His manifestation down here.

"Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you," etc. Because they were looking for something new. One thing, he says, I boast of is that it is old, because it is what Christ was when upon the earth. But if you will have something new, it is Christ as your life by the Holy Ghost now. It is "true in him and in you," because the darkness is passing and the light now shines. It was true in Him when here below, but now all this truth of the divine nature is as true of you as of Christ. Therefore it is new enough. It is old, because it was in Christ Himself; but it is new, because it is in you, as well as in Christ Himself.

216 So far we have had the first great principle of the divine life - obedience - walking in righteousness. Now comes the other side: loving the brethren. You are in the light, for God is light. Well then, God is love, and you cannot have one part of God without the other. If you have the light, you must have the love. Christ, when He was here, was the light of the world; but He was love too, and therefore if you have Him as your nature, you will have both. "He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him." In its very nature and way there is no occasion of stumbling. "But he that hateth his brother is in darkness and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes." This is true really in detail; because, if I am walking in hatred to my brethren, I am walking in darkness. But the apostle only gives the principle here. Love is an old thing, because it was in Christ on earth; but it is a new thing, because it is true in Him and in you. "He who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

We get there what I may call the characteristic tests of Christ our life. One is light - obedience - for no righteousness can be, unless it is obedient. Christ says, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Therefore we get this principle of obedient dependence which is righteousness. The other is love. Here then we have, first, as a supplement to the previous chapter, the advocacy of Christ; and then, in the other parts of the Epistle, the tests of this divine life as manifest in obedience and love to the brethren. In the life of Christ Himself all was most wonderfully, perfectly, and blessedly brought out.

This comes in now as breaking in upon the general course of the Epistle, and giving an account of why he wrote, and what he felt in writing. And first we find him speaking to all Christians, whom he calls "My children," and then addressing different classes of Christians, and telling why he wrote to them. It is his heart opening itself out to those to whom he was writing: and then we get some important practical truths.

217 In verse 12 the word "children" is the same as in verses 1, 28, but different from the "little children" in verses 13, 18. In the former he is speaking of all Christians, and calls them his "children"; whereas, in the other verses, he distinguishes between the young men, fathers, and the little children [babes] (paidia) or the youngest Christians. But in verses 1, 12, 28, the word teknia includes all saints.

"I write unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake, verse 12." That is true of all Christians. It is their universal condition. He had said before, "Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments." This was not to throw any doubt upon Christians being forgiven, but to stablish them in the truth, inasmuch as he says, "I write unto you children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake." This was a settled thing; they were all forgiven, and he wrote unto them because they were forgiven. A person that is not forgiven, the Epistle does not apply to. He takes that ground in writing to them. He says, "I write unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake." Such was the common condition of all Christians.

But now, when he comes to the different classes of Christians, there is a different character and position given to each of them. "I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning." Amongst the children of verse 12 there may be old Christians and babes. The fathers had known "him that is from the beginning." We have seen before, this means Christ in the world, His Person manifested in flesh. "Ye have known him that is from the beginning." That is where all experience ends; not in a knowledge of self merely as being occupied with it, but in such a knowledge as empties us of self, and gives us Christ. When a person is a young Christian, he is occupied with his feelings; it is all fresh and new to him, and it is right enough. He feels such wonderful joy in being forgiven. But, as you grow up, you get more and more emptied of self and occupied with Christ. Christ is this, and Christ that. In verse 14 he only repeats the same thing when writing to the fathers. He has a great deal to add when he writes to the young men, but to the fathers, it is still, "Ye have known him that is from the beginning." We learn our own foolishness and weakness, and so are cast upon Christ, and learn more of the depths of His grace, the perfectness of His Person. All right experience ends in forgetting self and thinking of Christ.

218 Next, he comes to the young men: "I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one." Having Christ with them, they have got strength in conflict and in service - they have overcome Satan.

Then he says, "I write. unto you babes, because ye have known the Father." Here again, we get another remarkable fact as to what he thought about Christians. That is, the babes in Christ - they that were but little children - had the Spirit of adoption. He has no idea of the weakest Christian not knowing that he was a child of God. To know Christ well, in the riches and excellence of His Person, is to be a father in Christ. But the youngest Christian knows that he is a child, and that the Father is his Father. It is like all Christians being forgiven - it is his place as a Christian. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba Father." It is not that you will not find persons doubting. You will find many a person who, if you ask him whether he is a child of God or not, will think it very humble to doubt about it, but who, in his prayers, cries, "Abba Father," with all his heart. It is between him and God. Repeating it over again, he has nothing to add to what he has said to the fathers, because all ends in Christ.

With the young men he goes more into detail because of the difficulties of the way, and he brings out the secret of strength for them - the word of God, in the midst of this world, where nothing is owned of God - God's mind comes into this world, and that is what we want. There is no way in the desert, as it is said in the Old Testament. The word of God shows God's way in the midst of a world where there is none. Therefore, when they are in the conflict, he says, "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one." That is the word by which Christ Himself overcame when the wicked one came and offered Him all the kingdoms of the world, He answered by the word - He overcame the wicked one.

Then he warns them: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." These things belong to it. All the glory of this world is not of the Father at all. And the more we look into John, and indeed all through the New Testament scripture, we may see these two great systems brought out plainly. He does not say you do not love Christ. But there is one great system that belongs to the Father, and another that belongs to the world. Every thing belongs to God as a Creator; but morally all is departed from Him. It was the devil that made this world, looked at as a moral world. God made paradise; and man sinned and got out of it, and then made up this world. Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and builded a city, and called it after the name of his son. Then God sent His Son, and they would not have Him, and thus it was a judged world. God has put it fully to the test - without law, under law, and then by His Son; and then He says, It is all judged. But then He has a way of His own, the Father has, and you cannot have both. If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. You may be tempted by it, and have to overcome it; but if you love it, the love of the Father is not in you; because He has got a system of His own, and you are going to the other system. It is so all through. In the Gospel we get divine life in the Person of Christ, and in the Epistle this divine life in the persons of Christians. In John 8 you will see the same truth. "Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world." There is no middle path with God. If they are of this world, they are from beneath; and if they are not of this world, they are from above. He says, I am not of this world; I am from above: because He came from the Father. You are of the world, and therefore from beneath, because it is Satan's world. So here - if the love of the world is in you, the love of the Father cannot be. There is another divine system, where the love of the Father is displayed, and if you belong to that, you have to overcome the world. It is not of the Father; it does not belong to that system.

219 Then he adds this: "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." Satan's works cannot last. They are seductive while they are there, but they cannot last: "but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." We have the same thing in Peter's Epistle, "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever." So here. "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever" - he that follows that word. The word of God brings all this into us, and that is what we have to follow.

220 Now he turns to the third class, having given this warning to the young men. For when a Christian is first converted, he would not thank you for the world. But when he has got on a little, the freshness fades; the world gradually eats out his freshness. If he is not careful, if his soul is not full of the things that are not seen, he gradually slips into the world. If he is full of Christ, he does not even see the things around. In chapter 5 John speaks of overcoming the world. There is the loss of all power and spiritual enjoyment, if the spirit of the world comes in: you cannot think of the things which the world suggests and the things of the Father at the same time. If the Holy Ghost is suggesting divine things to me, I have the present consciousness of belonging to all these things.

He turns, in verse 18, to the little children, and he tells them, "It is the last time." That is a remarkable expression, because eighteen hundred years have gone on since then, and it remains equally true that it is the last time; only the Lord, in His patience, is waiting, and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But it is the last time, because the power of evil has come in. When Christ was here, and was rejected, the power of evil was in the world. Then, when God raised up the church by the presence of the Holy Ghost, while Christ was on high, so that a man was in heaven, and the Holy Ghost in the world; there came power of redemption into the middle of Satan's world. That was not the last time. But now antichrists had come in, and he says, "this is the last time," because even this had failed, and nothing will come after this but judgment. "Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would not doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us."

These babes in Christ had broken with the world; they had done with its course. But here was a new kind of evil in the very place of divine power; persons setting up themselves, and abandoning Christ, and this was more dangerous. They had broken with the world, and knew what it was. But here comes in spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. He warns the babes against these enemies of the last times. Thank God, we have the warnings now. The apostle Paul even says, these are the last days, which is stronger still. But there is entire security where Christ is looked to. It is remarkable how he looks at the presence of the Spirit of God in the saints. He may be a babe; but God will not suffer him to be tempted above that he is able to bear. There may be the young men, but God gives them discernment; they know not the voice of strangers. These people may come to them with ever so much pretension, but it is not a voice they know. They know the voice of Christ, and they follow Him.

221 We saw that the babes in Christ knew the Father, and now we find further that these very babes have the divine unction, so that they will be able to judge through divine knowledge. He is pressing upon them their own competence, not as others, in themselves, but as taught of God, to avoid all snares. It is the subtlety of Satan, and therefore he warns the little ones more against it. "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." Here he gives us the full character of the antichrist. There were many antichrists, because the spirit of it had come in. Here it is the full character of it. It takes a certain Jewish character, denying Jesus to be the Christ; and it is opposed to Christianity, denying the Father and the Son.

Then he presses another point of immense importance, because people in these days use a great many fashionable words, such as development.

"Let that, therefore," the apostle says, "abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father." It is the Person of Christ. Instead of talking about the church as a body that teaches, I say it is taught.

The thing that is revealed is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that which was from the beginning. But if my soul is resting upon that, the truth about Christ as taught by the Holy Ghost, I am taught of the Father. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes . . . of the word of life." And now he says, "Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning." It is the Person of Christ that is the great thing, and it was by the revelation of Him that the church itself was formed. It exists in virtue of being taught of God.

222 The church does not teach - had nothing to do with teaching at all. God may raise up individuals in the church to teach, but the thing pressed upon us is that which we have heard from the beginning. It is a test of divine truth that we hold fast the starting-point - Jesus Christ. This is what tests everything. Where people insist upon the authority of the church, they never have the certainty of being children. If I am taught of God, I shall know what I have got for certain. Faith is always absolutely certain. If I have got the Father, I know that I am a child. I may be a naughty child, but still I am a child. "If that which ye have heard from the beginning remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life." He has promised me eternal life, and I shall have it; it is a perfectly settled thing.

"These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." There is real divine teaching. God may use an instrument to put it before us; but there is no real faith in the soul except where there is this unction of the Spirit of God. There may be convictions of sin before we get our souls clear as to being saved. But the moment I am divinely taught the Person of Christ, I say I have got eternal life - the life that God sent into the world.

A babe in Christ being most in danger, he enters into these kinds of warnings; but a person grown up into Christ knew very well where these things came from. What we now might think would be very learned things in Christianity, he says to the babes; but the great thing that marks those that are the most advanced - the fathers - is their knowledge of Christ.

The apostle takes up again in verse 28 all Christians in general, with an exhortation to abide in Him. You have here God in Christ so before the apostle's mind, that he says "Him," without saying who He is. He had been talking about the anointing - "even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." Previously, it was rather God as such spoken of; but "when he shall appear," we know Christ is meant thereby.

223 "And now, little children, abide in him; that when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming." If they did not abide in Him, the apostle had lost all his work. It would have been so far to his shame. You get the same thing in the second epistle (v. 8), "Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward." It is just what the apostle says to the Corinthians; 1 Cor. 3: 12, etc.) If we build upon the foundation, wood, hay, and stubble, the work will be burnt; there will be loss: he is proved to be a bad workman. The apostle here is pressing upon them to abide in Christ, that he may not be ashamed of his work. It is "that we may have confidence and not be ashamed," etc. - not that you may have confidence, etc. It is just what you see in the second epistle.

Then he takes up the second great object of the epistle - that communication of the divine nature of Christ, as our life, which gives us the same traits and characters that there are in God Himself - "which thing is true in him and in you." God is love, and the Christian loves. God is holy, and the Christian is so too. In His almighty power God, of course, is alone. But in what may be called the character of God, inasmuch as we are born of Him, we are like Him. And this divine nature enables us to enjoy God, as well as to be like Him.

Then, again, we see that God and Christ are so absolutely one, that the apostle says, "that we may not be ashamed before him at his coming"; but immediately he adds, "If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of him." We are born of God; yet he would appear to be speaking of the same one that should come - which is Christ. We find the same truth in Daniel 7. The Ancient of days described there is in Revelation 1 the Son of man. We get in Christ what the character and nature of God is in a man as living in this world; and then he shews that it is true of us too, as having the same life. He is righteous; and if a man doeth righteousness, he is born of Him. He has this nature.

224 1 John 3.

"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." When once you come to grace, we have the Father spoken of again. We are called God's children because we really are so. "Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." Who? Now by the "Him" is meant Christ. The world knew Him not: it does not know us for the same reason. We have the same life and character that He had. The world cannot recognise and own what is of Christ in us, because it did not recognise it in Christ. It is extremely remarkable and blessed for us to see this Man, the humblest man that ever was, and to find out what He really was, that God really became a man. The Word was God, and was made flesh.

We have got the same life; and when we have found Christ, we know that we have found God in all His blessedness close to us. And the world cannot know us. It does not know God, and cannot know us. You will find persons with a difficulty as to knowing whether it is Christ or God here, because the apostle carefully puts them together.

"It doth not yet appear what we shall be." It has not been seen what we are to be. The apostles saw it for a moment in the transfiguration; but, as to the manifestation of it, it does not yet appear. But being saints of God, having the same life, we know that we shall be like Him. He identifies God with Christ, and in a sense identifies us with Him. His glory is not yet manifested: but we shall be like Him, for "we shall see him as he is" - not as He will be, but as He is now in heavenly glory at the right hand of God. The flesh could not see this and subsist. Daniel fell as one dead, and John too, at the appearing of it. But we shall be like Him, and therefore capable of seeing Him as He is. This is a matter of infinite blessedness. We are to be conformed to the image of God's Son, that He may be the first-born among many brethren. If we were only conscious that there was all this blessedness, and yet had the thought, I am not to be like it, this would not be joy: whereas we are in it with the consciousness that we are the same. "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is"; that is, in glory as He is at the Father's right hand, and we shall see Him in that way.

225 "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Ours is the hope of being like Him - "that hath this hope in him," that is, in Christ - the hope of being like Himself. It does not say that he is pure as Christ is pure. But I have got the glory; and as it is mine, and I am going to be like Him, I must be as like Him as I can now. I must purify myself, and He is the measure of it. We are called by the glory to be up to it practically. The apostle says, "I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." I have not yet this resurrection from the dead, but I am pursuing it. But when Christ comes, He will change our vile bodies - and then we will have got it. The connection between glory and present walk is striking. As long as we are down here in this corruptible body, there is not a bit of glory. But the Spirit of God applies all this glory to the affections. I long to be like Christ, and therefore I get like Him in spirit. It is like a man that has a bright lamp before him at the end of a long passage. I have not the lamp till I get there, but I get more of it at every step. So with the glory: I have not got it till I am in it; but I get more of it the nearer I move towards Christ.

So in the epistle to the Ephesians Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it. He was washing and cleansing it, and would take away all spots. But it was that He might present it to Himself without spot. The Spirit takes of the things of Christ and presents them to us, and transforms us into the likeness of Christ. In Philippians he is speaking of the spiritual effect, by actual resurrection, upon the heart. "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection . . . if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." It is the actual thing, and he gets it applied to his heart now. "Not as though I had already attained . . . but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." Christ, in grace, had laid hold of him for the glory. Now he sees the glory, and follows after it. It is the glory in resurrection applied to the man's heart all along the road. So it is here. "Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." This bright and blessed glory fixes the affections and purifies the heart and forms the proper Christian path. It is a sanctifying hope - the soul being occupied with Christ, so that it is kept out of the evil.

226 He then goes on to another thing. If I go and commit sin, it is the lawlessness of the flesh, and nothing to do with Christ. "Whosoever practiseth sin, practiseth lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness." He does his own will in spite of God if he can. Because without the law sin was in the world. It is a kind of background he is making. If you are not purifying yourselves, as Christ is pure, it is the lawlessness of the flesh; it is entirely opposed to Christ. There is no middle path; for there is nothing good in this world. It is either Christ or flesh. Man is fallen and out of paradise, and there is nothing owned at all of man now. God made paradise, and man is out of it; and He made heaven, and man is not in it. But between the two there is nothing that God owns. God never made the world as it is, nor man as he is, that is, not the moral state that the world and man are in. It grew up when God had driven man out from His presence. Then Cain went and built a city, and established himself and his seed away from God. It must be either "ye are from beneath," or "I am from above." "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." If the law, then, is applied to the flesh, of course the flesh transgresses it. "And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin." There was no sin in Him; and He came to put away sin.

Then he takes in the strongest way the opposition between the two. "In him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him." He is taking the two things as opposed in every way. Because, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," he says to the same persons. But here, "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not," etc. The divine nature cannot sin. The thing that is born of God cannot sin, and that is ourselves so far as we are in Christ. As the apostle says, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Of course, that is not sin. The saint is never looked at as in the flesh; but "he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous." It is not merely that you are changed, but you are made partakers of the divine nature. "Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous." He has got the same nature which walks in the same path.

227 Christ has died as regards our guilt, and what is spoken of now is the communication of this nature. A man might come and make a great boast of high doctrine, and not do righteousness. Then I say, This is not the divine nature. We have it in Romans 6: "How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" You are dead. How can you be living in sin? Through carelessness you may fall into it, but that is not living in it. In general he takes what the truth is in itself, that we may know it in all its force. "He that practiseth sin is of the devil." He takes the opposite thing altogether. "For the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not practise sin." How can he? "For his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." It does not say, "he ought not to sin," but "he cannot." It is not a question of progress, but of the nature. The nature a man is born of is the nature he has. Take any animal you please, and this is true of it. We are born of God, and we have got that nature, and I say that cannot sin. I have got the treasure in an earthen vessel - that is true. The flesh is there, but the new nature is a sinless nature. It is, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin."

"In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother." There are the two traits which shew themselves in a thousand details of life - righteousness, practical righteousness, and love of the brethren. Mere amiable nature you find in dogs and other animals, being animal nature; but the love of the brethren is a divine motive. I love them because they are of God. I have communion in divine things with them. A man may be very unamiable naturally, and yet love the brethren with all his heart; and another may be very amiable, and have no love for them at all. Lower down, he says, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." It is the great test of the divine nature. It is the life of Christ which is in us, reproduced in our ways and walk. It is not merely avoiding sin, because there is more in Christ than the absence of sin. There was the manifestation of the divine nature. He was the divine nature walking through this world, and He had special love to the disciples, as we also have special love to the brethren. He was in the world, and as among men, to manifest God in it. And this is what we have always to do - to represent God in this world. "Ye are the epistle of Christ." People ought to read Christ in you, as they read the ten commandments on the tables of stone. If they read that, they will not read evil. We have the flesh to struggle against, but not to walk after. It is not an effort to try and be like Christ, but that being full of Him it comes out. Therefore He talks of abiding in Him. So "he that eateth me abideth in me." He has become our life, but He is our life in every-day exercises. We are sent into the world to manifest God. Then come difficulties and hindrances, and if we are not full of Christ, we give way to them; whereas, if we are full of Christ, we manifest Him in them. If not, we shew heat, temper, or some evil thing. But there is no need of living in the old nature. We never can excuse ourselves for living in it, because Christ is ours.

228 We again see in the first of these verses the proof of what "the beginning" is here. The great thing we have to look to, as regards life, and what that life is, is Christ manifested in this world. "This is the message that ye have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." We get Christ very distinctly there as the One who alone could give us the true measure and character of all else: He is the truth. Divine light, such as this, was not till Christ came. He was the faithful witness. Then you find another thing: there is the evil life or old Adam, and the true life, which is in Christ.

Both principles are at work. In the one there is hatred and his works evil, just as in the other we find love and righteousness. These go together. It began in Cain and Abel and has gone on ever since. Those that are really God's people are hated. Therefore it is said that "he was of that wicked one and slew his brother." "In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother." It was the spirit and nature of the being departed from God, of which the devil was the spring and the strength. "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain who was of that wicked one and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous."

You must not be surprised, therefore, if the world hates you. It is natural to man. In the first place, Satan is the prince of this world; and, besides that, it is the nature of man as he is. We were in death spiritually, and wherever that was the case, the spirit of Satan ruled and governed, and therefore there was hatred of God's children. But then there is this new life, and "we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." If a man does not love the brethren, he abides in death. That is where we all are naturally. He is looking at the very principle of life. If I only find a sign that it is a wild apple-tree, I know what the tree is. On the other hand, get the life of Christ, and the fruit answers to it. It is not a change of human nature as it is, because this abides in death. But the new life that comes is a life that bears its own fruit, just as that which is grafted into a tree. What sprouts up from the old stock is what came from the nature of the tree before. "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." He has not this good graft. It is a clear case.

229 Then he rises up to the source of it. "Hereby perceive we love." What is this love? How can I tell it? In that He laid down His life for us. And if Christ is really my life, He will be the same thing in spirit in me, as He was Himself. Christ kept the law because He was born under it. But the law calls upon man to love God and his neighbour, and that Christ did. But, besides that, He was the manifestation of God's love to man, and specially to His disciples, when they did not love God. This is what we are to be. Christ, who was the activity of His love, laid down His life. We perceive what the love of God is by this. But you ought to manifest the same thing. It is an immense privilege. Not only am I required to do certain things, but I am called upon to be a witness of God in a world that is without Him. And there is no limit to it. I ought to go as far as Christ went. And there have been some that have done this to death. Many martyrs have laid down their lives for Christ. "We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Besides the immense privilege, it is an essential truth. We have to manifest God in this world, because Christ is in us. That is, if we are children of God, there is communion with the source of it, and then there should be the display of it in our walk - the epistle of Christ known and read of all men.

230 "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" We have another mark there in the dwelling of the love of God. It is not merely love to God, because it is the spirit in which a person walks himself towards his brethren. It is the power of this divine nature dwelling in us which will shew itself in love to God and man. The love of God dwelling in us is the way of God Himself, who through the Spirit thereby brings His love into us. It is not God's love to us, but it is the power of that love working in us, and therefore it will soon shew itself to others. "My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him."

Now he looks to the effect of walking with God, as giving, not the knowledge of forgiveness, but confidence. He wrote to them because they were all forgiven; but if I want to have my heart assured before God, I must walk in this way. If my intercourse with God causes my heart to condemn me, you cannot call it confidence. If I am not walking according to God, I must either get away from Him, or if I find myself in His presence, His Spirit is constantly reproaching me, and that is not confidence.

"For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." He knows a great deal about me that I do not know myself. If a child has got a bad conscience, he sneaks about, if his father is coming; but if not, he runs to meet him and throws himself into his arms. But he cannot have that kind of confidence, if his heart reproaches him. That is what we have always to look for: to be with God, and in entire confidence with Him - no thought behind that perhaps he has something against us, not as to condemnation, but as to present confidence. How far it goes, the entire full counting upon God - counting upon His present activity for us! It is not only a question of the day of judgment, but it is the present dealing of the soul with God, and of God for the soul. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." In chapter 5 it is said, "This is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us." We are brought into a present confident spirit with God, so that we expect everything good from Him. If a child is going on naughtily, he cannot go on in confidence. He may say, My father loves me, but he is going to give me a whipping. But when the heart is all right, the child expects everything that flows from his father's love. So here, "Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight." This has nothing to do with acceptance, but with the every-day outflowing of the Father's kindness, so that the child counts upon it. It is the terrible effect of looking at acceptance and forgiveness as the end of the Christian's course, that this confidence is almost unknown. The apostle began with forgiveness: "Your sins are forgiven you, for his name's sake"; and now he is speaking of the confidence of the heart towards God. You get this in John 14: 23: "If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him," etc. This is not the grace that saves. In the epistle John says, "We love him, because he first loved us." The Lord says, "He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." He is speaking of the present exercise of this love to Christ.

231 It is a great thing to say, I have only to ask according to God's will, and I am sure to get it. He loves us in such a way that I can ask nothing without an answer. I want power and I get it directly. I want some hindrance removed out of the way, and it is removed directly. I may ask my father here for something, and he may tell me, I cannot do it; I cannot attend to you. But this is never the case with God. You can ask nothing, according to His will, without getting it. In a right path I have the whole power of God at my disposal. I may see mountains before me - all Satan's power. But never mind. If you are walking right, "ask what you will, and it shall be done for you." You have thorough present confidence in God. He is never too busy to hear us. All that we can come about is ours. "Whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments," etc. It is the direct government of God with our souls. This is where the question, between us and God, right and wrong, comes in. As regards our responsibility as men, we were ruined. Now we are saved, and God's dealings meet us on that ground, and then He delights to do everything for us. It is not what we will, but "whatsoever we ask." It is the will of the new nature, that is, obedience really. In that path of obedience God always heard Christ, for He was obedient, and God hears us; He puts us, in this life of Christ, into the same place as Christ.

232 "And this is his commandment that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in God, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us." He comes now to another most important point. Not merely that there is life, but that God by His Spirit dwells in us. There is power of communion as well as life. God dwells with Him who is love. It is not merely that I am redeemed. But as it was said of Israel, "They shall know that I am the Lord their God that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them"; so it is said of us, "Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." Christ was the obedient One, and God dwelt in Him; and he who is an obedient one now, God dwells in him. Christ said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." In us it is only derivatively by His Spirit, but still He dwells in us. In the obedient man God dwells as in Christ Himself. "And hereby know we that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us." That is, it is the presence of the Holy Ghost with us that gives us the consciousness that God dwells with us. He does not add in this latter part of the verse that we dwell in Him; but simply that the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost was and is, that we know that God abides in us.

1 John 4.

Then he warns them against false spirits; verses 1-6. Every spirit is not the Holy Ghost. Many false prophets are in the world. The saints must beware. The question is not, whether a man be converted; but whether he who speaks speaks by God's Spirit or a demon. The touchstone is the confession of Jesus come in the flesh. He who is guided of God confesses Jesus Christ Himself so come (not merely that He is come). To confess His coming is to recognise a truth; to confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh is to own the Person and lordship of Jesus. Once a demon is discerned, it is important to treat it as a demon: otherwise your sword is broken in your hand. To yield to human considerations, to play the amiable under such circumstances, will find you powerless against Satan. It is not to have communion with God in His thoughts of Satan. How precious is the word before such dangers! Holding it fast, with uprightness and humility, nothing will stumble us. God is faithful, and will guard the feeblest of His own. But outside this submission to God and His word, no matter what may be the beauty of a man's sentiments, or his ability, he will sooner or later fall under the power of the enemy.

233 But we come to a new point here, verses 7-16. Besides the life of Christ, there is the dwelling of God in us and of us in God. This was fully manifested in Christ, and the more we think of that, the more we shall see that the new life we have is a dependent life. Our Lord Himself said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live." Therefore we see He was a man praying always - leaning on His Father. For though He was God, He never used this to take a false position as man; but He took the place of dependence. And it is where He puts us - in the place of dependence, and therefore the place of power from above. It is not a question of sincerity, but of that lowliness which is the sense of dependence and looks for help and power from another.

What a privilege and motive for holiness, that God dwells in us! And when we want to glorify God the presence of His Spirit is the power. How distinctly God has come into close communion with us, and brought us into intimacy with Himself by forgiving us and saving us and giving us a life in which we walk with Him! It is a life of constant trial here, but of having Himself by the Holy Ghost as our power dwelling in us as we walk through the world. And this is what we have to see to - that the life of the saint should be developed according to Christ. And it is there that daily experience comes in, and we find our weakness if we are not looking to Christ.

Another great fact, brought in at the close of what we last saw, was the giving of the Holy Ghost. In verse 1 of this chapter, the apostle drops that to distinguish between spirits, not merely evil men. But there is a much greater action of Satan going on in the church of God than we are apt to suppose; and if we do not treat it as such, there is no power. If we come to terms with it, we cannot have power, because God cannot come to terms with Satan.

234 Then there is another thing in verse 6: "We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." Receiving the apostles' teaching is one of the tests of knowing God. "He that is not of God heareth not us." A person that does not listen to the Scriptures as such is not of God at all.

He comes now, with the additional fact of the Holy Ghost being given, to the third part - love of the brethren - and shews you how deep its source goes. It is not merely obligation, or righteousness, but the very nature of God Himself, what He is, as Christ is the pattern of human righteousness. He goes to the very nature of God Himself as such. "Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God." It comes from Him, having its source in Himself. "Love is of God." Because we have got His nature, we can say that "every one that doeth righteousness is born of him." But there I stop. It is a course of righteousness. But now I say, "every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." It is not merely duty that I do; it is the true nature itself that I have. If a person has this nature, he has that of God. John is not speaking of mere natural affections: these you have in the brute beasts. But it is a question of the divine nature. That which marks divine love is, that it thought of us while we were yet sinners. It is above evil. Where sin abounded grace has much more abounded. He that loves knows God. That is a great thing to say. I know what a man is because I am a man. An animal cannot tell what I am, because he has not my nature. In that way, when we love, we have the nature of God - we know what God is. There may be a great deal to learn, but still we have got the nature, and therefore know what that nature is. "He that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." If that new nature is in me, I enjoy it; I have a nature capable of enjoying it. Every nature enjoys what is suitable to it. If we have the divine nature, we enjoy God. We know Him in the way of enjoyment of that which belongs to our very nature.

"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." If I have it not, I do not know Him, because that is what He is. It is an immense truth, as regards the saints, that I know God. I have got the nature that enjoys God: and that is what our everlasting enjoyment will be.

235 "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." The apostle turns outside to get the proofs of this love. He is not looking inwards, as others do. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us." If I want to know divine love, God's love, I do not look within; because "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." There is another thing here which shews the perfectness of this love - it had no motive. It is what God was. 'If we love them that love us, what reward have we?' The manifestation of this love has a double character here. First, the Son is sent to be the propitiation for our sins; He loved us when we were guilty and defiled. "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son," etc. God's love to us has its proof in this - when there was nothing at all in us to bring - when there was not a movement in us towards God, there was in God toward us. We had no spiritual life, but we were guilty, looked at as born of Adam. Therefore this love is a perfect love. It has no motive in us, and, therefore, is perfect in itself; and it is exercised towards us according to our need. Here we have the proof of this love. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." How he draws the practical conclusion! If God has so loved me, I ought to love the brethren. I ought to get above all the disagreeable things and untowardness, because God loved me when I was as untoward as possible.

Now we come to another thing. It is God Himself present. Not merely have I got the divine nature, but God is present in a very remarkable way. "No man hath seen God at any time." How can I know and love a being that I have never seen? "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." The Apostle Paul expresses it in a different way. "The love of God," he says, "is shed abroad in our hearts." Now, what makes it so remarkable here? If we look at John 1: 18, it is said there, "No man hath seen God at any time." How can I know and love a person I have never seen? "The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." That is, in the Gospel, which is to bring Christ before us, I find the sense to be this: Well, you have not seen God, and yet you have; because He who was the very delight of the Father - who is in the bosom of the Father - the immediate and closest object of the Father's delight - He has declared Him. Therefore I do know Him. It is the answer to the difficulty, that no man ever saw God. Christ has made Him known to me. Here, in the Epistle, it is, "no man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." That which is revealed in Christ is brought directly into our own hearts, because the Holy Ghost is in us When Christ was in the world, it was the Son casting out devils and doing mighty works. And yet He said, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Now, by the Spirit, He says, "We will come unto him, and make our abode with him." He makes God dwelling in us the answer here to not seeing God; as Christ being in the world was then the answer to not seeing God. Having washed us in the blood of the Lamb, He comes and dwells in us. We have a knowledge of God in that way. "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." It is not merely that the nature is there, but God is there. "Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." This is the way we have the consciousness that we dwell in God, because, as God dwells in us, and He is infinite, we have the consciousness of dwelling in God. He is our home: we dwell in Him. He is our abode. It is the presence of the Holy Ghost that gives the consciousness of God's being there.

236 Still he turns back to objective truth. "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." I have God within me, and have the knowledge of that love. How did He prove it to me? By sending His Son to be the Saviour of the world. The proof of it is that which has been done without me - not anything within me. A person might say, But I have not got that. Then I say, You have got nothing. If you say, That is too high for me: I cannot speak of God as dwelling in me; then I answer, You are not a Christian at all. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God." He does speak of the blessed consciousness of it as our portion, but then he declares that it is the truth as to every Christian; and therefore if I am not enjoying it, there is something that is hindering me. If we had the Queen in the house, and did not trouble ourselves about her, we should have no enjoyment of the honour and privilege of having such a guest. And we may be going on in such a way as to have no consciousness of God's being in us. It shews a habit of living without intercourse with the God who dwells in us. The Christian has a life from God, which lives with God. He says therefore, after having spoken of this, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." That is the kind of character he gives of a Christian: "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us." There is no uncertainty. "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God," etc. It is the very nature of God.

237 Now he goes on. We have seen the love manifested when we were mere sinners, when we were guilty and dead. This was the starting-point with us. We were spiritually dead: there was not a single movement in our hearts towards God. And then God loved us. But we had a natural life from Adam, and therefore were guilty; and then God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Then the next thing is, that we dwell in God and He in us: we have this blessed communion by His being in our hearts. Then he comes to the third thing in verse 17. "Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, so are we in this world." Now it is not merely that He has loved me when I was a sinner, and that I enjoy Him in communion, but that all fear for the future is taken away entirely. I get boldness for the day of judgment; that is a different thing.

It is blessed love that Christ came into the world for such sinners as we. But then there is the day of judgment. When I think of the love, I am all happy; but when I think of the judgment, my conscience is not quite easy. Though the heart may have tasted the love, the conscience not being quite clear, when I think of judgment I am not quite happy. This is what is provided for here. "As he is, so are we in this world." The love was shewn in visiting us when we were sinners; it is enjoyed in communion; but it is completed in this, that I am in Christ, and that Christ must condemn Himself in the day of judgment, if He condemns me, because as He is, so am I in this world. I am glorified before I get there. He changes this vile body and makes it like to His glorious body. When I am before the judgment-seat, I am in this changed and glorified body; I am like my Judge. If He is my righteousness, as He is so I am now; because it is Christ's work, and Christ's work is finished, and Christ is appearing in heaven for me. And though I have exercises and trials of heart, yet, 'As he is, so am I in this world.' There love is perfected.

238 God Himself can do nothing more blessed than to make me like Christ in His presence. There is an end of judgment practically as an object of dread, because I am as clear as my Judge. He judges by His own righteousness, and that is my righteousness: I am that. I am united to Him, and, in that sense, am the same as Himself. There love is made perfect, that I may have boldness in the day of judgment. There has love been shewn, and it makes me miserable if my heart does not answer to it. I have not got boldness in the day of judgment. There is a judgment, and in order that love should be perfect in our hearts, there must be no dread of judgment. In order to have all its perfectness, I must have boldness in the day of judgment, and that I have by being as Christ is. This is true now. It is not that we have got the glory yet; but it is true as having Him for my life, and being united to Him. Now he draws the conclusion at once. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear." Fear is all gone. If I am dreading my Father, I cannot enjoy His love - there is torment in that. Love casts out fear. There is nothing to fear if God loves me perfectly, and does nothing but love me. That is what the Lord Jesus says: "I have declared thy name unto them and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." And so again He says, "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." The same peace that He had Himself He has given unto us. He was not dreading His Father. He had ineffable peace and delight. Well, "As he is, so are we in this world." Then comes, as a consequence of knowing this love, "We love him, because he first loved us." That is the fruit and consequence in our hearts. All this love which He has shewn to us has been in us and is perfected with us. "We love him because he first loved us." The heart turns back in thankfulness and love to Him.

But now, as through this Epistle, the apostle brings a kind of counter-test. "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" If His image in the saints does not draw out any affections, you do not really love Him. You may say you do, but it is not true. We find running all through the Epistle, this kind of counter-test. Another remarkable thing we see here. Even love itself does not get out of the place of obedience in its exercise. "And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." However blessed may be the workings of the divine nature in us, it is always in the shape of obedience. This was true even of Christ. Speaking of His own death, where His perfectness was brought out fully, He says, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment even so I do." It was still the commandment, as well as love. So love makes us serve and love the brethren, and yet it is obedience. Whatever is not obedience is not Christ. It is not a commandment against our nature, because we delight in doing what God commands. Still it is obedience, although it is the obedience of a joyful nature that has pleasure in obeying; and that, through God's dwelling in us and revealing Himself in that very way, in this nature in our souls.

239 It brings the position of the Christian to a wonderful point - his actual condition in the way of connection with God. It is not merely that the Holy Ghost dwells in us in the way of power (this would be a proof of the Holy Ghost's, that is, of God's, being in us, yet it would not prove that we are in God), but that we dwell in Him. When we think what kind of enjoyment and privileges we have here, what foolish creatures we are not to realise God more and to enjoy Him! "The diligent soul," it is said, "shall be made fat."

1 John 5.

There is a kind of summing up in this chapter of who these are: not what they are, but who they are, and what that is in which they have part. It was loving the brethren, for instance, we were seeing in a previous chapter. Now comes the inquiry, not who is my neighbour, but who is my brother? "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God: and everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him." It is not now a spiritual or moral test to see whether the love is real, but we get those who are the children of God, and then "everyone that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him." That is, if it is really this divine love, I shall love those that are born of God. If it is for the parent's sake, I shall love all the children, and this is the way in which it is put here.

240 But in verse 2 he gives a counter-proof that it is genuine. I know that I love God by loving the children of God; but I know that it is really loving them if I love God and keep His commandments. If I love them as His children, I shall love Himself. It runs all through this Epistle, a kind of countercheck which is of the greatest use. If it is the Holy Spirit, it is the Spirit of truth too. I have thus the means of checking one thing by another. I might seem to be loving God's children very much, while it may be only a party feeling. But if I love God, I love all for His sake. Anything else may be merely a feeling of human nature. It is the bringing God in which sets all right. In 2 Peter it is said, Add to brotherly love, love. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. If I love them as God's children, it is because I love Him that begat them. It takes them all in, but it always takes Him in, and therefore it is a question of obedience. "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous."

The great difficulty is the world; but faith vanquishes it. "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." There is a nature we have received which belongs to a system which is not of the world at all. "Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." "Ye are from beneath, I am from above." This world, as a system, is of the devil - not of God at all. All that is in it, "The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." The Father is the head, and source, and blessedness of a great system to which the world is entirely opposed: and therefore when the Son came into the world, the world rejected Him, and this has put the world, as a tested world, in perfect antagonism to the Father. We always find that it is the flesh against the Spirit, the world against the Father, and the devil against the Son. "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." It is truth which sanctifies. The difficulty is the world. We look on the things that are seen, and not on the things that are not seen, and therefore we are weak. The victory that overcomes the world is our faith.

241 It is not merely a nature that is given to us, but as creatures we must have an object for this nature and this is the Lord. I must have the true object, and therefore, "Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" He is occupied with something. When I find that the One whom the world has spit upon and crucified is the Son of God, I say such is what the world is. And therefore when my faith really rests upon Jesus as this despised One, the Son of God, I have done with the world; I overcome it as an enemy.

There we have the short account of these saints. They are born of God: they are a set of people that belong to Him as those that are alive; they live in another world that belongs to the Father. He then speaks of the spirit and power in which Christ came, that by which we are connected with this scene of blessedness that belongs to the Father. "This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood." This goes back to a most vital principle that we have had all through the Epistle. If it had been by water only, John the Baptist came by water. The word of God, if only applied to man as a child of Adam, could not purify him. Christ coming into the world by that put man to the test; and man was God's enemy, and, therefore, there was no mending him at all. It then became a question of redemption, of blood, as well as water, and that life was in the Son; not in the first Adam, but in the Second. "This is he that came by water and blood."

There is a cleansing, as we know; but this is the effect of redemption on the new life. It was out of a dead Christ that the cleansing came. A living Christ coming into the world presents Himself to man to see whether any link could be formed between God and man. But then was man finally condemned, and death comes in. It was always so. There is no life in us. "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." And that is the reason why He says you must eat the flesh and drink the blood. If you do not take Him as a dead Christ, you have nothing, for that cleansing came out of a dead Christ. It is death to the old thing, and a new life entirely is brought in.

242 Then there comes another blessed truth. We have a dead Christ, now alive for evermore; and next we have the Holy Ghost dwelling in us. But this is all as belonging to a new world. "There are three that bear witness - the Spirit, the water, and the blood." We have three witnesses, the Spirit bearing testimony; the water, the cleansing power; and the blood, the expiatory power; and these all agree in one. There is no cleansing of the old nature, but there is a new nature given. "God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." It is not by mending the old Adam, but it is life in the Son. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." There is no life belonging to the old man, it is a rejected thing, and there will not be two Adams in heaven. Here is the Son, and those that have life in the Son. God began working out this since the fall, but the full truth of it was brought out when Christ was risen.

Then there is another point in connection with the truth, and that is, the knowledge of it. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself," because we have got Christ, through the Spirit of Christ in us. Therefore I know that I have eternal life - that I am a child of God. We have got this blessed consciousness and comfort. The work has been wrought, the blood is shed, and, besides that, I cry, Abba, Father, through the Spirit that dwells in me. That is, "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself." He has got the thing; in a word, he has Christ.

The fault of the unbeliever is not that he has not the blessing, but that he makes God a liar. God has given an adequate witness about His Son; and "he that believeth not God hath made him a liar." And therefore a person rejecting the gospel is rejecting God's testimony about His Son. The witness was sufficient. We read of many who believed on His name. But they did not overcome the world, because there was no real faith. Jesus did not commit Himself to them.

"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." It is of all importance to see that it is not a mending of the nature that we have already, but the giving to us one that we had not before, in receiving Christ as our life. And all the rest is accomplished. The Spirit is the Holy Ghost present in the world. The water came out of Christ's side as well as the blood. Water cleanses what already exists. The water is the washing by the word - but not without the power of the Holy Ghost. It is the application of the word by the Holy Ghost. But besides that, the water gives the idea of the washing by the word; and therefore he says we are born of water and the Spirit.

243 One thing remains - the present confidence that we have with God. "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, ye that believe on the name of the Son of God." And then there comes every-day confidence. "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us." We are really reconciled to God. It is not an uncertain condition with God, but we are at home with Him. We have confidence in Him. It is not merely the fact that we have been saved, but we have present confidence. "And if we know that he heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him."

But there is another privilege we have - that of intercession for others. And now, too, we get just a hint at the dealings of God in the way of government with a man that. is saved. "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin not unto death." In the case of Ananias and Sapphira, there was a sin unto death. There is a constant dealing of God in government with His children, when if the sin be not of that character as unto death (it may go on to it), it is a question of discipline. There is many a sickness that is a discipline of God in some shape or another - positive discipline, which, if the heart were bowed to God about it, would be for good.

Chastenings are not always for actual faults. In Job it is said (chap. 33: 18, 19), "He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword. He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain"; and that we find from verse 17 is for the purpose of hiding pride from man. Then in chapter 36 the chastening is for positive faults (v. 9). "Then he sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity." There was a positive discipline of God. It is not merely here that there is this discipline, and that if there is a "messenger with him, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness, that there he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down into the pit," etc.

244 But now, as a Christian, you are competent yourself to be a messenger. The Christian having the title of intercession, and walking with God, he has this access to God to be heard in whatever he asks. When then you see a brother sin, and come under the discipline of God you go and be to him this messenger, one among a thousand. It is a matter of discipline and chastening for sin: and if this intercession be used, he will be restored. It supposes a person walking with God to be able to be this interpreter.

"We know that whatsoever is born of God sinneth not." The man is living after the flesh, if he is giving way to sin. The new nature sinneth not. If he sins at all, therefore, it must be because he is acting in the flesh. If we walk in the Spirit, Satan has no power over us at all. "He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not."

"And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." He sums up all in these two verses. "The whole world lieth in wickedness," and "we are of God." We blink at things that are so plain sometimes, in order to save a little bit of the world. But "we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ." God being revealed in Christ, and we being in Christ, we have got our place in a scene outside the world altogether.

We have here, too, a remarkable witness to the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. "We are in him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." It is an immense comfort; because, when I have found Christ, I have God Himself. I have found Him; I know Him; and I know what He is to me. "He that hath the Son hath the Father also."

Notes on the Second Epistle of John

J. N. Darby.

<28019E> 245

What specially characterises the Epistle is the connection of the truth with the manifestation of love. Both the second and third Epistles are occupied with the receiving of these who are going about preaching. The third Epistle commends those who went forth for Christ's sake, to the love of the faithful, who in receiving such, became fellow-helpers to the truth.

Here John warns this lady against receiving certain persons that did not bring the truth. He had pressed extremely the walking in love in the first Epistle. And so here too he says, "I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another." Then he takes these two guards of true charity: one is the truth and the other is obedience - just what Christ was when He was in the world. He was love come into the world, the witness and testimony of love, and He was the truth, and He was the obedient man. His love to His Father was shewn in His obeying Him in all things. He was the truth in shewing out everything just as it was. Besides, He came down to do the will of Him who sent Him.

John takes up these three great principles here. Love - divine charity - is insisted on, but it is always the truth, because it is Christ; and if it is not in the truth, it is denying Christ: it is saying there can be love in nature. The third thing is this obedience to the commandments of Christ. Such is the business of a Christian obeying Christ, with truth in the heart, and love as the spring of all. And that is just Christ. You cannot separate them. The flesh may put on the appearance of a thing; it may put on a great show of love; but it is not truth and obedience, it is not Christ.

Here it is a question of conscience with anyone. It is not an ecclesiastical question, but of a woman if so called on. It is a matter of personal conscience with every saint, the question of the individual receiving Christ in His members and of refusing whatsoever denies Christ. And this is the means of judging of it: "For the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever." The apostle loved the lady and her children, but it was for the truth's sake. Where there was not that, there could be no divine love.

246 In the next verse, again, we have "from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love." "I rejoiced greatly that I found of thy children walking in truth, as we have received a commandment from the Father." Now he brings in the obedience: it is a commandment from the Father. He will have the Son honoured, even as Himself.

"And now I beseech you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk after his commandments." Just as Christ walked after the commandments of God because He loved Him. As He said (John 14: 31), "That the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." So it is with those that follow Him. "This is the commandment, that, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it."

Then he adds, "Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist." If this divine love came down in a man, what was it to deny that? Christ came as a man. It could not be a mere man come in the flesh. This could not be said of a mere human being. If a man say, I am come in the flesh, I should ask, What else could you come in? That is what you are: you are a mere man. But whosoever shall "confess not Jesus Christ come in the flesh, this is a deceiver and an antichrist." Perfect Man, He is infinitely more.

"Look to yourselves." If they had all departed away, his work would have been burnt with fire. And therefore he says, "Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward." The reward of labour in that sense is for the work that he has done in the souls of others. As it is said of the Lord Jesus, "he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied"; so we in our little measure receive it.

Now we have a little more. After having spoken about these deceivers, he adds, "Whosoever goeth forward and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God." If you have not got the true Christ, you have not God at all. That is the first great broad principle. All through John, when he is speaking of relationship, it is the Son; but if of nature, it is God, not the Father. In John 8 it is God; and Jesus takes that place - "Before Abraham was, I am." There may be the rejection of the truth, and then I have not God in any; I am outside the whole scene in which this grace is displayed. I have not the doctrine of Christ, that is, the truth as to Christ; I have not got God at all. "He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son." He gets the whole unfolding of this unspeakable grace. It is the perfect revelation of God in its own blessedness within itself, not outside, but you have God inside; and you have got here all blessedness, in which the Father loves the Son and has given the Son for us; you have got both the Father and the Son. "Truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." . . . "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth." He has not communion with God, because God's nature is light.

247 You have, firstly, the great fact of not having God at all; a man is absolutely without God if he has not Christ. Then, secondly, when he unfolds the truth, it is the Father and the Son. He urges decision upon these saints. "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed." To do so would be encouraging and helping him; it is to tamper with my own conscience, because I am allowing something to be Christ which is a false one, and the deepest dishonour to God. If I shew this appearance of love where the truth is not, it is not Christ at all; it is denying Him, and saying that what is false is as good as what is true. It is helping the Antichrist and not the Christ. "Him that biddeth him God speed" (that is, literally salutes him on going away), "is partaker of his evil deeds." It was a sign of recognition and companionship.

"Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink; but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full." I get there another thing, that is, the kind of affection which should reign among the saints. It was not a sort of mere abstract love; but there was gladness in seeing them, real comfort in it, and rejoicing to see them doing well. The Holy Ghost always encourages this activity of love, however strong He may be for the truth. Christ has come into the world: the one point round which souls can rally and find God in grace. When anything unsettles that, there is no resource at all. If Satan cannot do anything by persecution, he tries to unsettle souls about the truth in Christ. He is a roaring lion, going about seeking whom he may devour; that is persecution. But he is not always a roaring lion. When he comes in as a serpent (that is, when he steals along, and does not roar at all), it is a great deal more dangerous. A person is tried by his violence and rage; but it is far more serious when we have to withstand the wiles of the devil. Still, wherever Christ is held to simply, all is simple. Here it is the case of a lady. It is personal faith that clings to Christ for His own sake. The person may not be wise enough to set the world right, but there is something that faith clings to. I must have Christ. The secret of all is the individual personal faith that holds fast to Christ and His truth. It is a wonderful mercy to have that which is a test of everything, and a proof of Christ's love. To have a clear and distinct object this carries me through, according to God's mind, this is what Christ walked in; and if we hold fast to Christ, it is always true.

Notes on the Third Epistle of John

J. N. Darby.

<28020E> 249

We have here the same great principle in general that we saw in the Second Epistle - that is, loving the truth. Only there John was warning against any one that transgressed the doctrine of Christ, and here he is rather encouraging gracious ways and-liberality towards those that were going about with the truth.

There is here the kindness that works among Christians. He desires that Gaius might prosper and be in health, even as his soul prospered. This Gaius received the brethren that went about preaching the word, and Diotrephes was jealous of them. He not only refused to receive the brethren himself, but hindered those that would. There was resistance to the free witness to God rendered by these persons going about. "Because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles." They went out freely, trusting the Lord, and Diotrephes would not have such things. So he not only would not receive them himself, but if other people did, he forbade them, and cast them out of the church. The Apostle writes to strengthen Gaius in the spirit of hearty welcome in receiving them.

With Diotrephes it was love of prominence, a fleshly desire in him, and this even rose so high that he was speaking against the apostle. Still, the main point that the apostle dwells on, in writing to Gaius, is that he was in the truth. It is remarkable in John that, while he speaks of love, he always guards it in the most definite way by what he calls "the truth." Real charity is in God Himself. He is love, and wherever love is real, it must be guarded by the truth as it is in Jesus, or it is not of God. Therefore, before he commends Gaius for his love and hospitality to the brethren, he says, "I rejoiced greatly when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth." This is the first thing he dwells upon, before he even speaks of what he does to the brethren and to strangers.

"Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and that strangers, which have borne witness of thy charity before the church; whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well; because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles." Gaius was evidently a gracious man, hospitable to these strangers. "We ought therefore to receive such, that we might be fellow-helpers to the truth." It is a remarkable expression - "the truth." "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." Christ is the truth. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Whatever was not Christ was nature, and this was not the truth, and you never could be able otherwise to discern good and evil.

250 Indeed Christ is "the truth." If we speak of the truth, we mean that it is a person speaking exactly what is true about anything. Christ tells us the truth about God. Satan takes very fair forms, as, in the case with Peter, when he said, in reference to the sufferings of Christ, "Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee." But Christ says, "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me," etc. He told the truth about that. It looked a very fair gracious speech; but it was really denying all that He had to do, and Christ tells the truth about it. And so about man. Who would have suspected that man could have done such things as he did when Christ was here? There you get the truth about man; all his evil was brought out; it was not fully detected till Christ came. So, too, I do not know what sin is till I see it in the cross of Christ. And just the same about righteousness. Christ is the truth. Whether it is God or man or Satan, or righteousness or sin, the truth about everything is in Christ; and if we have Christ, we have the truth. When we have to discern our way in the midst of good and evil, we do not know the truth unless we have got Christ. The truth is in Him: it is not in me.

The moment that I have Christ, and that I judge according to His feelings and thoughts, I am able to discern sin. It may take a very fair form - perhaps the loving your father or mother; but still the truth detects everything. God has shewn Himself to be love, rising above all evil; but still it is always "the truth." If He rises above the sin, He shews also what the sin is. It is of immense importance to hold fast Christ, else we do not know what the truth is. Satan is the father of lies, and no lie is of the truth. With the apostle, we see that it was his joy to get this truth sharper than any two-edged sword, sparing nothing in himself. It was his joy to see his children walking in the truth. Then, when the truth is settled, the outflow of love is beautiful. "Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers, which have borne witness of thy charity before the church." There you find the love coming out beautifully. The moment it is settled in Christ as the truth so that our own heart is judged, then God is free to act. The moment I have got the truth - Christ, then, freed from self - this divine love begins to act in its right channel. "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith." God has a peculiar love to His own, but He is gracious and kind towards even the very sparrows - makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

251 "Whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well." They were these preachers going about. "Because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles." They were casting themselves upon God.

"Demetrius had good report of all men, and of the truth itself." John looks at "the truth" as a thing standing in the world, and going through a great service in conflict. Demetrius is witnessed to by the truth: the gospel itself bore him witness. The gospel or truth is personified. If a man is hated for the truth's sake, we say that it is the truth that is hated. The gospel is love in the truth, and this working in the world. That is the substance of this Epistle: first, the truth; then, the working of love and grace, which becomes a fellow-helper to the truth. Then he says that there were these persons coming into the church, who were setting up to have a high place in it. They did not even receive the apostle. But that did not take away the apostle's power. "Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth."

"Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God; but he that doeth evil hath not seen God." We have seen the truth first, and then grace to the brethren and to others in general. If you do good, you are of God. It is not the question of mere evil; but "he that doeth good is of God." It is the active service of love. God does not do evil - that is clear; but He does good. "Demetrius hath good report of all men, and of the truth itself; yea, and we also bear record; and we know that our record is true." Demetrius was one of those who were going about in this way whom Diotrephes would not have, and one that the apostle encourages Gaius to receive.

252 It is an interesting thing to see not merely great doctrines in Scripture, but all the interior of what was at work even then. We are apt to see things upon stilts. Things were going on just then as they are now. There were some going about preaching the truth, and some did not like to receive them. We see thus the interior of Christianity going on, whereas we generally think it was something extraordinary; instead of being just the same struggling with good and evil, in principle the same kind of thing that is going on now. The apostle was left to watch over the declension of the church, and to give us the warnings that were needed all through.

It is a wonderful thing to know that "the truth" has come into the world. It is not merely that certain things are true, but the truth itself has come. I have got that which is God's own truth, in the midst of men's thoughts and confusions. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." We have seen here these two things: the truth which has come and tested everything; and then grace towards the brethren and these strangers, according to this truth. It is a great thing to have what links us up with Christ, which is to abide for ever. This world is all passing away, and man's breath goes forth. "He returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." But we have the truth in the midst of it all. The word of our God abides for ever. Holding peacefully fast by that, we have got, by grace, what we know is everlasting. Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life."

Fellowship with the Father and the Son

1 John 1

J. N. Darby.

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The great purpose of God, in all His dealings in grace, is to bring us - and to bring us individually too - into fellowship with Himself. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father." Thus we have the full knowledge of God, as far as it can be known by men, and that in full communion with Himself: not in the way of creation - that is, not merely as creatures, but in "union"; and we are made partakers of the Holy Ghost that there may be power; "we dwell in him and he in us." There cannot be anything more intimate.

It is not knowledge or science that has anything to do with this; for if it be but the human mind working on the things of God, it is but that "high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." Babes in Christ have possession of these things, they have not to seek for them, they are in possession of them, though of course they have to ripen in acquaintance with them. Knowledge itself, mere knowledge, puffs up; but, being brought low, the Spirit of God can act upon the soul and give knowledge in communion with God.

Although the Epistle of John is very abstract, yet it is abstract about things that the very feeblest saint knows in Christ. God is brought down to our nature, for God can come down to us in our weakness in Christ. The difference between the writings of Paul and John is this, that Paul unfolds to us the counsels of God in creation - the counsels of God towards the Jews (there are various developments of Christ's Person, as in Hebrews and Colossians); but John may be called more abstract, because he speaks of the nature of God Himself. The purpose and object of God is to bring us into full fellowship with Himself.

There are three things I would here notice. First, the work of God by which we can stand in His presence perfectly free from any question of sin, so that we can enjoy all that God is. Second, justification by faith and acceptance in the Beloved - the perfect cleansing of the conscience, knowing we are accepted so as to be able to be before Him in perfect peace. Third, the new birth, commonly called regeneration. There must be a new nature capable of affections towards God. An orphan who never knew a father has the affections of a child, is capable of loving a father, and is often very unhappy because without the object towards whom those affections would naturally flow. So the capacity to love God is that which we get by being partakers of the divine nature. The Holy Ghost is that which gives us competency to enjoy these things. We have an unction from the Holy One given to us, to enable us to enjoy what God has given to us. There must be our standing in the presence of God without our conscience being at work at all; a nature capable of enjoying God - a new nature; and power to walk in that new nature, which is by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us.

254 The thing brought especially before us is what that is we are to enjoy: the nature of the thing brought down to the understanding of a poor sinner; and that tries the conscience, just as it moves the affections. God is light, and if I am brought into the blessedness of what God is, it must put the conscience to the test; and I ask, am I standing in it? If I am capable of it, then I enjoy all the blessedness of standing in the light, and am in a position to test all that pretends to possess this character. "God is light." He is bringing this home to the hearts of the saints. And this must be by presenting Christ Himself. There was, at the time this Epistle was written, a great deal made of development, and He wants to bring them back to the truth. Science, so called, had got in. The character of apostolic teaching was to bring them back "earnestly to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints." "But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned." "That which was from the beginning." My soul ought to know Christ better every day. The moment I get "God manifest in the flesh," I cannot know anything out of Him, but that which is false. The question of knowledge is to give place to Christ. If I get there, nothing can shake me. I am in Christ. "These things write we unto you that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." Do you believe on the Son? Then rest there.

Verse 1. First, it was from the beginning; second, it was a real substantial Person they had known familiarly, not a doctrine; that is the blessed secret of all. If they have Christ, then they have all that the Father has, all that is revealed of Him: and they cannot go from that without being wrong. They have got eternal life, the perfect revelation of God - the power of life in Christ. This is what is presented to us as the full enjoyment and the safeguard of the saint. It is ours, though that which was with the Father, yet was so near to us; not union, but so near to us that nothing could be so near as Christ Himself. Instead of wanting anything between myself and Christ, it is revealed to me, so that nothing could be so near to me as Christ Himself. This is the eternal life that was with the Father.

255 And it is as we study the Lord Jesus Christ that we shall have affections established towards Him, which nothing can break. The poor woman who was a sinner had such confidence in Him that she had come to Him, and loved Him; but the secret of our joy is to know the love of Christ to us; and then we have confidence in Him, understanding that God has come so near as to reveal Himself, and inspire confidence. The more we go out and study Christ - the more we penetrate into His ways - the more we learn the depth of all these riches in Him, the more is His divine fulness revealed to us. If it is His taking little children up in His arms, I see in it what God's character is. "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." Having truth thus revealed in a Person, I get it for the humblest, lowest, poorest, sinner, because it is a personal act of our Lord Jesus Christ. "That which was from the beginning." And now, mark, this "Word of life," while it shews what God was in Christ, shews it communicated to us; and everything, true or false, is tested by this. So he asks, "Is there love?" No. Then it is not of God. "He that loveth not knoweth not God." This is now what John teaches, he brings me up to the object - what God was. "That which we have seen with our eyes"; "God is light"; "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanseth us from all sin"; the communication of life to the Christian; the height of the source of the life communicated to us. But in the Gospel of John you will find, "of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace," "which thing is true in him and in you." "An old commandment which was from the beginning"; now a new commandment, become true in Him and in you. He called it a new commandment, though an old one - a simple truth that Christ Himself is become our life, "that the life of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal bodies." If a poor sinner is converted, he has the life communicated from Jesus up there, which comes down to the lowest need in us; and yet how high it rises!

256 This Gospel begins before creation. Genesis begins with creation, and gives the scene in which all is to be acted; but John gives Him who created, and states the pre-existence of God. "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth," "thou art the same" - we get Christ before the creation, and then in creation. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," and became the source of life; and we receive our life from Him who existed, before all worlds, from everlasting. We receive our new nature from Him, and are united to Him who was before the world, and who created the world. This has a double effect (if right with God), lifting our hearts up in ten thousand thousand thanks, while it manifests the life of Jesus. The least thing manifests the life of Jesus. Whatever does not manifest Him is of the world; whatever is not the manifestation of the life of Christ in our souls, it is sin. And do not think that a hardship. No; rejoice in it. I would have your hearts enlarged; as the apostle says, "be ye also enlarged." Oh to have Christ so before the eye as to be able to judge everything in His light! Do not think it is great learning; no, there may be the lust of the mind as well as the lust of the flesh; but if in communion with God, we discern all things.

I call your minds back to see the way we received the life; it was in the humblest and simplest way. He who came into the world to save sinners, He has made us vessels of His fulness. Thus we have fellowship with the Father and with the Son, and display it. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." The effect is, we have the Father and the Son, and we have nothing more to seek. I have the Father and the Son. Can I get truth outside the Father and the Son? I may have more to learn. If a man is on the ocean, there may be a great deal he has to discover of it, but he has not to get there; he says, I am there. So I am in the truth. I have got a great deal to learn; but I am in the Father and the Son, and I am in the truth. I do not want to seek it if I am in it. I have the very eternal God in whom I dwell - I have come to the Father. When there is a consciousness of this, O what comfort and what peace! It not only guards us from evils without, but it gives spiritual rest within. If I am striving to get something, I have no communion. If I want to get to the sovereign, when I am in His presence already, I have no communion; and if I am not brought up there, I cannot have the sense of what the conscience ought to be in God's presence. The joy is, that our fellowship is with the Father, and not that of getting there.

257 "These things write we unto you that your joy may be full." There is where God brings the saint if there is humbleness. And if there is not humbleness, we shall slip. When we lose the sense of God's presence, the sense of it, I say (because we are always in His presence in truth), we are at the point to sin. My natural character or flesh will shew itself if I am out of His presence. There is such a thing as the saint's dwelling in the conscious presence of God without fear. If there is anything between me and God, my conscience will be at work; but when the Spirit is not grieved, the soul is in the presence of God for joy; learning holiness, it is true, but in joy, because occupied in communion instead of in detection; and that is a great thing. There is such a thing as being in His presence without the conscience having to be exercised, and in perfect joy. "My peace I give unto you." What was that peace? There were no vagabond affections - there could not be, and so there was full peace of heart with God. Christ was divinely perfect - all His affections always in tune with God. Now, through the grace and power of God, we may be brought to that, Christ having been revealed to the soul, the world is cast out, and Christ is everything, and there is perfect joy. This is often what our experience is after conversion, but afterwards the love to Christ grows less fervent - the world creeps in little by little, and we have less joy.

There are three things which characterise a Christian. First, "he is in the light as God is in the light." Now God had said to Israel, "I will dwell in the thick darkness"; and at Sinai told them to keep off; "for if so much as a beast touch the mountain it shall be stoned." There was a great deal of good there, but He was in His pavilion of darkness, not seen. God acted towards Israel, but did not shew Himself. Now the veil is rent from top to bottom, and all is light. It is the very nature of the truth we are in, that God is now manifestly revealed, and he that is come in through the veil stands in the light of God's holiness, perfect purity in itself, and it shews everything that is not so. Second, "Fellowship one with another." We are there together, and all have fellowship by the same Holy Ghost dwelling in all. Third, We can be there because "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." The more thoroughly in the light, the more it is seen that there is no spot on us through that blood. This could not be said of a Jew; but now the righteousness of God is set forth, and we are brought into the light as He is in the light. Is this a thing that makes you unhappy, or gives you joy of heart? If we are true of heart, we shall be glad of the light to detect the darkness in us. "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." We do not want to escape from the light, but to be searched by it - not with a pretension that we have no sin, but the consciousness that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. For the effect of being in the light is, that we confess our sins. "In whose spirit there is no guile." There are two things there, the confession and the love.

258 Verses 1-4 are that there may be no deception. Then in verse 5, "This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." Now that is the test when Christ is known in the presence of God: there is no question about sin. How came I there? I came through the blood - then I have got peace. If I am reasoning about God, this is another thing; but if we have got there, we got there through the blood, and this gives peace, a peace which is never lost. There is a peace which may be lost: happy at first, while fresh from conversion, and all is easy and smooth with us, our hearts attracted by the grace of Christ; but if failure comes in, conscience is awakened, sin alarms, and we lose our peace, so that we do not know where we are. Until we have apprehended that we are brought to God - where we never could be brought if there remained a spot of sin upon us - we cannot know settled peace in our souls, as spoken of in Hebrews, "no more conscience of sin[s]"; and that is enduring peace. The power of the affections of the new nature forms a link of fellowship with God; and only as we keep in the light, shall we know the practical enjoyment of it. We must be in the light that evil thoughts may be shut out, so that we may have fellowship with God. In how many things, in our intercourse with one another or with the world, self comes in and is not judged by us! There is a practical consciousness in the Christian that he cannot go on without God, and he judges, waits, and confesses, trusting in God, and thus his heart is kept calm and in peace.

259 There are two things. First, The manifestation of the eternal life - for it has been manifested to us. Second, We are partakers of it, I have fellowship with the Father and the Son. He has communicated to us that nature, so that we can delight in His fellowship.

The Lord give us to keep ourselves in the love of God - in His presence, in the light, detecting everything that is not of Him, judging it, and thus to be in the enjoyment of His love.

If our hearts were as simple as the word of God, our perception of its truths would be as simple and as easy. But it is not so. In a certain sense it could not be so; nor ought it to be so, till our hearts and thoughts are brought into subjection to God's thoughts. There will be no simplicity till the conscience is purged; because, till the soul is brought to God, all is confusion and darkness on account of sin. In partial and dimmer light there is often terror, because everything is confused. So when the conscience is at work, until we are brought to set to our seal that God is true, and learn that all our thoughts perish, all our ways are foolishness, terror and confusion reign in the soul. But when brought to this, our hearts become as simple as the word. It is a great matter to have the heart exercised. God would have, and will have, the mind and conscience exercised. But till our thoughts are brought into subjection to God's thoughts - our own thoughts utterly set aside - we cannot have blessed and happy thoughts of God. When our thoughts flow in the current of God's thoughts - when His thoughts become ours - it is blessed in every sense. The conscience is blessed, the heart is blessed; and you go on cheerfully. Not so when God speaks, and we begin to reason; setting up our thoughts against, or mingling them with, God's revelation. That is not simplicity. Till the soul is bowed to receive God's thoughts you cannot, and ought not, to have perfect peace. I have sin in me; how then can I have peace? Here is the difficulty. For, "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." If the revelation of God in Christ shines into me, I cannot say, "I have no sin." What follows? "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." Here, then, I find how I can have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. Christ the Advocate with the Father, maintains us in the communion we are apt to lose. This is the great secret which breaks down human pride - entire subjection to God's thoughts. If God has given a revelation, and I am not subject to it, it is unbelief and rebellion. God says, "the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." If I say, "I have done this or that, and God cannot forget; He knows all, and He must remember"; I am found reasoning, and not submitting to God's thoughts. I am concluding what God must be, from what I find in myself, consequent on the light which has shined in.

260 How then can I have peace? God does not mean us to take up things lightly, without exercise of soul. When the light of God shines into the conscience, sin is felt, and seen too, where it never was seen before. God shines in, and I find darkness. God cannot have to do with darkness. I find that in me which God cannot accept. How can God accept me?

I am always glad to see a conscience exercised thus. It is all useful to convict of sin. It is good for the light to probe to the bottom of the heart. It is awful to think what the human heart is - I do not mean in the gross forms of evil. There is something in the selfishness, the cold calculating reasoning of man's heart, worse than all the sins one could enumerate - yes, even of the decent man who keeps his character! Is there one single motive which governs your heart, decent and sober as you are, which governed Christ? Is there one feeling in your breast which was in Christ? Not one. What governs men? Selfishness. Not so Christ. There was no selfishness in Christ. In Him all was love. Love it was that brought Him down. Love gave Him energy when hungry and weary at the well. Love carried Him on, one constant unfailing stream of love. Never was He betrayed into anything contrary to it. Deserted, abandoned, betrayed, still there was one unwearying action of love. Selfishness can feel love. It is even lovely to man's mind, though he is the very opposite of it. Yet some are amiable and beautiful characters. But how do they use their amiability? To attract to self! self governs man. Selfishness need not be put into him; it is there. All is sin from beginning to end - all self. Whatever be the form it takes, it is vanity. Is it not true of every one that will read this, that some personal gratification, perhaps some little bit of dress, has more power to occupy the thoughts, than the agony of Christ? Not that He would have us always occupied with that; He would have us occupied with His Person and glory.

261 When I want to prove, then, is that we cannot think badly enough of what our hearts are. It is well that we should know it, for we cannot have the truth without in some measure judging the root and principle of evil within. But then have we any power to remedy the evil? No, none. But when brought to God, happily we get miserable about it. When there are desires after truth, I hope, because I see some goodness in God; but hope is dashed by seeing some evil in myself. That is not simplicity. It is judging God by some sort of knowledge of what I am. It may be true and righteous; but it is law. The principle of law is, that God is towards man according to what man is towards God. It is the principle which conscience always will act on; for according to conscience it is right. The evil is not in this, but in the fact that I am not brought to total despair. The light has not yet broken down the will, so as to make me cry out, "I am vile, and abhor myself in dust and ashes."

Beloved friends, if I take the ground of expecting anything from God, in virtue of what I am towards Him, all is over! there is nothing but condemnation. God is holy, and I am not. God is righteous, and I am a sinner. The end of all these exercises of soul is to make you cry out, "I am vile," and that is all. God is holy, and I am not. He is holy, and must be holy, and ought to be holy. Would you have Him lower Himself down to what you are? No, never. I may tremble before Him when I think of it, but I would not have it otherwise. No person quickened into the divine nature could deliberately wish God to come down from His holiness, to spare one sin; because he has learnt by that same nature to hate sin. My heart has tasted a little of love in God Himself; for He cannot reveal Himself without revealing love. The law shews man what he ought to be, but does not shew what God is. It says, love God, and it shews me that I ought to love, but does not tell me who or what the God is I am to love. Job said, if I could but find Him! However distracted and broken to pieces under the hand of God, he felt that if he could only find Him, he would love Him. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" Flesh is always under the law. Realising by faith the precious truth that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, then all is easy, all is peace. Flesh comes in and troubles, and the soul is down; and it is up and down; and the evil is that the soul gets habituated to such alternations, and not to walking in communion with God.

262 To think that God is going to condemn me is not fellowship with His thoughts. What is fellowship? Common thoughts together; common feelings, affections, objects; one heart, one mind. Thus we have fellowship with God! How wonderful! Fellowship with the Father and the Son. How so? Why; what have I received, if I have not received God's thoughts? Does not the Father delight in the Son? and do not I delight in that there is all beauty and perfectness in Him? Do not I delight in a soul being converted? Is it not your delight that Christ should be perfectly honoured and glorified? and is it not God's too? If God's thoughts are the spring of our thoughts, can we wonder that our joy should be full? The Holy Ghost gives thoughts, and our hearts are too narrow to take them in in all their fulness and power; but our joy is full, nay so full that it runs over. It is not that we are not inconsistent to the end. The peace and rest that we get is, that there is no modification, no change, in God Himself.

If we say there is this or that inconsistency in me, and how can such as I look to God, and begin questioning, we get back to law - to judging by my own good-for-nothing heart of what God is. Would I have you indifferent to sins? No! but I would you had so settled and constant a judgment of the flesh, as vile and cannot please God, as to give yourself entirely up. Many of us have to learn this by detail - by failing, and failing, and failing. It is better to learn it by a ray of light shot from God's credited word - to believe, from His report that, from the first shoot it puts forth from the earth to the last fruit it bears, it is the old tree, and will never bring forth anything but wild grapes. A hard lesson this, but a true one. Are your hearts brought to say, in God's presence, I know that "I am carnal, sold under sin?" Have you come to this point, to accept the entire judgment of God against yourself? Terrible! But you must get there to know more full blessedness. Have you ever sat down satisfied to know that the self that is sitting there cannot please God? When it comes to that I give up all thoughts of judging God by what I am; for then He could only cast me out of His presence! I am not looking to gain eternal life. I cannot; I have failed. Where then shall I find that which I so desperately want? Why in this was manifested the love of God (v. 2). Himself is manifested.

263 The life you want is come by another. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." You are just the opposite to Jesus. How did you find that out? Jesus is manifested, the eternal life which came down from the Father, to you, because you could never have got your heart up to it. If Christ is not my life, where is it? Is Christ my life? Yes! and what a life I have. It makes me see sin in me - true. But if I have the sin, have I an imperfect life? A life which, perhaps, God cannot be pleased with? No; it is given from God, because I am mere sin. God sent His Son that I might live through Him. It is God's free gift. Where is responsibility then? As regards getting, there is none. It is in the using! Do I weaken responsibility? Nay, I give it all its force. If you are under the law, you are either weakening its authority (for if I say God is merciful and will give a reprieve, I destroy the law), or you established the law, proving its utter condemnation, and that you are dead through it - a lost sinner - alive by the life of Christ.

"This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (v. 5). God comes in as light. Sin is darkness. Light has no fellowship with darkness. Light being come in, we must so stand in the presence of God that, in the full light of His holiness, no spot at all is seen in us. Do you walk thus in the light? It is a real thing. The walk is what a man really is. Can you stand in the light, as God is in it without a veil between, walking, not according to the light, but in the light? Have you ever walked in such sort, knowing, without an effort in your conscience, that you are in the presence of God? If not, how have you been walking - going on for a few brief years? Whither you know not - in the awful folly of the human heart - in a constant state of moral madness! Have you ever had it all told out in your conscience, alone with God, all that you ever did? A long tale! That is what you have done, that is what you have thought, and I saw it all! Would you like thus to be told out, alone with God, the things that perhaps were not done before men, just proving that you thought more of man than of God? Is it all going to sink into oblivion? Have you thus been manifested to God, as the apostle speaks?

264 Here is a message - mark who brings it! A message by Christ. To bring me to Christ - to God - to judge? No! But to bring me to One who has come to put away all that He has made manifest! I breathe again: what a comfort! I can desire now that everything should be known, everything I have even thought of, because it is to Him who came to put it all away - not to hide, nor excuse, but to put it all away. The Son of God has died for it all. It is God putting my sin away, instead of putting me away. I am in the light, but the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me from all sin. I get the witness of God Himself, God who is light. If He does not shew a spot in me, who will? Do I say, there is no spot in my nature? No. But it does not depend on what I am; it depends on God, in whose light I am. The God who manifests me tells me that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses me from all sin! God has loved me perfectly. How do I know that? Because of what I am? No: I know it from what God is, and from what He has done; and my soul rests in constant, perfect, undisturbed peace; for God has revealed Himself to be what He is, and has revealed what He has done, in that Christ died; and what He has done never can change - He never changes. It is in the power of an accomplished salvation that the soul rests, and not on anything that is yet to be done; so that there can be no change. The blood of Christ alone blots out my sin. If Christ did not do it perfectly, when will it be done? But He has done it. "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." When faith, by divine teaching, has laid hold on this, faith does not change either. "The worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins."

One word at the close on that which is important to us all - communion or fellowship. Is communion never interrupted? Yes! But God's love is not interrupted, nor my confidence, though my communion may often be; for God cannot have communion with a single sin - with an idle trifling thought - so that, when such come into the mind, we cannot have communion. What is the resource then? The answer is given in chapter 2: 1, "My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." It is not here the Mediator with God, but the Advocate with the Father. Communion with the Father has been interrupted. Advocacy is founded on two points: that He, the righteous One is in God's presence, and that He has made propitiation for us. We have fellowship with the Father and the Son, and we lose it through sin or folly. Christ comes in as the Advocate, and the Spirit of Christ works according to advocacy, and restores communion, brings us back to fellowship with the Father and the Son. Here is the remedy for daily failure. Our position is fellowship with the Father and the Son.

265 "That our joy may be full." Have you been brought to this? He has made peace. Have you got it? Take no rest till you have it. Tolerate no sin; but see that God has put it all away by the blood of the cross. God forbid there should be any levity about sin. Nothing is so impossible as that God can brook sin. But He can put it away. Have you, by faith, attained this rest, rest in that eternal life which came by the shed blood, never to be shed again? Beloved friends, only be sure of this, that God is love; that in all His ways with you, He is love, and He would have you happy. You cannot be happy in evil. Because He is love, He would bring us to know this love and find therein our rest. Aye, and He would have us reckon on Him as regards our failures. I have sin in me, and I have no strength save in Him. If I cannot, or do not, go to Him when there is sin and failure, where am I to go for strength? Moses said, Exodus 34: 9, "If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance." Could you go up with the stiffneckedness you have without God? "Go with us," says Moses, "because it is a stiffnecked people." You will never get the victory over sin, nor indeed properly judge it, unless you have God with you. Christ can give us to hate the sin and strengthen us against the thing we hate. God is love. I know it in Christ, and I have Him against the evil that would hinder me - the thing I feared would be too much for me. "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."

It is a great mercy that God has not left us in the dark as to our state before Him. Now men, by nature, have a notion of judgment. Even the heathen have this; and much of the Christianity of the present day is little more. Men try to conduct themselves in such sort as to stand in judgment, tempered perhaps by mercy. They confound what is never confounded in the word of God - judgment and mercy.

266 Now Christ did not come to leave men there; He did not die to leave men there. He came to put men in a totally different condition. If the Son of man came into the world and died, it must have been for some great purpose. He brought down into this world the whole light of grace and truth - all that was needed to change the whole relation of a man to God; He came with it.

In verse 3 we get the object of writing this scripture, that we may have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. It speaks of such an entire putting away of sin, and such a knowledge of God's thoughts about the Father and the Son as that we may have fellowship with them. What a wonderful thing! Not a mere natural thought of judgment, but companionship of heart with the Father and the Son. Does this leave any uncertainty as to our state at the great day? No. He is not to have fellowship and intimate friendship with us and then condemn us. No. There is such a cleansing as that all that could hinder this fellowship is for ever put away.

Mark how far a man's thought is from that naturally. He says, I have not this fellowship, this joy: God is in heaven and I on the earth. Well, if it is so, you have not got the good of the gospel. If you have not fellowship with the Father, you are not thinking about Him at all, or else you are dreading Him. You have not fellowship, you cannot have fellowship, if you feel criminal before Him. It is anything but fellowship. The will is not broken down when there is dread. But how is this? Why! is not your heart given to pleasure, to money? Are you not after the flesh, after things which are quite contrary to God, and contrary to fellowship with God? "The carnal mind is enmity to God." This is our state naturally, and what the word of God calls darkness; not merely being in the dark, but darkness itself, just as God is light. It is in you that the evil is. There is the insensibility of a drunkard; but besides this, there is the fact that he loves to gratify a vile lust. "Ye were sometimes darkness."

And what is this darkness? Corruption of nature. Compare yourself with Christ. He is the pattern of what is good. Are you not just the very opposite? How came you to be so? All the objects for which you are living are just the opposite of that for which Christ was living. You are living for pleasure, for money, for fame, and for a thousand other things, while He was ever living unto God. I am not speaking of your outward life, but of your motives. All that is governing your life is the opposite of what governed Christ. Suppose a person brought up in filth from his youth; he does not know that it is filth. He has got accustomed to it; and why? Because his heart is as filthy as his clothes or his house.

267 Now we are so accustomed to sin that we do not see it to be sin. What does that prove? Just that we love it. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." The rejection of Jesus is the proof of it. You may say that, if you had lived then, you would not have done as they did, you would not reject Him. Are you sure of that? What are you doing now? Do you see any beauty in Him? Do you see one bit of darkness in yourself? When He is brought in testimony before you, you do not see beauty in Him. That is darkness. We love our lusts, and we do not love the Lord Jesus Christ. That is our state. Christ is not the thing that governs and possesses our hearts day by day. If so, how can we have fellowship? "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." But you are darkness, and how can you have fellowship with Him? You are darkness in your conduct, in your will, and in your judgment; for your judgment is governed by your will, your motives, desires, etc. He is holiness itself, "light," which is pure and which manifests everything. But if He manifests everything in you, how then can you have fellowship with Him?

Now this is a message of what God is, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." He cannot give up His light, He cannot have fellowship with darkness; and it would not be a blessing if He did. But it is a message brought down here. It is not in heaven, but here that we have the message, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." If you call yourself a Christian, you are saying that you have fellowship with Him; but if you are walking in darkness you are deceiving yourself. This is a fearful thing. God is so totally out of men's minds, that they have not the sense that they have got away from Him. God is light. There cannot be the slightest communion with darkness. God cannot undo Himself, and destroy His own holiness to have fellowship with darkness. You are deceiving yourself.

268 Now there is another thing; "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another; and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." God will not leave you away from Himself. If He makes you happy, it is in Himself. Now this is what natural conscience dreads - to be in God's presence. God, as He is, without modifying one bit of His holiness, puts us there in the light. Then I am in the light as God is in the light. This was in Christ. What do we see in Christ? Holiness in every thought. Israel undertook to obey God under terror, Christ in love. Men undertake this as Israel did, under terror of judgment. Men do undertake to do God's will in view of judgment. Now Christ said, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." That is what Israel undertook, and we know how they failed. That is what men are doing - undertaking to have to do with God in prospect of judgment. God dealt with Israel so to prove that they could not do it. But that is what Christ did in grace. So when He came on earth He was all obedience and love Christ comes, and what do we find in all His ways? Separation from evil. He kept evil outside of Him in passing through it. He touched the leper and was undefiled. He was love; He never did anything but love. He was the living expression of the holiness and love of God in the midst of sin.

When the truth of that is brought into the conscience, when I see that I have slighted the Christ, and preferred idle vanities to Him, how it shews me what I am! When I see the love of Christ, does not that come and say, "O you are a wretch to prefer a bit of dress to Christ, to take anything when Christ is disliked for it!" And when thus brought into the light, in the presence of God, we judge ourselves. I judge rightly what I am, and what I have been doing, all the while I have been in darkness. I must, of course, see the light; therefore it is by faith. Not that I may realise all, but yet I judge all in God's presence and hate myself. And it is just when we begin to think that God does not hate us that we begin to hate ourselves. When the spirituality of the law comes, we hate sin, but dread the consequences; but when the light of Christ comes, we hate sin through and through, and there is humbleness. I hate sin and abhor myself. Now, there is a real moral change. I am brought into the true light. O what a difference when a man is brought to God; not in terror which makes him run away, nor in full peace, but yet to a God who, in love, has brought me into His presence to shew me what I am. Then, I repeat, it is getting into the light. There is distress at first, but so much the better, for the heart is set right.

269 "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Here is something more than hating sin. We are in the light. God will not enfeeble that light so as to allow one shade of darkness. He loves us so much as not to dim one ray of His glory, but He is doing that which will make us happy in it. Instead of allowing sin, He cleanses it away.

If walking in the light as He is in the light, how do I get there? Not in Christ's life merely, for I need His death. There the light was more shewn than in His life. There God is shewn to be intolerant of all sin. God Himself has marked there, in the cross, that He cannot tolerate sin. And if Christ was holiness Himself, it shews more clearly the fearfulness of sin put upon Him. If God and Christ are to settle the question of sin between them, they must do it according to the perfection of their own knowledge of it. There light and sin met. Light is turned into judgment against sin. Light did meet the sin, and in judgment. Where are we to get the fruit of this? Now take the cross; there He was giving Himself up, all that He was for us. There never was a time in which light and love came out so as on the cross - the perfection of light, because of obedience; of love, because of giving up of self. Never was there such obedience as when Christ was made sin. All is brought to the same focus, that I may see light and love in Christ. Why all this? That the blood of Jesus Christ His Son may cleanse us from all sin.

Now that I am brought into the light, what do I see? Sin on me? No, I see it was laid on Christ. I see light dealing with sin on Him. When I learn the extent of sin, then I learn the extent of love. When brought into the light as God is - in the cross, I see that Christ has put my sins away; and my being in the light it is that enables me to see it. When I come to see sin in its fulness, I see that it is on Christ. And now there is not merely the cleansing of my conscience, but peace with God. It is in the light. I am in the light, as God is in the light; and the very thing that brings me to see sin, brings me to see sin put away. I know too that God is love, and here I have peace. Then we get truth in the inward parts. If I confess sin - own all sin as such, that is truth in the inward parts. See Psalm 32. So we are brought in the consciousness of forgiveness into the presence of God; and there I know I am cleansed according to God's mind. Then I learn God's love. In Isaiah 43 God says, "Thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities." What then? "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own name's sake."

270 Now this is the message that "God is light." He cannot change; you must. The place where this takes place is the cross. The message is God's perfect love. God, in love to your souls, has not waited till judgment to tell you what sin is, but has told it out in Christ as in His sight, and He has done so in putting it away. Hence the fearful guilt of despising such grace.

The special point in what we have before us here, as I may say in all the writings of John, is such a manifestation of the Father in the Son as should bring us into fellowship and association with both. We have difficulties: there is the holy nature and character of God, and our state. He first puts this blessed thought and purpose of God, giving us fellowship with the Father and the Son, and then goes on to shew where the difficulty lies.

As Christians we have a new nature and capacity of enjoying God, as born of God, a divine nature - "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit"; and we have the power of the Holy Ghost. Evil nature has some special delight; and so the divine nature in us delights in divine things. If this were simply so, all would be very simple; but the flesh is there. Yet it is true for all that, that we should never have had the same kind of fellowship with the Father and the Son if we had not these exercises with other things that are not the Father and the Son. We have to go through temptation; but all this brings out the love and thoughtfulness of God about us that we never should have learned if we were not what we are. Man in Eden would be in innocence, thanking God and enjoying himself; but we have had Christ, that is, God revealing Himself fully in grace above all the sin. It was natural to God, if I may so speak, to love creation, but something more than natural, when God in sovereign grace commends His love to us when we are sinners. There I find what rises above all my thoughts of simple goodness; One absolutely holy, not merely good, but a perfectly holy nature dealing with one that is evil. That is infinite goodness, and yet it brings us in this increased knowledge of what God is to where there has been no evil at all.

271 This revelation makes us know God as we never could have known Him otherwise. The angels delight to look into it, but it applies to the affections of our hearts as applied to ourselves; for He does not take hold of angels but of the seed of Abraham. I get then the Lord Jesus Christ becoming a man, shewing His holiness where sin was - not where sin never could enter - and then the patience and the goodness of the love, the perfect revelation of the Father. He could say, "Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Even if we take the highest character of this, we have the Father's delight in the Son Himself revealed to us, and we are brought into it in Christ, the very thing that should occupy us. He puts us, by the love that sought us while sinners, into this love; we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son; it is there that we are and thus so blessedly brought in.

I see a Man (one who is God over all, but still a man) the object of the Father's delight, and the One who had His delight in the Father. "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you." And "I have declared unto them thy name and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." It is all sovereign grace towards me, it is true, but redemption has brought us thus (Christ having become our life) into the apprehension of all these delights; so that, while we are brought to the dust as to ourselves, it brings us to full joy. And when God revealed Himself thus, He does not say "this is my beloved Son, you ought to love Him," but "this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" - "I love Him." He reveals His own affections to the Son. When we come to the death of the Lord Jesus, "now is the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in him." I see the sinless One, in the very place of sin where He was made sin, perfect in love to His Father and perfect in obedience. I say, was there ever anything like it? This perfect One, perfect in dependence when as a victim forsaken of God, perfect in His love, perfect in obedience: everything was tested to the uttermost - "the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" When I see all this, my soul as taught of God adoringly delights in it, humbled to the dust as to ourselves, still looking at the perfectness of this wondrous One. I suppose the soul has had peace, sin all gone; then Christ is the blessed object of my soul, and I learn the kind of feelings I never should have otherwise known. He could say "therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life," and I say therefore do I love Him. I have got the thought of the Father about Him. It is not merely that my sins are put away; but by the Father thus revealing all His thoughts and ways in Christ as He has, my soul in looking at Christ sees all this perfectness, enough to draw out the affections of the Father because of His perfectness of love to Him and obedience. He has set Him at His own right hand in glory; I sit down to gaze at Him, and see infinite perfectness. The Father could not but delight in, and love Him; and as taught of God I have fellowship with the Father in the very most blessed objects of His affections, the closest fullest object of His love. He has centred all my affections; as it is said in the Epistle to the Ephesians, "that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus" - even to angels and principalities and powers in the heavens.

272 It is there where a soul is brought, when there is peace of heart - not merely of conscience - but peace of heart through the Holy Ghost, when peace of conscience has nothing to do with it. If my affections are concentrated on the object of the Father's whole delight, I know the infiniteness of the object, and this gives peace of heart. Through sovereign grace I have my delight in Him. My affections are feeble and weak; but still if they are centred on this object, I am at the infiniteness of the source of delight. He is the Father's constant delight. His delight was to do His Father's will - His meat and drink to do the will of Him that sent Him. With Him I have all things; the object is there; with Him I know the Father. I have His Father my Father, His God my God. I have the Spirit of adoption whereby I cry, Abba Father. The affections flow out according to the new nature and the Spirit of Christ. It is not supposing that our affections are adequate: they never are even in human things, but they can be concentrated - not let out to other things. We are finite: the object is infinite; confidence grows in the apprehension of it.

273 We are brought then in this new nature and the power of the Holy Ghost - the Father has brought me - into the very same place and title and name that Christ is in. "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Beloved, now are we. the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." The soul goes on in fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. It cannot be otherwise if you merely take the truth, because it is the Holy Ghost that is the spring of the affections and thoughts, and He cannot give us different ones from those of the Father and the Son. For though the Holy Ghost is down here and working in us, He brings down the things that belong there and communicates them to us.

When I speak of my need as a sinner, it is not fellowship; I must come as a sinner to the cross, wanting to be cleansed, and justified. This brings me into that; but I must come as a sinner, I must come by my conscience, though my heart may be attracted by the Lord Jesus; if my conscience is not reached, nothing is done. His holy love, not mine, attracts me; but if I come into God's presence, He is light, and my conscience is reached. If I anon with joy receive the gospel, there is no root, though there may be sincerity at the moment; where love works, it always brings light, because God is love as well as light, and the love gives me confidence to come into the light when I find I am a sinner.

You will always find these two things where a soul has to do with God: you cannot have confidence without finding out both. Why did the woman that was a sinner come into the Pharisee's house? Because the love of Christ was in her heart. It is the same with every soul. God is both light and love. He has really revealed Christ to us, and I have confidence. The righteousness of God against sin is revealed and love to the sinner. We walk in the light as God is in the light. It is the only way we can go to God; I cannot come but through the cross of Christ. Then, when I am come, I find in passing through the veil, there is not a morsel of sin left on me in the sight of God. I am fit for the light, and then I come to enjoy God's way in it. I have this side in coming to God, I want the cross; but then when I pass through, I am reconciled to God, and begin to learn His thoughts - to look on the cross from God's side. I come to Him, and there I see all the wondrous blessedness of what God is, and therefore my heart can adore, being in peace. Having come, I have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

274 First is brought out simply and absolutely that as such he that is born of God cannot sin. Christ is his life: sin cannot touch it - "he that is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." But it gives us what our portion, our place is. If I only get a mixed condition, I cannot have God's complacency in it. It is in complacency and fellowship: our proper life is proper fellowship, and that in divine complacency. Our proper divine life is fellowship with the Father and with the Son. It is not a question of being able to stand before God in righteousness; that is the claim of His holiness and righteousness, not fellowship. If it be a question of righteousness, He is estimating in a judicial way what is before Him. And, Christ being before Him, it is all settled. But here it is the full joy that should be ours in this fellowship, and that by the perfect blessed revelation of the eternal life which was with the Father.

"For the life was manifested and we have seen it, and bear witness and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us: that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us." We have seen all that is in the Father's heart close to ourselves in a man (v. 1). "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father" - He was constantly before us, and we looking on Him.

Here I get this blessed object before me, this eternal life come down to me in which the Father has been perfectly revealed, revealed in Him so that that which is my life reveals the Father. It is a wonderful blessedness, a truly blessed joy. That which perfectly reveals the Father and represents Him has come down here in my nature. Therefore the apostle so insists on it - we have heard Him, we have seen Him with our eyes, we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. There is what he first presents; "these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."

275 Now comes the other side, the grace having been all brought out. This is that which was from the beginning (mark the word); now what does he reveal? He has a message, "that God is light," which is, that He is absolute purity, and reveals everything. This is what light does, it makes all things manifest. "God is light and in him is no darkness at all" - no mixture. "If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth." It is the nature of God in its purity, applied as a test of communion. This is the message that Christ has brought, that God is light. And we walk in the light - that is, in the thorough knowledge of God. Darkness is no knowledge of God at all. If I take the world, the light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not. That is, man's heart was the very opposite of God's. "Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." "If we walk in the light" - here it is not merely according to the light, but "in the light," that is, the full revelation of God, though of course we ought to walk accordingly.

Now mark another point of importance. It is an entirely new thing that is given to us; it is that which was "from the beginning." It is not as in the Gospel - "in the beginning"; because the Word is before the creation. In the beginning God created; but before this Christ was there and had no beginning: when nothing was created He was - that is where the Gospel begins. But here we have got a question of associating man with God in a new standing, that is, in grace, and this is what was "from the beginning." The old man is set aside; it is a new start-point, God's Son, still a man. He is the First-born, the man of God's delight and God's counsels; others are brought into the place by grace. But the cross has come in and closed the history of man as a lost sinner, and begun the history of the accepted man - that is, of Christ. "Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning" - it is Christ. The law and the prophets were before Him, but are all entirely set aside for faith; and, Christ taking the place of everything, I have got that which was from the beginning. "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old; it was then I was by him as one brought up with him, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him." Therefore the angels say "glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good pleasure in men," Luke 2.

276 Now, dealing in detail as to this fellowship with God, God is light; where therefore there is growth, if there is a thing in which the flesh is active, this comes to the light. The Person with whom I have fellowship is light; the light detects if my conscience is right. I cannot have fellowship really without my conscience being brought into the light. He unfolds this both as to the nature, and as to the acting of it. We have to walk in the light as God is in the light. We could not have got it in Adam, blessed and happy and peaceful as he was; but here I have got it. Christ is the revelation of God in light; and if I am made partaker of the divine nature, it is in the last Adam. "In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Darkness does not comprehend light, but light that is of the same nature does.

"But if we walk in the light"; for mark here that it is not now the law. Do not call the law light. In the law I get the measure of what man ought to be, and therefore God says, "I dwell in the thick darkness." Christ meets it for us; but when I have got this new nature, this light that comes down from heaven, it is not what a man ought to be, but what is fit to be in the light as God is. Thus you cannot go back to innocence. Here I am, a lost sinner, and now I have found God revealed in Christ, the light of the world. This brings me in through the rent veil, and I must be fit for God's presence in glory.

Thus it is in John 13. In the chapter before "the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified." It is the third character in which He is presented in these chapters - as Son of man. The Greeks come up, and He says, "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." Then in chapter 13, "He riseth from supper and laid aside his garment and took a towel and girded himself." What was the meaning of that? "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me" - I cannot sit with you as your companion: I cannot go on; I am going to my Father, and I must have you fit to be there. You are going through the world and will pick up dirt, and I cannot have it. He is shewing this, that it is not now any return to a condition of man, responsible as man, but to walk in the light, even as God is in the light. If I am not fit for that, I cannot be with God at all. There is where the difficulties come in. It is not the question can I answer to God? No, I cannot. The veil is rent now: the question is, Have you got such a new condition and standing that you can be in the light with God, where the flesh cannot be? There is where He puts us.

277 "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another." There is no selfishness there. Suppose I enjoy the love of God, do you think bringing another in makes it less? No; you enjoy the light, and it is not a bit the less for others. In human things, if I have a loaf and another comes in to share it, there is only half a loaf left for me. In divine things we have fellowship one with another, and there is no diminution.

Then I come to the third point. Here I am in the light as God is, in this blessed fellowship, "and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." It is not 'has cleansed' or 'will cleanse,' but very simply an abstract statement; just as when I say 'that medicine cures the ague,' I am talking of its nature. I have to do with God in the light as He is in the light. I have got this blessed knowledge, that the light has come out through the cross, and I am as white as snow. The thing that let out the light made me fit for it. Thus there are these three great elements of my condition - in the light as God is, the fellowship of the Spirit, and the blood of Jesus that cleanses from all sin.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." I cannot say the flesh is not there (it is not sinning), but the existence of sin in the flesh does not give a bad conscience. My conscience is bad (I mean practically) if I let the sin, the flesh, act. The old man in its nature is always there. In the cross of Christ I have what meets the case - our old man is crucified with Him, and I have to reckon it dead; but still there it is in itself too truly.

Then I get the next step. Suppose it does act - "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." It is not "if we confess our sin" - I have nothing to do with confessing sin. People will confess their sin, not their sins; for the heart is deceitful enough to excuse the sins by admitting sin in the flesh. I admit the flesh is there; but why did not you keep it down in the power of Christ so as not to let it act? Therefore it is we have to confess our sins: and mark, we have to walk with that. When he speaks of sin (v. 8), it is the present tense; I never can say I have no sin: but when of sins it is, "if we say that we have not sinned" (v. 10). I ought not to be sinning; I may be thinking of the blessedness of Christ. If so, I am not sinning; my mind may be occupied with Him. But if I say that I have not sinned, I make God a liar, because He declares all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Here I get the distinction.

278 It is surprising that people do not see the difference between 'sin' and 'sins.' Peter speaks of sinning, that is, of the lust that comes when the flesh is active; but when I come to Paul and John, they speak of the nature of the flesh, of sin in the flesh. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us: if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Observe in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is not communion exactly which is the main object of the teaching there. Here it is, and therefore I get the Father and the Son, the highest expression of it. In Hebrews I enter into the holiest. It is a question of whether I can approach God who is holy and righteous, and does not give up His holiness and righteousness because He is love; and there I get this, that I am perfected for ever (the words "for ever" meaning not merely for eternity, but what is uninterrupted). As Christ is always at the right hand of God, so we are uninterruptedly before God. There is never a moment that the believer is not the righteousness of God as standing in Christ. Therefore priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews does not apply to sins. What it does apply to is this: - I am perfected for ever and He who is my righteousness, by whom I am perfected for ever, has sat down at the right hand of God. But I am here walking in this world, where I cannot take a step without mercy and grace to help. I have difficulties and trials; I go to the throne of God and get help in time of need. The thing in Hebrews is whether I can go as a mere sinner into God's presence. Yes, the veil is rent, and the Person that put away my sins is sitting there. He is my witness that I am perfect - "for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" - a perfection that never changes, for He is sitting there for me, "expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." He is sitting there because He has nothing more to do. There are these two points in the Epistle: having by Himself purged our sins, He sat down; and, being perfected for ever, I am walking on this earth with temptation, but He is always getting grace to help me through this world of difficulty and contradiction of sinners. There is a daily dependence on grace to help me to walk a holy life, without a question of my being perfect before God, and the constant supply of grace through Christ who is there.

279 Now here the question is raised of how I can have fellowship with the light, where, if I have for a moment a thought not spiritual or charitable, it is sin. The instant I come to fellowship or communion, if I let my own thoughts come in, it is gone. The smallest thing interrupts communion; even supposing I recollect myself, yet for the moment it is gone. The holy God cannot have communion with that which is unholy. Now I get what Christ is as the Advocate: "if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins." What is the ground of it? Jesus Christ the righteous. The righteous One is there, my righteousness is always there (as in the Hebrews). Thus not a question of imputation arises, but of communion. I cannot bear the thought that I should grieve the Spirit of God and turn Him into a reprover, instead of communicating the joy of God to me, the One that gives me fellowship with the Father. The moment that is all settled, Jesus Christ the righteous One is there, and He is the propitiation for my sins, I must not have one thought that is inconsistent with the place. But what makes me find it out? My Advocate has been there about it to bring my soul back into fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, which had been entirely interrupted: but the righteousness has not been interrupted. Therefore he says "an Advocate with the Father," and does not talk about God in that sense, because it is a question of communion with the Father, not of righteousness.

Thus I have got grace acting, not the law; no question of imputation, but no allowance of sin at all as a matter of holiness. It does not put me back to the law, nor its righteousness; but Christ being Advocate for me there, and the Spirit of God in me to act in my conscience, it brings me into utter humiliation before God, and restores the communion of my soul. Some chastening or other comes. But there is not the smallest allowance of anything that hinders communion. nor the smallest imputation of sins. It is the maintenance of communion practically, or the restoration of it when broken, with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; while the righteousness and propitiation remain, so that it is advocacy, not imputation.

280 We must walk in the light as God is in the light. Nothing unfit for God is tolerated. There is propitiation, there is provision of grace if we sin. As to imputation, all is settled, perfected for ever. But we are to walk worthily of God who has called us unto His kingdom and glory, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called. Now let me ask, do we really believe we are called to fellowship of that kind? How is it in our hearts? I am sure there is growth in this fellowship with the Father and with the Son. Is this where our souls live? It is what we are called to. It is not saying we have no sin. The sin is there, but in the power of Christ dwelling in us we are called into this fellowship. The power is there, so that I have no excuse for letting in anything that will interrupt communion. We do, when careless about prayer or something of the sort; but there is no excuse for it. Our place is to walk in fellowship with the Father and the Son always. If we do fail, we have the Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and, as with poor Peter, He restores us. Do you suppose that the work of Christ has not put you in the light as God is, that there is not the perfecting us for ever? There is grace for you to walk aright. It is not saying I am weak: if we always said that, we should get the strength we wanted.

The Lord give us to have the blessed consciousness, that we have been reconciled to God as revealed in Christ, loved as Christ is loved, and called to walk in the sense of this, so that there is the constant dependence on Christ, the constant supply of grace to depend on, the constant testimony to the One we are dependent on.

It is not saying, I am perfected and that is all about it. You have to go through a world of temptation. When Israel was redeemed, they had to go through the wilderness: there is where all the "ifs" come in. If I am in Christ, there is no "if" at all. But I am walking through the wilderness with that which keeps me constantly dependent. I have the revelation of Christ's power. We are kept by the power of God, and we are kept because we want to be kept; I need this power every moment, there is all necessity for it.

281 I know this power, and there ought to be this blessed dependence on God. He does not raise the question of righteousness in it, but puts me in this place, and then leaves me to go through the world to have the senses exercised to discern both good and evil. If I do fail, there is my Advocate with the Father, to restore my soul. Unceasing grace and unceasing dependence are the true ground.

The Lord give us the distinct and full sense that the work of Christ has perfected us for ever, and then that you are brought by it into the presence of God in light, and know every instant dependence on the grace of Christ, and constant grace to be dependent on.

The Positiveness of Life in Christ

1 John 3: 1-10

J. N. Darby.

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If we weigh the state of the church, we shall find a great deal of what is negative in the Christian life, and contentedness with what is negative. For example, a man sees sin, he takes for granted that there must be sin in him, and it is true and well that he should know it, provided it be not working; he sees the blood of Christ, and is happy. If his flesh is kept in check as to positive sin, and the blood of Christ is seen, he is content. That is what I call negative - a person settling in himself that sin is, and is met by the cross of Christ. It is not as speaking lightly of the cross that I say this. There is nothing like the cross. God Himself is glorified by it. The glory we can have with Christ, but on the cross He was alone.

This condition flows greatly from all that is of nature not having been judged, and the heart then occupied with Christ. When there is a positive life in exercise which attaches itself to Him, and sees the excellency in Him, it never can be satisfied without seeking to have and be that which it sees in Him. Being free from sin - freed, if you please (for when this word is used in Scripture it refers to slavery), there is the positive activity of delighting in Christ. The heart is so far delivered from sin as to delight positively in Christ.

John takes up a positive active life, in the activity of which he supposes the Christian lives, and which has joys and delights of its own. "If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons [children] of God!"

I get the nature of which we are made partakers shewn from the life which is lived. If He is righteous, we know that every one who doeth righteousness has the manifested character of that nature, is born of Him. Where has it come from? From God. I recognise this relationship of a child by the nature that is manifested. The apostle is not merely thinking of what we are in the title of righteousness, but of whom we are born - whence we draw our life. Hence it is that he says in verse 9, "cannot sin," for it is the nature of God in which we live as born again. He takes the truth up, as he does on every subject, in its own absoluteness, without modifying it by the contradictory principle in us. But the result of the possession of this life is brought in in remarkable terms. We are born of God, but the life which we have received is that eternal life which was manifested in Christ; chap. 1: 1-3. Hence he says, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," no one has seen the glory, "but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." We shall be like Him; it is from the blessed consciousness of this, and the object thus set before us, that the activity of this life now flows. "And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself" (he does not say is pure, but) "even as he is pure." That is, the measure and standard which he has before his soul is Christ as its object.

283 How different this is from the negative state, occupied with sin, perhaps thinking how I shall get rid of it! I am a child of Adam is the thought of such an one; no, I say, I am a child of God. If we are sufficiently emptied of self to have Christ before us in this double way, as the life in which we live, and the object for which we live, then the affections are associated with the object we like; and He is not merely object but life. The power of the life is exactly in the measure in which Christ is the object. There is where a Christian is happy. His soul's affections are set free and occupied with Christ. He is the One we love and delight in, and we want to be like Him and with Him. If your heart is dragging through the world, and you are trying to get as free from all the spots as you can, you cannot be happy. This positive life is real liberty of heart, and that is what happiness means. He purifies himself as He is pure.

If I am not living this life of Christ, the old lawless thing is active. When there is not the activity of divine life, there is not merely failure in this, but there is the activity of the Adam life, and it is always lawless. "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not," and whosoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Christ and Christ in him; that is, if I am eating Christ and occupied with Christ, I do not commit sin, nor is my mind living in the sphere in which it has power. If you are not abiding in Him, you will get down to the other state I have spoken of, the mere avoiding of positive evil, while living in the sphere of thought in which flesh can find itself at home, while the spiritual affections are dull and inactive. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous." I am in Christ on the same footing of righteousness, as to my walk down here, that He is, as partaker of the same nature and looking forward to a perfect conformity to Him. We have a positive life in itself, which is itself. I here is this positive life in connection with Christ who is our life, and this life lives entirely on Him. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God," etc. This is the way it lives. It has these two traits - practical righteousness, and love of the brethren.

284 A word on the way the soul gets into this living on Christ and with Him. I do not believe you can ever do that until you get free in your conscience. Till then you cannot get beyond this negative conflict with sin, which avoids the evil the new life sees and judges. If I have the new life, I find the sin in me; and if I have not the consciousness of divine righteousness, I cannot delight in Christ as set free; that is, I must think of the sin. Is not God holy? And have not I sins? not merely guilt, but sins in my members? Yes; then "he that committeth sin is of the devil." Well, I commit sin, and hence I am afraid. That is, the workings of flesh come back on my conscience, and I must be occupied with self. The soul is not discharged from self as the ground of its standing before God, though there be divinely given, self-humbling conviction of sin, enough to be cast over on divine righteousness in Christ. It has not been brought to see that the case is perfectly hopeless and then to be cast over entirely on Christ. When brought to this, I am taken out of flesh by this work of redemption in Christ, so that I am made the righteousness of God in Him, and I do not look at myself to know if I am righteous before God.

What a contrast between that kind of negative life, with the head just above water and which says, I am alive, so I ought to be thankful, and this positive joyful life which goes out in active energy after Christ! But in order to this the staff of confidence in self must be snapped. If your hearts are with the world, this is not living on Christ. You have these difficulties because you are inclined to them and nourish what is the seat of them by continually letting your heart move on in the sphere where Christ is not. Christ Himself is not enough your object. There is surely grace enough in Him to help, when He is looked to, and His strength is made perfect in weakness.

The Love of God, the Love of Saints, and Overcoming the World.

1 John 4 and 5

J. N. Darby.

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God's love, in contrast with man's is distinguished by this, that while man must have something to drew out his love (as it is said, "For a good man some would even dare to die; but God commendeth his love to usward, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"), God's love is without motive, there being nothing attractive in the object that draws it out. "In due time Christ died for the ungodly." God's love sees no good in us. The brightest proof of God's love and man's enmity was seen in the cross: they met there, and thus shewed the superiority of God's love; as Jethro says, "In the thing wherein they dealt proudly He was above them." Verse 9 sets out the open manifestation of His love to us while we were yet sinners. We learn His purposes and counsels about us as saints, in the second place, in verse 17 - "Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world." This is a very different thing from His first visiting us in our sins. "Herein is love with us made perfect." The perfectness of God's love towards His saints is seen in the bringing them to be like Christ Himself. The sovereign grace of God puts the saint into the same place as Christ, that we may have the same kind of fellowship with the Father that Christ had. So in John 14 the Lord says, "My peace I give unto you" - that is, the peace He had with His Father - "not as the world giveth give I unto you."

The world has the character of a benefactor; and that it sometimes gives generously I do not deny. But then it is by helping a man as he is, out of the resources which it has, which may be all very well; yet, while helping him, it is only taking care of itself. But it is evidently a different thing here; for Christ takes us clean out of our condition, putting us into the same relationship with the Father as Himself. The world cannot give in this way. There is no guarding anything for self in Christ's unjealous love, but in us there is. Therefore He could say, "Not as the world giveth give I unto you." His delight was to shew that the Father loved them as He loved Him. "The glory thou hast given me I have given them, that the world may know that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." Jesus not only loves them Himself, but He will have it known by the world that they are loved by the Father as He Himself is loved. Can there be anything more disinterested than this (although the word "disinterested" fails to give the full meaning)? Still all this is guarded, for Christ ever keeps His place as the eternal Son of God. At the mount of transfiguration, the moment there is the question of putting Moses and Elias on an equality with Jesus, they both disappear, for when Peter said, Let us make three tabernacles, one for Moses and one for Elias, as well as one for the Lord, while he thus spake there came a cloud and overshadowed them, and instantly the glorified men vanished. "And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him." It is not said "hear them," but "hear him." "And when the voice was past, Jesus was found alone."

286 If Christ, in His wondrous grace, reveals Moses and Elias as His companions and associates in the glory, the moment Peter, in his foolishness, gives utterance to the thought that would place them on an equality with Christ, they must both vanish from the scene. It does not say, as the Father loved them, but as "he has loved me" (as a man). For however Christ may bring us unto the same place with Himself, He abides the object of homage and honour, even as the Father. If we elevate ourselves to an equality with Christ, immediately we set ourselves above Him. And it is ever the case thus with flesh. But the more a saint enters into his elevation, as being brought by grace into the same place with Christ, the more he adores Christ as God over all, blessed for evermore. This is ever to be borne in mind.

The thought in verse 17, "as he is, so are we in this world," is that the saints are in the same place as Christ. If I have righteousness, it is a divine righteousness: "We are made the righteousness of God in him." If I have life, it is a divine eternal life: "when Christ who is our life shall appear." If I have glory, it is the same glory: "the glory thou hast given me, I have given them." If we have an inheritance, we are "joint-heirs with Christ"; if love, it is the same love wherewith the Father loved Christ: "Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me."

The love is the most difficult thing for us to enter into, but the Lord would have our hearts enjoying it. All that we have in Christ is brought out in this passage, in the general expression, "as he is, so are we." It is the thought and purpose of God's grace to bless us not only by Christ, but with Christ. Christ could not be satisfied unless it was so, we being the fruit and travail of His soul: "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me": again, "I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." The Father's love is seen in giving His Son for us, and the Son's love in His giving Himself for us, and thus bringing us into His perfect place.

287 Some Christians do not give this verse 17 all its power; they refer it simply to our position before God respecting the day of judgment. Whatever judgment may come, the saint has nothing to do with it, for where there is a question about judgment there can be no boldness. There is nothing more comforting than the perfect confidence of having God as my Father. I cannot get the affections in full play if I think God is going to judge me; but I have the Spirit of adoption, and if I sin or do wrong, I run to my Father directly, because I know my Father is not going to judge me for it; for God is my Father, and will not judge (save as a Father, now for my correction, by the way). Therefore boldness is needed for the exercise of the spiritual affections in me; and we ought to remember this, for Christians often shrink from it; but it is evident that, if I am hesitating whether God is going to bless me or to judge me, I cannot love Him.

Then observe another thing - there is a great difference between spiritual desires and spiritual affections, although they both have the same root. The spiritual desires, if the relationship which would meet them be not known, only produce sorrow. Take an orphan, for instance, in a family where the parent's love to the children is witnessed every day, the sorrowful experience would be, O, that I too had a father! The child who has its parent has the same desires; the relationship existing of parent and child, it knows the joy and gladness which flows from such relationship. So also that we may have joy and gladness as the children of God, we must have the consciousness of the relationship in which we stand to God. It is not merely that we have a divine nature which gives us spiritual desires, but we must also have the consciousness of the relationship into which we are brought by the power of what Christ has done. It is clear there never could be a question between Christ and His Father as to the daily and hourly enjoyment of the consciousness of His Father's love: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." So also He says, "My peace I give unto you." Again he says, "that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves." The Father's delight was in Christ, and He knew it in the daily enjoyment of it. And now, "as he is, so are we in this world."

288 While Christ lays the ground of our relationship by being the propitiation for our sins and the source of our life, yet it is not by Christ's righteousness that I get "boldness." I must be righteous, of course; I cannot have boldness without it; but besides this there is another character God has towards me - that of a Father - and I have another character towards God, as a child. I have not only righteousness, but I am a son. And here I should notice the defectiveness of some of our hymns which call Christ our brother. We never find in Scripture that Christ is called our Elder Brother. In the fulness of His grace He is not ashamed to own and call us His brethren. My father is a man, but I do not call him a man; it would shew a want of filial reverence in me if I did. In nothing is the power of the Spirit of God more shewn in the child of God than the suitableness of his expressions and feelings towards God. If we are really enjoying our place of infinite privilege, the Source and Giver of our privilege will maintain His own proper place in our hearts.

When we are in the mount of God, it always humbles; although when a saint gets down again, he may be proud of having been there: he is never so when there. Paul was not puffed up when he was caught up into the third heavens; but after he had been there, he needed the thorn in the flesh to keep him humble.

"As he is, so are we in this world," not only in the same standing as to acceptance with God in Christ, but we are brought by the communication of His life into the same relationship as Himself. While in the beginning of the epistle the foundation is laid deep and wide in the blood which cleanses fully, still the grand subject of the epistle is the place into which we are brought. "Herein is love with us made perfect." If my heart has seized the truth that God as a Father is acting in grace towards me, there is no place for fear. If I have fear I fly to Him, instead of being afraid of Him. If I sin, I fly to Him to pardon it. I could not in my sin fly to my judge, but I have confidence in my Father's love, and I fly to Him because "perfect love casteth out fear." The proof of God's love is that He has given His Son; the perfection of it is, that we are as He is; and fear is cast out even in view of judgment. But if we ask how this came to pass, the answer is, "We love him because he first loved us" (v. 19). There we are brought back to the simplest principles: we love God because He first loved us. We did not come to God because of His loveliness; "we love him because he first loved us." We do not come in by loving God (this we do after), but we come in as sinners, as debtors to His grace; and then, having come in, so finding God to be what He is - love meeting us in our every need - then we love Him.

289 Verse 20. Here is a check upon man's deceitful heart: if a man does not love his brother, he cannot love God. Wherever the divine nature is, it is attractive to one born of God.

Verse 21. We have another important principle in this verse: whatever the energy of the divine life in me, it always will have the character of obedience. While there was in Christ the devotedness of love, there was also obedience. We are to love the brethren as being led by the energy of the Spirit, but I am to love them in the path of holy obedience. There is nothing so humble as obedience, and love never takes us out of the place of obedience. The Lord Jesus said, "As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." When Lazarus was sick, and they sent to Jesus, He abode two days in the same place where He was, because He had no word from His Father; and so, if I have any little service to do for my brother, it must be as in the path of obedience to the word of God. This is what Satan tried to get the Lord out of in the wilderness. Oh, says Satan, have your own will, if it is only in ever so little a bit, by making these stones into bread, now you are hungry. No, the Lord says, it is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but," etc. Here we get a countercheck even to the workings of the divine nature, for if it is not a command, it is not of God, and we are here to obey.

1 John 5.

Verse 1. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ." Here we get the link between God and the family. When any one is born of God, he is my brother. If the question is asked, Who is my brother? How am I to know my brother? Every one that is born of God is my brother. I may have to sorrow over him sometimes, but still he is my brother, because I am related to him by the same divine nature. It is of great importance to remember this in the present day, because, when the Holy Ghost really acts, there will be a constant tendency to follow different courses. There has been an awakening from the dead mass around by the power of the Spirit. There are glimmerings of light: mere stones would be motionless, but there is life; therefore the moving power would lead in different directions, because of what we are. If we were all subject to the Spirit of God, we should all go one way. There is another thing also to be observed - we are not at the beginning of Christianity, but at the dark end, and escaping as it were by different roads. The very fact of the operation of the Spirit would be to produce perfect unity if we were subject, but we are not so.

290 The remedy for this is for the heart to be in close fellowship with Christ; and in proportion as this is the case, will love for all saints be there. To the same extent as Christ is valued will the saint be valued. In proportion as Christ's thoughts about His saints are known to me, will all saints be in my thoughts. I do not know Christ's love aright if one saint is left out; as it is said in Ephesians 3: 18, "Ye . . . may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the height, and depth, and breadth, and length, and to know the love of Christ." Only can I enter into this in any measure when I embrace all saints. If I should leave one out, I leave out part of Christ's heart. In Colossians we have "your love to all saints"; and in that epistle we have the fulness of the Head; in Ephesians, the fulness of the body. God's grace working in me makes every one born of God the object of my affections. I cannot go every way at once, and a real difficulty arises how to walk in fidelity to Christ, and in love to the brethren, so as not to let the affections get into a loose and general way. I cannot be loving God without loving all the children of God. "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments" (v. 2). Now men would say that is reasoning in a circle, but there is in it a deeply practical check against the evil of my own heart. If I love the Father, I shall love the children for the Father's sake, and not lead them into wrong paths, because this would displease and grieve the Father. If I should lead them into anything wrong, I should prove that I do not love them for the Father's sake, but for my own pleasure and comfort. If you truly love them, you at the same time love God and keep His commandments. If I knew that a member of Christ's body is going wrong, does this make me cease to love him? No; but because he is going wrong my soul is more deeply in affection, going out after him, as being one with Christ. To be able to love the brethren faithfully we must keep close to Christ.

291 Again, we have another counter-check: if one comes to me with a vast amount of truth without holiness, or if there be a great show of holiness and truth be absent, neither is of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. Satan never touches that which is born of God; he cannot touch it.

Worldliness is a terrible hindrance to the saint. The world is opposed to the Father, as the flesh opposes the Spirit, and the devil opposes Christ.

The difficulty lies in not maintaining nearness to Christ, which the world would come in and hinder. Then I am open to all sorts of error, for I shall not like the trouble to be right if I am not near Christ. It is very troublesome and disagreeable sometimes to have to do with saints: one will not give up this thing, and another that; and if we are at a distance from Christ, we shall be ready to give them up, and shall not take the pains to get them right when they are wrong. So Moses said, when in a wrong spirit, "Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom?"

So Paul says, "My little children, for whom I travail in birth," etc. You have got off the right ground, and I must have you, as it were, born again. I am travailing over again for you, that you may be right, because you belong to Christ. When Paul looked at them in confusion, as they were, away from Christ, he could only say, "I stand in doubt of you"; but when he looks at them as in Christ, he can say, "I have confidence in you through the Lord."

Faith not only sees Christ in the glory, but sees also the connection between the glory of Christ and the saints, and it is that which enables one to get on. So Moses said of Israel, not only God was their God, but they are "thy people." The real hindrance is the world. See Gehazi in the king's court: his heart had drawn in the spirit of the world, and he was able to entertain the world with the mighty actings of the Spirit. The world will be entertained, and it will be entertained with religion if it cannot get anything else. All that I know of the world's path, spirit, affections, and conduct is, that it has crucified my Lord; not in its affections and lusts merely, but by wicked hands it has crucified my Master. Suppose it was but yesterday that you had seen Pontius Pilate the governor, the chief priests and elders, putting Christ to death, would you feel happy to-day in holding communion with them? The stain of Christ's blood is as fresh in God's sight as if it had been done but yesterday; the time which has elapsed since makes no difference in its moral guilt.

292 The question then is, Am I to get under the power of this world, or am I to overcome it (in my heart I mean)? When Christ was down here, in all the beauty and attractive grace in which God the Father could delight, there was not found in the world one thought or sentiment of common interest or feeling drawing them to Him. The world in all its classes - rulers, priests, Pharisees, and the multitude - have all been associated in hanging the Son of God upon a gibbet. Such is the world's heart. If I have seen the glory of Christ's Person, and see that He is the very Son of God who came down and was turned out by the world, can I be happy with it? The link between the natural thoughts and affections and the world exists in every heart, so that in all kinds of things, even in walking through the streets, I constantly find that which attracts me eye, and my eye affects my heart.

Nothing will overcome the world in my heart but the deep consciousness of how it has treated Christ. Take my children, for instance: do I want them to get on well in the world? must I have good places for them in it? Nothing but knowing the place Christ had in it will overcome the world in my heart. There is no possibility of getting on with God unless the world is given up, and the heart is satisfied with Christ. Christ must be everything. Look at Abraham's history: he sojourned in a strange country where he had not a place so much as to set his foot on. So we are not of the world; and this is the test of our affections, for as we are not at once taken out of the evil, we must have our hearts exercised to godliness. It is very easy to overcome the world when the love of Christ has made it distasteful. Satan is the god of this world. Perhaps you will say, That is true of the heathen world. Yes, but it is not true of the heathen world only. Although it was not till after the rejection of Christ that it was brought out, it was true before. God had spoken by His servants and prophets, and the world had beaten one, and stoned another, and killed another; then He said, I will send my beloved Son: it may be they will reverence Him when they see Him. But Him they crucified, thus proving that Satan was the master of man. So the Lord said, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee." You will not have spiritual discernment or power of motive unless the heart be kept near to Christ. I shall not want the world if Christ is in my heart. If my delight is in that in which God delights, that is, in Christ, then I can overcome. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God the Father.

293 What! must I do everything to Christ? Oh, that very question proves a heart away from Christ, shewing it bondage for you to do all to the glory of God. It is not that we are to scorn the world in the least, for God's grace is for every poor sinner that will receive it. It is the spirit of the world in my own heart which I have to overcome - that which my heart is in danger of being led by.

The three points we have looked to, then, have been - first, perfect love with us. There is not merely the manifestation of God's love to the saint, but association with Christ's life, putting us into relationship with God. Secondly, love to every saint; but we are to love them as God's children, and keep ourselves in the exercise of love to God and keeping His commandments. Thirdly, we are to overcome the world. The heart, resting on, looking to, eating, feeding on, Christ, gets the consciousness of what the world is, and it overcomes. The Lord keep us in humble dependence on Himself. His grace is sufficient for us; His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

The Three Who are Witnessing: "The Spirit, and the water, and the blood."

1 John 5: 6-21

J. N. Darby.

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In the preceding verses the question between God and the world is brought to an issue; for the Son of God having been seen in the world, and in the world and by the world crucified - thus putting the world to the test - God could do nothing in the world in the hope of finding good in it, after it had crucified His Son. Jesus had to say, "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee." Having hung God's Son on the cross, it is plain that this act cut the world off from all possible association with God, and thus the world has become a thing to be overcome by the saint, as the apostle says (v. 5), "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" But he then adds, "This is he that came by water and blood."

That is, he now presents the character and value of the cross, "He came by water and blood." The water and the blood are as a witness on God's part, or the testimony that God gives; for it should be observed that the words, "witness," "record," and "testimony," are all the same word in the original.

You may remark here, that "This is the witness, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." This is the thing witnessed. This is the record (or testimony) that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. It is not in the first Adam, but in His Son; not in man, nor by his works, nor by any means whatever, but it is God's gift. "He hath given," and though we possess the life, it is not properly and intrinsically in us, but IN HIS SON. When we are quickened, the life is not looked at as in us; for Christ says, "Because I live, ye shall live also." It is therefore immutable. If Christ's life, indeed, can in any way be annulled or set aside, then can the life in us be so likewise, and not otherwise. If Christ can die, so can we; but if death has no more dominion over Him, no more has it over us. And this it is that gives the amazing value and most blessed character of this life, namely, that its spring and source is in Christ. It is given to the Son to have life in Himself; John 5: 26. And thus He becomes, through grace, our life. For example, my finger has life, my natural life, flowing through it; but the seat of life is not there. My finger may be cut off, though I am not here supposing that a member of Christ can be cut off (which is impossible); but if my finger be cut off, the life still remains in my body, the seat of life not being in my finger. My finger was as much alive as the rest of my body, but the seat of life was not there. The seat of life is in Christ. "Our life is hid with Christ in God." Hence all the character of the life and all the communion flows from the blessed truth - "in his Son." The character of this life is nearness to God. Christ Himself is my life. It is of the last importance for the strength and comfort of our souls, and for all blessed delight in God, clearly to understand what our life is; for our thoughts on regeneration are necessarily altogether imperfect until we apprehend that it is a real life which we have, a life associating us with God's Son, a life not possessed before, and in virtue of which we get communion with the Father, who has given us eternal life - not in us, but "in his Son."

295 We get brought out in various testimonies what Christ is to us, as in 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11, where the apostle, speaking of the offscouring of the earth, says, "Such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." And so here we get a corresponding testimony brought out in these three witnesses, the water, the blood, and the Spirit.

In John 19: 34 it is recorded that "one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water." The blood and the water flowed from a dead Christ. Hence we see how manifestly the link between the natural man and God is broken, and broken for ever! For "in that he died, he died unto sin once." All that Christ could have blessed in nature is now entirely and for ever gone; and if there is to be any blessing now, it must be in a new nature, and through a dead Christ; as also all connection and association with God. Expiation, purity, life, can alone be had through a dead Christ. It is a dead Christ that must purify me if I am to be purified; for it was from a dead Christ that the water (the symbol of cleansing) flowed. Until the death of Christ, God was dealing with nature, to see (or rather to teach us, for He knew what it was) if any good thing could come out of nature. But the cross proved - God's rejected Son proved - that it was not possible that any good thing could come out of nature. Man is not merely a sinner driven out of paradise, as we know Adam was; but man's state now results not only from his being turned out of God's presence because of sin, but from the will and energy of his evil nature, which has cast God out of His own world.

296 The cross shews that man's nature is utterly incapable of being acted on by any motive whatever which could set it right. This is very humbling, yet very blessed. Heaven will not do; earth will not do; the law will not do. I have yet one thing in heaven - My beloved Son: I will send Him. It may be they will reverence Him when they see Him. But no. The determination of man's will is to have the world without God. This is what man wants. He will not have God in any sense. Here it is brought to a climax; and the very worst display of Christendom will be just this. If any of you should be seeking pleasure in the world, you know you do not want to find God there; for if you did, it would upset it all. Thus are you saying in spirit, "Let us kill the heir, and the inheritance shall be ours." You may not have lifted up your hand to slay God's Son, but you have turned Him out of your heart. Man's great abilities will be much more developed in the day that is just approaching than they have ever yet been, in trying to make the world go on thoroughly well without God. When was there ever a time when everything was going on so well, as men speak, such unity among nations as now, or such drawing out of resources? The cry is, "Peace, peace," - by the energies and working of man's will without God. Man looks for progress in the philosophy, commerce, politics, and comfort of this world, but still there is in his heart a dread of the consequences of the progress of this self-will. Thus is fulfilled the apparent paradox of Scripture, the cry of peace combined with "men's hearts failing them for fear." Now men would say this is a contradiction, but it is not; for while men are building up commerce and arts and science in the energy of self-will, who is there among them that would undertake to answer for the state of any nation in three years' time, or for even a much shorter period? Man is afraid of the working of self-will in his neighbour, though he likes to exert it in himself. But the Christian has learned that the question as to the world is settled in the rejection of Christ. At that moment it was all over with the world.

297 The question between God and man is settled as to man himself; for not only is man turned out of paradise, but when God's Son came, they crucified Him, and now grace comes in; and the Christian goes outside the world to get, in God's rejected Son, the life which is to be had in Him alone. This is God's record that He has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Amidst all this turmoil and trouble where shall I get peace? The moment I see a pierced Christ, I have that which expiates and purifies. All this is not a theory, not a doctrine merely, but a reality; for the moment my conscience begins to work, I find that by nature I am separate from God; that my carnal mind is enmity against God; that it is not only the world that has crucified God's Son, but my sins pierced Him. This is an individual thing, for this is how individual souls are brought into the blessing. When I have real faith in what God's word tells me about my own evil, then the question arises, What am I to do? All that which makes me a mere moral man declares that I could have nothing to do with God; but through a pierced Christ I have three witnesses that I can have to do with God. The highest act of insolence that it was possible for man to do against God brought out the very thing that put guilt away, even the blood and water flowing from Christ's pierced side. Suppose it was but yesterday that I wielded the spear against Jesus, the very act that brought out my enmity brought that which put it away. I cannot estimate sin aright until I see the water and blood flowing out of the pierced side of Christ, putting it away. But then I must be brought to the consciousness that I in spirit was there; my enmity to God did it; my sins pierced Him. It was thus God addressed the Jews, telling them that they had killed the heir; that is, their hearts had consented to it. Those Jews whom Peter addressed, saying, "Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain," had not actually murdered the Prince of life. They had not held the spear any more than you did; but in the same spirit they refused Christ a place in their hearts; and it is thus God deals with the world. His question with the world is, "What have you done with my Son?" As with Cain, "Where is Abel thy brother?" And the only answer they can give is, "We have slain him."

The moment the Messiah was rejected, that moment all title to the promises was lost to the Jews. All hope of salvation - everything is now gone from them as a people; and now, if they would get blessing, they must come in as sinners, and have their sins put away by the blood that flowed from the pierced side of their Messiah. Now then, as all title on the part of man to anything is gone, God is giving eternal life. God must direct the heart away from itself (except to the sense of its sinfulness) to Christ. Have I estimated my own sin as the murderer of Christ? Well, the blood has put the sin away; for the blood has cleansed the man who held the spear that pierced His side. We are nothing but sin; well, Christ was made sin for us, and through a dead Christ we get the blood as a witness that our sins are all put away; the blood being a witness of the perfect expiation of all sin. Christ "hath put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Here, however, it is not looking at the part man took in it, but at what Christ came into the world for, and which He accomplished.

298 There is, however, the water as well as the blood, and what is that? The water cleanses as the blood expiates: "that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." While the blood expiates, the water cleanses. The water bears witness to the same life-giving power. "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The Spirit of God is the source of life and the power of the word, and gives life. Practically the word is the instrument, the incorruptible seed; and it is also a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and it is that by which God's thoughts are communicated to us. And it is out of the pierced side of Christ that these testimonies of God flow, thus writing death upon every production of nature. For it is not a modifying of the nature which now exists that the cross brings in, but the counting everything outside Christ to be dead, as there is not a thought, lust, or desire about the world upon which Christ does not write death; and thus it is that we get altogether new affections, "dead unto sin, but alive unto God," through the life in His Son. And the real character of purifying is this writing death upon everything that flows not from a pierced Christ. The water is the purification, but the purification is through a dead Christ. Christ all His life through was the pattern in man of what man ought to be; but our participating in this could only be by the cleansing of His death.

But there is a third thing - we have not only the blood which expiates, and the water which purifies, through which we are dead to sin, but He has obtained for us the Spirit, the presence of the Holy Ghost, as the power of the word. It may, perhaps, be objected, I do not find myself thus dead to sin and purified. But you have a hatred to sin, which is a proof of your having died to it. And "In that Christ died, he died unto sin once, so likewise RECKON ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin"; for God ever treats us according to what He has really given us, treating us as though we had realised it all. So in John, the Lord says, "and whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Now they did know HIM who was truly the way to the Father, yet Thomas objected and said, "We know not the way," because they had never realised it. The instant I believe in Jesus, I am called on to reckon myself dead. I am never told to die, but I am told to mortify my members that are upon the earth. But I am never told to die. A man under the law will be trying to die with all his might, but he will never succeed. A Christian is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God, and therefore he mortifies his members which are upon the earth, as living in the power of the life he has in the Son of God.

299 Observe, he does not speak of our life being on the earth, for that is above with Christ in God; therefore he treats us as dead, but our members which are upon the earth we are to mortify. He never tells us to kill ourselves, but faith takes God's testimony as true, therefore I say I am dead, and because I am dead, I have to mortify my members, being as dead to the earth as Christ was, for I have God telling me that I am dead through believing. This is most practical as to peace of soul, for the moment I believe in Christ, I am delivered from all these things. I am not seeking to die, for I have the secret of power, and count myself dead. There is a practical difficulty as to the water, for how can I say I am washed, if I still find myself to be dirty? But I can say I am dead with Christ, for I shall never succeed in killing myself. The moment that I believe in Christ, all that He has done as a Saviour is mine, and God appropriates and applies it to me. I may have failed to realise it, but the treasure is put into my possession.

Some souls often say, I believe all the value and efficacy of Christ's work, but I cannot apply it. And who asks you to do so? It is God who applies it, and He has applied it to you, if you believe in its value and efficacy. The moment we believe in Christ we have the Holy Ghost as bearing witness, "He shall take of mine and shew it unto you." Just as the Son came down to do God's will, and then ascended up again into heaven, so, at the Son's ascension, the Holy Ghost came down as a Person on the earth; for the Holy Ghost is always spoken of as being now on earth, and it is this which gives the true and peculiar character of the church of God. And here we get the third witness in the Spirit of truth coming down to earth. The moment I believe, I am scaled with that Holy Spirit of promise. All that I can produce of God's good fruits as a Christian is in consequence of being sealed by the Holy Ghost. Redemption being perfectly accomplished, then the Holy Ghost comes down in Person, so that the position of the church on earth is between these two things, the redemption made, and the glory in prospect, as the Holy Ghost comes down between the church's redemption and the church's glory.

300 The knowledge of being dead with Christ gives me a pure heart as being myself dead to nature, sin, the world, and law. By the blood I get perfect peace and a good conscience; and then the Holy Ghost comes down from God; thus we have perfect peace with God, having God's own witness. Well, then, I have left the whole scene; I have done with nature altogether; my sins are all gone, the blood has put them away, and I am now dead unto sin and alive unto God. The cross, the wounds of Christ, are the door by which I entered, and the presence of the Holy Ghost is the power by which I enjoy the fruits of it. As we have seen, the witnesses of God on the earth are three - the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one; "for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son."

The heart is constantly looking for God to give it a testimony about itself; but God is giving a testimony about His Son, and not about what we are; if God were to give a testimony about us, it must be about our sin and unbelief of heart. But no; and it is of great importance in this day of infidelity to see that if God gives a testimony, it is about His Son, and what He is to the sinner. If you believe that, you will get peace.

If I am going about to get a standing before God on the ground of my holiness, this would be self-righteousness, and of course I shall not get a witness from God as to that. But if my soul takes its stand with God, on the testimony God has given to His Son, then I get the witness in myself: when I have got this faith, I have got the thing in my own soul. For instance, look at Paul before Agrippa: "I would to God that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am, except these bonds." He was so thoroughly conscious that the Christ in his soul was the Christ in heaven, and he was so happy in this consciousness, that he wished the whole company were like himself (except the bonds), having Christ, and a well of water springing up within. That which makes heaven to be a heaven to the saint is just this, that he finds the same Christ in heaven that he has in his own soul; and all the subtleties of infidelity cannot touch the soul that possesses Christ thus within. No reasoning of an infidel can shake my confidence if I am happy in Christ; for if a man came to tell me there was no Christ, when my soul was happy in Him, I should not believe him. There may be no intellectual or logical proof on my part, but there will be, to a certain extent, a moral testimony in the happiness of my soul, and the warmth of my affections being centred in Christ. I have often found how much it tells with men of all conditions to assure them that I am perfectly happy in Christ, and quite sure of going to heaven. Are you so? they say; I only wish I could say it. It would not be a proof to an infidel, his merely seeing you were happy; but it comes home to the heart of man, as there is a craving in man's heart that will never be met till he gets Christ there; for man is never happy without Christ, whatever he may say.

301 "He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar." The sin of men is in making God a liar, when they do not believe the record God has given of His Son; for men do quarrel with you when you tell them you know that you are saved. They say, How can you know that? which is just as much as saying that God is not capable of communicating any blessing to man. It is calling God's wisdom in question, as well as His power, in the testimony of His mercy and grace. This is what I have felt in the great question about the Bible. It is not whether it is the people's right to have the Bible, but it is questioning God's right in giving it. The treason is in keeping away God's message from His servants. It is not merely the servants' right to have the message, but it is God's right in giving it that is called in question, as it is interfering with God's right of communicating His thoughts in His word. Whenever God gives a revelation, man is responsible to receive it. God has given a witness in which He reveals the glory of His Son; and when man calls in question that word, he is disputing with God in the testimony of His grace as to what He is.

302 Who can explain the riddle of this miserable world without Christ? Go into the alleys and lanes of this vast city, and see the woe and degradation even in this best and most civilised of countries, and learn there what sin does. In the drawing-room you may philosophise about it, but it is not in a drawing-room that you will learn what the world is. But when you tell me that it was because of all this sin and wretchedness that God's Son came down into this world to put the sin away, then I can understand it; and God gives eternal life, not life for a moment, or a life we can sin away, as Adam's, but eternal life, which is above and beyond sin altogether; being in His Son, and therefore as near to God as can be. "This life is in his Son," who was ever the subject of His Father's delight; for when down here God could not be silent in His expression of joy, "This is my beloved Son."

And God, in giving me eternal life, has also given me a nature and capacity to enjoy Him for ever. I am brought into an association with God, a relationship to God, and an enjoyment of God, which the angels know not, although holy in their nature, and exalted. We are thus brought near that we might know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be "filled with all the fulness of God."

In what a wondrous place we are set, if we could but be purged, not from gross sins, but from the vanity and earthliness that fills our minds, to enter into all our blessedness, and the association which we have thus with God, the very same which Christ has! He has borne the wrath of God for our sins, that this full cup of blessing might be given to us. In all this God would have simplicity of heart. A man may talk about many things, but knowledge apart from Christ will never do; but if we possess Christ within, Satan can never touch us; and if he comes, he will find Christ there, who has overcome him. It is a sweet and blessed thing, that any saint, though born but yesterday, has all in Christ that I have. And if one says, But I am such a great sinner, well, the blood has put that away, and settled that question for ever.

303 "And this is the confidence we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us." There is a confidence in God that applies itself to all the details of life through which I may be called to pass. This is the confidence we have in Him: His ear being ever open to us, we have what we ask for, when we ask according to God's will. How wondrous is this, that God's ear is ever open to us, for surely we should not desire to ask for anything contrary to His will! "And if we know that he hears us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." I am so made to know the love that, if I ask, I shall have. If I am really in earnest to do God's will, to preach the gospel, for instance, and there are hindrances in the way - Satan in the way - I have only to ask, and I have all God's power at my disposal, His ear being open to me. If you know what conflict and difficulty are, what a blessing is this, to have God's ear open to you, and to know, if you are doing God's will, you will always succeed in doing His will.

"There is a sin unto death, I do not say ye shall pray for it." Temporal death is here intended as chastening in the way of God's government. "There is a sin not unto death." And if there be real intercession, God will forgive us; James 5: 14, 15. If you ask me what the sin unto death is, it may be. any sin; it may be the telling of a lie, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. (Peter does not pray for them.) See also the case of Stephen, when he said, "Lay not this sin to their charge." And in Corinthians, "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep." The horribly confused state of the church causes the government to be kept more in the hands of God; and from the saints' incompetency to walk in the power of the Spirit, they are necessarily more thrown on the Lord, whose faithfulness to us will not allow our sins to go unjudged. "He withdraweth not his eye from the righteous."

May we be so walking in the power of holiness, that we may not be struggling with sin under His correcting hand; may we be walking in full communion with His grace! Amen.

Notes on the First Epistle of John

J. N. Darby.

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The leading subject of the First Epistle of John is the life of God manifested upon earth in the Person of the Son, and communicated to man by Him - this life being the basis of intercourse between man and God. The exposition of this blessed subject is accompanied by numerous unfoldings occupying a large place in this Epistle; still the fundamental subject is - "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."

The whole doctrine of the Epistle is set forth in 1 John 1, and 1 John 2: 1, 2. These three consecutive truths are found there; namely, divine life communicated to man, and our introduction into communion with the Father and the Son, in virtue of that life (1 John 1: 1-4); the nature of the God with whom we are in communion (1 John 1: 5-10); and the means ordered by God for maintaining us in communion. 1 John 2: 1, 2.

In the portion contained between 1 John 2: 3, and chapter 3: 23, John considers the experimental and practical proof of the reality of the life in us. From 1 John 3: 24 to chapter 4: 21 he unfolds the extent of our privilege as recipients of life, and enjoying communion with God, the privilege of God dwelling in us, and of us in Him. Lastly, in chapter 5 he considers the subject in its connection with the testimony of God and faith.

Various elucidations and observations on the subject of antichrists and false teachers are scattered throughout the whole Epistle; warning against the Gnostics, who at that time were undermining the faith of the saints.

1 John 1.

Verses 1-4. The fulness of the grace which is in Christ: the Son has brought us that eternal life which was with the Father. There is a complete exposition of this truth in these few verses, a general statement introductory to the Epistle.

Verse 1. "That which was from the beginning . . . which we have seen with our eyes . . . and our hands have handled of the Word of life." It is the testimony of eye-witnesses, the apostle's language suited to the circumstances of the saints, who were at that time threatened by the heresy of the Gnostics. These latter laid claim to development; they said, The Gospels have given us the truth in germ, and now we possess the development of it. Not so, replies the apostle of God, we possess that which was in the beginning, and it is great and perfect enough to admit of no development. The heretics denied also that the Christ had come in flesh. John affirms the contrary in saying: we have seen Him and have handled Him.

305 Verse 2. This verse is parenthetical. "The life was manifested" in the Person of the Son come in flesh. "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." The life manifested in Christ is an object for faith. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath the Son hath also the Father." This is the objective side on which this truth is first presented. But it has also its subjective side: the life, which has been manifested here below by the Son, abides in us who have believed. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself."

Let us remark that the life has not in us an independent and isolated existence. Far from leaving us in such a state, it introduces us into communion with the Father. But, besides, this life is Christ Himself; Christ, who is in heaven, is also in us. Certainly there are effects of this life which are confined to our individuality, regeneration for instance, and other such blessings. But the life itself assumes in us a different existence, and, by its link with the source that produced it, presents something larger. The source of the life is Christ; the stream is in us, and the stream is not severed from the source. If a man said, speaking of his hand, "It lives," it would signify that his hand had an existence independently of the rest of his body. Doubtless the hand lives, but it lives by the life which animates the whole being to which it belongs.

"We shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." The apostles possessed this life by direct communication; the saints receive it by the testimony borne to this life. "That ye also may have fellowship with us" signifies that you may participate in the things which we, who have seen the Lord, enjoy. "And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." The saints to whom these things are said knew already communion with the Father. John desired that they should enjoy their privilege, and therefore he brought it again before their notice. God has not only given us life, but it is His will that every kind of intercourse should exist between Himself and His children.

306 "Our fellowship." In virtue of the fact that we have life, we have the same affections, the same sentiments, the same thoughts as the Father and the Son. Jesus imparted to His disciples all the communications by which the Father testified His love to the Son. These blessed communications are also our portion, and we enjoy them in direct relation with the Father and the Son.

Verses 5-10. Here we approach a second general truth. It being our privilege to enjoy communion with the Father and the Son, what is the God with whom we are in communion? For an answer we read this message: "God is light." The God who has brought us into communion with Himself is the holy God. Such is His nature. Here we notice that when John speaks of God in connection with the work of grace, he uses the expression, "the Father and the Son"; when he speaks of His nature, he says "God."

Verse 5. "This then is the message." The apostles, who looked upon the life in the Son and declared it for the blessing and joy of the saints, have also heard the message whereby God reveals that He is light, and they declare that also. "God is light." The life which we have received and by which we have entered into communion with the Father and the Son, has emanated from God who is light, and by this life we are placed in that light.

Verse 6. In this verse and those following, John confirms by contrasts the truths he has just put forth, and submits them to a counter-proof. In the grace whereby He introduces us into His communion, God gives up none of His attributes, none of His rights. "God is light," and if we walk in darkness there is no communion between us and Him. To pretend to have fellowship with Him whilst walking in darkness is to fail of the truth of God, and to lie.

Verse 7. But if we walk in the light, we realise blessed communion. In order to enjoy it we must walk in the light, and not merely according to the light. Being in the light we are with God, and there is no place for sin there; and besides the light reveals sin and judges it. "We have fellowship one with another" signifies our mutual communion. "The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin." By the existence of sin there is a difficulty to communion as a real thing; but the blood of Christ has removed this difficulty, it answers before God for the condition of man. To be cleansed from all sin is to be conscious of being without spot before God, in virtue of the blood of Christ. This spiritual state of the saints only exists through the gospel. Under law the worshippers retained a conscience of sins; the ineffectual offerings of bulls and of goats could give them no other standing. But ours is very different and far better. We possess that infinite grace which, through the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, places us with a purged conscience in the light of the presence of God, with a capacity for enjoying the fellowship of one another also God.

307 Is the child of God sprinkled by blood several times? No, for the sprinkling of the blood upon the believer answers to the shedding of blood accomplished once for all before God, neither is repeated. It is important that the Christian should hold fast a true sense of the value of the blood of Christ offered once. Otherwise we sink into Jewish elements, and for every failure we seek a fresh sprinkling. Now this is precisely the state which the apostle contrasts with the conscience perfected by the blood of Christ; Heb. 10: 14. "The worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sin[s]," Heb. 10: 2.

Verse 7 sets forth the state of the Christian with regard to purity, even as verses 2 and 3 do with regard to communion with God. Set in the light by the cleansing blood of Christ, and abiding there we are in communion with the saints; but communion has been first formed with the Father and the Son by the life we received in the Son.

Verse 8. "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves." The light requires that we should confess what we are in our nature. To say that we have no sin is not only ignoring a truth but also deceiving ourselves. In such a case the truth is not in us, for if Christ who is the truth dwells in us, we must know that we carry about a sinful nature.

Verses 9, 10. The light also requires that we should confess the truth as to our actions. If we deny that we have sinned, which is equivalent to denying that sin is in the world, we are not converted, and in that case the word is not in us. "He is faithful and just." He cannot fail to answer to that attitude of grace which He has taken towards us.

308 1 John 2.

Verses 1, 2 are the third general truth. In these two verses John sets forth the means whereby we can remain in communion with Him who is light. He consequently presents the advocacy of Jesus. Although in our present state we are not altogether beyond sin, for it is still in our nature and, alas! shews itself too often in our conduct, yet grace provides the means for maintaining us in communion with God or for restoring us when it is disturbed. It reconciles our weakness with the perfect position in which we are set to enjoy fellowship with God. Jesus Christ the righteous intercedes for us.

Verse 1. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." The intercession of Christ is looked at more particularly in this connection, as the result of that grace which lifts us up when we have fallen, although that intercession also serves to keep us from falling. Has sin shewn itself in our walk? Far from undergoing the misfortune of remaining under the effect of our sin, we experience through the intercession of Jesus that gracious help, which sets us again before God, perhaps broken-hearted, still before God to whom we confess our sin. Our confession of sin is made to God, not to Jesus in order that He may intercede. His intercession in our behalf always goes on; it precedes us in our return to God. Therefore John does not say, If any man repent, we have an advocate; but he says, "If any man sin," for repentance in us in itself the result of the intercession of Jesus.

The forgiveness of God restores our soul to the enjoyment of His communion. This effect of the grace of God to us answers to the sprinkling of water upon defiled persons under the law. We have been sprinkled by blood once, and it is on that account that the sprinkling of water can avail to cleanse us. "An advocate" is a defender, one who takes up our cause, and exercises for us the office of protector. The care of the Roman patricians for their clients would give an idea of this office. By granting us a defender God has shewn that He cannot pass over sin with indifference. His fellowship and sin cannot go together.

"With the Father." John does not say with God, because he is treating of our communion, and not of the mediation which maintains us in the presence of God. This latter subject belongs more especially to the Epistle to the Hebrews. "Jesus Christ the righteous." The basis of our standing before God is not altered by our fall. Righteousness abides before God, the righteous One is there for us. But there is more.

309 Verse 2. "He is the propitiation for our sins." Thus all that is necessary, as an answer to God for us sinners, is found in Jesus. He, who in His own Person is righteousness itself and who, when here below, made propitiation for our sins, is in the presence of God; and He intervenes for us by an intercession founded upon righteousness and propitiation, this double basis of our salvation. Otherwise it would be impossible for God to look upon a creature who has sinned. The words, "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world," appear to be spoken to souls who have not yet peace. Are they addressed to Christians? Yes, it is to Christians that John writes these things; only in speaking thus he has no particular state of soul in view.

John gives us in this Epistle an exposé of great principles which he lays down absolutely, leaving aside all details of application. Doubtless experience brings in various modifications; still they in no wise affect the original force of these principles. For instance, I say, Our meeting room is open to every one, anybody may enter it. But here is a man who cannot enter because he is lame. Will the exception to be made in his case alter what I have said? No. So is it also with divine things. If we only possessed the great principles of the truth of God in the measure of their application to man, we should never really possess them at all. It is indispensable to discern this absolute way of setting forth the truth of God in order to understand the Epistle of John. "Not for ours only." Ours are the sins of us, Jews. Such I believe to be the sense of this word "ours," according to a passage in his third Epistle (v. 8), in which John identifies himself with the Jews.

This verse 2 concludes the exposition of the general truths which constitute the Epistle. In what follows we shall find a development of experimental proofs of these truths, with a view to shew what are the evidences of the reality of divine life in the saints. Two proofs are adduced, namely, love and righteousness. But before considering these, John presents another practical feature, namely, obedience, which also proceeds from the divine life in us, and which is necessary to our intercourse with God.

310 Verses 3, 4. "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments." If purity is required from man, when it is a question of the nature of the God he is in communion with, obedience marks our position in the presence of His sovereign majesty. The submission of man is due to God because He is sovereign. The grace, which has brought us back to Him and made us happy, has, at the same time, set us in a state of dependence upon Him, which dependence is expressed by obedience. There are certain commandments to be kept, and our obedience to them testifies that we know God. Jesus, in whom is seen the perfect Man, walked in entire dependence upon God. His life was not only activity in good, but above all things was characterised by obedience; He was subject to another, even His Father. God alone does what is good without obeying.

"His commandments" are not the tables of the law, but the various communications by which the Lord has shewn the perfection of His divine Person. The words, the precepts, and commandments which emanated from His mouth, were the expression of the life manifested by Him here below, and they become the light which now directs that life in us. The law says, "This do and thou shalt live." On this footing no one has obeyed: but Christ, who was the life, obeyed. Being in Christ through grace we inherit this position; we receive from Him a life freely given, which places us and leads us in the path of obedience. Christ who obeyed is our life. What He was upon earth directs His life in us. His commandments are based upon the life which He has given us.

Verses 5, 6. "But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected."* There is something further than keeping His commandments, there is also keeping His word, and the divine communications in the latter case go beyond the former. Having spoken of the blessing which accompanies obedience to the Lord's commandments, John next shews the extent of the blessing when it is a question of answering to greater communications. By His word God leads us into the thoughts of His love. And as in Jesus, the impulses of the heart were in harmony with the thoughts of the Father, so also in our case, through the life which He has given us, we find ourselves so very near to God that we know His will and His good pleasure. Blessed fruits of the divine sap circulate in us. Sweet and glorious blessing, in which is unfolded for the redeemed of the Lord the greatness of their joy in the knowledge of God!

{*Here we notice another example of those absolute principles which are found in the Epistle of John, "In him verily is the love of God perfected." Perhaps there is no one in the state of soul indicated by the words, "keepeth his word;" nevertheless the principle remains: "the love of God perfected in us" is what corresponds to such a state.}

311 "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." It does not say, ought to be what he was, but "ought to walk even as he walked." We could not be what Jesus was, but He has left us an example and we follow in His steps.

This verse presents a peculiarity which is also found in other passages of the Epistle. "Abideth in him" means "abideth in God," "walk even as he walked" means "as Christ walked." John uses the words, "he," "him," without much attention to the reciprocity of terms. He so sees in Christ the expression of God Himself, for Christ is God manifest in the flesh, that he can use the same word for both without confusion.

Abide in him - God. As is the case with visible things that our impressions are formed by the circumstances in which we are found, so is it in spiritual matters, as to our abiding in God. For instance, if we inhabit a damp house, we soon feel it; but if in an agreeable residence, we feel it also. We are in God even as the chick is in its egg. These pictures but feebly set forth our grand privilege of abiding in God. Yes; He is our hiding-place, and there we taste the joys of divine affections.

Verses 7, 8. We have already seen something about the commandments of Christ; here are some further unfoldings given in view of seducers. The commandments which we receive from him is old and new at the same: old, because it is the "life which was with the Father," "that which was from the beginning"; new, because the life, which was in Christ, has been communicated to us in time, "which thing is true in him and in you." In this old and new commandment we have the foundation and development of all that is good. It is not addressed to us as from without by a Christ witnessing for God on the earth, but it is the action of a new life which he has put within us; it is a commandment hanging upon the union of life, sentiments, and habits, manifested in Jesus, and common to the family of God. Yet it is a commandment having for us all the authority of divine will; we are to be filled with the will of God. "The true light now shineth." The gospel reveals God; the law and the ordinances, and the whole of that system in which God remained concealed, have been eclipsed by its light.

312 As we have already noticed, above and beyond all its other effects, the divine life in man stamps upon him a character of obedience. But love and righteousness are the proper activity of that life which is the nature of God Himself. The life was manifested in Jesus in both those characters, and they are reproduced in us. The presence or absence of these features marks the two families, that of God, and that of the adversary.*

{*Far from being an occasion of doubt for the saints, these characteristic features are, on the contrary, a reason for confidence. John used them, firstly, to reassure the simple, in whom some had endeavoured to instil doubts, secondly, to help to the discovery of seducers and to convict them of falsehood. For instance, a man makes a great display of knowledge, but he lacks the love of the brethren. By this we know that he is in darkness, and we avoid him.}

Verses 9-11. The love of the brethren. This love is the proof that we possess divine life. It dwells in light. There is no agreement between the light and sentiments opposed to this love.

Verses 12-27. These verses form a parenthesis in which John addresses communications to the saints, suited to the various degrees of the development of life in them. In this address John sees the saints divided into three classes, and he designates them as fathers, young men, and little children.

Verse 12. Before touching upon these three classes, the apostle puts forth a communication addressed to them all: "I write unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake." Evidently John is writing, on behalf of God, to persons that are accepted in grace. Unless man has entered into this condition of grace, God has no relationship with him. We also gather from this that the forgiveness of sins is the portion of the Christian, independently of all progress in spiritual life.

"CHILDREN" (teknia) is an endearing term used by John to the saints; spoken also by our Lord when He said, "Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God." Mark 10: 24. This expression runs through the whole Epistle. But in verses 13 and 18, where the moral classes are referred to, the words "little children" are represented by the word paidia which occurs only in these two verses. John speaks twice to each of the three classes.

313 Verse 13. In the first instance he briefly states what belongs to each of them. Verses 14-27: Here he enters into developments.

"FATHERS." By this designation John points out that state of soul in which Christ is everything. Christ is known as He is, as He was manifested from the beginning, and in Him a blessed portion is possessed. It is the fruit of Christian experience. The time comes when the deceptions of life have vanished, and when the world has nothing attractive to the eye. The knowledge of Him, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, fills and possesses the soul. To such John writes the same thing twice, "Fathers, I have written to you, because ye have known him that is from the beginning," v. 13, 14. There is nothing else to say to those to whom Christ is everything. The conflicts that the young man sustains result in bringing him also into this state of soul when Christ will be everything to him.

"YOUNG MEN." This is the stage in which the spiritual life puts forth its energy against the world. For them a struggle has commenced, and conflicts are sustained, but they will be followed by the soul's rest in Christ. John says to them, "Ye have overcome the wicked one. Ye are strong and the word of God abideth in you." The secret of their strength was in their immediate dependence upon Him who is strong, and the word was the instrument by which this strength was exercised. But we see (v. 15-17), it will not do to lay down the weapons before the battle is over. The apostle adds, "Love not the world . . . all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." When mentioning the elements of the world, John says, "is not of the Father"; he could have equally said, "is not of Christ"; but he says "of the Father," in order to go back to the source of all. Christ is of the Father, the world is not.

"LITTLE CHILDREN." It is the earliest state, infancy of Christian life. At this first stage of spiritual life the Father is known, the Spirit of adoption has been received, and there is consciousness of being a child of God - "One God, the Father," 1 Cor. 8: 6. Such is the first ray of light received by faith after reconciliation with God. In verse 13 John says to these little children, "Ye have known the Father." But in verses 18-27 he puts them on their guard against the antichrists.

314 It would not be judged wise, in our days, to be speaking of the antichrists to babes in the faith. Later on, one might think, would be a better time to speak to them of prophecy and of the antichrists. Certainly, if it were only a question of theories, and indeed, in that case, better never to speak of them at all. But the word of God is practical, in prophecy as in everything else. It treats of the antichrists as a matter affecting the walk of the saints. The antichrists have come! let the saints discern them and avoid them.

Verse 18. "As ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last time." The existence of antichrists marks the last days of Christianity and proves their commencement in John's time.

On the subject of the Antichrist, the apostle adds in verse 22, "that he denieth that Jesus is the Christ . . . denieth the Father and the Son." These are two aspects of apostasy in which we see Antichrist; first, uniting with Jewish unbelief, secondly, rejecting Christianity. The word gives the Antichrist an essentially religious character; the testimony of the prophets agrees with the New Testament on this point. It is also important to note this word in verse 23, "Whosoever denieth the Son hath not the Father," for many who reject Christ pretend not to reject the Father.

Verses 20, 21. It is touching to see the way in which John proceeds in endeavouring to shelter the babes in the faith from the danger of the seducers. Their weak condition claimed this aid; but, in rendering it, John's first care is to remind them of what they are through grace: You have been anointed by the Holy Ghost, you know the truth.

Verse 24. More than this, he reminds them of the first truths of the gospel, and urges them to hold to them as to a sheet-anchor. "Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father."

315 Verse 27. And again, whilst teaching them he adds, "But the anointing which ye have received of him, abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you." As a servant of God, and being also led to it by Christian affection, he bestows his care on them; still the saints, yea even babes in the faith, are responsible to keep themselves from evil, seeing they are sealed of the Holy Ghost, and John desires not to weaken that responsibility. "As the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him."*

{*John goes farther in his second Epistle; he there exhorts not to receive the bearers of false doctrine. He still refers to the same class of individuals, that is, those who denied Christ come in flesh. He describes them as not abiding in the doctrine of Christ. This is the evil the saints had to contend with. There might be erroneous elements mixed with the faith of some persons, and whilst being a cause for vigilance and care on the part of those who are with them, this need not hinder their walking together. But if anyone sins against "the doctrine of Christ," that is to say, against the doctrine which concerns Christ Himself, and which is the basis of the faith, he is not to be received.}

"Ye shall abide in it" would be as correct, and indeed more grammatical; still I believe we should read "in him."

Verse 28. John resumes the thread interrupted from verse 12, and brings us again to the experimental proofs of divine life in us. It yet remains to speak of righteousness as a proof of this life, and then to present further unfoldings upon these proofs combined. Verse 28 serves as a connecting link. "And now, children, abide in him, that when he shall appear we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming." To abide in Christ is to be continually drawing one's strength from Him, depending upon Him, and remaining faithful to him. See John 15. "That . . . we may not be ashamed." It is we, the apostles. This interpretation of the passage is justified by a quotation from the second Epistle (v. 8), "Look to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward." The apostles laboured to maintain the work they had wrought, and of which they would reap the fruits in the day of Christ. This thought of the result of their labours in the glory was familiar to the apostle. Paul says: "That I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain," Phil. 2: 16.

Verse 29 and chapter 3: 1-9 present righteousness. "Ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him." John reasons thus, As the fruits of life are there, necessarily the life must be there also.

316 1 John 3.

Verses 1, 2. From the words "born of him" in the previous verse, John draws the conclusion that we are children of God, and enumerates some of our privileges as such. "Born of him"; then we are His children! "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons [children] of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not . . . it doth not yet appear what we shall be . . . when he shall appear, we shall be like him," etc. "It knew him not" signifies knew not Christ, although the commencement of the sentence speaks of the Father. It is the same language as in Revelation 22: 3, "the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face." John says, "his face," in the singular, yet he is speaking of God and of the Lamb.

"We shall be like him." Our likeness to Christ then is the result of a present privilege, that of having life in Christ, as Paul expresses it when saying, "Christ, who is our life." We shall be like Christ, but such as He is now with the Father. In the same way our privilege of seeing Him will be seeing Him as He is now.* Surely we shall reign with Him, but we shall receive neither the special glory, nor the attributes proper to the Son of man, for they belong to Jesus only.

{*This point raises the question whether we shall see God in the brightness of His essential glory. The scripture answers: "dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see." In another place speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem, it says, "The glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light [lamp] thereof." It follows from this that it is outside the inaccessible light that the God of glory reveals Himself to man, and that this revelation is made through Jesus.}

Verses 3-6. Christ Himself is the measure of the Christian's sanctification. The hope of seeing Jesus in His glory makes us desire to be like Him now. "Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure. In him is no sin . . . whosoever abideth in him sinneth not." Thus our hope is linked with practical righteousness.

317 Verse 4. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law." The true version reads: "Whosoever practiseth sin, practiseth also lawlessness." "Transgresseth also the law," and "committeth iniquity," render the Greek imperfectly. If it were said, "practiseth lawlessness," it would be nearer the Greek, which is lawlessness.

Verses 7, 8. Let us notice the different manner in which John speaks of him who practises righteousness and of him who practises sin. Of the first he says that he "is righteous, even as he [Christ] is righteous." This indicates the state of a person owing to the possession of a nature received, and consequently an abiding state. Of the second, John says: "Is of the devil," which signifies, he receives his disposition from the wicked one. The enemy may exert an action upon man, but he cannot impart himself. God alone can communicate His nature. We are "partakers of the divine nature."

Verse 9. "Whosoever is born of God doth not practise sin." In interpreting this passage some make the words "commit sin," mean "live in sin," but this weakens its bearing. These words have reference to something absolute, to the nature of Christ within us. So John does not say, That which, but "whosoever is born of God," thereby meaning a being and not a thing, and that being does not practise sin. Doubtless not to practise sin is the characteristic of the child of God. The Christian does not live in sin, and this because he has a holy nature which spiritually constitutes the individual.

Verses 10-18. To complete the subject we now get some developments upon the two great principles combined; righteousness and love. The two leading features of the child of God are that he practiseth righteousness and loveth his brother. By contrast, he that practiseth not righteousness and loveth not his brother is not of God. "His brother." Has one, who is not born of God, a brother? Here again we must follow abstractions. The principles remain, although there may not be all the elements of application.

Verse 12. The opposite of the child of God is seen in Cain. He slew his brother (evidence of his hatred), and wherefore? because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

Verses 13-15 are application. The brethren - and by this word John designates all the children of God - are hated by the world, even as Abel was hated by Cain. On their part there is love, and this love is the proof that they have passed from death to life.

318 Verse 16. But love is seen in and learnt from Christ. We know love through Him who has been the most complete proof of the love of God, for moved by this love Christ gave Himself.

Verses 16-18 are application. The love of Christ in us should lead us even to lay down our lives for the brethren. It can also shew itself by lesser actions, and can lead us to make our brethren partakers with us of any of this world's goods that we may possess.

Verses 19-23. As obedience introduced the subject of the proofs that we are partakers of divine life, so now it concludes this also. In loving the brethren we not only have evidence that we are of the truth, but we assure our hearts before God, love being the keeping of the commandment which we have received to love one another (v. 23). And more, being obedient to His commandment, whatsoever we ask, we receive.

Verse 19. "Assure our hearts before him." The subject in hand is evidently a question of liberty with God, and not of salvation or condemnation.

Verse 20. "God is greater than our heart." He knows us better than. we know ourselves. Immediately our heart allows something that cannot stand before God, our communion and liberty with Him suffer. Now sometimes we know not where to discover what has unsettled our intercourse with God. What has done it? After a little searching we shall discover that our hearts are tolerating some elements of evil which God sees and will not allow.

Verse 22. "Whatsoever we ask we receive of him." This truth appertains to the absolute principles of the new man, for our prayers are not always answered. On one occasion Paul prayed three times and was not heard. But the prayer of the new man is always according to Christ who could say to His Father: "Thou hearest me always." Verse 22 supposes such a prayer as we address to God when we are walking in His ways; and not that which bursts from the heart when we find ourselves in exceptional circumstances. We can understand why, in Gethsemane, Jesus requested that He might not have to drink the cup which involved the hiding of God's face.

319 Verse 23. "His commandment" signifies both the commandment of God and the commandment of Christ; for God it is who has given us the command to believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ," and Christ that to "love one another." This is another instance of the way in which John speaks without distinguishing between God and Christ. The exposition of the experimental proofs of divine life in us are concluded with this verse.

Verse 24. We now enter upon a new subject. Two great privileges of the saints, expressed by John in these words, "He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him and he in him," correspond to the obedience which maintains our hearts in a state of liberty before God.

Here, as in other passages which we have already looked at, the word he is indefinite; it applies to God and to Christ indiscriminately. Abide in Him may mean, abide in God, or abide in Christ. Still by the light which chapter 4 sheds upon the subject, we can see that these words signify rather, that we abide in God, and God abides in us. This expresses the immensity of the grace which God has given us in granting us life and a place in communion with Himself.

To abide in God is, as we remarked in chapter 2, the privilege of resting on the bosom of God Himself, there tasting divine affections; a privilege alas! too little enjoyed by our souls, for we know not how at all times to fall back upon God in order to escape from the dearth of the wilderness. We enjoy communion with the Father and the Son; but we have more, we abide in God.

God abiding in us indicates a different blessing from that of our abiding in God. God abides in us through the communication of His nature. He is Himself thus the element of our being. "He has given us of his Spirit," chap. 4: 13. We have received the life manifested by the Son in this world, and the received Spirit is God Himself in us.

This last privilege is now mentioned for the first time in this Epistle, and in speaking it, John gives the proof of its reality in these words: "And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us." Although he has just mentioned two privileges, he only adduces the proof of the latter, which is introductory to the former, and which is the subject he is about to unfold.

320 1 John 4.

Verses 1-6. Here, before pursuing the subject, John stops again to point out the seducers. In the preceding chapter (v. 24) he has spoken of the gift of the Spirit of God, but there are also false spirits, and it is well to put the saints on their guard against them.

Verse 1. "Try the spirits." The thing to be judged according to this exhortation, is not whether a man is converted, but whether a man who prophesies is speaking by the Spirit of God or by a spirit of demons. How are we to know the false spirits? Here is the touchstone.

Verses 2, 3. "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God." By this test we discern the Spirit which is of God, and that which is not of God. A man who prophesies by the Spirit of God also confesses Jesus Christ come in the flesh. He not merely confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh, but he confesses Jesus Himself - the Jesus who came in flesh. To confess that Jesus has come in the flesh is to acknowledge a truth; to confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is to acknowledge the Person and lordship of Jesus

It is not uncommon for the agents of the enemy, when putting forth false doctrines, to make use of the word of God, although they despise it. They quote it when it suits their purpose,* and when it is inconvenient they despise and neglect it. All error proceeds from the devil, and he uses every agency to cause it to spread. And yet, although all error comes from him, it does not suffice that a doctrine be false to decide that he who puts it forth speaks by an evil spirit. In cases where there has been evidence that a demon was speaking, besides the excitement of the speaker, there has been an astonishing promptness of effect, and a wonderful power of persuasion.** Alas! the flesh is always ready to give an ear to Satan, but it resists the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Besides, when the Holy Ghost works in man, He proceeds by appropriating the truth to the individual; and this result is not obtained very promptly.

{*All heretics conceal their doctrines. In our days we have had proofs of this in the Irvingites and Mormons. It seems almost incredible that there should be any being on earth who could accept the absurdities of these latter. What success is to be attained over man by pandering to his flesh, and what a solemn example of Satan's power!}

{** This was the case among the Irvingites.}

321 As soon as the demon is discerned, there is but one course - to treat the demon as a demon. If this course be adopted, he will be found powerless before the name of Jesus; but if we resort to any other way, if we yield to human considerations, if we are amiable with the agents of the enemy, we shall soon find ourselves in weakness before Satan: God not being able to be with us in the course we have chosen.

In the presence of these dangers how precious is the word of God to faith! It is the word which enlightens us that we may discern the adversary and error, and which shews us the path which God has marked out for faithfulness in such circumstances. Let us cleave to His word, with an upright heart, walking in lowliness before the Lord; and nothing can cause us to stumble on our way: God is faithful, He keeps His own, He will keep the youngest and the weakest. But without this submission to God and to His word, whatever beautiful sentiments we may express, or whatever clever method we may adopt, we shall have to feel the power of the enemy.

Verse 6. "We are of God" (we, the apostles); "he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us, hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." The words of the apostles are authoritative. Those to whom these delegates of the Lord spoke were under the responsibility of receiving the word, because it came from an apostle. The refusal to submit would shew that the person was of the world, and following the spirit of error. Our responsibility is the same, for we possess the epistles written by the apostles. Having given these words of warning and teaching respecting the spirits, John resumes the subject commenced in chapter 3: 24.

Verses 7-12. "God dwelling in us" is a privilege which derives all its value from the love of God in which we share.

Verses 7, 8. "Let us love one another; for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God . . . for God is love." The source of love is in God only, it is God Himself. But through infinite grace this love finds room in a human heart and renders it capable of loving. It is no question here of human affections, but of the love of God, the presence of which in the heart of a man proves that the man is born of God and knows God. How immense is the privilege which raises us thus to the blessing which belongs to the nature of a God of love!

322 Among the number of blessings which have fallen to our lot, there are several of a kind different from the one we have just spoken of; for instance, those which flow from the counsels of God; the portion of the church as united to Christ, the inheritance promised to the saints, blessings which are unfolded in Paul's epistles. But in the Epistle of John we get an order of privileges more connected with the Person of God Himself - with His nature, of which by grace we are partakers.

Verses 9-12. God has manifested His love by sending His only-begotten Son through whom He has given us life, found a propitiation for us, and by whom He has revealed Himself in love. These verses set forth the Christian privileges brought by Jesus at His first coming. Here are some details.

Verses 9, 10. The love of God which now moves in our souls was first shewn by acts outside us. It wrought in our behalf when as yet there was nothing but sin in us. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Thus our privilege of feeling our hearts filled with the love of God flows from the love God had for us when we were but sinners; and this love has become ours by the possession of an object outside ourselves. If with respect to this privilege, we had only the subjective side, that is, the love in us, it would be pure mysticism; but there is also the objective side, the love of God for us. Thus there is no room for that self-worship which is such a strong characteristic of religious sentimentalism.

Verses 11, 12, are blessed effects of the presence and action of the love of God in us. Thereby God Himself dwells in us and His love is perfected in us. To what glorious truths does this link us! We read in the Gospel of John, chapter 1: 18, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." And in this verse of the Epistle, "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." The same Christ who revealed God in the world dwells in the saints in whom He also reveals God. Such is the privilege of those whose life Christ is. "His love is perfected in us." When love is in exercise in the intercourse of saints, God has His place in this intercourse; He is there, for He Himself is love. And if God is present producing His love in others, it is a perfected love.

323 Verse 13. "Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." As in chapter 3: 24, so again in this verse we find the two privileges joined together: our dwelling in God, and God dwelling in us. "Of his spirit." God has communicated His nature to us, He dwells in us. The church as a body is also the dwelling-place of God, on account of the personal presence of the Holy Ghost in the body. The church, being the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost, is highly blessed. This is not the place to unfold that blessing, pleasant as it would be to do so. Only for the sake of the subject now under consideration let us remark that the Holy Ghost manifested His presence in the church at the beginning by various signs; there were gifts of healings, of tongues, and other workings which all contributed to the glory of the presence of God in the midst of His saints. These glorious manifestations were not hindered by the presence of any even if unconverted.* But when we learn from John that God dwells in us and that we know this privilege because God hath given us of His Spirit, we have a very different blessing before us; one that is inherent to the divine nature in us, a privilege which is inseparable from conversion, since it is conversion itself in its very essence.

{*Hebrews 6: 4, 5.}

We dwell in God and God dwells in us; this is the order of these privileges in our spiritual experience. Being conscious by the Spirit that we dwell in God, we thereby know that God dwells in us. It is the order followed in verse 13 which we are now considering. But when these privileges are looked upon in connection with the testimony of God and with divine operations, they are reversed: God dwells in us and we in Him. This is the subject set forth in the two following verses.

Verses 14, 15. "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." God gives us to believe the testimony and at the same time takes up His abode in us; this is one of the first of blessings on which others are built up. Thus as a simple result of this grace we dwell in God, we have our refuge in Him, we taste of His peace, His joy, and His rest.

324 When John says, "whosoever shall confess," he sees life in its earliest fruits, and he finds in these another proof of God's dwelling in us and of our dwelling in Him. What privileges we possess by faith! We have drawn from that fulness, from that ocean of life; and, after having received for ourselves, we become channels of communication to others.

Verse 16 is a summary of the preceding verses: "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us"; it is privilege of faith. "He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him"; it is experimental blessing.

Verse 17. Read "Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." Having given the proofs of the love of God for us, and having shewn that we have known and believed His love, John, in this verse, seeks to shew the immense blessing which the love of God sheds upon us. His love, which was manifested by the gift of the Son, is perfected in the grace which makes us to be such as Jesus is. We are "as he is" by the fact of having in us the life of Jesus glorified. The life which shone forth in Jesus when He came out of the grave (after having exhausted the judgment of God, abolished sin, and conquered death), divine life in man has been communicated to us, and it places us before God in the same standing as that of Jesus Himself.

It is not an imputed privilege; the love of God which constitutes it is a love that is perfected in us. We have received from God this life against which there is no judgment, for it is divine, and we have received it through Him who went under the judgment in our stead. Such is the love of God perfected in us. The effect of this grace is to give our souls full confidence as to the day of judgment. Evidently there could not be a place for us in that day more excellent than that of finding ourselves in the same position as the judge Himself. Verse 18. Again, what sentiments become ours in our daily life! No more fear; the love of God perfected in us has cast it out.

Verses 19-21. John puts the reality of the love of God in us to a counter-test: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar." The proof that our love is really of God is in this; that we love the brethren, not on account of the satisfaction found in so doing, but because they are of God. We cannot love a person without taking an interest in his children. But suppose the case of a father having three sons; I love two of them, this does not testify that I love their father, for if I did, I should love the three sons. These principles which act as counter-proofs are very useful; we often need their test.

325 1 John 5.

Verse 1. Brotherly love being established, the question arises: Who is my brother? We get for an answer, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." This is a brother, we owe him love.

Verse 2. But brotherly love is also in its turn submitted to a counter-test: "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments." Let us notice that love of the brethren, which was adduced as a proof of our love to God in chapter 4: 20, is now the point to be proved. This is what the schoolmen would term reasoning in a vicious circle; but life and love are beyond their sphere. True love is accompanied by obedience. The love which leads us to love the children of God, for God's sake, could not love them and at the same time incite them to things which displease their Father. Would it be love to a man to set his children an example of disobedience? It would be loving neither him nor his children. Disobedience is never love. Christ, who is perfect love, also shewed perfect obedience.

Verses 4, 5. But here is an obstacle; the world renders obedience difficult. When we feel its influence, the commandments of God seem grievous. But, on the other hand, love escapes that influence and remains obedient. Thus love is in conflict with the world, but faith is there to help. "This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith."

Unspeakable mystery of the knowledge of Jesus! a crucified One is the Son of God! Faith knows this Saviour rejected by the world, and clings to Him. The name of Jesus has an all-powerful attraction for faith; and finding a blessed portion in Jesus it joyfully accepts the place of the Saviour here below. What can the world do against the faith that sees things thus? It is not astonishing that faith in Jesus should be in conflict with the world; for if a crucified one be the Son of God, what an overthrow of the order of things in belonging to this world! But this rejected One has overcome the world and faith shares in His victory.

326 Verses 6-12. Up to this point of the epistle we have had to consider the great principles of the truth concerning life. Before ending John here touches upon the question of the testimony of God to which the communication of this life to sinners corresponds. We have first the witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood.

Verse 6. "This is he who came by (dia) water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by (en) water only, but by (en) water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness." The testimony of the water and of the blood is twice expressed in this verse, but with a different Greek preposition each time. He came by (dia) water and blood; and then He came in (en) water and blood; that is to say, in the power of the water and of the blood. The former of these expressions (dia) indicates the character in which Jesus came here below; the latter (en), the power displayed by Him according to that character. Jesus came in a character of purification and expiation: "by water and blood." He has wrought according to that character, and has accomplished purification and expiation in water and blood. Although the water and the blood both express the death of Christ, they set forth two results of that death. We are cleansed by the water of death (sanctification), and we are also cleansed by blood (justification). From this it follows that, the death of Christ giving its character and value to our sanctification, we reckon ourselves dead to sin even as Christ died for sin. I do not know if we pay sufficient heed to this purifying power of the death of Christ, whereby we are freed from the power of sin now.

"And it is the Spirit that beareth witness." The Spirit of God, present here below, is also a witness of the grace of life which is in Jesus. But it is in virtue of the death of Christ that the Holy Ghost has come down. Thus purification, expiation, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, are privileges which exist for us only in virtue of a dead Christ.

Verses 7, 8 omit a portion of these two verses, and read, "For there are three that bear record, the Spirit and the water and the blood: and these three agree in one."* Three witnesses, but only one testimony.

{*Several words included in verses 7 and 8 are not to be found in most MSS, and are not admitted in the best Greek editions of the New Testament. We follow these editions. These are the words to be suppressed: "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth."}

327 Verses 9, 10. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself"; for God imparts life to him who believes. As to the witness, we find again the two things which we have noticed throughout the Epistle: the internal and the external, the subjective and the objective side, experience and faith. Christ, who is the object of the testimony in the world, dwells in the saints. We thus understand how the witness of God is greater than that of men.

Verses 11, 12. After becoming acquainted with the witnesses, we learn what their testimony is. It is this: "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Life was not in the first Adam; it is in Jesus only, but it comes to us through death; this the three witnesses - the Spirit, the water, and the blood - affirm.

Verse 13. "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life."* I am not writing to you, says John, to bring you the blessings of the testimony of God, as though you were not in possession of them, but to remind you that you have them, in order that you may be forearmed against the false teachers when they call your privileges in question.

{*Several editions of the New Testament, upon the authority of the principal manuscripts, reject the words we have omitted at the end of this verse; namely, "And that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."}

Verses 14, 15. "If we ask anything according to his will he heareth us." Our souls are sometimes much exercised before God as to prayer; for God, who in His goodness grants us all things that are good for us, reserves to Himself the choice, the means, and the time. However we have the comfort of knowing that God always hears us. He is not absent nor too high to listen to our prayers. But more than this: "we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." What mercy! God is willing to hear the requests which such feeble creatures as ourselves send up to Him. God perhaps does not answer at once. This exercise of patience is blessed to our souls, and is often more salutary than an immediate answer. It acts upon our intercourse with God, it moulds it, and teaches us dependence. It is well for us to know that we should not pray with the idea of dictating to God. But the faith which has prayed nevertheless feels sure that God has heard, and this confidence consoles and sustains.

328 Verses 16, 17. What is this sin unto death? It is sin, but sin aggravated by particular circumstances. The sin of Ananias was a lie which the surrounding circumstances rendered more serious. Every sin may become a sin unto death.

Verses 18, 20. These three verses comprise the great principles of the Epistle. They form a sort of conclusion. But here, as in the body of the Epistle, John expresses himself in a way calculated to sustain faith in spite of the sowers of doubts. "We know," says he, what? We know what is the life which we have received from God. We know that the wicked one is in the world. We know that the Son of God is come, that He is true and that we are in Him. Yes! on all these points we know where we are. It is a last shaft which, in concluding, John levels at the corrupters of the faith. Verse 19. "For the whole world lieth in wickedness," read "The whole world lieth in the wicked one."

Verse 20. Notice the chain of thoughts in this verse. The Son has come and has given us to know God as "him that is true." We are in Him that is true because we are in His Son Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ is God Himself, the true God. He is also eternal life.

Verse 21. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," that is, from all that might come in between you and God.

Note.

The grace administered through John's ministry appertains to the individual blessing of saints. It is the communication of divine life to man, a blessing which exists at all times, and which belongs to the saints, whatever may be the state of God's people. This apostle is not occupied with the church, with that which as a whole, forms the body of Christ. This mystery was entrusted to Paul.

329 Compared with John, the apostle of the Gentiles is seen in different circumstances. Paul, being a chosen vessel for that work of sovereign grace, which by the power of the Holy Ghost, gathers a church here below composed of Jews and Gentiles, united in one body to Christ in heaven, manifested extraordinary energy which was crowned with success. But the testing time came, Paul was imprisoned, his ministry was cut short, all forsook him. Disaffection appeared, and later on the unity was broken. The decline, which commenced then, has continued and increased until our days.

What will be the end of it? The word holds out no hope of a return here below to the first state of blessing. The tares which have been sown in the field must remain until the harvest. But if there is no hope of restoration for the system, yet the grace of life remains and is not inactive. This life, the revelation and the resources of which were the chief object of John's ministry, still flows on; and it may be said that it is by means of this life that the Lord has intervened when all was about to fail in Christianity.

Epistle of Jude

J. N. Darby.

<28026E> 330

The point in the Epistle of Jude is departure from original standing, and contains strong warning to us in the last days. It is not the same as 2 Peter, where you see the angels judged for having sinned. In Jude it is apostasy: "They kept not their first estate." In 1 Peter we get the judgment of God's people (the house of chap. 4). It is the government of God exercised towards His people. In 2 Peter it is His government exercised against wickedness. The general character of apostasy is Cain, of ecclesiastical error Balaam, of gainsaying Korah. The mention of these things is meant to be a warning, and an admonition - "crept in" practically abusing the grace of God. He warns against such; v. 12.

Why is mercy introduced here? v. 2. Because they needed the mercy, they were no longer addressed as the church, but as individuals. In all the closing writings of the New Testament, the church is looked at as a thing judged (that is, the professing thing on earth). God is judging it as contrary to His mind. If God's judgment is on the church, I cannot look to it for judgment; its judgment is worth nothing to me. He was going to write to them about the common salvation, but was obliged to write on this particular subject, because they were in danger. We have lost what he was going to write, but we have gained what he did write by the guidance of the Spirit. If the first estate is not kept, there may be long patience, but there is no remedy. And when God comes in to judge, He always goes back to the first departure from the original standing. Thus Stephen, when speaking of the departure and sin of Israel, goes back to the golden calf, their first departure; Acts 7. We must go back to the original to judge the present state. "I planted wholly a right seed." Verse 4 shews the character is suited the enemy to take at a particular time. Those who had "crept in unawares" are those on whom the Lord will execute judgment when He comes. Enoch prophesied of these; v. 14, 15. The same set of people who in the apostle's days were coming in, the Lord will judge.

They deny the only Lord (despot, Master). The same word is used in 2 Peter 2: 1, "denying the Lord that bought them." He bought the world, just as Joseph bought up all the land of Egypt and the persons too for Pharaoh - like a slave bought. I will not know you apart from your master. It has nothing to do with redemption. It is His claim over them, but these "crept in unawares," and refuse to admit His claim.

331 As to "contend earnestly for the faith once delivered" this would be rather defending the faith which we have than attacking that which is false. If I see the mischief coming in, I stand out against it, setting my face as a flint. There is no good in your raising the devil if you cannot lay him. There is no use in your meddling with evil if you are not called of God to do so.

"Once delivered," that is, I must go back to the beginning) to the original faith as it was delivered. In these days it is all-important to inquire what was from the beginning. You have certainly got what is in the New Testament, what was in the beginning. If I abide in that, I abide in the Father and in the Son; 1 John 2: 25. Verses 14, 15, Enoch's prophecy, the first testimony of God. Here we find that God had from His first testimony contemplated the apostasy of the church; just as in Deuteronomy 32 at the commencement of Israel's history, He foretells what the end would be. At the starting-point the apostasy was thought of. It strengthens faith to see this. I am not surprised at any evil that may come in. I am not looking at what He has put out of His hand, but at that which is in His heart. The tendency of the path all around was to shake faith. "Will ye also go away?" A person never sees beyond what he is. He cannot judge beyond the moral state he is in. A person may have light as to mere knowledge, but not as to their judgment of things around.

There is responsibility as to being clean in your walk. "Contend earnestly" for it. It may be in stating the truth - not only to teach but to convince gainsayers, v. 11. In Cain we get the first principles of apostasy, natural religion and evil, the world and hatred to that which is true. In Balaam we get religion for gain, selling his services for reward, and fornication (seducing God's people), and idols. In Korah we get open rebellion, the full apostasy, the denial of Christ in His titles as Priest and King. Cain is the man in whose family the world was set up with a natural false worship. The Balaam and Korah forms of evil are going on both together. With Cain it was the utter blindness toward God. What answers to the gainsaying of Korah now? It is open infidelity, such as we find in Colenso and the Oxford "Essays and Reviews." The error of Balaam for reward. Balaam's was religious seduction, taking the name of the Lord, and the real inspiration comes from the devil. "Stand here while I meet [the Lord] yonder." The words, "the Lord" are introduced by the translators. He was really going to seek enchantments, as we learn from Numbers 24: I. He was professing to get his inspiration from the Lord, whilst really inspired by the devil.

332 In Balaam we get him selling what he really received from God to the devil for reward. Jezebel is the principle of national religion. Jezebel had no business with Israel at all. It is the Jezebel character of evil rather than that of Balaam now. "For reward" is the point here. We get the other in Pergamos; Rev. 2. He had a certain and remarkable knowledge of Jehovah, but could not do what he liked - an awfully wicked man - with the love of reward, power, and gifts. "Feast with you, Feeding themselves," etc. They like the credit of being with God's children. Those who had crept in were feasting themselves at their feasts of charity, like those against whom the apostle warns the Philippians, "whose god is their belly." Another thing which characterised them was the absence of all conscience, "feeding themselves without fear." Compare Ezekiel 28, the prince of Tyre. Conscience is always awake when we have to do with God. It may be sometimes reproved, but it is always awake.

Verse 19. Without God's Spirit. "These be they who separate themselves. They are like the Pharisees. "Stand by thyself. Come not near me, for I am holier than thou," Isa. 45: 5. The word "Pharisee" means "separatist." Here they are those who had crept in. In 1 John 2 the antichrists are distinguished by having gone out.

Verse 20. That which characterises the faith amidst all the evil is that it is a "most holy faith." "Praying in the Holy Ghost." The great difference between those who were really saints and those who had crept in was having the Spirit; the others were described as "sensual [natural], having not the Spirit." The presence of the Holy Ghost in the saints is what characterises the Christian state and the Christian church in this dispensation. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." "He that is spiritual discerneth all things." We do not make half enough of the fact that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost. No Spirit, there is no life, nor spiritual understanding. Prayer is not only dependence, but expressed dependence, absolute confidence too. "In everything by prayer . . . let your requests be made known unto God." It may be perhaps foolish requests. It is the emptying out of the heart to God. It does not say that you will receive all your request, but that "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." It is another thing to go and talk with Him about His interests.

333 There is another thing needed - absolute confidence in God, asking in the name of Jesus, being in the current. If the words dwell in us, we shall ask aright. Moses says to God, "You brought Israel out. What will You do for Your great name?" Until the Lord Jesus comes the state will be evil. The last bit of the hill is the steepest: but climb, never mind, and "as thy day so shall thy strength be." The days in which we live are perilous times, but the Lord is just as sufficient for perilous times as any other time. The power of the Spirit is always accompanied by a sense of weakness and difficulty, and therefore the need of mercy. "Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life." It is here the mercy needed along all the path, mercy reaching to the end and carrying us into everlasting life. It is not the same as Philippians 3 - looking for the Saviour, that is, actual deliverance. Peter speaks of the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. "Building up yourselves" is individual here. It is not building the church, but individuals.

Again, He says, "Keep yourselves in the love of God" practically. It is one thing to know the love of God as a general truth - "God so loved the world"; but it is another thing to know myself as the special object of it. It is knowing myself as the special object of it that I get here. We get the two things in Ephesians 1: 4, 5. In verse 4 it is the general truth that we should be "holy and without blame before him in love." In verse 5 the special thing is, "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself." We get the same thing of the love of Christ. He "loved me and gave himself for me." Verses 22, 23. It is a man who will not let an evil in to hinder the enjoyment of divine love. When a man is ensnared, "have compassion"; but if he goes on recklessly without conscience, have "fear."

Verse 24. There is a power able to keep the saints above circumstances. "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only (wise) God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." Faultless as to our walk, our life. He is able to keep one. "Exceeding joy?" Yes. We must not lose sight of that, that there is a power efficient to keep us from falling. We are apt to get into Romans 7 as a practical state. There is an evil nature and it will out. "That ye may not do," etc. The Spirit hinders you from living after the flesh; v. 23. "Saving saints." He sees the saints in conflict, but above the circumstances. A saint above circumstances knows how to abound and to be hungry. We do not realise sufficiently that the power is there to keep us from falling - in all things more than conquerors, that is, over circumstances.

334 It is a great thing to have the inward consciousness of the love of God, that I walk in the perfect consciousness that God loves me. "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved," etc. It is power as regards my walk, that I have the present and immediate consciousness that God loves me. I get a double character of His love - His nature. And all that He does flows from love. But it is another thing to be the personal object of His love. "He loved us and washed us." "Loved me and gave himself for me." God's love was manifested, and that in His general character. He might have had servants, but that would not satisfy Him.

If you have the character of Antichrist in the Epistles of John, you get the opposite element in Jude. "They went out from us." It is open apostasy. Denying the Father and the Son is anti-Christian; denying that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2: 22) is apostate Judaism. This is not the case with Jude. There I see, not the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, but Christendom - Christians looked at as general profession, and the corruption is in that. They "crept in" (v. 4), not "went out"; 1 John 2: 19. They not only denied the Master, but turned His grace into lasciviousness; v. 4.

"To convince all that are ungodly among them," v. 15. Even when He executes judgment, it is still "among them"; every character of evil is taken up to the very end. Enoch prophesies of these who have "crept in." They denied the character of Christianity, without open apostasy; as in Philippians, they were "enemies of the cross of Christ." The judgment is on those who have got in, though of course there will be a judgment on others.

335 "Denying the only Master" (despotes) (v. 4) is the comparison of a master who has bought a slave in the market that will not own him. The earliest evil bears its fruits to the end - they ought to have been purged out, but, as a fact, they remain to the end. Cain is natural religion; Balaam, ecclesiastical corruption; and Korah, opposition to Christ's royalty and priesthood. We have to look not only for open infidelity, but to moral persons moving on amidst Christendom and "gainsaying."

"Looking for the mercy" (v. 21) is striking. You cannot get into an evil that you do not find Christ for you in it; you cannot give up your Isaac without getting him in resurrection. If in trial we look to God, we receive fresh revelations. The disciples gave Him up as a living Christ, and they got Him as a glorified Christ. The mercy throws the soul on the patient goodness of Christ, and of this goodness, if we are spared the evil, we are the expression. If I feel that I belong to a system that has all gone wrong, I feel myself cast on the mercy of God. Do not get out of the place where the sense of divine love can keep you in the sense of divine holiness. See 1 Thess. 3: 12, 13. If I walk with God, there must be holiness. Christ Himself is the perfection of good in the midst of evil. Elijah goes to heaven in the midst of apostate Israel. In that case we have an Elisha. This mercy keeps the tone of the heart right. There must be real faithfulness, not pretension; but we must be looking on to the end, when things will be right; but now things are gone so wrong that I want mercy at every step.

One single beautiful word I would add. "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law." Christ has come of a woman and come under law, He has come into a place of ruin where the law has made transgressors. The Pharisees separate themselves (v. 19); they set themselves up.

On the Apocalypse

J. N. Darby.

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The first thing I find in the Apocalypse is that this revelation was not committed to the church as being in its normal relationship with the Head of the house. Just as we have distinguished in prophecy these two cases, that in which the people were acknowledged of God, and that in which they were not; so we have as regards the Apocalypse something like the latter of these two cases. It is a man who receives the communication of it, not the body. There is, however, a slight difference, on account of the seven churches. It is not an internal communication, a communication of grace (an ecclesiastical communication, as one might say, in the good sense of the word); but it is a prophetical communication concerning a certain time.

Verse 4. It is not properly the Trinity, for in that case there would be the Father. Verse 6. One sees here the position of the church in this governmental order of God, which characterises the Apocalypse. In verse 13 it is "a Son of man," not the Son of Man: it is to express the character in which He shews Himself. He is servant here; yet not absolutely, for He was clothed with a garment down to the foot. It was not tucked up for service, and His girdle is not brought down so as to strengthen the loins. He wears it about the breast like a girdle of righteousness. Then in verse 14 He is "Jehovah."

Verse 16. We have His power in authority, authority over that which acts in power as administering in the church. All that have authority He holds in His hand. They are not administrators as gifts; it is rather as government.

Verse 17. John fell at His feet as dead. It is a man who receives a glorious vision, as a prophet (Daniel). Verse 18. "I am the first and the last" (Jehovah). "I am he that liveth and was dead." He had passed through the state where sin had reduced man. Verse 19 gives us the division of the Apocalypse.

Verse 20. "The angels"; they are the administrative representatives. If as head of the state I had before me the representatives of a dozen towns, I could, according to the case, address one of them and say to him, How is it that such a thing should take place in such or such a locality? They are mystical administrative representatives of the church. It is not that angels go and come from the church to God; it is the idea of angels, without saying that they are persons. The "angel of Jehovah" is an expression to signify that mysterious representation of God when it is not He Himself. For the rest, it is a difficult expression to define rightly.

337 Ephesus

. Revelation 2: 1-7. Here is Christ in His general character - chief and inspector. It seems to me pretty clear that the seven churches are the moral history of the church from the time of John until the end. First, this number seven shews that it forms a whole. If it is a complete idea, it cannot be the aggregate of the church at that time, because they are totally different states. The Lord could not say at the same time, as if to the general church, "Thou hast them that hold the doctrine of Balaam," and "Thou hast kept the word of my patience." Then, if it were only a question of those seven churches, it is incredible that He holds the seven stars, as a whole, in His hand, and that He only thinks of seven churches when there were thousands in the world; v. 12. The stream still runs, but the spring had dried up. Christ in these epistles, we see, will not bear with anything short of the primitive state of the church: it is that which He had set up Himself in forming the church. If they do not return, the Lord will take away the candlestick; and we find very little of repentance in the history of the seven churches. From the very first, judgment is pronounced on the church; only we have the different phases through which it passes to arrive there.

Smyrna

. Verses 8-11. "Some of you." Although it has to do with an angel, He will not speak as leaving all the responsibility on one only. It is instructive to see that the Lord, who has all power, allows Satan to act, and is content with saying (as judge), "Be thou faithful unto death." We do not find here the communications according to grace, nor that care which belongs to priesthood. They are left simply in their own responsibility. There would be no chastisement, if there were not a cause. There surely was at Smyrna a certain decline, which was the occasion for it; for the persecution, which is first for the sake of Christ, is often also a correction, as we see in Hebrews 12: 4, 5. As for myself, I do not make up a theory of a gradual decline. God may, for a moment, stop the outward evil, as in the time of Josiah, although the evil continues underneath, and works in an underground way. He maintains responsibility so as to bring one to feel the need of resting upon Him. What does "overcoming" mean in these passages? I answer, To hold fast, in spite of the flesh and Satan.

338 Pergamos

. Verses 12-17. Now Christ explains the word. He here again judges within. But it is not merely a moral judgment. He begins to exercise judgment on one part of the church (perhaps as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira), for there was yet much good in the church. But it is the church itself judged in a portion of its members. "Thou hast there them . . . I will fight against them with the sword of my mouth." Verses 15, 16. The doctrine of the Nicolaitanes is a doctrine which sanctions evil deeds in the church. It suffices to know what is said about this in the word.

Now however that the church is found where Satan's seat is, there must be a seal for heaven. The church was losing its heavenly character; then Jesus encourages this character. It is an exhortation to be heavenly, particularly addressed to individuals. When all is heavenly, there is no need of that exhortation. The manna is not that which is necessary in this world, but the enjoyment of Christ, known in heaven, as having been in humiliation. It is, in a word, a heavenly character in intimacy with Jesus, for the manna which is offered is a hidden manna; and the name on the stone is a name that no one knows but he that receives it. This epistle is clear enough to my mind, to enable me to apply it to the time of Constantine.

Thyatira

. "The Son of God" - this is a new title, distinct, outside of the vision. It is necessary that Christ should separate Himself somewhat from the church. He isolates Himself a little in His Person, because the church has so lost its characteristic features that He cannot really own it. It is this new title which causes the change in the order of the promise and of the warning. The result of it is, that those who had faith were much more faithful. Hence He distinguishes the conquerors in a more particular manner; and, not being able hopefully to occupy Himself with the improvement of the church, He speaks of His coming as the sole object of hope. The church, as such, is clean set aside. The church is, by nature, a remnant; but that character was so totally lost in Thyatira, that it was needful to form again a remnant. With the churches which follow (save that He has the seven spirits and the seven stars, that is to say, all that suffices for the church, whatever may come) Jesus never takes a revealed character, because the church has lost the character in which He can be in its midst, as church. The church must therefore by special faith lay hold on Him, of that which He is for the circumstances in which it is found, because the character which He takes is not His natural character (one may say) even in judgment.

339 He finds His delight in owning the good which was found there. Verse 22. "I will cast her into a bed"; Jezebel is an adulterous woman. In hell she will have her bed! There are children born of her prostitution, and the Lord will kill them with death (by judgment). Her children are those who draw their faith from her: the thing must be understood morally (thus Bossuet); but there are servants of His who commit fornication with her (Fenelon, for instance, and many others). Verse 24. "But unto you I say," he distinguishes a remnant very plainly. "I will put upon you none other burden"; the Lord would add nothing more. He only asked that they should be faithful in keeping themselves from Jezebel. In truth, it is already a great thing to keep oneself from Popery. Since that, indeed, there have been other communications from the Lord.

Verse 26. "To him will I give power over the nations." He is coming; then when He has come, He will give authority to this little remnant who have been faithful in the midst of the nations. He gives the morning star; this is the portion of the church, to have its part with Christ before He comes. Having traced the failure with Jezebel, it is the coming of the Lord which is the only answer to faith.

These churches are never the energy of God, which produces the effect - the blessing; but they are the state which results from it, when the effect is produced, and God confides it to the responsibility of man. God forms the church; after that He declares the responsibility of the church. It is quite simple. Does Christ judge what God has done? Surely not.

We can divide the seven churches into two categories: firstly, the first four; secondly, the last three. As to the first four, all is ended with Thyatira. God works anew in Sardis. He recommences, so to speak, and all terminates with Laodicea. Now when God has wrought, He brings man into what He has done, with the responsibility of maintaining it. If man fails therein, if he spoils it or allows it to be spoilt, God rejects all that is spoilt. This is what has happened for the church. God wrought to establish a testimony for His Son; man, who was placed in that testimony, has failed in it, as Ephesus in its first love, etc.; then the state of things becomes so bad that God rejects it, without abandoning His mode of action. He recommences at Sardis according to the same principle; but at Laodicea the Son, to whom testimony was to be rendered, is outside: then all is spued out.

340 Verse 27. See Revelation 18: 20. We do not get here the relationship of the church: but that which is governmental and of judgment. It is always the case in the Revelation. Judgment is not our habitual thought; but there are cases where one feels that the righteousness of God is a good thing. In Thyatira, the evil is complete; it is no longer corruption only. Hence, when the evil takes the character of an adversary, it is a thought according to God to bring in judgment.

There is a connection between Thyatira and the Babylon of chapters 17 and 18 of Revelation, although there are also in these chapters other elements. Then the Lord distinguishes the remnant in the plainest manner by saying, "To you I say, the rest who are in Thyatira." If one commits fornication with Jezebel, there is indeed danger of throwing oneself into the depths of Satan and of going through the experience of these and not of the depths of God.

"The morning star" is the coming of Jesus preceding His manifestation to the world. Peter goes up to the point where Paul begins. He speaks of prophecy as pointing out the evil things, the events. He warns me; whereas the morning star is Christ Himself, my hope, outside of all other things, turning my eye towards the dawn of day. For me the coming of Christ is not prophecy, because the coming of Christ is my own proper hope. I am as it were in a dome which has no opening but at the summit, so that I am in immediate connection with Christ in heaven, and a stranger to all the rest. Peter limits his doctrine to what he saw. He saw the Lord up to the moment when the cloud concealed Him from their eyes.

Sardis

. Revelation 3: 1. We have here a beginning again. The Lord presents Himself in an already revealed character, the seven stars, and in a new character, the seven spirits - not the seven spirits which are before His throne. It is what suffices for all times, where the church is found. The "seven spirits" shew fulness of action; the "seven stars" are fulness of power in government. Whilst going through the experience of our weakness, we ought not to forget that there is, even now, in Christ, all that is needed in order to work with blessing and effect.

341 "Thou hast a name that thou livest" (renown). It was not merely negative; for there was enough to deserve renown among men. The Lord distinguishes persons from things; but He judges persons according to things, "the things which remain," the good which remained, whether people or things. I see here that, whatever be the state of failure, God expects that the works will be complete, according to the light which He has given. Protestantism will be judged according to the light which was given at the Reformation, and not according to what it is now. In practice this remark is important, because it happens that men lose the light soon after it is given; and yet God judges according to the light which was given. So it is no reason for saying, I did not know it. It often happens that when all has been lost, one pretends to have all, by retaining the reputation which had been acquired when all was possessed. This is the case in Thyatira.

We find here, moreover, a very solemn thing. It is that Sardis is threatened with the same judgment as the world. Although recognised as the church, and although it had a name that it lived, this professing church is threatened to undergo the woe which is declared in 1 Thessalonians 5 as not to come upon Christians. Sardis is not the remnant of Thyatira, because, after all, that remnant would be dead whilst having a name that it lived, and that of those chosen ones a very small number would be walking with the Lord. It would thus be a very poor remnant, and it would be sad enough to belong to it. One must always remember that these churches, such as they are pointed out, are not the energy of God which wrought the thing, when, after it is done, God confides it to responsibility.

There is yet another remark to make on these last three churches. It is this: the coming of Christ is foremost, whether as a hope or in judgment for the conscience, because there was no longer either hope or means of putting the church in its right position. It is no longer a question of seeking to put Protestantism in its ecclesiastical state. No: "I will come on thee as a thief." Save the fact that He has the seven stars, none of the characters which Jesus takes after this belong to the revelation given of Him in chapter 1. If, for my part, I rest upon Christ now, I must lay hold of Him in a special character, according to the need in which I find myself. The book of life is the book of citizenship: one is registered therein - one has the right to fight. It is a great thing to walk with the Lord; but save the fact that they had failed, I do not find much here - little relationship with the Lord, little intimacy. All is corrupted. They are faithful, it is true; they keep themselves from that corruption, but there is little speciality. They escape from this worldliness - "They have not defiled their garments"; all is negative. Protestantism has hardly the sense that one is in relationship with God, and that there are many things to know in Him; there is but little spiritual exercise. Protestantism is insipid; it has not the idea of a God who is present. In verse 4 read "But thou hast a few names."

342 Philadelphia

. Revelation 3: 7. Here one is quite outside this class of titles; one is not ecclesiastically but morally outside the characters which He takes, when He has in view all the church. Verse 7. We have in these titles the "holy," and the "true," as well as the power which holds the door open for us, that we may attend to His service.

Some say, In keeping such or such a position I keep a door open for myself. Well! I find here, that it is Christ alone who has the keys. In verse 8 it is very touching, that without being able to say anything more, He says, "I know thy works." He thus turns away the attention from the works to direct it on the path which He has opened for working still. Although there was very little, it was already a great deal, for there was but little strength. It is no longer some of those violent ones who take the kingdom by force, but Christ, who has the key, holds the door open before these feeble ones, and this suffices. If there was much strength, it would surely be more remarkable; but when with little strength one is faithful notwithstanding, this is the beauty of faithfulness.

Verse 9. Historically, they were Jews who tormented the Christians; it may be that at the end, these Jews will be found again and do the same thing. One may understand by "Jews," people of their character (namely, some assembly constituted on Jewish principles, a pretension to be the people of God by natural descent, whether race or principles, etc.). This expression - "I will make them," etc. - is very vague; it may be thus understood, that, without being joined to them, they will own that the Philadelphians are the remnant that God loves. In verse 10 we have the reason, the wherefore of the blessing: "Thou hast kept the word of my patience." It is not only that we wait for Him, but that we wait as He waits. One keeps the word of that patience, and that word forms the affections and the conduct.

343 "The hour of temptation." A temptation is coming, which will try all the dwellers upon the earth. We must not confound the temptation with the tribulation; the latter is more peculiar to Judea; it is Jacob's trouble; Jer. 30: 7. But here, although this temptation embraces the whole habitable world, Philadelphia is not found there, so that it is neither in the great temptation, nor in the great tribulation. In verse 11 mark well, that there is here a very positive revelation of His coming, and that it is not the same here as for Sardis, to which the threat is addressed of being overtaken as by a thief. The contrast with Sardis is remarkable enough. If we are keeping the word of His patience, though weak, we shall be kept out of the hour of temptation. First, all Jewish character is set aside; secondly, one is identified with Jesus in His awaiting.

Verse 12. The promise has for me a very touching form; He says, "My," "My." In this address, we see Christ found again on the earth; He was there found with little strength; He suffered from the Jews; the porter opened to Him the door; John 10. So it is here. That is why the figures are rather Jewish. At the same time we find the church also. There are the great moral elements of Christ and the church, although there is not the power displayed in judgment before the world. As to the characters which Christ takes, in these three churches, there is this to notice: in Sardis, the church; in Philadelphia, David and the kingdom; in Laodicea, the world. We can understand His resuming successively these characters for the end.

Laodicea

. Revelation 3: 14. That which Jesus essentially is in Himself; not however as a character available for the church in holiness and truth. If the church fails, He takes His range in His own personal character, more independently of what the church is. He is the "beginning" of all things, always, in Himself; He is that, come what may. When the church was the manifestation of Himself to the world, He was something for it; at least, as motive in conduct. Here the church does no longer respond to Him; then He takes, in Himself, every character in testimony: "The Amen," in whom every promise is secured; "the faithful witness," etc. That which is wanting to the church, He is that in Himself - "the beginning of the creation of God," the beginning of all things. Christ is that which corresponds to the primitive idea that was in God's mind before all things. The Greek word arkel means the beginning in theory, and the end in practice. The main thought in building a house is to have a roof; but, in practice, a roof is the last thing that is made. The word "principle" comes nearest to the sense; but it does not give all the idea of the Greek. These titles lead us to follow the setting aside of the church.

344 Verse 15. They did not see this faithful and true witness; therefore they are content with a miserable state, which is nothing at all as testimony. They are so far off, that they do not perceive what they are come to, and they think themselves rich. For them it is not worth while to be hot or cold for Jesus; it is complete thoughtlessness and indifference. "And thou knowest not that thou art . . . the miserable." Until the church is spued out He does not cease to counsel. As to the characters which Christ takes here, it is not as saying that He will act towards Laodicea according to these titles; but He prepares the spirit of the church to know that those things will be accomplished in Him; it is what He will do, when He accomplishes His promises, etc. In this manner, Laodicea follows a line, after the church is gone, to lead to the throne from which comes forth the judgments in the following chapters. "I counsel thee to buy," because it is always a question of responsibility.

Verse 20. There is so much apathy, that the Lord contented Himself with knocking at the door. Verse 21: "To him that overcometh," who will have overcome that indifferentism. It is, indeed, something to open the door to be saved, and to ascend the throne. When there is indifference for so precious an object, truly it is sad. "On my throne." It has been said that it is the highest promise; for my part it seems to me that it is the promise which is most simply necessary; it is the minimum of the reward, because one must either reign or not be there at all. At Sardis, repentance is proposed to the church; the promise is conditional for the whole. At Laodicea, the invitation is individual.

345 In these churches, we have the moral character; but the manner in which that ends in judgment is not said. For my part, I do not occupy myself with the ruined house, which is going to fall; I take away the stones, because I know that the Lord is coming to fetch that which belongs to Him. The action of the Spirit among Protestants, rather than among Papists, is to me a sign of the approach of the judgments, because God is acting in that which is outside the original church. That makes me understand the blessing of being like Jonathan, who, having gone forward in simple faith, repelled the enemies of Israel without participating in the follies of Saul. It may be that, in the Roman states, popery will extend its sway over all, whilst in other states, Germany, Holland, England, etc., Protestantism will end by being merely a negative state of things without importance.

This quite naturally leads to the throne. Christ has said His last word in the church: it is a question now of the introduction of the Firstborn into the world.

Chapter 4. Here Christ is no longer seen on the earth, in the midst of the candlesticks; He is no longer occupied with them. He is now seen in heaven. All is over with the church down here. Verse 2: "A throne." It is not Christ in the church, nor at Jerusalem, but in heaven. The church ought to have been, on the earth, an adequate witness of the ways of God, making God known; but if it has failed in this, God makes Himself known. He Himself accomplishes His objects. Verse 3: "A rainbow." It is neither in relationship with the church nor with the Jews, but with the creation - postdiluvian relationship.

Verse 4: "Four and twenty thrones." A throne is the royal seat of authority and government. Those four and twenty elders are kings. Here are only thrones and crowns. It is not the church as the bride; yet the church is formed there. There is nothing said either of the character of priest. The main thought is a throne: we are there before a throne. These four and twenty are reigning ones. Verse 5: "Seven lamps of fire," which bring to light and judge what does not suit the throne. "Thunderings" mean majesty in government, manifested in a fearful manner. Verse 6: "A sea of glass" is solidified purity. One needed to be pure to be there. It is what one must be to be there. It is also the remembrance of what was done for those who are there; but it would be rather in chapter 15, that the sea might present this idea of remembrance. "Four living creatures" are the active qualities of God; they are the principles of His authority.

346 In the symbols, we must know how to set aside the thought of the creatures themselves, so as only to see the ideas. This is what is important in a symbol, that it is a grouping together of moral qualities by means of one being or several, thus forming a picture which gives us a complete idea of God in the thing symbolised. Thus with the beast, it is hardly possible to understand the symmetrical arrangement of seven heads and ten horns; whereas, we understand easily seven forms of government for the beast, and his power represented by ten kings. "Full of eyes" (v. 8) is the absolute sagacity to see everywhere. As to the cherubim, the idea that I have is, that they are the symbol of God's judicial government. God put a cherubim "to keep the way of the tree of life." They are four heads of creation, just as one sees their classes for the earth in Genesis 2: 20. They celebrate the Creator-God, the governor of the world, the God of the Old Testament; what He is outside Christianity, consequently for the world, whether the world or Israel; the Almighty, Jehovah, the coming One, the God who is coming, as He is the God who was. At the same time these names are mentioned in one of the epistles to the Corinthians; 2 Cor. 6: 18. The God who is the Almighty, the Jehovah, would be the Father of Christians.

Verse 9: it is a question of the creation here. Such is the subject of chapter 4. It is the creation which gives glory to God; there is neither redemption, nor anything else. In verse 11 read, "for thy will," for thy good pleasure. It is God the Creator, governor, on the throne, with all that appertains to the supreme throne. "Four and twenty" is twice the administrative perfection in man - a double testimony. "Seven" is a prime number that has no factor; this number is more abstract, and rises higher as a symbol. "Twelve" is the number which is most capable of subdivision. When it is a question of the action of man, it is always twelve.

Revelation 5. Books were then rolls. When there was much matter, they were written on within and on the back. In this one, which had seven seals, each turn was sealed at the head of the roll. Verse 5: you will always find that it is the elders who have divine intelligence; they are the explainers. We find here the Jewish power of government. "Root of David" is just to say, where the government of God is to be placed; Christ is the source of it. "Seven horns" and "seven eyes"; it is still for government, because they are "the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth." There is something to learn in the history of these eyes. In 2 Chronicles 16: 9, they "run to and fro throughout the whole earth." This is providence in general. In Zechariah 3: 9, they are on the stone laid in Jerusalem. In Zechariah 4: 10, these same eyes, being established in Jerusalem, "run to and fro through the whole earth"; it is a providence which originates in God's intention of putting the throne in Zion. Lastly here, in Revelation 5, before being in Zion, the eyes are in the horns of the Lamb on high.

347 Verse 8. According to the grammatical order, it is only the elders who have harps and vials; but one can hardly insist as to this. It is the prayers of the saints, and not of the priests; the idea is Jewish. It is as in Luke 1, at the time when Zechariah offered the incense, all the people were outside praying. Verse 9 is literally, "and they sing." Read rather, "thou hast bought [people]. . . . Thou hast made them kings . . . . and they reign." All scholars suppress the "us." It is not difficult to understand, because the priests present the prayers of the saints. As to these saints on the earth, God has made them kings and priests. There was no doubt that the four and twenty elders were kings and priests; but that which was so beautiful to celebrate was, that those suffering ones, left behind awhile, were also kings and priests. There is a slight difference of reading as to "reign," or "will reign"; for my part, I think it is rather "will reign." The church is there, but not alone: all the saints of the Old Testament are there also. Verse 11 and following; it is not only creation which this multitude of angels celebrate, it is also redemption. It is only the elders who say "for thou," etc. (v. 9). They have the divine intelligence which lays hold of the reason why Christ was humbled. It is the same as to the creation; Rev. 4: 11. Whereas, the angels merely celebrate the glory of God, without saying why God has done the things.

Revelation 6. The first four seals are the providential history of what God will do, when the moment comes to introduce the Firstborn into the world. Then, in the general government of His providence, God does certain things, by which He begins to put down man. It is the beginning of the ways of God, when He is going to introduce His Firstborn into the world. There is, first of all, the first start, which seems an apparent victory, then all sorts of chastisements, which press upon men, without breaking them down. Verse 9, they are those who have before suffered from the hand of man. "The souls are," as if to say, I saw them living, although they were put to death. Their souls were under the altar, as a sacrifice to God for His cause. (The same re-appears in Revelation 20, where they are seen to be raised from the dead.) But it is the idea that they have been put to death. They received white robes, to shew that they are pure and approved of God. What they ask for is not resurrection, but vengeance. Verse 17, we must carefully mark that it is not God who says, "the great day of his wrath is come"; it is the frightened men who say so at that moment; but later, when the day is come, they are not frightened about it. Verses 12-17: this earthquake is not the same as in Matthew 24. At the fifth seal, after the scene of the souls under the altar, there is a certain period not mentioned here, during which there are still some put to death. This would be the place of the great tribulation which follows the abomination standing in the holy place; Matt. 24: 15-28. Then, at the sixth seal, a shaking, which is not yet the end; but after which come other things noticed farther on in the Apocalypse.

348 Revelation 7. Here again we have twelve (twelve multiplied by twelve). They are the spared ones of Israel. This is much more general. It is all the spared ones of Israel. Verses 9-17: this is the passage of the Apocalypse, which is the most difficult to class. God will help us, I trust. Here I do not find intelligence. I find still that they celebrate salvation coming from God, such as He is in His government. God (and the Lamb on the earth) is the one who spared them. It is an elder who has the intelligence of what concerns this multitude. We have seen Israel in the first part of this chapter: now we have Gentiles. I find in these saved ones neither intelligence of redemption, nor the Father, nor that joy which finds in God its happiness. They are relieved. It is an almost negative blessing. "They shall hunger no more," etc. I find nothing here of what is characteristic for the church. They are Gentiles, who go through the time of trial pointed out to Philadelphia. Are they in heaven or on the earth? At all events, they are before the throne, and not on thrones. Their position is altogether inferior to that of the church. Their religion is that of the Apocalypse; their relation with God is according to the Apocalyptic form. They are neither in relationship with the Father, nor with the throne on the earth.

349 Revelation 8. In verses 3-5, the effect of intercession in this case is to bring down judgment. There is something of mystery here. The saints begin to interest themselves about this. We have much more of the imagery of the temple. "The fire of the altar," the judgment of God which Christ suffered, is turned against the earth. That which had been a burnt-offering to God of a sweet savour becomes against man his very judgment. These are not only acts of providence, but religious dealings in connection with the world. The Jewish principle of the relationship of God is with the world. If there is evil, God will avenge it; Psalm 20. The opening of the seals brings out the counsels of God, whilst the trumpets announce God in judgment. As there is a throne in heaven before it is established in Zion, so before there is a temple where God receives His worship, the saints on the earth are in relationship with the temple of God in heaven. Since it is a question of introducing the Firstborn into the world, God shews Himself more and more distinctly under a Jewish character.

In the first four trumpets the judgment is limited to the third part of the things smitten. It is all that is organised on the earth, beginning by the lowest. The sources of refreshment and the authorities are smitten completely for a third part. First trumpet is a third part of the eminent persons and all prosperity. Second trumpet is some great power, which God employs in judgment, in causing to fall into the mass of the people (the sea). Third trumpet is the star, some power, acting as light, which corrupts the principles of the peoples and influences for evil. It is not only human power; it is something higher (as for instance the star of Napoleon). The "rivers" represent peoples, the "waters" moral influences. The peoples moving under certain principles become the rivers. Fourth trumpet is the governmental powers are smitten: they are in darkness, at least for a third part.

Revelation 9. Now we have not only men smitten in their circumstances; but those who cling to the earth are smitten in their persons in a direct manner. Fifth trumpet is a power, especially Satanic, which comes out of the bottomless pit and finishes the corrupting of all wisdom of government. A star of heaven ought never to be on the earth. Mahomet is an instance of this. He was a man of extraordinary power put by Satan in movement to spread a moral influence, which vitiates the atmosphere one breathes. In verse 3 are "locusts." There are agents, a whole army, which spring from this principle.

350 Verse 6. Men tormented by the devil will seek death. They will suffer in two ways, morally and physically, being prepared unto battle. There is an appearance of dignity, of royal righteousness; but when they turn round, one sees that they are subject to something (hair). At the same time they will do harm. They have the teeth of lions. God gives the name of their head in two languages, perhaps because the scene takes place in the East; and for a Hebrew he would be Abaddon, and for a Greek Apollyon. Sixth trumpet - we are in the East since the fifth trumpet, it seems to me. Here we are near the Euphrates. It is a terrible invasion. It is much more an armed attack than a moral influence (the influence of the tail, so to speak); not but that there is equally that. Verse 19. The men that escape repent neither of their idolatry, nor of their wickedness. The influences of the last form of evil, for the last judgments in the East, prepare themselves on every side, because Jerusalem is about to become the centre.

Remark that up to the end of Revelation 11 we have the general history; afterwards we have that which is more specially relative to the beast and to the apostasy. Therefore it was necessary to mark the place in the general history, and it is this we have in the parenthesis of chapters 10 and 11 up to verse 13.

What we have in chapters 8 and 9 is the preparation to arrive at the last form of evil. God chastens men in order to stop them, and it would be a mercy if they would listen. One must notice, moreover, that until now it is these wicked men who are smitten, and not as yet the saints, although there may be persecutions as at all times.

Revelation 10. "Clothed with a cloud" is an appearance of divine majesty. "A rainbow" is again the covenant with the creation. "His face was as it were the sun" - supreme majesty; "his feet as pillars of fire" - the firmness of judgment. He descends from heaven to take possession of the earth, by placing His feet, one on the earth, the other on the sea. Verses 3, 4: "Seven thunders" - the perfection of God's intervention in His judgment, answering to the voice of the angel. God keeps sealed those things which John then sees; He will not allow John to write. God allows things to be spoken, in order to shew that all His power must intervene to answer this cry of Christ; but He will only reveal what is in relationship with that which is an object of veneration in the world; Christianity, Judaism, and consequently the apostasy. With His feet, Christ takes possession of all, China, America, etc.: but it is not His will to occupy us with it here. In verse 6 read, "That there should be no longer delay." The "Little book" means not the ways of providence in the world hidden, but the relation of the servants with what takes place in the world, the persecuted servants.

351 Revelation 11. This chapter is properly the summing up of the "little book," the development of which will take place in the following chapters. "Measure": the book takes Jewish forms here (this had not taken place before) and owns those who can really offer worship to God, or enter into the interior of the temple. The prophetic Spirit, announcing that a judgment is going to take place, takes and puts the individual in relationship with God according to the principles of His government. We are in the last week, and commence the history of the things which enter into the sphere of the last prophets. Up to this the things did not distinctly come out in this way; but now here we are in the week of Daniel. In verse 2 this measuring indicates that God owns what belongs to Him (property is measured by a line). In Matthew 24 the Lord leaves everything vague until the last half-week, at least as to the period. It is from the time of the abomination in the holy place that all is determined. For the last half-week, there is nothing doubtful to my mind. As to Zechariah 10, 14, chapter 10 gives the last attack, and chapter 14 the first. It is evident enough to me that, the first time, Jerusalem is taken, and that the second time, the Lord being there and the remnant in force, the enemies do not succeed.

Verse 4. The two witnesses stand before the God, not of heaven, but of all the earth. It is not a candlestick before the Lord of the earth; it is an adequate testimony to the state of Israel according to God - "two witnesses." God will also be in the midst of the remnant, without owning the people. In Zechariah we see everything in order. There is a candlestick and two olive trees, which furnish oil for the candlestick. Here it is two candlesticks and two olive trees. How can you arrange them so as to make a whole? In the "two," I do not go beyond the idea that it is an adequate testimony.

352 Verses 5, 6. We find again here the power of Elias and of Moses. It is the proof that God takes up anew His relationships with His people, but in a sovereign manner, by means of the prophets as of old, when they were in Egypt or separated from the temple, as in the time of Elijah. This is always what God does when His people are in disorder and He returns to His relationship with them. One sees again here that His relationships with His people are at the same time relationships and non-relationships, because nothing is in order (a proof by the way, that the first half-week is viewed vaguely and might well belong at the same time both to the mission of Jesus and to the testimony of the end until the abomination of the desolation). The witnesses shut the heavens; they have authority over the waters and over the earth. The three things which we have seen to be objects of the judgment (chap. 8) are now in their power.

Verse 7. It is not only that the holy city is trodden under foot, but besides that, Satan destroys the testimony of God on the earth. All then is in the hands of the wicked one. Verse 8. Read "the great street of the city." "The city" is not Babylon, but Jerusalem. Verse 10. What ferocious joy of man, when they had put to death the witnesses of God! "They that dwell upon the earth" are those who are settled there, morally as well as otherwise. Verses 11-13: we see that after their testimony there is a series of events. Verse 13: there is extreme fear; but they had not received the testimony, for they give glory to the God of heaven. Here the sixth trumpet is finished. It goes up to the death of the two witnesses.

The seventh trumpet is probably the end of the last half-week. There is nothing said here of what happens; only, when it has sounded, they celebrate in heaven the victory, because the trumpet has sounded for the end; chap. 10: 7. Chapter 11 terminates the Apocalypse; for in the seventh trumpet they celebrate the result of all, up to the judgment of the dead and the everlasting kingdom.

353 In Revelation 11 the prophet makes the beast to ascend out of the bottomless pit without developing its history. Now he begins afresh, and although it is a fresh taking up of the thing, at the same time it is, as it were, the sequel. Having given the history of the world in general, he reserved the beast for a particular history; but when he comes to that, he takes his sources in heaven (that is, from Satan).

It will be noticed that Revelation 12-14 go together. In Revelation 12 we have the great elements, the bringing on the scene the principal actors, and all that relates directly to the power of Satan; in chapter 13 the instruments of that power in the world. Revelation 14 gives the ways of God, who intervenes in the midst of all that.

Revelation 12: 1: "Clothed with the sun" is with supreme power. Verse 10: it is the beginning of the kingdom - not that it is yet established on the earth;* but because he who hinders is cast out from heaven. His power, although not yet destroyed, is thrown into a more limited circle. It is no longer an influence from heaven. Satan on the earth is obliged to shew himself such as he is. As long as he is in heaven, he can exercise a deceitful influence; once upon the earth, he is obliged to unmask himself. "Our brethren" are those who on earth were yet aspiring to heaven. The church is already in heaven.

{*There is progress in the return of the Jews to God. First, they acknowledge their sad state and ask for deliverance in acknowledging that the nations cannot deliver, and that one must lean upon God. To this God responds. Secondly, they judge their sins between themselves and God; then the impression is much deeper. (Ps. 130. De profundis.) God responds to this also. These make two interventions of God in the restoring of His people.}

Revelation 13. Here we are in history. The beast rises out of the sea, not out of the bottomless pit, because it is a question of the history of the instruments, and not of the sources of power. It resembles the characters of the first three beasts of Daniel 7; and it is the fourth. It is (v. 3) a resurrection-beast; it is important to notice this in order to recognise it. Verse 5: "Continue forty and two months"; God will permit him to act during that time. It always seems to me that the "little horn" of Daniel 7 resembles this first beast much more than the second. Verse 8 "All that dwell upon the earth"; one must always distinguish them in the moral character of being settled down here, in contrast with those who by faith belong to heaven. Verse 10: God will not have force and violence; He will have the patience of faith.

354 Verse 11: "Another beast." Christianity is not the Lamb; for the Lamb is Christ personally. I have an idea that it is a power of the earth, a power which rises up from among the Jews, when all is organised, when the first beast is already there. The word "earth" is one to which one must pay great attention, in order to have the interpretation, because in Hebrew and Greek it means the organised earth, or else Judea. See this second case in Isaiah 24.

It had "two horns," so as to resemble "a lamb." For my part, I think that it is a false Christ in Judea, who will be the Messiah of the Jews and the agent of the Roman empire to persuade the Jews to submit to the beast.

Verse 13. Here he is acting as a prophet, and giving signs or wonders, as a proof that he is sent by Jehovah. Is it not said in 2 Thessalonians 2 that he owns no God? The answer is "Yes"; but the difficulty is completely removed by the testimony of Daniel 11, where we see that he does not "regard any god"; while at the same time he honours his god Mauzzim. Outwardly before the Jews, he will have a god; inwardly, he has none. In 2 Thessalonians 2 it is, to my mind, religious and moral.

Revelation 14 is the intervention of God in the midst of all these things. "An hundred forty and four thousand" are those who have suffered with Christ from the hands of the wicked Jews, like the remnant with David. Before the temple is built the true David reigns in Zion, and those who have suffered with Him reign with Him. They have a share in of heaven. They are not in heaven; but they sing the song of heaven. I do not know whether they are raised from the dead or changed. There are seven things in this chapter: verse 1, first; verse 6, second; verse 8, third; verse 9, fourth; verse 13, fifth; verse 14, sixth; and verse 17, seventh.

In the fifth section - the time when one ceases to be put to death for the Lord - it is "the dead," particularly their character the diers, so to speak. This is the close of martyrdom. The diers in the Lord are blessed from that moment; they enter into the blessing which they have been waiting for. Hence it is finished - nothing remains but the coming of the Son of man. They are blessed from this time. I do not say that they die from henceforth. In the sixth it is the harvest or judgment where distinction is made; in the ninth, the vintage, where everything is trodden down. At His coming, He smites everywhere; but where all has not been against Him ("the isles"), He distinguishes; whilst in Edom, where the gathering together of the wicked ones takes place, all is trodden down.

355 Revelation 15, 16 are altogether separate. It is the wrath of God. This is not the same as the wrath of the Lamb. It is God acting in public government, and not Christ executing judgment in person. At the same time, it is unmingled judgment, because the saints who suffered under the beast are not ingathered and in glory.

Revelation 16 is the vials. We have here, as for the trumpets, the earth, the sea, the rivers, the sun: the sun becomes more scorching. Men would have this beast: they must know what it is. Fifth vial: the throne of the beast is the object. Sixth vial: the Euphrates is dried up. All the sources of prosperity are smitten. The plagues fall upon the men who worship the beast and did not repent. Also the sixth vial prepares the last great catastrophe. Verse 13: "The dragon" is the open energy and hostility of Satan; "the beast" is the Roman empire in its state of blasphemy, having again come up out of the bottomless pit; and "the false prophet" is he who pretended to be the sent one of God. In verse 16 we find ourselves again with Hebrew landmarks - Armageddon. It is, as in Judges 5, the gathering together of the kings to make war against God.

Verses 16, 18. "In the air"; because it is universal. What a solemn word - "It is done!" We have not yet the judgment of the beast. Up to this it is only what happens around; the judgment of the beast is another thing. "The earth" is where they have not received "the love of the truth"; then God sends them "strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." They unite with the rebellion of men under the government of God, and undergo direct judgment. They are smitten alive; whereas "the nations," where Christianity has not had its seat, undergo the judgment in a less terrible manner. The Apocalypse brings us to the point where the apostasy of the church has led the world; it is an apostate concentration. It ends in this way on the earth. On the other hand, this book shews us also the end of all things for good by the rapture of the saints to heaven. To sum it all up, blessing is on high, judgment below.

356 Revelation 17, 18. It is not the beast in its particular history, but now its relationship with the harlot.

Revelation 17: 1. "Upon many waters" means by the side of the waters. She has direct power over the beast, and her influence extends even over nations. Verse 3: For the Spirit this world is a wilderness. The beast has the royal colour, but the harlot is much more adorned. Verse 5: "Abominations of the earth" are idols. It is a mystery; it is not a clear thing, as if it were a city. If there were Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon, it would not be a mystery. One must seek here one or more characters. She is the cause of every persecution, and of all the blood which has been shed. Verse 8: The beast reappears with a diabolical character. Verse 9: "Mountains" are seats of authority in stability.

Verse 11. This eighth king is the beast itself; but it is, at the same time, one of the old forms which reappears (consuls, decemvirs, emperors - one knows not what; but it is "of the seven"). Verse 12: "They reign for the same time with the beast." The ten horns belong to the beast; they are not the barbarians of the middle ages. Verse 17 means the horns, which destroy the harlot, not the "kings of the earth," for they lament; chap. 18: 9. We have here the end of Christendom; Christianity had ceased before this. These horns are indeed kings; but they are powers and kings at the same time. If the king falls, the power - the people - is always there.

Revelation 18: 4-6. Two things are said to the saints: first, to come out of Babylon in order not to partake of her sins, nor of her judgment; secondly, to smite her. This warning, though placed in the account after the judgment of Babel, is addressed to the saints before the judgment.

Revelation 19: 10. We must distinguish the prophetic Spirit from the Spirit sent from heaven. In the first case, it is the Spirit who declares things beforehand; in the second, it is the Spirit given after a work accomplished in redemption, as a seal of that work. This is important to distinguish, because the testimony of Jesus is not always the gospel.

From verse 11 to chapter 20: 3 is the warrior judgment. What follows is rather the sessional judgment. Verse 11. The armies which accompany Him are the saints. Chap. 17: 14: As to "heaven opened," it is interesting to remark that, until Christ, heaven could not be opened. We find four times heaven opened in the New Testament. Firstly, at the time of the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3: 21, 22); secondly, during the days of the Son of man, according to John 1: 51 (this will be fully accomplished in the millennium; but already on the earth, His Person called for that, Luke 22: 43); thirdly, at the death of Stephen, for the reception on high of the redeemed man; fourthly, in judgment. Rev. 19: 15. "Out of his mouth"; "the word that I have spoken" to you, "the same shall judge," etc. Verse 20. Those are the two which go first into the lake of fire. Others will be cast in somewhat later; Matt. 25.

357 Revelation 20. As for Satan, he is cast into the bottomless pit, because he is again to come out and deceive the nations afresh. In verse 4, besides the general expression, which says that they are on thrones, there are two classes named. Otherwise it might have been feared that these persons, those of the last half-week, the last raised from the dead, would not be found with the others; they are introduced here, in order that we may see their place. Christ, who comes like lightning, does not pass away like lightning. He sits down to judge. In verses 7-9, it is to be remarked that the saints do not suffer; there is a complete separation. That which belongs to God is gathered to the Lord who is there; but when "the camp of the saints" is surrounded, fire comes down out of heaven.

Verse 10. Satan, once cast down, never goes up again to heaven. In verse 11, "I saw a great white throne"; it is always sessional; but Christ is alone. There are no other thrones here, because it is a question of the dead; we shall not judge the dead. One must, moreover, pay attention to this, that Christ does not come for the judgment of the dead. He is already there when the moment arrives. Verse 13. This is to say, that all the rest of the dead were there.

Revelation 21: 1-8. These verses continue the history. The Lamb is not named in these eight verses; it is not a mediatorial system. It is God "all in all."

In Revelation 21: 9, we go back a little. It is one of the seven angels who shews the New Jerusalem to John. This remark may shew that we have not here a continuation of the history. There is also the contrast of the two cities. It needs a measure of spirituality to lay hold of the figures here. The city descended out of heaven; the origin of the church is heavenly. It is always twelve, because it is always a question of men, though it be in glory. "Gold" is divine righteousness. One sees the meaning of this symbol by the mercy-seat of gold which received the blood. As to "precious stones," I do not know whether I could explain more than the light of God diversified in His saints; as, for instance, the light of the sun in a prism. God is light; and the church is the perfect prism, in which the light of God brings out in detail all the beauties of His glory. I find this varied expression of the perfection of God, first in the creature (or creation); secondly, in Christ, in the priesthood; thirdly, in glory for the church. It is God's essential perfection, not manifesting itself essentially, but in a centre which shews its various beauties. All these figures furnish us with real ideas, which it is good to lay hold of. This is made very evident by the fact, that this varied glory has its history in creation, in grace, and in glory. The "gates" are twelve pearls; the beauty of the church appears directly. There was no temple therein: God is the temple of it; His proper glory insures His majesty. The city has God Himself for its light; but the city is itself the light of the nations; v. 23, 24. In verse 26, they bring their gifts "to" it, and not "into" it. Instead of each one worshipping his net (Hab. 1: 16), they will own the God of glory, honouring Him and presenting to Him their gifts (in His city on this earth), as of old they offered oblations to Jehovah before His altar on the earth.

358 Revelation 22: 3. All the ripe fruit which the life of Christ produces we eat of in heaven; all that is manifested (the leaves) will be administered in grace and healing on the earth. On the earth now, the church should be the manifestation of all this glory.

In this chapter there are three times "I come quickly." Verse 7 is a warning for those who are in connection with the things said in this book - those who are found in the circumstances to which the prophecy applies. Verse 12. This is much more general; the consequence will be universal. In verse 16 Jesus no longer prophesies; He introduces Himself afresh. Then as soon as He announces Himself in His character for the church, namely, His Person and His coming, the cry of the bride is - "Come." This (v. 17) is the complete picture of the church in the absence of Christ. Four things are there: first, the Holy Ghost; secondly, the bride waiting for Christ, knowing what He is for it; thirdly some weak ones, who have not yet entered into the affections of the bride, but at the same time belonging to Christ, and therefore invited to join their voices to its own. Fourthly and lastly, the church, the depositary of living waters, possessing the Holy Spirit in the absence of Christ, invites those from without to come and quench their thirst.

Outline of the Revelation

J. N. Darby.

<28028E> 360

Let us look a little at the different forms of evil in connection with the Revelation.

When we go beyond the seven churches, we find the government of the world, but we see the government put into the hands of the Lamb that was slain. The book, we know, is divided into three parts; chap. 1: 19. Firstly, "The things which thou hast seen," that is, the personal glory of Christ; not merely in His deity, nor His humanity, but in the character of judgment, as seen in chapter 1. Secondly, "The things which are" - the seven churches - His judgment of the seven churches as given in chapters 2 and 3. Thirdly, "The things which shall be hereafter" (or, after these). There we see God's judgment and government of the world.

In Revelation 1 we find the divine attributes in One who is Man. There is a full description of the Lord Jesus, not as girded for priestly service, but "clothed with a garment down to his foot"; here it is priestly judgment. The "golden girdle" is divine righteousness. "His head and his hairs were white like wool," the Ancient of days; Dan. 7: 9. "His eyes a flame of fire" are divine unsparing scrutiny; "His feet like unto fine brass," earthly judgment; "His voice as the sound of many waters," His majesty; "His countenance as the sun," supreme light; "The first and the last," Jehovah; "He that liveth and was dead," the risen man. We see Him with certain divine attributes, and executing judgment as the Son of man. There is something similar in chapters 7 and 10 of Daniel. You get Him as Jehovah, and as One risen from the dead, as the risen Man walking among the candlesticks.

The seven churches (Rev. 2, 3) then existing are looked at as those which Christ judges, though they present to us the whole history of the church until the coming of the Lord. They are thus given that there might be nothing to hinder their looking for the immediate coming of the Lord. It is the same in Matthew 25. The virgins who go to sleep are the same that wake; and the servants who receive the talents are the same the Lord reckons with at His coming, though ages and generations have passed away from the time of the church going to sleep, and the time of the going forth of the cry, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh." When the Spirit of God speaks of the Bridegroom tarrying, He speaks of the present state of things existing unto the end. We see seven subsisting churches, and there is no form of evil can come in that is not provided for. In Jerusalem was found the blood of all the prophets; in Babylon (chap. 17) the blood of all the saints. We at the close have all the responsibility. The vision and the blessing was from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come. "Who is" is the immutable being of God. Thus time is brought in in connection with Him who is eternal - the coming One - who is, was, and is coming.

361 In Revelation 4 we see a throne set in heaven, and the four living creatures surrounding it. The throne of Daniel 7 is a partial development; but it is not simply the throne in that character here. We have cherubim as well as seraphim. What is the difference? The cherubim are connected with present judgment on the earth; they are the seat of God's judicial power on earth. The seraphim covered their faces, crying, "Holy, holy, holy." They are connected with God revealed, so as to bring man as man into His presence. In Isaiah 6 we find the seraphim. Here we see government in respect to the holiness of God's nature, not so much His revealed ways. God comes out according to His nature. Anything not according to that nature I cannot have. We find the incompatibility of God's nature with sin - the contrariety of an unholy nature with a holy Being. The living creatures here are cherubim, the attributes of God and the heads of creation - cattle, beasts of the field, birds, and man. The lion was the symbol of strength; the calf, firmness; man, intelligence; the eagle, swiftness of judgment. The seraphim in Isaiah 6 have nothing to do with grace, only with judgment. The coal of fire is grace, but burning grace. Cherubim are the government of God on earth; seraphim cry, "Holy, holy, holy." The living creatures here illustrate the cherubic character: Holy, holy, holy, the seraphic character; the seven Spirits of God the attributive character. The seven lamps are the seven Spirits; they are in connection with God's government of the earth, and similar to Isaiah 11, "the spirit of wisdom," etc. The rainbow (v. 3) is God's covenant with creation. You find judgment, but not yet the Lord till the next chapter. The living creatures in Ezekiel 1 are the attributes of God, the pillars of the throne. "The Lord reigneth . . . he sitteth between the cherubims," Ps. 99: 1. Man made gods of the attributes to worship.

362 In Revelation 5 the angels are seen as a distinct set outside. In chapter 4 are no angels at all - the living creatures may be angels; in chapter 5 they are the heavenly saints. We perhaps get here the transfer of power from angels to men, according to Hebrews 2. The coming age is not to be under angels, but under man. The Lamb's taking the book is the beginning in a certain way of the coming age. All through the old dispensation God was dealing with man through angels - "the law was given by the disposition of angels"; now they are displaced by man, their power transferred to the heavenly saints. The four living creatures are only used as symbols, just as the beast of chapter 17 has seven heads and ten horns; if taken literally, where would you put the ten horns on seven heads? They have tried to put them in pictures, and they have made a mess of it.

The beasts and elders worship together. The beasts celebrate, but do not worship. You see the beasts and elders separate in chapter 4. The angels never give a reason for their worship; the saints always do, for they have the mind and thoughts of God. Theirs is an intelligent - a "reasonable service."

God has been pleased to use certain agents, according to these attributes, of which the beasts are the symbols. He has used angels, He will use saints. Earthly saints will not reign over the earth, they are reigned over - a royal nation in a certain sense. The beasts have more the governmental character, the elders are worshippers. Both represent the church in chapter 5; they may perhaps include the Old Testament saints too. The elders are characterised by their intelligence in the mind of God. In Revelation 5: 10, the words us and we should be them and they - it refers to the remnant. Their song mentions the two classes - themselves the heavenly saints, and the remnant. "Redeemed or bought," "made them." He is worthy, for He has purchased us. It is not here so much His character as the Redeemer making atonement that is seen, but rather what we find in Philippians 2 - the humbled Man set upon the throne - the effect of His death for Him, and not for us. Through death He got into this place. It is His title to take the government of the earth.

Verse 6. The seven horns and the seven eyes represent the perfection of power and the perfection of intelligence. The "eyes" are the exercise of divine intelligence in the government of the earth. (See 2 Chr. 16: 9; Zech. 4: 10.) In the lion (v. 5), we have the symbol of power, in the lamb (v. 6) of redemption, in the seven spirits we get the Holy Ghost as governing. They are sent out into all the earth, the divine perfection of government in the earth. The eyes in chapter 4 are all-seeing; in chapter 5 perfection in government; in chapter 4: 8 internal spiritual perception; in chapter 5 all is looked at as in order, both in the heavens and the earth, the effect of the Lamb's taking the book. There is no reign in chapter 4.

363 The church has the spiritual intelligence now which is necessary to the government of the earth, but is not yet in the place to exercise the power. We have an unction from the Holy One and know all things. You cannot go beyond that. We do not need any fresh endowment. Of course there is the new body and the glory which we have not got. Our bodies belong to the first creation. I belong to the new creation. The church will have no more power of discernment in the glory than now. The perfect thing is not yet come; 1 Cor. 13. There are always the two things (for instance, in John, we have everlasting life as a present possession; in Romans 6: 22, "the end everlasting life"). So in Romans we have justification and righteousness as a present thing, whilst in Philippians 3 it is something future. This is because, although we belong to the new creation, we are still in the old as to the body. As regards the new man, it realises everything in heaven. As to our body, we realise that we are groaning on earth. They are priests in chapter 5, but not acting in chapter 4. That is preparatory, a sort of programme to the soul of all the things that were to come out after. The throne is set, but not yet acting. God's holiness is celebrated.

You have the throne set in heaven, not in Jerusalem. God is seen in heaven and directly I see the character of things in Him. When Christ comes to the world, He comes as God, not as the Messiah. In the first three Gospels He comes as Messiah, presenting Himself to man's responsibility. They are summed up in John 1: 11: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Then in John we have Him as God manifest in flesh. The Son came to reveal the Father. So we find John full of election. We have the character of John's Gospel in that verse, "I came forth from the Father and am come into the world," chap. 16: 28. If He comes as God, He must necessarily come to the world as the sphere of His acting, not to the Jews only. "I came into the world." He leaves the world and goes to the Father. Whenever you put an interpretation upon a scripture, you go wrong. One of the old fathers has well said, "He reads the scriptures well who brings back a sense from it, but does not take one to it." In chapters 4, 5, the elders are the administrative power by which the attributes of God are displayed.

364 In Revelation 6, at the opening of the fifth seal, we find the souls of martyrs under the altar. They cry for judgment, not rest. Then as the answer to their prayer we have a mighty shaking at the opening of the sixth seal, so that the kings, the great men, etc., think in their terror that the end is come (but they are mistaken).

Revelation 7. Before the other judgments are poured out, the Lord takes care to number His people. We have in this chapter God's people on earth: first, the Jews, then the Gentiles. These are those who go through the tribulation. They are the results of the everlasting gospel going out to the Gentiles after the church has been taken up. These saints, after the church is gone, are living in earthly circumstances and have the highest kind of comfort you can have. These saints are in a better case than the millennial ones, but not in so good an one as the elder saints. Saints have so got down to earth in their hopes that they have taken this as belonging to them, thanking God that He is coming down to them to wipe away their tears, instead of rising up to God beyond the place where tears are. The church is up in heaven. Where does this multitude come from? They are those who are living on the earth, for they serve God day and night in His temple, whilst in the New Jerusalem there is no temple. The everlasting gospel bears something of the character of John the Baptist's. Connected with judgment, they are warned. The number of the Jews here (one hundred and forty-four thousand) is a mystic number - it is that of human perfection - a thousand times over of each tribe (seven the highest indivisible number, perfection in unity, God's perfect number; twelve is the lowest number divisible by four different numbers). We find these Jews in Matthew 25 spoken of as the Lord's brethren. We have the heavenly saints in the same chapter as the virgins and the servants. These are not altogether the same as the one hundred and forty-four thousand of chapter 14. Some of them are killed during the tribulation and get their places in heaven. White robes - token of acceptance and righteousness - are given to the slain remnant. The Gentiles seen in chapter 7 are those who have gone through the tribulation and therefore have a higher place of blessing than those born during the millennium. The great tribulation is not the same as Jacob's trial; the former is connected with the whole earth, whilst the latter only applies to Israel. They may be going on at the same time.

365 We may just look at the connection of Psalms 93-100 with this period. Psalm 93, the Lord reigneth - general idea; Psalm 94, the cry of the remnant of Israel and the question asked, Is He going to have the throne together with Antichrist? (v. 20); Psalm 95, the last summons to Israel; Psalm 96, the everlasting gospel to the heathen; Psalm 97, He is actually coming; Psalm 98, He is come; Psalm 99, He is sitting between the cherubim; Psalm 100, all the Gentiles, the nations are summoned to come up and worship. Here we get what the reign of Solomon is a type of.

Revelation 8. Here we find the answers to the prayers of the saints (Rev. 6: 10), the angel having given efficacy to their prayers by offering them up with incense on the golden altar before the throne and now the judgments are poured out. The angel here is Christ. When the heavenly saints act as priests, they do not pray at all; Rev. 5: 8, 9. When Christ is the priest, as here, He adds incense to the prayers. In Revelation 5 the prayers are the incense. At the opening of the seventh seal we see more special judgments. First, there is silence, a lull after the terrible sixth, and no action. Then we come to the trumpets. In Revelation 8 are the first four judgments, and these are more specially on states and circumstances (they are the western judgments); in Revelation 9 the fifth and sixth trumpets, which are specially upon man, people are attacked; these are the eastern judgments, the third part of man being slain. The fifth falls on the apostate Jews who had not the seal of God on their foreheads; Rev. 9: 4. It is the wrath of God here that is poured out, not that of the Lamb. God is about to bring the Only-begotten into the world again, and in this chapter He is clearing the ground. His title as the slain Lamb is owned in Revelation 5, but we do not get His acting in judgment till we come to Revelation 19. The action here is all angelic.

366 Revelation 10 and 11 are parenthetical; Rev. 12, 13 and 14 are connected; Rev. 15-18 form an appendix. The whole book closes at Revelation 11: 18. It brings us down to the judgment of the dead, at the end of the millennium, which you get more fully gone into in Revelation 20. The last verse of chapter 11 belongs to chapter 12. It goes on beyond the millennium into the eternal state. Then follows an appendix, Revelation 12-20 going more into detail right on to the final scene in the last two chapters. In Revelation 10 you again find Christ under the figure of an angel. Before the sounding of the last trumpet, He brings in a little book which unfolds all the rest; Rev. 11. In Revelation 10: 6, "that there should be time no longer" - the real force of the word here is, "that there should be no more delay," but the mystery of God should be finished at the sounding of the seventh angel.

Revelation 11: 2. The holy city is trodden under foot of the Gentiles forty-two months. This is the second half of the last of the seventy weeks of Daniel. We only find the last half of the week spoken of in Revelation. The whole week is spoken of in Daniel 9: 24-27. First, you have seven weeks - these were historical; then sixty-two weeks are added, bringing us "unto Messiah the Prince." "After these things [it does not say how long] Messiah is cut off." The first half of the remaining week we find is the ministry of Christ which lasted three years and a half. Then the Messiah is cut off. So now to faith there is only the last half of the week to come. But the apostate nation, not owning the period of Christ's ministry, "confirms the covenant" with Antichrist for the whole week. They go on flourishing till the middle of the week. Then Antichrist breaks his covenant with them, and their judgment follows, and Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles for "forty and two months." They refused Him who came in His Father's name, and will receive him who comes in his own name. In Daniel 7: 25 it is the times and laws, and not the saints, that are given into his hand. In the first book of Psalms we see the experience of the remnant during the first half-week, and that is why we find more of the experience of the Lord Jesus here than in all the other Psalms. In the half-week of the Lord's ministry the remnant received Him, the nation did not. When under Antichrist the nation again go through the first half-week, it will be the converse, the nation receive him and the remnant do not. In the Gospels by Matthew and Mark we have only the last tribulation, whilst in Luke is also seen the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Luke says nothing of the abomination of desolation set up. We find from Revelation 11: 1-3 that true worship and true testimony are maintained during the whole of this time of one thousand two hundred and sixty days. Time is never counted except in connection with the Jews. The church belongs to heaven, and time is not reckoned in connection with it. There is no date mentioned in Revelation till you come to the last half-week (v. 9, probably literal days). When the church is caught up, there will be apostasy. We see in 2 Thessalonians 2 that those who received not the love of the truth that they might be saved are given up to believe a lie. So to Christendom it is the same thing whether Christ comes, or does not come; if the truth is rejected, they die in their sins. Revelation 11 takes us on to the last scene of judgment - that of the dead, which takes place after the millennium: this finishes the book. Thus the beast, Babylon, and then the appendix (chapters 11: 19, and chaps. 12, 13 and 14) go together.

367 You are in the dark place, but you have the Lord's candle, namely, prophecy, and you do well to take heed to it.

In Revelation 11: 19 we see the ark of God's testament in His temple. Come what may, there is security for Israel. He has given a heavenly security to the covenant on earth. The word of prophecy is not to draw, but to drive us out of the world. The best thing is to have a heavenly Christ to draw us out, but it is good to have the word of prophecy to let us know what is coming on the world.

The church is not spoken of here (Rev. 12); she forms the body of the one new man, the man-child caught up to God and His throne. The woman includes all the twelve tribes clothed with supreme authority, and complete government about her head. Seven is the highest indivisible number, twelve the most divisible number (a circle and a cube). The man-child is taken up to God and His throne, the woman is left to persecution. James addresses all the twelve tribes, though ten seem to have been lost sight of.

In Revelation 13 we get the instruments of Satan: the Roman beast in his last form, and the second beast, which I believe to Antichrist. In chapter 12 we had an anti-priest, "the accuser of our brethren, which accused them before our God day and night." In chapter 13 we see an anti-king and anti-prophet. The true King and Prophet was rejected; so now they get a false king and a false prophet. He takes these two earthly characters, now he can no longer exercise the former.

368 In Revelation 14 we get the result of God's dealings during this period - one hundred and forty-four thousand associated with Christ on earth. It is "His Father," never the Father relating to the saints. They are associated with Christ in His royal place upon earth. They are those who have been specially faithful; they learn the heavenly song though they are not in heaven, and they have His comfort. They have shared Christ's rejection, and now they have a place of special blessing. Special blessing is always the result of special sorrow. They are the firstfruits for God and the Lamb on the earth, as we are the firstfruits for heaven. It is too late to go to heaven unless they are killed. They learn the song that is sung there, and accompany Him in His rejection. Whoever belongs to Him out of all the nations you find in chapter 7.

Revelation 15, 16. Now we come to a new wonder. The others in chapter 14 end with the winepress of the wrath of God. Chapter 15 begins before the end of chapter 14. There are seven different testimonies in chapter 14. Corruption is centred in Babylon, power in the beast. God destroys Babylon, not the Lamb.

An inward quickening is never treated of in Scripture as salvation; the idea of regeneration has been lost. Cornelius was quickened beyond a doubt, but was told to send for Peter to hear "words whereby he might be saved." We get the two things in Romans 10: "with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Salvation is here the result not merely of believing, but also of confessing. Peter, in Acts 2 exhorts those who were pricked to the heart by the word spoken to "save" themselves from that untoward generation. Lydia was a worshipper of God before the visit of Paul to Philippi. Salvation is not the Holy Ghost's work, but the work of Christ. I cannot say a man is saved unless his conscience is purged. The church has lost the thought of being saved. People think it is enough to be born anew. Regeneration is confounded with having life. If we look at Israel, they are not spoken of as saved till they were across the Red Sea. Salvation is connected with actual deliverance. When the blood was on the doorpost, they were free from the judgment. There God was known as a Judge; as a Saviour at the Red Sea - "Stand still and see the salvation of God."

369 In result, salvation always includes the body. "Believe - be saved," Eph., chaps. 1, 2). "By grace are ye saved." I should say a quickened soul was safe, but not saved. Israel was safe under the shelter of the blood, though they had not then seen "the salvation of God" - full deliverance from Egypt. A man has not to be saved unless he is lost. You could not say in that sense, that a Jew, before the rejection of Christ, was totally lost; that is, he was under probation. It is no longer so now that man is in a probationary state. Not only is he a sinner, but the cross of Christ proves him to be totally lost. Man thus proved to be lost is in a position to be totally saved - "delivered from this present evil world." I was in the flesh, but now I am in Christ. If a soul were only quickened and not saved, he would not belong to the church at the coming of the Lord. I know this is impossible, because, as the apostle says, "He which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ." You are not united by faith, or by life, but by the Holy Ghost. "In whom, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise," Eph. 1. People are now taught to hope that they have life. I meet two different persons, and I ask both whether they are the children of God. I get the same reply from each, "I hope so"; but if I hear them at their prayers, I find there the different state of their souls. Whilst one, having the Spirit of adoption, is crying "Abba, Father," the language of the other is "Lord, have mercy."

"Regeneration," as the word is used in the New Testament, is not the same as being born again. The word is only used twice; Matthew 19, where it is in connection with the millennium: and in Titus 3, with baptism. It is more connected with salvation than quickening. A desire after holiness would be one evidence of a quickened soul. I do not say he is saved; Scripture does not say so. If one has been set free, one never gets into uncertainty. "Forgotten that he was purged from his old sins," is speaking of practice. For instance, my child runs out in the street and gets dirty, and I say to him, "You have forgotten that I washed you just before you went out." A person may be very clear and have little godliness. I would far rather see a person in real distress of soul, as in Romans 7 than knowing himself saved, and taking it coolly without any exercise of conscience. It is not till after Israel had passed the Red Sea and seen the salvation of God, that we get the song of deliverance. What is the meaning of the word of the Lord to Zacchaeus: "This day is salvation come to this house"? Christ was Himself the salvation of God. As Simeon says, "mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Zacchaeus now receives Him joyfully. He had been full of his good works before, giving half of his goods to the poor, etc.; he was just telling the Saviour what he was doing before. Jesus seeks and saves the lost.

370 In Revelation 17 we have Babylon and the two beasts.

Revelation 18, the judgment of Babylon, "in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain on the earth." She is corrupt religion, most hateful to God, like Jerusalem which the Lord held guilty in His day of all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from Abel downward.

Revelation 19. The marriage of the Lamb comes after the judgment of Babylon. Here we have not God destroying corruption, but the Lamb Himself taking the power.

In Revelation 20, and 21: 5 is seen the final scene, till, according to 1 Corinthians 15, "God is all in all."

Revelation 21: 8 entirely closes the history of the book. A description follows (from Rev. 21: 9) of the New Jerusalem; then warnings. In the end we get again the relationship of the church to Christ, as at the beginning of chapter 1. At the presentation of Himself, she says, "Unto him that loved us," etc. Here, in chapter 22: 16, He presents Himself as the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright and morning star. The bride immediately with the Spirit answers, Come. We have three invitations in this verse: first, as to the Bridegroom, she invites Him to come; second, she turns to the other saints - those who have heard and received the word are invited to join in the cry, and say, "come"; third, she turns to the world and invites the thirsty to come and drink freely of the water of life. We see the bride under different names, the assembly and the body in Ephesians; and holy city, and the new and holy Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Were Abraham, etc., not in the church? Some think they may be of the city, but not of the body.

371 Would you make a third sphere then for the Old Testament saints? There may be twenty spheres. Look at Hebrews 12: 22-24: there we see several spheres. First, we are "come unto Mount Zion" (that is, the hundred and forty-four thousand in the land (Rev. 14) - here we have royal grace upon earth); secondly, AND unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; thirdly, AND to an innumerable company of angels, the general assembly; fourthly, AND to the church of the first-born which are written in heaven; fifthly, AND to God the Judge of all; sixthly, AND to the spirits of just men made perfect (that is, the Old Testament saints, Heb. 11: 40); seventhly, AND to Jesus the mediator, etc.; eighthly, AND to the blood, etc. You find out the different divisions by noticing where the word AND is used. We have the ascending scale, then the descending. He begins with earth and goes higher and higher till he arrives at God the Judge of all at the top, and then descends to earth again. The blood of sprinkling is connected with the new covenant of God and the earth. I suppose that Abraham, etc., looked for the blessing that accompanied that state of things. Having got nothing on earth, he looked up for the eternal city.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOL. 7.]

A few words on Elijah

1 Kings 17-20.

J. N. Darby.

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These chapters set before us several important principles; and we see there pointed out several very different characters; we learn in them also the ways of God.

Ahab and Jezebel appear on the scene; Elijah prophesies; Obadiah is seen and the seven thousand men of God mentioned in 1 Kings 19: 18.

The character of Ahab is presented to us in 1 Kings 16: 29-33. Ahab, Jezebel, and the four hundred and fifty prophets were at the head of the apostates of Israel, who at that time worshipped Baal. And Obadiah and the seven thousand were mixed up with the people (1 Kings 18); not that they served the idol, but they were friends of Ahab. As for Elijah, he was the friend of God, and, separated entirely from the apostasy, he was the only witness of the truth in the midst of all the evil.

Let us distinguish then these three different classes of persons: Ahab and Israel, apostates on one side; Elijah, on the other, the faithful servant of God and again, somewhat different, Obadiah and the seven thousand connected always with the evil. Now let us examine the different characters of these persons.

What were the circumstances of Elijah? This feeble and poor man had no force and strength save what he found in the Lord, his only support (1 Kings 17: 1-9). He was a man of faith and prayer; and, keeping before the Lord, he could boldly testify against the apostasy of Israel and announce the judgments of God.

It is said to him (1 Kings 17: 3), "Get thee hence and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith that is before Jordan"; then in verse 5 we read that he obeyed this command. We see already then that Elijah had no power, but had faith in God and knew that all blessing is in obedience. Also from the moment that the word was addressed to him, he submitted to it and went to the brook Cherith where he learnt to depend on God.

Ahab and all Israel were the enemies of Elijah (1 Kings 18: 10); but God was his friend, and in each step that he took in fidelity to the Lord he learnt the fidelity of the Lord to him. By this means he was more and more strengthened for the mission on which he was about to be employed (1 Kings 18: 1). God sent him to be with a poor widow who entertained him during the famine, after he was fed by the ravens at Cherith. During all the time that he was cared for by the ravens at the brook, and by the widow at Sarepta, he learnt to know the riches of the love and grace of God. It is there precisely that we learn to know ourselves also in all the circumstances in which we are placed by the Lord.

2 We see then in 1 Kings 17 the simple and entire obedience of Elijah. Whether the Lord sent him to a brook to be fed by ravens; whether he was sent to a widow during the famine; whether he was sent before his real enemy Ahab (1 Kings 18), he made no objection, but counting on the Lord he did that which he was ordered. He was nevertheless a man subject to the same passions and to the same infirmities as ourselves (James 5: 17, 18); but he had much of that faith the power of which is infinite. By it he could say that there should be no rain, and there was none; by it he could raise the son of the widow, and overcome Ahab the king and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. These circumstances shew us clearly that Elijah was in the place where one is blessed, namely, in that of obedience. Men were his enemies; Ahab had sent everywhere persons to find him out: but the Lord was his refuge, and he had learnt to trust in Him.

Let us examine now what concerns Obadiah (1 Kings 18: 3, etc.). He feared the Lord greatly, but, spite of this, he was in the service of Ahab's house and did not bear testimony against its evil. He did not suffer the reproach of Christ. He was not like Elijah, pursued and chased from country to country. He did not know what it was to be fed by the ravens or the widow; that is to say, he lived little by faith, and knew little of the ways of God. He lived at his ease in the world. Ahab was his lord. But who was Elijah's? Jehovah. Compare 1 Kings 18: 10 and 15. Oh what a difference! Obadiah knew the good things of the earth; Elijah, the good things of heaven.

Let us read now verses 7-11. All the thoughts of Obadiah were about his master, whom he dreaded; but all the thoughts of Elijah were centred on the Lord, his only Master. The superiority of his position to that of Obadiah is further indicated by this circumstance, that the latter fell on his face before Elijah when he met him (v. 7). And when Elijah tells him to go and announce to Ahab, Obadiah is all frightened. Yet Obadiah was a child of God; he had even hid the prophets; but he had no strength whatever to bear testimony to the Lord, because he was associated with evil. As to Elijah, he could say fearlessly to Ahab and to all the people, "If the Lord be God, follow him," v. 21. Whence did, therefore, this boldness and power come, as seen in Elijah, a poor and weak man, who had been straitened to this point, that he depended upon ravens and upon a widow for his food? From the fact that he stood aloof from the apostasy, that he lived by faith and had a single eye fixed upon his God. Oh how far better his position was than that of Obadiah!

3 There is in these things an application for us to make to ourselves. Let us gather from them this lesson, that since the Lord is God, it is He whom we must serve, and that, in order to be faithful to Him, we have to separate ourselves from all the principles of the apostasy by which we are surrounded.

We know how Elijah triumphed over his enemies: there is therefore no need of repeating the issue of the scene on Carmel. But let us observe that, when Elijah prayed the Lord that He might give him the victory, what he asked was, that it might be known that the Lord was God (v. 37). All the desire of his heart consisted in these two things, that the Lord might be glorified, and that His people might know Him. There was not in him the least desire to lift himself up, to exalt himself; it mattered not to him if he was nothing, provided that God might be glorified and His people brought to know Him. Oh that the same desire may be in us, and that all thought of vainglory may be cast far, far away!

Let us now read 1 Kings 19. Poor Elijah! he had a lesson to learn, which we ourselves, weak and poor as we are, need to learn also. When Elijah stood before the Lord, he could by the Lord's power stop or send rain to the earth, raise up the widow's son, etc. But when he stood, not now before the Lord, but before Jezebel, he was then without strength, and this ungodly woman was able to cause him to fear. Downcast, Elijah therefore goes into the wilderness, sits down under a juniper-tree and asks the Lord to take away his life (v. 4). How different he is here from what he was in the chapter before! How little did he remember what the Lord had done for him; how little did he enter into the mind of God, and expect that chariot of fire which would shortly take him up to heaven! (2 Kings 2: 11).

So is it with us. We are downcast, discouraged and weak in ourselves as soon as we fail to live in faith and prayer, and then we cannot say, as Elijah in chapter 18, "The Lord before whom I stand."

4 In 1 Kings 17 Elijah by faith could make the widow's oil and meal last; but here he is weak, and needs that an angel come to strengthen him and give him some food. (Read 1 Kings 19: 5-8.) He eats, drinks, and like a man without strength lies down. But the Lord sends the angel back again, for He is plentiful in grace and mercy; He watches over all our ways and feeds our souls according to a our wants and according to all our circumstances. The Lord therefore bore with Elijah and succoured him, and it is also what He is with respect to us. As He was afflicted in all the affliction of His people (Isa. 63: 9), so is He with us in ours now.

In 1 Kings 17 God was leading Elijah and telling him where to go, and Elijah obeyed. But in 1 Kings 19 Elijah, fearing Jezebel, flees away and does not wait for the Lord's commandment to go into the wilderness. See therefore what a sad message is sent to him, as recorded in verse 13, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" In verses 11 and 12 we read that a wind, an earthquake, and a fire are sent; but Elijah did not find. the Lord in these things, and they could not bring comfort nor strength to his soul. God was appearing in His grandeur and power; but what Elijah needed was the still small voice, what he wanted was the manifestation of grace and communion with his God. When, therefore, Elijah had heard the still small voice, he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood ready to obey the Lord. By the power and strength that he had found in this voice he was once again enabled to obey the commandment of the Lord.

What we have said on these chapters is very incomplete but we believe that the chief thing is to bring out of them the principles calculated to give the intelligence of what the chapters contain. Let us therefore be mindful of avoiding the position of Obadiah and the seven thousand, who were taking their ease in the midst of apostasy, but who were without strength to bear testimony against evil. Let us also remember that, though Elijah was despised and rejected of men, he was nevertheless in the place of blessing. And if like himself we are brought to realise our weakness, let us remember that communion with the Lord can alone give us afresh zeal and devotedness and joy.

Brief Thoughts on 1 Chronicles

1 Chronicles 11-17

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There is a great difference between the David of Chronicles and that of Samuel. The king in 1 Chronicles is the David of grace and blessing according to the counsels of God. The king in Samuel is the historical David exercised in responsibility.

In Chronicles we do not find the matter of Uriah nor that of Absalom. Even Joab with all his crimes, who is not cited in 2 Samuel 23, is here mentioned because he took the stronghold of Zion. This makes us understand what value Zion has in the eyes of God, and in what way the Chronicles regard the history. There is absolutely no evil reported, save that which is necessary to make us understand the history. In the book of Kings it is the history of Israel and the conduct of the kings under responsibility. In the books of Chronicles it is a question of God's mind, and in chapters 11 to 17 of the first book as to placing David in Jerusalem, chapter 10 having given us the fall of Saul.

1 Chronicles 11.

David begins to reign over all Israel with the desires of the people; he begins at Zion. Afterward we have his valiant men, and their joy at installing him as king.

1 Chronicles 12.

Here we see the heart of Israel returning to David, as it will return to Christ when He shall have established the throne in Zion. It is the heart of Israel which concentrates itself round the Beloved of God. Certain persons came when he was a stranger; now it is all Israel.

1 Chronicles 13.

Then it is a question of putting the ark of God in its place. Before this the ark had been taken. (See Ps. 78: 59-72.) It is sovereign grace which returns. He chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which He loved.

1st. God was wroth and greatly abhorred Israel, so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, and delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy's hand.

2nd. With David God takes up His people and sanctuary. David re-commences all the history of Israel.

6 Then, if Psalm 132 be looked at, this feature will be seen as to the ark: it was the sign of the covenant finally, and a new thing to be set in Zion. When Moses in Numbers 10 said, "Rise up, LORD," he did not add "into thy rest." The tabernacle in the wilderness could not be the rest of God. But Zion is the place that Jehovah chose for His rest. He desired it for His habitation (v. 13). And David enters into the mind of God. Compare verse 4. ("I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until," etc.) We see in the Psalms generally all the deep feelings in the heart of David for God. On the other hand God makes Himself respected, as we see in His dealing with Uzza.

We have thus as a summary of all this: first, that God had rejected His tabernacle, Shiloh; and, secondly, that meanwhile He gives prophets to sustain sovereign relations with His people till Messiah comes. Samuel had truly begun prophecy, which is not anything established, but only serves meanwhile. See the song of Hannah who figures the remnant there. Prophecy declares that God is all, come what may, and that He sustains all things till He have raised the house of His anointed. Thirdly, at last in His anointed He accomplishes His mind. The people no more wished to have God working by prophecy than when He wrought by priesthood. They demand a king, and God gives Saul. Meanwhile God prepares His anointed by affliction. Hebrews 2 is just the counterpart of David's history. So, too, Jesus will reign over Judah before reigning over all Israel. In the Chronicles we have no history of David's reign in Hebron.

1 Chronicles 14.

David king over all Israel renders himself terrible to the nations (v. 17), as the Lord will in due time (Zech. 9; Micah 5). Victory follows dependence and obedience; and as the blessing of Jehovah comes, the fame of David goes out everywhere. Psalm 18 finds its place here: in taking it all, one must place it a little later.

1 Chronicles 15.

David now has no rest till he has prepared a resting-place for the ark of Jehovah; even as the Lord also, in the midst of conflicts, will have no rest till He establishes the tie between God and His people.

7 Knowing that the tabernacle was abandoned, David did not dream of putting the ark in the tabernacle. This would have been to restore things on the spoilt footing of the law. The external routine had quite fallen short of God's glory. The king takes the lead, as priesthood had failed; and the ark is put in the seat of kingly power; as Christ the deliverer in grace will order all by-and-by in Zion, whence the rod of His power is to go forth.

Then (v. 16) David institutes choral worship or psalmody: Heman, Asaph, and even David himself in an ephod of linen danced and played. It was he that recalled the due place of the Levites, and summoned the priests in their due order, who also had the singers appointed with instruments of music, psalteries, and harps, and cymbals sounding by lifting up the voice with joy. All is new here and in relation to David's mind touching Zion, the centre chosen, after having left aside the tabernacle at Gibeon and all the order established primitively by Moses. "So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the ark of the covenant of Jehovah out of the house of Obed-edom with joy. And it came to pass, when God helped the Levites that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, that they offered seven bullocks and seven rams. And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the Levites that bare the ark, and the singers, and Chenaniah the master of the song with the singers: David also had upon him an ephod of linen. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of Jehovah with shouting, and with the sound of the cornet and with trumpets, and with cymbals, making a noise with psalteries and harps, And it came to pass, as the ark of the covenant of Jehovah came to the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looking out at a window saw king David dancing and playing; and she despised him in her heart," v. 25-29. Nevertheless David was not king and priest like Solomon, though it be true that his faith made all the joy of the people of God. It is a sort of anticipation of the true Melchizedek.

1 Chronicles 16.

This song is composed of several Psalms. We find here all the principles on which God founds the blessing of His people for the last day. But there is a remarkable difference - that He does not put them in the definitive blessing. There is, to begin, a part of Psalm 105. He shews how He kept Abraham. He recalls the faithfulness of God toward them until then and bids them recollect it. Only He bids Israel be mindful always of His covenant without saying yet that He remembers it, because it is not yet the full blessing.

8 From verse 23 we have Psalm 96. It is always an invitation. It is not yet Psalm 98 where all is accomplished. The temple is wanting. From verse 34 we have the beginning of the Psalms which celebrate the faithfulness of God, 106, 107, 118, and 136. Psalm 106 is His goodness, faithful for ever, in presence of all the unfaithfulness of Israel. Psalm 107 is that which He has done to gather at the last day. Psalm 98 is the celebration of the Messiah come back. It is the psalm in which it is said that the stone rejected by the builders is become the head of the corner. Psalm 136 is the celebration of God's goodness which begins from the creation, and goes through to the millennium. In this psalm mercy occupies the place from one end to the other. After this (in verses 35, 36) he cites still the end of Psalm 106. One sees by verse 35 that at this moment, as in Psalm 106, all Israel is not yet brought back and everything not yet restored. Only the pledge of the covenant is there. All the scene of the re-commencement of the relations of God with Israel is found in the Chronicles.

In verses 39-43 the altar was still with the tabernacle at Gibeon. It was a high place which one had to condemn in following David who had the fresh truth. Faith did so, though Solomon did not, but clung to the altar. However, David with the priests to offer burnt-offerings established Heman and Jeduthun, etc., to give thanks to Jehovah because His mercy endures for ever. It is thus that one can judge what is old system in the church; though we can also say, His mercy endures for ever. The altar there was a testimony to the fallen state of the people, for the ark was not in the tabernacle.

It is touching to see that the Chronicles were written in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. At that time it was less necessary to tell all the sins of the people than to say, His mercy endures for ever. A basis is laid for all in Christ's death, and by His resurrection all are sure mercies to be displayed at His coming and kingdom.

1 Chronicles 17.

9 Here the condition laid upon the seed of David is not found as in 2 Samuel 7. God did not allow David to build the temple; because, when He would glorify Himself in the midst of the people, it was necessary that it should be in peace and that there be no more enemies. The warrior was the character of David, though at that moment there was rest all around. Because of that David could not build the house of Jehovah. Nevertheless as depositary of promises he learns that Jehovah will build him a house (v. 10), and that his son should build Jehovah a house, as He would establish David's house for evermore (v. 12-14). How touching is the prayer of David on this occasion! (v. 16-27).

Notes on 1 Chronicles 13-17

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God is graciously pleased to reveal Himself in different ways and at different times. He formerly made Himself known by prophets, but in these last times He has manifested Himself in His Son; and in whatever way He has chosen to reveal Himself, He has been rejected in them all.

For instance, the ark was the sign of the presence of Jehovah in the midst of His people. Well, the ark was abandoned (1 Sam. 7: 2); just as today the Holy Spirit, by which God is in the midst of His people, is despised. God was then present by the ark as He is today by the Holy Ghost, and as He was rejected by the abandonment of the ark, He is rejected today in as far as the Spirit is not honoured.

But although the people might thus have forgotten and despised Jehovah, David could have no joy nor rest until the ark was brought back, and the presence of the Lord recognised. He knew that peace and blessing are only to be had where God is, and longed ardently for His presence. We have the cry of David's soul in Psalm 63. "And let us bring again the ark of our God to us; for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul," 1 Chr. 13: 3.

The king's great occupation was to seek how he could accomplish that which he had in his heart; and we see in verses 1 and 4 that he consulted all the people, and that they agreed to his proposal. But although it was a holy desire in David and in Israel for the return of the ark, it ought only to have been accomplished according to the will of God, who alone could teach them how they ought to set about it in order that His name might be glorified. But David's having consulted the people, instead of consulting the Lord, caused the ark of God to be brought upon a new cart from the house of Abinadab, "and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart," v. 7.

All this was bad, for it was against the commandment of the Lord, and God could neither recognise nor bless this act. He had said that the ark ought to be borne by the children of Kohath, that is to say, by the Levites (Num. 4: 15); and if David had consulted the Lord, he would have been taught about this, and the ark would have been neither placed on a cart nor conducted by Uzza and Ahio. But David took counsel with the people and they executed their holy desire according to their own thoughts, and not according to God's. Uzza acted also on the same principle; he was not led by the Lord to hold the ark, but by his own judgment. He was not a man who felt his weakness and who allowed himself to be ruled and guided by the Lord; and consequently he put forth his hand and touched the ark. Thus every child of God who puts his hand to the Lord's work, presuming that he is able to act in his own strength, resembles Uzza. It is God alone who is to be glorified, and it is He alone who can say how He wishes to be glorified; and if David had inquired of Him, he would have learnt that God would glorify Himself.

11 We see in verse 10 what were the sad consequences of Uzza's conduct, and in verse 11 we see that David was greatly afflicted at the breach the Lord made upon Uzza; but it was needful for him in this way to learn, that we have to wait and let the Lord do His work in His own way. May we also keep this instruction, of which we all have need, and not act in our own strength! Let us remember that Uzza drew upon himself the wrath of God by putting his hand to the ark. All the work was spoilt by his folly: the ark instead of being brought in triumph was put aside and placed in the house of Obed-edom; and all this because in the first place David had not consulted the Lord, and secondly Uzza acted himself instead of letting the Lord act. These circumstances were calculated to humble David greatly: he was first afflicted, then afraid of God (v. 11, 12); but all that happened taught him wherein he had failed.

Thus we see in the following chapter (1 Chronicles 14) that he acted very differently. The Philistines having spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim (v. 9), did David assemble all his army and prepare immediately for battle? No, he consulted God, saying, "Shall I shew myself against the Philistines, and wilt thou deliver them into my hand?" Now it is no more the people that David consults, it is the Lord; thus the consequence is very different from that of the first circumstance. In 1 Chronicles 13: 11 the breach is made in the midst of David's people; but here it is made in the midst of his enemies, for God acts for him (1 Chr. 14: 11).

We may be very zealous for the glory of God; but the greater our zeal is, the more harm it will do if it is not according to knowledge; we shall spoil everything, like David in chapter 13, if we do not understand our incapacity and dependence; and we can only acquire the knowledge that we need, in order that our zeal be not destructive, by consulting the Lord.

12 A remarkable thing is, that trials and chastisement are always needed to bring us back to God's order: it was in the midst of much affliction that David learned God's intention, and these afflictions served to make the lesson he had received penetrate deeply into his soul. In 1 Chronicles 14: 13, 14, we see that, the Philistines having again returned, David again consults the Lord. This time the Lord does not tell David to go up to the Philistines and that he will have the victory, for God wished to prove him still more. God told him not to go up to his enemies, but to wait for a noise in the tops of the mulberry-trees. What had the mulberry-trees to do with the battle? Nothing, but God wanted to be recognised: this was the lesson that David further learnt. He obeyed the Lord; and we see the consequence was, that the Lord was glorified and David's reputation spread abroad. David having owned the Lord, the Lord could everywhere own David.

What magnificent instruction is found in these chapters? May we keep it and be led by it every day in order that God may be glorified in us. Let us remember to leave God to do His own work, and if He wish to use us for something, what we have to do is to consult Him about it, and not so-and-so. Thus, instead of putting obstacles in the way of His work, we shall be blessed in that which He will do through us.

In 1 Chronicles 15: 2 David says, "None ought to carry the ark of the Lord but the Levites." He remembers his fall, and the lesson is learned; he applies himself now to act according to God's intention. Thus we see, the work of man no longer spoils that of God, and God is glorified, the people are joyful, the ark of the Lord has again taken its place in their midst, and the blessing is so great that the psalms which they sing are those which will be sung in the millennium, when the Lord will return to Israel (v. 25-29). In 1 Chronicles 16: 8-22 they sing Psalm 105 and from verses 23 to 33 they sing Psalm 96. How different are the results which we find in chapter 13, where David acts by himself without consulting the Lord, and he and all his people are plunged into affliction! But, here, where it is God who acts, the blessing is so great that David and all his people call on the heavens and earth to rejoice at it.

13 In 1 Chronicles 17 we again see a holy desire in David: he wished to build a house for the ark, but was this the will of God? Nathan told David to do all that was in his heart (v. 2). Ah, Nathan had not learned the lesson, for he answered without learning from Jehovah His intention, and in the same night God charged him to go and tell David, "Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in." David wished to give something to Jehovah, but Jehovah was going to give to him. David wanted to build a house for Jehovah, but Jehovah was going to build one for David (v. 10). "For it is more blessed to give than to receive," Acts 20: 35, and giving is God's part. This is another lesson that David learnt. The Lord does not need us to bless Him, but He is pleased to bless us: what He asks of us is to sit at Jesus' feet and receive the abundant grace He bestows on us. From verse 16 to 21 one sees that David has understood this lesson; his thoughts are no more, as at the beginning of the chapter, occupied with the construction of a house, but with God Himself (v. 20); and he is humble and grateful before Jehovah. All that he says in these verses shews that he has learnt of God he thinks n more of himself, nor his zeal, nor his projects, he has forgotten all that is of himself in thinking of Jehovah. Oh let us imitate David in this! May our thoughts centre in God and we shall no longer be occupied with ourselves, nor with what we wish to do (v. 5, 6-8).

Let us remark another very touching truth in these verses. So long as Jehovah's people crossed the desert and had enemies to fight, Jehovah had no resting-place on the earth, and journeyed in the tabernacle with His people, "In all their affliction he was afflicted," Isa. 63: 9. And it was only then His people could rest that God allowed them to build Him a house wherein He might rest.

Notes on 2 Chronicles 18-20

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We have seen in 1 Kings 17, 18, that Ahab and Jezebel worshipped the idol Baal, and now we read the judgments of God on Ahab and apostate Israel.

It is necessary for us to know the circumstances mentioned in this chapter, as they are of grave importance. Let us consider in it especially the characters of Jehoshaphat and Micaiah. This last was separated from Ahab and apostate Israel; he entered into God's thoughts and was declaring to Ahab and Israel the judgments which were ready to come upon them. Read verses 16-23. In verse 26 we see the consequences of his fidelity: Ahab and Israel are his enemies, and he is put into the place of affliction. Jehoshaphat's circumstances were very different; he was a child of God as well as Micaiah, but he was rich and great, and had made alliance with one of God's enemies - with Ahab. Ahab knew him to be a child of God, and, in order to tranquillise his conscience, caused sheep and oxen to be killed for him in abundance. It mattered not to Ahab what he did if he succeeded in persuading Jehoshaphat to go with him to Ramoth-Gilead. But Jehoshaphat's conscience was not satisfied by the sacrifice of all these sheep and oxen; and he said to the king of Israel, "Inquire, I pray thee at the word of Jehovah to-day." Ahab then assembled the four hundred and fifty prophets who cried, "Peace, peace," although God's judgment was ready to break over him and apostate Israel; but the words of these false prophets did not satisfy Jehoshaphat's conscience any more than the sacrifices. Thus it is ever so when the child of God is found in the midst of evil of any kind: although four hundred and fifty prophets and the whole world would seek to satisfy his conscience, they could not attain this end. See what is said of false prophets in Ezekiel 13: 1-16.

But the king of Israel was satisfied with what the lying prophets said; and, as God punished Pharaoh by giving him up to a delusion, He did the same to Ahab. And the same thing will happen to many others at the end of this dispensation; men will preach "peace, peace," and judgment will break forth upon them (Rev. 16: 14; 2 Thess. 2: 7-13). Here is a solemn truth. This is why we ought first to be very grateful because the Lord has revealed Himself to us; then we ought to take care not to become like Jehoshaphat who "joined affinity with Ahab." How good the Lord was to put it into the king of Judah's heart to seek counsel of a prophet of Jehovah! It was a means by which he might have been instructed about the judgments which were going to happen, and have been able to warn his people. But alliance with evil blinds to such a degree, that Jehoshaphat did not discern that Micaiah was a true prophet of Jehovah; and he did not believe his word, but went in spite of it all up to the battle in which Ahab was to meet with the judgment of God. Oh may we be separated from evil in order to be capable of judging all things and to hold fast that which is truth!

15 We have also to remark Micaiah's faithfulness: although he was engaged by the messenger to speak the same words as the false prophets, he replied, "What my God saith, that will I speak," v. 12, 13. Micaiah told Ahab that he should be killed in the battle; but the latter, thinking to escape by his own prudence, disguised himself, and told Jehoshaphat to wear his robes (v. 27-30). Oh what a magnificent proof we have of the love of God in these verses! Jehoshaphat is surrounded by the Syrians on all sides, but he was a child of God; and although he had joined with Ahab, nothing could separate him from the Lord whose faithfulness to His own endures notwithstanding their unfaithfulness. Jehoshaphat cried to the Lord who became his protector; and although, humanly speaking, it seemed all over with him, nevertheless his enemies were not allowed to touch him.

But as surely as the child of God will be preserved by the love of his Father, so sure is it that the judgment of God will fall on those who reject His mercy. We see this in a remarkable manner in this chapter. Ahab, notwithstanding His precautions, could not escape; he might have disguised himself from the Syrians, but he was not able to hide himself from God (v. 33). Thus it is with poor sinners: even if they should succeed in not being seen by man, the eye of God will find them. May the Lord make this example of use to us!

It is well to consider how much more advantageous Micaiah's position was than that of Jehoshaphat. It is true he was afflicted and persecuted by Ahab and the false prophets, but he was not like Jehoshaphat to be found in the midst of God's judgments. The latter was as ignorant as Ahab of what was going to take place; be it that even Micaiah had announced it to them, and that these judgments were, as it were, suspended over their heads, yet Jehoshaphat did not expect them. And why? For he was a child of God as well as Micaiah. Had he. not the Lord's thought and a clear view of His intention? It was because he had joined himself to God's enemies and that his affections were with the things of the world, whilst Micaiah had separated himself to the service of God. Oh how ashamed Jehoshaphat ought to have been, to be thus found amongst the Lord's enemies! and how grateful he ought to have been for the gracious help which he so little merited!

16 We see in 2 Chronicles 19: 2, that, although Jehoshaphat had been delivered by the compassion and love of God, he was spoken to in words of reproach, after which the Lord encouraged him by adding, "Nevertheless there are good things found in thee"; which shews us, that if God disapprove that which is evil, He owns the good which He has put into His own people. In Jude's Epistle, which speaks of the apostasy of the present dispensation, we see at verse 23 something similar to that which happened to Jehoshaphat. Like Lot, he was saved so as by fire.

All these circumstances in Jehoshaphat's life were calculated to humble him deeply and teach him the incomprehensible fulness of God's mercy. He ought to have drawn from these experiences deep instruction both about God and himself. Let us read in 2 Chronicles 20: 2-13 what were the fruits of these instructions. Jehoshaphat is here very different; he is not now in affinity with Ahab, he is depending on God alone in whom is his strength and his joy. "Our eyes are on thee," he says to Jehovah. Will Micaiah be now separated from him as he was in the preceding chapter? Let us read from verse 15 to 18 of chapter 20. In the preceding chapter Jehoshaphat is found in the ranks of God's enemies, and he is only saved by the intervention of Jehovah; but here we see him dependent upon God and blessed, not afraid, and knowing that Jehovah is with him. He goes to the battle, and God orders it all in such a way that he has no anxiety (v. 17). What a precious lesson he had received in all this! And should we not be disposed to think that from this time forth he would keep near to God and in separation from His enemies? He had learnt by experience the grief there is in sin, and it seems impossible that he should fall again into the same fault which had brought him into such trouble; but we see in verses 35-38 that it was not so.

17 The lesson which we may take from the second fall of Jehoshaphat is that, although we may have been punished, we fall again into the very same sins if we do not keep in communion with the Lord.

The Work of the House of God and the Workmen therein

Ezra 3.

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The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah hang together. In Ezra, we get the temple built and worship restored; in Nehemiah, the restoration of the city; Haggai opens out the secret of the hindrances to the work; in Zechariah we have truth presented by which God strengthened the hearts of the remnant.

Truth meets persons in our days in external things; it is common to see Christians opening the scriptures and being struck with the fact of how unlike the things there presented are to what they see around them. Man would set to work to put things in order, God's remedy is to meet practical departure in oneself, to begin with self, We have "the word of the Lord,"* are we bringing our consciences to it - not asking for increase of light, increase of power, but more honest, holy obedience to what we know, just doing that, in all our weakness, which God teaches us to be right? I read Philippians 2: 13, "It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure"; if I am waiting for more power, before I work out that which it is His will I should do, I am denying that He is working in me to accomplish it by His power - to will and to do.

{*There was a moral appeal to conscience in the Jew - "you know what Moses says, and, you have departed from it" - "how came you Jews out of the land?"}

We are to walk, step by step, as God gives the light. Some will say, "Yes, when the door is opened, as it was for the Jews - when power is put forth, as it was for the Jews, then we will go forth, not seeing that, when the Jews walked disobediently, God raised up enemies from without, standing by to sanction their captivity." The Jew could say, "We must be in bondage until the years of the captivity be ended." Not so the Christian. God has set him free from all captivity, in Christ. If he get into bondage, through the lust of the flesh, the Just of the eye, or the pride of life, the moment God gives him light to see where he is, that moment the word to him is, "Cease to de evil, learn to do) well." The question at the Reformation (and so now), was, "Is the word of God to be obeyed or not? - the Lord hath spoken, and shall not we obey?" It is for God to see in us obedience to His word, so far as we know it, and more knowledge will be given - "to him that hath shall more be given."

19 But, here, it is necessary for us to see that conduct may go beyond faith. If it does, it will break down. Right conduct on a wrong motive must fail. In Ezra 3, we have the Jews working for God, and that from the written word; for what Moses commanded, they observed (v. 2), and what David did, they set themselves to do (v. 10). But they failed. The adversaries of Judah came and stopped the work (chap. 4). Looking at the outward form, we should have said, "Now here is obedience." But God's eye saw through it all. Self-complacency was there; the corrupt heart was there, Haggai furnishes the key. The heart was unpurged. These adversaries, what were they? The remnant had escaped, had got into the land, had begun to build - and why did they not go on? God was using the adversaries of Judah, as the occasion, to shew the cause of their failure. Circumstances bring out the cause of failure; but occasion and cause are constantly confounded. The cause of failure was not in the adversaries of Judah, but in the hearts of the people which were set upon their own things and not upon the things of God, upon their own ceiled houses, and not upon the house of the Lord. And so, we find, through the whole of the word of God, the occasion one thing, the cause another. That which is not done to the Lord, is not done in faith.

Have we a purpose? - Jesus had a purpose to which He ever turned. Oh how little purpose of soul have we for God! The Jews had plenty of thoughts; but, when difficulties sprang up, they had no purpose. God, therefore, had to teach them purpose, to teach them whether it was His energy, or their own, they were walking in, to teach them to trust in Himself. Action, in the time of difficulty, is what God expects from us, as knowing and acting in the strength we have in Him - to go forward in the purpose of God, as the channels for His energy to flow in, to shew that there is strength and energy in Him, far beyond all the hindering circumstances, which may come to try our purpose.

Divine energy will never lose its purpose for God. Human energy will say, "the time is not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built," (Hag. 1: 2), and will be amusing itself with its vineyards and fields and houses, squandering the time, instead of carrying on with untiring energy, the settled purpose of the soul, amidst all the difficulties and dangers which may, threaten or oppose.

20 In Haggai, I find God acting; and there, I get a lesson for myself, for I have to do with God. I see the hypocrisy of man, doing a right thing, but not doing it to God, doing it from a wrong motive. Whatever is not done in faith, to God, will fail. As soon as there is confession, "when the people did fear before the Lord," there is the gracious answer, "I am with you, saith the Lord." Thus, we have three great points brought out: -

1st. - Are we walking in what we know, up to the light we have

2ndly. - The course of the conduct the light brings into, not do for the flesh to walk in, but the energy of faith alone.

3rdly. - Whatever connection the circumstances of providence may have with the things of God, they are not of power in the work of God. The providence of God may open the prison-door, lead the people out, raise up Cyrus, Zerubbabel, etc.; 'but, when they want power for action, we find the Spirit of prophecy opening their eyes to see their departure from God, telling them what was in their own hearts, and then telling of the grace in God's heart towards them, and the glory that awaited them. (See Ezra 5: 1, 2.)

By the mercy of God, the government of this country is favourable; the quietness we enjoy, the privilege of meeting together without fear of interruption or violence has been the boon 'under God) of the government. This, to us, is a great responsibility. But there is nothing of real power in service, but a "thus saith the Lord." There is no power in the floating topics of religion, it must be the truth of God in our own souls - knowing the truth of God, as God's truth, and then our action, action for God. Are we searching the word of God to find God there? What is the value of seeing all the scenes pointed out in scripture - things past, or things to come - and not seeing God in them? There are two marks of spiritual experience in scripture. First, having studied such a portion, have you seen God as presented in those circumstances? have you met God there? If so, you have been bowed down and humbled; and, if humbled, you have got rest. Secondly, a spiritual reception of scripture will ever produce corresponding action, a going forth, a "Here am I." If one say, I cannot understand - when the Spirit is teaching, He takes us to what we can understand. Power for service is learned in the presence of God, and there alone; for, in the presence of God, we get humbled and rest in His grace.

20 Is my study of scripture a drawing out of God's word of what I am, and of what God is?

On the Book of Job.

Especially  Job 9.

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I suppose every reader is aware of the circumstances of this book, of the trials of Job, sent him of God for his good, under which his faith broke down at last.

It just teaches us how good is to be got, how blessing comes and must come, that is, in the real knowledge of self Men speak of God's goodness; but their only thought of God's goodness is His passing over sin. Were half the people around us put into heaven, they would get out as fast as they could. What is in heaven is not in accordance with them: nothing they like is there, and nothing is there that they like. Not one of us naturally would find a single thing according to our mind in heaven. So that the Lord says, "Ye must be born again."

The goodness of God does not pass over iniquity, but brings us to the distinct definite knowledge of what we are and of what we have done. Hence being good, He is above all the evil and can bless us in Christ. Here we are walking in a vain show, and are aware that everything around will not last. Everybody knows that the fashion of this world passes away, and yet people are occupied with it.

"While we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things which are not seen." What is "seen," everybody knows, will all go to nothing. They must leave it any way (1 Tim. 6); and then their whole life and objects will be entirely done with. Their conduct they will not have done with, unless it be put away by the blood of Christ. You think God has given a revelation; but do we want a revelation of this world? According to our intelligence and ability we know the world ourselves; but when we pass beyond this world, we want God to tell us, to bring down to us, a sure and certain testimony of what will become of us. This He has done. He has given a full revelation of what our state is and what His holiness is; and He has given a sure, settled and certain foundation for blessing so that there can be no doubt about it.

God would not have us walking in uncertainty; for uncertainty is misery. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father." Believing in Jesus we know our relationship with God, we are "joint-heirs with Christ." "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." God was dealing with Job; but he had to learn himself. What makes Job so interesting is that the book comes before all dispensations.

23 When I find what I am and cannot tell what God is, of course, I am in misery. When God is ploughing up the ground, this is not a crop. Ploughing comes before harvest. "In all this Job sinned not." There was none like Job in all the earth, but he did not know himself: a spirit of self-righteousness had been creeping over him.

Supposing God had stopped there, what would have come of it? Job might have said, "In prosperity I was eyes to the blind; in adversity I was patient": and the whole case would have been worse. He goes on till his friends come, and then, perhaps from pride, or because he could not bear their sympathy, he breaks down. The process was a trying humbling one. "Oh if I could meet God," Job says, "He is not like you: there is goodness in Him." His friends stood on utterly false ground; they took this world as the adequate witness of the government of God. This only makes Job the more angry: the world is no adequate testimony of the government of God.

There you see a soul rising under that which is upon him, striving and wrestling, the flesh breaking out so that he should know himself Job, having been thus wrought in and exercised and ploughed up, passes through all the various considerations as to how he could meet God. Throughout there are certain true sayings, as "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness"; but are we righteous? This is another story. Are you in a condition, if you had to do with God this moment, to say "I am righteous" before Him? Many a one looks at the cross and says "I am a poor sinner, and I have no hope but the cross." But can you say, "I am a poor sinner, and the judgment-seat just suits me"?

When we have really known Christ as our righteousness, there is no place where the soul is so clear and bright and certain about the matter as for the day of judgment: we shall be in glory then. Where the heart has not been broken up, the soul does not understand as a present thing what it is to be before God now. You will find in this chapter naughty expressions, but in the main what Job says is true. There was a mixture, that his wrong thoughts might be judged.

24 "How should man be just with God?" The instant the soul is awakened, it sees with God's eye: and this is the only way of seeing right. When this is the case, the soul in the light of the judgment of God says, "I could not answer him one of a thousand." God is infinitely good; but His way of goodness is not that of allowing evil. Could you answer for yourself in the day of judgment for everything you have ever said or done?

We were all living in a vain show. I may have a character, which God cares nothing about; but He cares about conscience. Before the day of judgment He says "There is none righteous, no, not one," "that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Job goes through several of these cases; then his wrong feeling breaks out. "He . . . filleth me with bitterness." Then he gets more right, "If I justify myself, my own mouth shall condemn me." Can you justify yourself in God's presence? If you cannot justify yourself there, what is the good of doing so anywhere else? You could not stand in the light as God is in the light, and you know it. How comes it that the thought of God makes a man melancholy? He finds out that he is not walking with God. Then, it is impossible to go on longer in that way: we all naturally have got a conscience of good and evil. The crust of the heart has to be ploughed up - the "fallow ground," as Jeremiah calls it.

Then comes another case: "If I wash myself with snow water and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." Thus, if a man had been brought up in a dirty cabin, he does not feel it to be so. Thus men have habits of thinking according to men, not according to God. You will find that sins against man are thought a great deal of, such as murder and robbery: suppose a man commits sins like these, he is intolerable, not fit for society; but suppose he hates God, men say, Oh, that is his own affair.

Go through the history of all religions: do you see a Mohammedan ashamed of His religion? Do you find a follower of juggernaut ashamed of his religion? Where is it ever seen, when a man has a false religion, that he is ashamed of it? But take a Christian, a real Christian, and he is ashamed of it. How comes it? What a tale it tells of the world! Man may sing songs in the street, but hymns - that will not do.

25 If I talk of washing myself "with snow water, my own clothes shall abhor me." This is where we are brought, all of us. "There is none righteous, no, not one." If that were all, I could not stand here and speak to you, for we are all the same.

You see Job could not answer God, and he is struggling under this: what does he say he wants? "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us that might lay his hand upon both." Oh, I have got no daysman! "Let him take his rod away from me and let not his fear terrify me." What Job said he had not got is exactly what we have now in Christ. Was Christ a terror in this world? The law was this exactly; there were thunderings and lightnings: even Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake," and the people, "Do not let God speak to us." The law struck with terror, but it produced no real change in man, and no confidence in God.

The law does not give life, it does not take away sins, nor does it give an object for the heart. The man in Romans 7 says, "I hate sin." "So do I," says the law, "and this is the reason that I curse you." Does this inspire confidence? The law is very useful, it brings the knowledge of sin - what Job was getting here, not that it was law but the same principle). There was no peace, no rest, but it was sin brought upon the conscience, which never gave confidence.

In Cain we see utter insensibility to man's having been driven out of paradise, to sin, to the curse: he brought to God the very sign of the curse. Cain left God and listened to Satan; therefore he is under judgment. People talk as if God had made man as he is. Suppose I make a desk and then judge that desk, what do I judge? Myself. By our sin we turned God into a Judge instead of a Blesser. Abel comes to God, and brings his victim, offering the fat of the lamb. He felt, If I do not get something between me and God, I cannot come near God.

If we look at Christ, we shall find that He exactly meets the need that Job felt. I cannot answer God one in a thousand but what do I find in Christ? God in His person came to me in this world because I could not do anything. The blessed Lord did not wait up in heaven, but came to these unrighteous people. He never said "Come to me," until He had come Himself.

26 I see in this Daysman God shewing me that He is above all my sin. He is light to make everything manifest now; but when He has done that in man's heart and conscience, He puts it all away. In the world, where men were sinners, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." I have God that visited me, but not to hide my sins. God came to me, to the woman in the city that was a sinner, to Mary Magdalene. I get Him coming and talking to the Samaritan about a fountain of water springing up unto everlasting life. I have Him saying to the woman, "Thy sins are forgiven thee."

It is God Himself in this world, not terrifying us, but in perfect blessed love as Man amongst men; the holy One, the undefiled that used the undefilableness of His nature to carry the blessed love of God to us. This blessed One is the Daysman. God has visited me just as I am; He came to me just as I am: I know God is for me. But if He comes to the sinner, He lets him feel his sins; "You are so bad you have nobody you can trust; you cannot shew your face to a decent person; then come and shew it to Me," says Christ. This is the way of God's dealing. Will He wait for the day of judgment?

The beginning of all sin was losing confidence in God: "He is keeping back that tree." If I do not trust God, I must do the best I can for myself: then follows lust, transgression, ruin. Christ comes into the world of sinners and says, "Now you can have confidence in Me."

How blessed it is to trace Christ's life in this world! He says to the woman at the well, "If thou knewest the gift of God!" and He came to bring the blessing. These two things I get hold of: that God is giving, and who it is that has come down so low as to be dependent on a poor woman for a drink of water. Instead of waiting for the day of judgment He has come down into this world to say, "Now if you just trust Me! You cannot answer in the day of judgment, but I am come in the day of grace." Did you ever see any terror in Him? Terror to the Pharisees you might in a certain sense see; but did you ever see, when God was in the world (Christ was God in this world), anything but love to sinners? Never. This is what I find in that blessed One, divine love. Who put it into God's heart? Did you? Nobody but Himself; His own heart was the source of it. I get to know God far better than I know myself; the moment I receive the true blessed testimony of His love, I know Him; I have my Daysman ("I and the Father are one"), who has come into the world of sinners just as they were, passing through this world of sin to meet every want.

27 Well, He goes on, In the cross it is not God before men in this world, but Man before God made sin. In the perfectness of this same love He offered Himself to God: He stands before God made sin for us that He might be dealt with according as it deserved. This was the reason He prayed, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He did not speak this of outrages and insults from man, but He could not take the wrath of God thus. If any of us was to be saved, this cup must be drunk. Just as God came out in love to us down here, so Christ has gone up as Man to God up there.

I find all these people that He had met in blessing saying, "Crucify him, crucify him"; the priests, who ought to have pleaded for weakness, crying out against Him; the judge condemning the innocent Man; and His friends who had been with Him continually - one betraying, another denying, and all deserting Him! I find Him setting His face as a flint, bowing to His Father's will. I find Him, if my faith follow Him there, drinking the cup on the cross there: I brought Him: my sin, my wickedness, my neglect of Him for years, brought Him there. What of my sins now? They are all gone. What is there like that atonement? People talk of Him as an example, which we know He was; but if you take Him only as an example, what do you find? The one righteous Man in the world declaring He was forsaken of God at the end! What sort of testimony is that?

The moment I see Christ there, and all the darkness around, and Him made sin for us, the work done alone between Him and God; there only was obedience fully tested, there was the one spotless victim, the blessed Son of God. There is no glorifying God perfectly except in the cross. There I find the whole righteous judgment of God against sin, no patience, no gentleness; Christ was really drinking the cup, If God could pass over sins, where would be His righteousness? Here I find God's perfect righteousness against sin and His perfect love; I get the whole enmity of man rising up against God, and, where it carries out its purpose, God's perfect grace. You never get positive sin dealt with outright before God except in the cross, and perfect love doing it. I find Christ there alone with God. I see Him in infinite unutterable love. He is in the presence of God for me, always in the value of what He has wrought; and when I go up to God now, I go into the holiest as white as snow, because I could not go in there except by the work of Christ.

28 I go on to the day of judgment: whom do I find there? The very person who put away all my sins. It gives this blessed rest to the heart now; and, when I stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, there is the Man who bore away my sins! How do we get there? When Christ appears, what will He do with me, with you? He comes and changes this vile body: "It is sown in corruption, raised again in glory." To get before the judgment-seat we must be raised or changed: Christ comes Himself, and He raises or changes us, and takes us to Himself

The first coming of Christ was about the putting away of sin. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." What you want is God-given faith in the person of our Daysman. He brings out love to me where I am, and He has gone in as Man in righteousness to God. The question with me is, whether in that dark hour when all were shut out He finished the work God gave Him to do, and gave His life a ransom for many; and I believe He finished it: do you believe? Now He is sitting there, having finished the work, and God has raised Him from the dead; and I know, not only that He has accomplished the work, but that God has accepted it. Like Abel I come to God with His Lamb in my hand.

"If I wash myself with snow water . . . yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch"; I shall be like a man come out of a ditch. But I have got my Daysman, and God rests in Him; and we are in Him, the Holy Ghost being sent down that we may know it. "At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father and ye in me and I in you." Then I learn what the Lord Jesus says in John 17: "That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them." If I look at my Daysman, I have got to the very spring of God's heart. He has given His Son. Glory is but a natural consequence. And if I find He is a righteous God who cannot look at sin: well, I say, He has looked at it on the cross and judged it fully.

29 Christ has accomplished the work: God has accepted it and Christ sits there at His right hand till His enemies are made His footstool. When I say I am in Christ, there is this other blessed truth that Christ is in me. If Christ is in you, walk worthy of Him; being reconciled to God, Christ being your life, you are to glorify God in everything: "Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." You are not you own at all; if you want to be your own, you are not Christ's. What we have to do is to detect the evil in the heart, and thus not dishonour Christ before the world. I am no longer my own at all, but the epistle of Christ. People are to read Christ in you as the ten commandments in the tables of stone.

Redemption is perfect; Christ is our righteousness; I have got my Daysman. The Holy Ghost coming down and dwelling in me, my soul is in the consciousness of the value of what Christ has done, and I am waiting in earnest desire for Christ to come and take me there. It is a perfect finished work, and the only part I had in it was my sin.

The Lord open your hearts and turn your eyes on that blessed One; and if you have your heart open, if you are struggling like Job to lay your hands on the head of the Lamb, the Lord give you in this day of salvation not to neglect so great a salvation.

How the Lord accepted Job

Job 42.

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We see in Job's history the workings of God in the soul in bringing it to Himself, and the exercises the heart passes through when learning itself in the presence of Satan and in the presence of God Himself.

"The Lord accepted Job." It does not say that the Lord accepted his acts, or his works, or anything connected with him; but that He accepted himself And that is just what we want. The moment our souls are really awakened to a sense of what God is and of what we are, we then want to know that we are accepted of God. Till that is known, we may try to bring our acts and our works to clothe ourselves with them; but when we have really come into God's presence, we clothe ourselves with nothing, and then we get the sense of the divine favour.

The converse of this is also true. We know that our works are unholy; and when our souls are truly awakened, we look at ourselves as being the spring of these unholy works; and thus we learn that in heart and spirit and nature we are far from God. Then I am grieved, not only for my sins, but because it is I who committed them. And this is a present thing. If I am looking at my works, I may put them off till the day of judgment; but for myself, personally, I cannot be satisfied without the sense of the present and immediate acceptance of God. I must know that I am at this moment standing in His favour.

It is not said that God accepted Job till the end of his trials. And what had his friends done for him during the sifting through which he was passing? Well might he say, "Miserable comforters are ye all." They had no true apprehension of God's character, and so were unable to understand His dealings with a soul. They had no proper sense of sin, and therefore knew not that, if God would deal in blessing with man, it must be entirely on the ground of grace. They did not know how to meet his case; and though they had said many true things, yet they had not said one single right thing in its application to Job, for they did not understand him.

Job had never really been brought into the presence of God. There had been a certain work in his soul, which produced fruits. But in chapter 29 we evidently see that he had been walking in the sense of blessings from God, and in a measure in the sense of the fruits of grace produced in his heart. He was resting in what he was to others, and not in the favour of God Himself. He owned God, it is true, and bowed under His hand; but notwithstanding he had never been truly in His presence, and consequently his heart had never been searched out. It was not a question of fruits, but a question of what he was. So God goes on dealing with job, till in the very thing in which Job was most famous he is brought to nothing. Job, the most patient man, curses the day of his birth. Why is this? Because we must be broken down - we must be brought to the sense of what we are, as well as of what we have done; and then God can deal with us out of His own heart. Thus God's dealings with us are intended to bring out really what we are before our own eyes in His presence, in the presence of that eye which looks on while we see what sinners we are. Thus God went on dealing with Job till Job was brought to say, "I am vile, I abhor myself."

31 In chapter 23, we see Job's confidence in God, and his desire for God, although the stroke was bitter. He said, "Oh! that I knew where I might find him!" He did not attempt to keep away from God. He had that kind of sense of what God was that he wanted to get to Him, "even to his seat." It is true he speaks of "ordering his cause before him"; but in chapter 9 where he is speaking of man being justified before God, he says, "If he contend with me, I cannot answer him one of a thousand"; and again, "If I justify myself, my own mouth shall condemn me," Here we find that Job was thinking of being in God's sight. There was not the wretched hypocritical attempt to keep away from God; there was the consciousness of having to do with God; and in heart he desired to get to Him, though his conscience kept him away. Thus there was much more truth in Job than in the see-saw truths of his friends; for conscience was in full exercise in him, and not at all in them.

There was also more grace in Job's heart now than when he was floating along in prosperous circumstances. It was, in truth, trying and miserable work; but still he was finding out what was in him. And what grace it is in God that He should take up a heart, and thus wring it out, that the soul might be brought, such as it is, into immediate dependence on Himself!

32 The sinfulness of Job was brought out, so that he could not say it was not there. The sinfulness of his heart was brought upon his conscience; it had come fully out; and a terrible thing that is. We know what it is to the unconverted man; it makes him reckless in iniquity. Let a man think that he has lost his character, and he will then run loose in wickedness. When a man comes to this, it thoroughly breaks him down. It is one thing for a man to lose his character with himself, but it is another and a very different thing to lose it with his neighbour. But when Job has lost his character, when it is entirely gone, then God comes in.

After all the sifting, Job is brought into God's presence, and then "Jehovah accepted Job." In God's presence his mouth is stopped; then he said, "I am vile"; "I will lay my hand on my mouth." But Job must be brought farther, because God is to bring him to Himself; he must be brought to confess not only that there is no good in him, but that there is a great deal of evil. And this he does, as in verse 3, "I have uttered that I understood not." For now it is not a question of condemnation but of sin. When the sinner has judged himself, the fear of condemnation has passed away. "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Thus Job takes God's side against himself. He laid himself before God, and abhorred himself; and then he repents in dust and ashes; for it is only in the presence of God that we learn repentance. In its fullest sense true repentance is, when our sin is so thoroughly brought out that we are taking God's side of the question in judging ourselves, and in justifying Him. Then it is that He justifies us, and makes us accepted in the Beloved. Then it was that "Jehovah accepted Job." And blessed is the man whom the Lord accepteth. May we indeed feel the need of Him, and not rest in the hypocritical quiet of keeping out of His presence!

Christ's Association of Himself with His People on Earth

Psalm 16.

J. N. Darby.

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I need hardly say that there are many aspects in which we may consider the character of our Lord Jesus Christ; for He is the summing up of all possible beauty and perfection in Himself. But He is more than this. He is the means and measure by which we can judge of everything besides. If I want to know God, I must learn Him in Christ. If I want to know what man is in perfection, I learn it by Christ. In a word, all real truth is learnt, and learnt only, in or by Christ. Whether it be man, or sin, or death, or life, or love, or hatred, all is manifested in Christ, or by Christ. Hence the importance of having the soul occupied with Christ, of feeding on Him, since He is the only transforming power, and the only standard of excellence, and the light by which all things else are made manifest.

It is not the joy of deliverance that is presented in this psalm, nor the work by which deliverance is accomplished; but rather the Deliverer in His humiliation and walk on earth, drawn out as the attractive object of our souls. For Christ is an object in a double way. He is an object in glory to attract our souls upward from the earth, as it is said, "seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." But He is no less an object in His humiliation as presenting the embodiment of all moral excellence before God, and that in a world through which we are called to pass.

If we contemplate Christ in glory, this gives us the definiteness of that hope to which we are predestinated, for we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's Son. "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." This awakens the energy of hope, of joy, and gladness. If we are delivered from death, through the blood of Christ, we are also planted in Him as the objects of God's delight. Christ's position before the Father, and His relation to Him, mark our position and relationship through infinite grace; for He says, "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." We are like Him in the sight of His Father, and our praises should not jar with His.

"We wait [it is true] for the hope of righteousness by faith"; not for "righteousness by faith," because we have that, or rather in Him are that; but we wait for the hope that belongs to it; and we know what that is, for it is that which has now in glory. And we are to be "changed into the same image from glory to glory." Christ is our righteousness, and we have it, or rather we are it; "we are made the righteousness of God in him." But we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness. The Spirit was sent down to witness that Christ is glorified; and hence He becomes an object to us in the glory.

61 It is not good for the soul only to contemplate Christ as an agent, important as this is in its place. No question, if I am feeding on Christ, dwelling on Him with admiration and delight and joy, as the object of my soul, it pre-supposes a knowledge of Him as an agent accomplishing redemption by His death, and having taken His place on high for us, and so maintaining the integrity of our position before God and our communion with Him. But if I am looking at the priesthood of Christ, precious and necessary as it is, He is still before me, more as an agent than the object of my soul. As priest, He is a servant in grace. To see Him girded thus for service doubtless draws out the affections, and gives power and energy, and brightens our hearts all along the road. But then all manner of exercise of heart comes in here; because Christ deals with us in this according to what we practically are. The priesthood of Christ has to do with weakness and infirmities, with the ever-varying exercises of the soul: and hence it is said, "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous," Righteousness ever abides in God's presence, and hence the ground of the restoration of communion when it has been lost. If any man sin, we are not driven to a distance but the soul is restored because Christ has prayed for us. It is not that we have to ask Him to intercede, or to exercise His priesthood for us, but that He has done so; for the movement of grace is always on His heart. The priesthood of Christ is for those who are righteous, who are redeemed, in order to carry them on through the wilderness of this world. He is their Advocate, constantly carrying on their affairs, and the Holy Ghost is spoken of by the same title (for "the Comforter" is indeed the Advocate).

Thus Christ applies, in divine wisdom, to the heart, all that we have by virtue of His intercession. He is perfectly cognizant of all that is in us, and knows how to meet it. It is not the idea that I am going to glory, but that, God having set me in perfect righteousness, He teaches me by the priesthood of Christ to discern between good and evil according to His light, or according to His nature. I am utterly dependent in my condition, and He feeds me day by day with manna as I need. As He said of Israel: "Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years," Deut. 8: 2-4.

62 He never forgot Israel for a single day, because all their supplies in the wilderness depended on His remembrance and faithful care; and His care as our High Priest and Advocate is the same to us now. In all this Christ is an agent; but in this psalm He is an object - an object in His humiliation, and, more properly, the food of our souls. He is not our food in glory, but in humiliation. We feed on Him here, as a living and dead Christ. Christ does not say in John 6, "The bread of God is he" which went up to heaven; but "He which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world."

That which especially draws out our affections is the tracing of Christ's passage through this world, through everything down here about which He has to deal with us. When He was on earth, the Father could delight in Him in the beginning of His path, on account of His inherent excellence; and at the close, because of His developed perfection. He could say, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"; and God has given us for delight, the very same object in which He delights. What do we say then? Why, in weakness and poverty, it is true, yet surely, with unhesitating confidence, we say the same! We cannot indeed reach His perfectness in our thoughts; but then the very sense we have of the poverty and weakness of our apprehensions is because the Father has shewn us something of His perfectness.

The Father, in communicating His own delight, does not say, This is My beloved Son in whom you ought to be well pleased, but in whom I am well pleased. How marvellous that the Father should tell us what His thoughts are about His Son, and what His delight is in Him! It was not what was true about Christ that attracted the poor woman in Simon's house (Luke 7: 37-50), but it was the beauty and attractiveness of Christ Himself that absorbed her heart. She loved and admired Him for what He was, before she knew what He was for her. When she knew this, she could reflect upon it, and this would give the ground of constancy to her affections and delight. Jesus commended all she did - her tears - her affection - her silence; because all were drawn forth by her contemplation of Himself.

63 But, before we can properly feed on Christ as our food, we must know Him as our righteousness. Some are attracted to Christ for a while, and have joy in Him, but for the want of a knowledge of righteousness lose their joy, and know not how to find it again. Righteousness sets us in peace before God, and then we have fellowship, and can speak of it; as the apostle says, "truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." And on the same ground we have fellowship one with another. Connected with this there are three things: 1st, Walking in the light as God is in the light; 2nd, consequent fellowship and communion one with another; 3rd, being perfectly cleansed by the blood. When the soul has the sense of being perfectly cleansed by the blood of Christ, and His death is thus entered into, there is the ground for feeding on Christ, and occupancy with Him as our object. And this the Lord reckons on as a result of His love. He says to His disciples, "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go to the Father." He reckons on their affections making them glad on account of His joy; and He only refers to His joy, to shew how He looks for their sympathy to be engaged with what concerned Himself. This however cannot be until salvation is known. But Christ should be our object; and dwelling on what He is, the food of our souls.

Two things form perfection in the creature before God: dependence and obedience. Independence is sin - necessarily so. All effort after a freedom of this nature is but an attempt to break away from the sense of creature - dependence on God. The action of our own will is sin.

When Christ became man He took the character of a dependent, an obedient one. His Father's will was not only His guide in all He did, but His motive in doing it: and this was His perfection. Observe the place of dependence He takes in verse 1 of this Psalm: "Preserve me, O God! for in thee do I put my trust." It is beautiful to see His obedience, and beautiful to see it in dependence too.

64 Whenever the Father has His rightful place in our affections, He has it in everything. "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Take the example of a child in pleasing a father: love makes it a matter of perfect indifference to the child's heart as to what the thing is that is to be done; it is done to please its father, and this is motive enough for anything. And how does the heart look back with delight, and trace this in Christ, in all His ways in His pathway through this world! He had all power, but never used it to serve Himself. From the manger to the cross it was the embodiment of the word, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!" Because He was above all evil, He was able to go through all evil, unassailable by it; while at the same time He was capable of touching and dealing with those who were in it.

In the words, "I said unto Jehovah, Thou art my Lord," Christ takes the place of the servant to God; and there is not a step in the path of life - divine life - but He trod it, in order to shew it to us. Surely it was enough to draw out the delight of the Father to see the Son, as man, walking down here, in everything dependent upon His pleasure, and in everything obedient to His will. And we know indeed that it was so, from the opened heavens at the baptism of John, and from the voice from the excellent glory - "this is my beloved Son." In everything He manifested a blessed and perfect dependence. He came out from the Father, and carried back into His presence, a man with the stamp of the same blessed perfectness which He had with the Father before the world was.

He says, "Thou wilt shew me the path of life"; and He passed through death in dependence on the Father. Adam found the path of death in his folly; but back to the path of life he never could get. The trees of knowledge and of life to this day are perplexing the minds of men; but no reason nor philosophy of man can reconcile responsibility and the gift of life. Man cannot make it out. From the beginning he has tried to stand in responsibility, whenever the mind has been awakened to acknowledge the claims of God, without a knowledge of His grace. But in everything he has failed; and all that he has done by it is to earn death. Christ comes into the place of ruin and death, and makes out and shews us the path of life - that "path which the vulture's eye hath not seen." He was the life; and He tracks a path for us in the wild waste - "in the wilderness," as it is said, "where there is no way." He finds it and shews it to us, and we have to learn to tread it in dependence and obedience. To Him it must be through death; therefore He says, If any man will follow me, "he must take up his cross." Christ would rather die than disobey; there is His perfectness. We have to tread in the same steps; but Christ before us is the One we have to look to, to think on, to feed upon, in this wild waste of sin and death. It is not the quantity we do that marks our spirituality; but the perfectness with which we present Christ.

65 "In thy presence there is fulness of joy." There are two parts of blessedness - being with Christ, and being like Christ. If we were constantly before God in the consciousness of being unlike Him, it would only distress. But we shall be with Him and like Him; and the consciousness of this is blessedness. With Him we shall enjoy the Father's countenance; crowned and sitting on thrones, but delighting to cast our crowns down before Him, and to say, "Thou art worthy" - our souls being filled with the excellency of Him who is in the midst.

The saints, the excellent of the earth, with whom Christ associates Himself, are all His delight. No matter how feeble or how failing; He says they are the excellent, and His delight is in them - not in their state, it may be, but in them. And He must have them with Him. "Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me may be with me where I am." He would have them with Him! He will be in company with them in the glory, in the presence of His Father, where is "fulness of joy." And oh! may it rest on our minds in what way Christ associates Himself with the excellent down here; and may our hearts dwell on God's delight in Him, and on His perfectness down here, that we may make it our delight to trace His footsteps, weigh His words, and feed on Him.

Thoughts on Psalm 16

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As Psalm 15 gives the character of those who will have their portion with Christ in His kingdom, when God sets Him as King in Zion, so in Psalm 16 Christ Himself seems to say, I have come down from that place God Himself had assigned Me, and taken My place in the pathway of faith - the very same that you are in - the place of rejection, of sorrow, of suffering, the place that the godly remnant find themselves in. Therefore is His cry to God. He used not His own divine power to escape any suffering; and, remember, it was not suffering for sin, not chastening, but the path of faith - as He says, "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." Therefore had He His ear opened morning by morning. He fully entered into the sorrows of the wilderness. There is not a sorrow comes upon a saint, not a trial of faith in which we can find ourselves, but Christ can fully sympathise with us in it. If we only set our foot in the narrow way (it is with the new nature He sympathises), then we find this blessed One has been before us' It is astonishing how much we are sustained by circumstances, how we lean upon the circumstances that the Lord never had in His path. Much of our joy is derived from a thousand things that Christ never had joy in, and that gave Him not a moment's sustainment. We may find ourselves losing, or in danger of losing, not a few things by faithfulness. What then? We shall only be brought nearer to the Lord Himself. If the path becomes rougher than ever it was before, surely we shall find only the more of the sympathy of Him who has trodden it in all its roughness. Therefore can He be called "the Author and Finisher of faith," because He has run the whole course of faith. He has suffered every kind of suffering and trial that besets the path. We may each one of us have this or that peculiar trial or sorrow. Ours is but a taste of that which He drank to the dregs - like a shade of that which in its real depth of grief He knew. The contradiction of sinners beset Him on every side.

We may know somewhat of it in any little measure of faithfulness we shew. We may be called to give up father and mother, or, as the Lord says, to "hate father and mother," etc. But what had He to comfort Him from any such sources? Everything like a prop here was gone, yet could He say in the face of all that, "The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places, yea, I have a goodly heritage. Thou wilt shew me the path of life." Suppose death comes, Jesus could say, "My flesh also shall rest in hope." Hezekiah knew and said in his trial, By all these things men live, and in all these things is the life of the spirit.

67 There is chastening, and the like, needed by us; but Christ never sought to do anything but to please God. His sufferings therefore proceeded only from His walking in the path of life. All that could try faith came upon Him, while He was without anything which we have so fully that could sustain nature. Still we find Him in death trusting in God. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither," etc. The path of life was perfectly opened out to us in Christ. There is a deep joy in entering in spirit into Christ's paths. The remnant enter into it in Psalm 20. The thorough realising of what Christ was as a man down here. There is nothing lays hold on the heart, nothing feeds it, like that. Every sorrow that the heart of any can go through, as walking in the path of righteousness, Jesus knew in His path. This renders His sympathy so peculiarly sweet. Any exaggeration would be dangerous on this subject, thus taking away our portion. It is true fellowship with Christ's sufferings that gives the energy of hope. This is drawn out by the glory being unfolded to us by His sufferings. I am more and more struck in reading the Psalms thus as connected with the Jews.

When I look at the church, I can only say it is nothing but sovereign grace that picks up wretched sinners and links them with Jesus, giving them the same place, the same portion, "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." I can only gaze with wonder and adore. It was the counsel of God from everlasting - His sovereign grace. I cannot then talk of God's government or His dealings with us, since no principles of government could make us members of Christ's body, etc. It was all sovereign grace. The church is the fulness, the body, of Christ. Once lay hold of that, and what is the consequence? It draws out wonder, admiration, worship.

But that is not all; there is another thing for us. What mercy to know that my salvation is secure! But now as set free from anxiety about myself I am to be occupied with Him by whom all this wondrous work was wrought. I find there is not a sorrow or difficulty in the pathway of life which He is not interested in. This is other knowledge than the knowledge of salvation. It draws out trust and confidence and love, as Job says, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." We find Christ Himself going through it all - not suffering for sin indeed, but for righteousness. Only on the cross did He know what it was to suffer for sin - our sins. There indeed He knew the forsaking of God. If I suffer as a saint, I find the full sympathy of Jesus. If for sin, the Lord has no sympathy with sin, though He Himself needed to suffer for us, and thus to become known to us not as the Bread that came down from heaven only, but giving His flesh for the life of the world (John 6). Do you thus feed upon Him? Do you know Him as thus made the food for your souls, that which turns into the substance of life? Then feed on Him. This is what the knowledge of Him leads to. It is another thing from the energy of hope. The effect of being occupied with the glory, where Christ now is, is to enable us to overcome the difficulties that obstruct our way and to reach forward.

68 Occupation with His walk as a man shews us the path of godliness. We see Him taking it in His baptism. When those whose eyes were opened to see the principles of the kingdom (conscious that they were bearing anything but the good fruit) took the place of confession, Jesus was there. The One who had so fully taken the place as man as to say to God, "Thou art my Lord," says also of the saints, "In them is all my delight." We find this in Hebrews 2 - "He is not ashamed to call them brethren, for both he that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified are all of one."

"Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself," etc. His state was not having a will to do something or other that must be stopped; no, He could say, "Lo, I come to do thy will." Such is christian obedience, and true liberty, not to require checking in our wills, but to have the same kind of obedience as Christ's. He stands alone in Ills sufferings in our stead. Nothing equals the glory that He will have as the Saviour of sinners. Other glory we share with Him, but in that He is alone. In His walk He sets us an example. In His trust in God, etc., He never takes a single step to get the reward of obedience, but asks of His Father, as - in John 17, "Father, glorify thy Son," etc.; and here, in the simplest confidence, "Thou wilt not leave my soul," etc. Patience with Him had its perfect work. He never stirs even when they told Him, "he whom thou lovest is sick." He waited patiently till the right time; and now His desire for His people is that they might have His joy fulfilled in themselves - that joy which He knew when He said, "My meat is to do the will," etc. He trod the path of sorrow and rejection here, but He had joy in that very path, as He says, "The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places."

69 In Psalm 22 we get the cry of the Lord at the cross. No suffering for sin till then, but the great principle of the communion of Christ with the sorrows of the new nature in the saints was true before then.

In the measure in which we enter into the path, we get communion with Christ. The affections of Christ more known to us, we become better acquainted, as it were, with the heart of Christ. This is not a question of safety, but of growing up unto Him. The heavens were opened over Him when He took the place publicly of identifying Himself with those who were in reality the godly. When we get into that place, the Spirit of God can lead us into the understanding of these things - taking of the things of Christ, and shewing them unto us. But if one say, I am not there, cannot we delight in tracing Christ in it? Even if we are not walking in the place as we should be, it is most blessed to trace His walk in it. It is our privilege to walk in it, our highest privilege here; and so only shall we be fully able to enjoy our proper portion, Christ, as led and taught of the Spirit.

Psalm 25

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There is something to touch us in seeing a soul open out to God without yet enjoying deliverance. It knows well that he who waits on God shall not be confounded; but peace is not there though seen from afar. We must remark the manner in which God receives this opening of heart. He takes cognisance of all that passes in the soul: fear, hope, sins, deliverance. God would have us understand that He occupies Himself with it all.

The Psalms, because of their prophetic character, are the expression of the Holy Spirit's operation in the soul before it finds peace. They do not give the definitive answer of the love of God. There is in our hearts a depth of hardness, of insensibility, of levity such that it is needful God should take pains with them to fix them and bring them down to the feeling of their incapacity. God fixes the soul by the sense of its wants. We are so miserable that the only means of giving us the idea of God's love is by fixing the heart through its wants on the contemplation of what God is; so that where the sense of want fails the love of God is totally unknown, as if it did not exist.

In verses 7-11 there is a deep principle. It is only when we are thoroughly convinced that our iniquity is "great" that we feel the need we have of God and of His pardon. One might think of a little iniquity that one had just to remedy oneself, or that God might pass it over. The heart of man upsets everything. He puts the uprightness of Jehovah before His grace, His truth before His mercy, and thinks that, if a man walk as he ought, God will be good toward him. That is just the contrary of what is said here. "Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O LORD. Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way. The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way. All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. For thy name's sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great," v. 7-11. Jehovah who is "upright" loves uprightness; but before all He would have the wretched sinner know Him as "good." The ill-enlightened soul that knows its faults up to a certain point desires to arrive at enjoying the goodness of God by its own uprightness. It is the proof of a state of heart which knows not God and which hardens itself against all the history He has given of man's heart, as well as of Himself, in the word. Hardness of heart rises against the grace of God, and nothing more hinders grace from acting than the thought that, if one is upright, God will be good; and this, because the heart is neither lowly nor softened, and pride is not yet destroyed therein.

71 Man wishes that one should not speak to him of his sins. The action of the Holy Spirit, on the contrary, makes one own and confess sin in detail. We can speak of sin in general, or yet more of the sins of which we are not guilty; but otherwise a man does not speak of his own sins. Did not Peter say to the Jews, "Ye denied the Holy One and the Just," although he had done so himself in a manner still more shameful? Why did he speak of that sin without blushing? The Holy Spirit alone could give him to do so through Him who came by water and blood, Paul when converted and in peace speaks freely to the Lord Jesus of the sins he had done against His name and saints. An unconverted man can speak of evil or of other sins than his own, having no confidence in God's grace for eternal life or remission. A thief may blame a drunkard; but no one naturally speaks of his own sins, because the conscience avoids being upright before God. Men would hide their sins and shew their good qualities; they would pass as honest good sort of people, and get rid of God. In that case one has no need of the goodness of God. People will try to meet the goodness of God by a certain uprightness; but there is no true confidence in God, and every hope of rendering worship to God in this state of things is a fraud. God begins with what we are; He takes us such as we are; and man will not have it so.

God presents to us in the Bible the most extraordinary things. He lays out all His counsels and all His resources for the evil state in which man is found. We see then all the efforts and the pains God has taken to put Himself in relation with the heart of man. It is the greatest hardness of heart to see, without being thereby touched, all that which God has done, and the action of His Spirit in those who are saved. One sees hearts with God's goodness out before them, yet abiding far from Him, such as they are. The hard heart sees all that and goes its own way. The heart that is thus has not yet received the least seed of life.

72 But one may also be convinced of sin and seek to recover before God the place one has lost. This soul believes that there is some means other than pure pardon. It has not yet true relations with God. It cannot any longer seek the world; it observes the Lord's day; it attends meetings, and rests on the like. But then the soul is not convinced that God is love, any more than it is in the presence of God with a true knowledge of itself. Not being humbled, it chooses itself a way to arrive at God, and cannot say, "I wait on thee," as in verses 5, 21. It is when we are convinced there is no question of getting to God, but that we are in His presence and lost, that we can say, "For thy name's sake, O Jehovah, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great." There is no more thought of bettering the conduct in order to get to God; there is no more a way to pave. We no longer desire then to avoid God, but we see ourselves before Him such as we are. If God is revealed, we have to understand that which He is Himself, and then comes the knowledge of His grace. It is a question of knowing what God is in respect to the sinner who is always in His presence. God is always "good," and He will not sanction the wickedness of man in leaving him quiet though hardened. Instead of reproaching with the sin, God brings to the conviction of sin in making it felt that He has seen the sin, that He has thought of it, and that He has found a means of pardoning and of teaching sinners the way they should follow.

"For thy goodness' sake," "for thy name's sake"; there is ground on which the soul founds its confidence. Impossible that God should fail His own name (John 17: 6). He is "good and upright." What does the goodness of God to a trembling and miserable sinner? It does not cast up to him his misery, but takes cognisance of it to inspire him with full confidence and give him courage. God would deny Himself if He failed in His goodness in this case. God cannot do otherwise; He sees to His own name, His glory, His truth, His grace, in a word to all that He is, as we read in the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15: 20-25).

God makes us understand that He occupies Himself with our sins long before we ourselves were occupied with them. If the goodness of God is occupied with them, it must be that He is so to get rid of them altogether, and He has given Jesus for this purpose. To blot out our sins completely - there is what God's goodness would and must do. But if one would arrive at pardon by progress in holiness, it is to choose the road for oneself God puts the sinner at his ease in His presence by shewing him his sins on the head of Jesus. His glory would not be complete if the believer were not justified. It is a salvation accomplished for ever that God presents to us, and the soul is in peace. All this is for His name's sake.

73 If the soul is assured of the goodness of God, would it love to keep some sins? No; the conscience set free from the thick layer of old sins becomes more delicate. If we are truly quickened, what we find in ourselves after our conversion is much more painful to us than the sins were before conversion. But Jesus is dead, knowing what we were and because of what we are. Such as I am, God loves me; His name is here in question, and His name in goodness. God has condemned sin in the flesh (Rom. 8: 3), in that Christ, having become man, was made sin for us (2 Cor. 5: 19-21). He has been sacrificed for us (Heb. 9). The name of God who is love is thus revealed by everything that God has done for us in Jesus.

God is upright also, and He teaches the sinner and leads him. This comes after pardon. The first is He is good; then comes truth, though man's heart thinks the inverse. If we are in relation with a God of goodness, how will that appear? Up to what point should He be manifested to us? He will shew in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us through Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 7). God has before Him the most wretched of sinners (take the robber on the cross); and what will He do to display to the angels, etc., in heaven the riches of His goodness? He will take us, once wretched, and set us in the same glory as Christ Himself.

It is in us God shews what He is. You who say you are most feeble and miserable, it is you God would choose, if He would shew the immense riches of His grace. He cannot stop in this goodness; and it is not humility to put limits to His goodness by saying we are too little and unworthy. He forgives for the sake of His own name (1 John 2: 12). He restores and leads for His own name's sake. He begins, continues, and finishes up to heaven itself and always for the sake of His name (Phil. 1). There is the only thing which makes the soul upright, sincere, and open before God, because there remains no subject of fear with regard to sin, and there is never uprightness in the heart till our consciences have seen and felt what we are before God as sinners pardoned. The moment that the soul says, "For thy name's sake, O Jehovah, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great," it cannot but be that God manifests Himself. One then makes progress in Him, and one finds the sweet assurance that God is ever good and upright for the sinner.

Psalm 40

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There are some special Psalms connected with Christ, round which others seem clustered. This is one of them. Here is Christ's actual association with His people on earth, not only in their sorrows, but at length bearing their sins, so that all who looked to Him might be blessed with Him. "I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me." Christ did not take one step to save Himself. He might have had twelve legions of angels, but He was waiting on the Lord.

He appeals to God as Jehovah, not Father, because this was not then brought out, as it is now. The Jew did not know the Father as He is now revealed; and Christ was taking the place of a godly man made under the law amongst them. Therefore He is spoken of in terms suiting the relationship known to the Jews.

One or two verses often bring out the subject of the psalm, the rest being the development of it. What He did in the position He took up is the great thing here - what He went through, what He felt. The grand principle is, that He "waited patiently for Jehovah" - the relationship in which Christ as a man was standing on the earth as connected with the remnant of Israel.

It is clear that the different names of God have a most important meaning, because they are the revelation of what He is to all, If I call Him Father, I own what He is to me as His child. If "Jehovah" be employed, it is what He is in caring for and keeping His earthly people, whom He had called out in order to shew His ways in government. If "God Almighty" be used, it is as protector of His pilgrims as Abram, Isaac, and Jacob in going from one country to another, or abiding in presence of hostile races in Canaan. For us it is Father. "Holy Father, keep through thine own name," etc. It is important for us to know our position, as well as to see what position Christ was in when expressing these Psalms. In Matthew 5 He says, "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." He teaches us that we are to shew forth grace and not law, as the Father was doing in Himself. Therefore we have to act after the same character: and nothing else suits those who belong to the kingdom of heaven and have the revelation of the Father's name.

76 Here, in Psalm 40, His heart is with the poor remnant. He undertakes their cause, going through all their sorrow and bearing their sins. In the last it is for them, not with them; but He gives them the comfort of being taken up to the same place with Himself, putting a new song into their mouths, as Jehovah had into His. "Many shall see it and fear, and shall trust in the Lord." But, moreover He says, in verse 6, "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required." These are all put aside. "He taketh away the first to establish the second." Christ came to do God's will. Everything centres in the Son. All blessing is connected with relationship to Him, whether for outcast reprobates (Gentiles), or for God's people, the Jews, who had broken the covenant. The Levitical system vanishes away as not meeting God's desires any more than man's need. Christ, who says "Lo, I come to do thy will," is everything. Then He "preached righteousness in the great congregation." This cost Him His life. He made perfectly good God's character in the world - went out to all the people - declared God's faithfulness - did not hide His righteousness within His heart, and got into miry clay in consequence, that is, all that can press a man down. "I have glorified thee on the earth." "I have not concealed thy loving-kindness and thy truth from the great congregation." "Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me," for I have been declaring what Thou art in faithfulness; withhold not Thou Thy tender mercies from Me. Then He goes farther (v. 12), for He came to suffer not only with but for us. "For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me." Not merely our there, but "MINE." If speaking amongst the remnant He might have said our; but when taking them on Himself, standing alone for their deliverance, He says "mine."

Next, there is judgment on the enemies alluded to in verses 14, 15, in contrast with verse 16: "Let all those that seek thee rejoice," etc. It is no more clouds and darkness, fearing the Lord and walking in darkness, not knowing such a thing longer, but rejoicing as well as seeking; for He has met all against us. When we are not rejoicing in the salvation of the Lord, we have not found it; we may be seeking it, but have not found it.

In the Psalms we have the thoughts and feelings of Christ expressed, when the facts are going on. We have the privilege thus of knowing how He felt when under them. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" His feelings are here. The fact was atonement. When suffering from God He was absolutely alone - none to look on, When He appeals to God for deliverance, He is not heard (on the cross). "He tasted death for every man." If He had had the least comfort from God, He would not have drunk the cup. Never was He so precious to God. Never was obedience so perfect as at that moment. Divine love was mightier than all the sufferings - mightier than sin - mightier than death, Satan, or wrath of God. It was not so with Peter, who was full of joy when going out of the world; and Stephen says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," without any suspending of the favour of God. There was no wrath on them: Jesus bore it all for them - for us. The effect of the cross is a throne of unmingled grace, and it will be open to all in the millennium.

77 In Psalm 23 Jehovah is the Shepherd; we cannot say Christ was a sheep. He is Jehovah, but still He emptied Himself - went before them - passed through every difficulty and trial.

In Psalm 24 He is Jehovah received on high.

In Psalm 25 sin is confessed. This is what makes the difference for any soul in the present time. The remnant, before they trust in Christ, cry to Jehovah. How can I go to Jehovah when I have been sinning? How can a man trust Jehovah with a bad conscience? Here is combined the expression of confession and of trust together. They can look for mercy. God never allows absolute despair in His people, though it is often very like it. In Judas it was absolute; and he went out and hanged himself. Then all is brought out to meet this state in the cross. If there were only love where would be the righteousness? If righteousness' only, where the love? Both are combined in the cross. When 'the cross comes in, all is perfectly clear. The righteousness is proved to be as great as the love, and the love as great as the righteousness. This is often not known all at once; but by little and little the blessed picture seen in Christ makes its way into the soul. Then it is all light; but then the man finds darkness comes in perhaps. At first there is only reckoning on the blessedness of Christ, and, when that reaches the conscience, it brings bitterness. What at first only attracted the heart did not reach the elements of good and evil - it was all joy; but when light reaches these, he finds it does not minister peace, because he has not learnt the thing to which it applies in his own soul. The state of the Jews all through these psalms is this - not having the application in the conscience of what the cross teaches.

78 It is a wonderful thing to see Christ coming to the cross, and saying, "mine iniquities." Christ made Himself one with me, taking all my debts upon Him; my surety, He has gone down into the depths. "Mine iniquities!" - any one of the remnant might say that. There is the remnant's voice in it; but there is Christ's first. He has taken them. They suffer FROM them, never FOR them. If they suffered for them, it would be eternal condemnation. "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God."

God brings in the principle of living righteousness, and therefore gives the consciousness of sins. "For thy name's sake pardon mine iniquity; for it is great," Psalm 25. This is strange reasoning according to man's thought - "for it is great." Men plead that it is a little sin; but when taught of God, we see how great sin is. Another thing is, truth is in the man, because he feels the sin great, he has given up any thought of justifying himself. My iniquity is great: if Thou dost not forgive me for Thine own glory's sake, Thou canst not do it at all. And not one spot of sin will He leave, for the comfort of my own heart or the glory of His name. In Isaiah 43: 22, etc., Israel are made to rest in absolute sovereign mercy. Grace is perfect in the getting rid of our sin in Christ.

Thus Psalm 40, "I waited patiently," etc., gives the reason why the remnant should trust Jehovah. MESSIAH has been delivered from the horrible pit and the miry clay by the path of resurrection. Then there is the great central truth - "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire," etc. The Levitical system vanishes as inefficacious. "Mine ears hast thou digged." It is not here the same as Isaiah 50, where "he awakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened mine ear," etc. This has a peculiar character. It is His offering Himself before He came. So in Philippians 2 we read He becomes a man, taking the form of a servant, having ears, doing nothing but what He was told, listening to every word that came out of God's mouth. "By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live." He had cars to receive it. Christ had no desire to do anything different from God's will: this was His motive. Never to stir but as another - God - will guide you, is perfectness as a man. Do you say, What! am I never to do what I like? Oh! I answer, you want to have your own will, which is sin.

79 Christ waited for the expression of His Father's will before doing anything. Christ on earth was in the form of a servant. How did He get there? By putting off all the glory of having a will of His own - offering Himself before He came to do God's will. His delight was to come; His love brought Him. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." If that was His will, it was the Father's will. He "learned obedience by the things which he suffered." He told His disciples, in going forth, to say, "Peace . . . . And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again." So it was with Him. He was obedient. He offered Himself to obey, and there was pure and constant obedience all through. There was power, of course, in Him, but He came into the place of perfect obedience. The first word is not from God, Do you go, but "Lo, I come": it was from Christ, "in the volume of the book it is written of me." This gives us a knowledge of Christ and His intercourse with God before He came. Here is Christ, the Son of God, a divine person, and the means of all blessing, taking the place of obedience on earth. Nay, He is the servant now, too: what is He doing for us? Bringing out God to us, to our eyes; yea, He has brought God right down to our hearts. "I have preached righteousness in the great congregation," not concealed thy faithfulness, etc. Christ has not failed to bring all that God is to us. How we want it in a world that has got as far away as it can from God, with its artificers like Cain and his seed!

Others might talk about the thing, but Christ was it. In every word and act they might have seen the Father, if they had had eyes to see. Christ can say, I know the world - what it is; I have gone through it all high and low; I have traced it all through, and, like Noah's dove, never found an echo. Now you come to Me: I will give you rest. There is never any rest for a human heart but in Him. One then learns of Him in the meekness and submission of His soul.

"Let all those that seek thee rejoice," etc. "But I am poor and needy: the Lord thinketh upon me." I and the others - I have taken the sorrow for them, and they must rejoice. Can you say, "Let the Lord be magnified"? He says, I have taken it all on myself, I have done it all. "By the obedience of one many shall be justified." If you have not been broken down to feel your iniquity is great, you cannot have peace; you are mixing up something of your own. If you get Christ instead of yourself, because you yourself are so bad, then you can say, The Lord has put away my sin; I am accepted in the Beloved. Are you emptied of yourself so as to say, Christ is everything for me? He has been made sin: is righteousness between you and God now, instead of your sins? Whence did it come? By the love of God flowing in through the Spirit. By Him He says, "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." All the emphasis is on "no more." They are not to be brought up another day. Only believe in Christ and rest in grace so truly divine.

Psalms 42-72

Book 2

Especially Psalms 45 and 68

J. N. Darby.

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In the Second Book of Psalms we see the remnant entirely cast out of Judaea; this gives a different character to their state. In the First Book we have seen it was the exercise of patience in the midst of evil that characterised them. That is now over, and they are as a whole cast out, with the exception of a few. The woman flies when the abomination is set up. The extremity of evil has arrived, and they are looking for judgment to work out deliverance for them.

As a general thing, we find more connection with the person of Christ in the First Book. When in the world, He remained in Jerusalem for a time, then He went out; and when He went back, it was to be crucified and slain. Thomas dreaded this when he said, "They sought of late to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?" Christ had been declaring God's righteousness, in the great congregation, not "refraining his lips." They rejected Him for it; but, before man was allowed to lay his lawless hands upon Him, God gives a public testimony to every part of His glory. In the raising of Lazarus there was testimony to Him as Son of God; riding into Jerusalem on an ass, there was testimony to Him as Son of David; and then when the Greeks come up, there is testimony to Him as Son of man. All this led to His crucifixion, and, in the end, to the judgment of the Jews.

Psalm 42 is the utterance of those cast out of Jerusalem. Compare verses 5, 9, etc.

Joel 2: 17 shews they have got back again after this, and after the destruction of the beast. Those in Zion are calling for a fast, but the putting down of enemies is not finished. In Ezekiel we read of the Northern and Eastern armies coming up, and they find the Lord there. Sennacherib represents the northern army, not the beast.

Joel 2: 20, "His stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things." "Fear not, O land, for the Lord will do great things." There is not only apostasy judged in the beast, but there is the government of the Lord Jesus coming in over the rebellious nations. Thus there are two characters of judgment. He overcomes the beast (that which was antagonistic to what was in heaven) making "war with the Lamb": that which is apostate from what is heavenly goes in rebellion against what is heavenly. Christ comes from heaven and breaks that. Then there is the great northern army: Gog comes up and finds Him there. There are those feeble Jews there, and what are they to do? The man of the earth has all in his hand; but God is going to prove He is God of the earth as well as of heaven. It seems to the tried remnant as if God had forgotten them; but no! He is there to destroy this army, as well as the apostate king who had been already consigned alive to the lake of fire. The Lord comes and says, "Here I am," and the enemies are destroyed on the mountains. But the same feeling has come out in this case as in the other: they say "Where is thy God?"

82 There is more historically brought out in this book of the Psalms, and not so much of Christ's sufferings (there is that too in Psalm 69), and more of His sitting in judgment over them. There is the entire dominion of evil allowed, and then the coming in of power to set it aside, Here you have "God" more than Jehovah. The link is broken, for they are out of the land. See the difference between Psalms 14 and 53. In the one it is Jehovah, in the other it is God: contrast also Psalm 14: 5; 53: 5 - the "righteous" and "him that encamped against thee."

Psalm 43 refers to the apostate Jews, as Psalm 42 to the rebellious Gentiles, from whom they are suffering. Psalm 44 goes back in spirit, "We have heard with our ears," etc. They did not see, because driven out; but they hear. It is the past contrasted with the present desolation. Verse 9 is their condition; verse 11, "sheep appointed for meat"; verse 17, sense of integrity; verse 23 is not Jehovah, but Adonai.

In Psalm 45 Messiah comes in; in Psalm 46 all is entirely changed. Psalm 47 is a call anticipative of victory. Psalm 48 is descriptive of how it comes about that the King is there. What they said in Psalms 42-44 you get the answer to in Psalm 48. All they have heard of they now see. It comes to pass again, and more than ever. "We have thought of thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple" - just what they are longing for in Psalm 42. "According to thy name." They praise according to what they know He is - they can trust. "Thy right hand is full of righteousness."

83 These titles of God, Almighty, Most High, and Jehovah, are connected with God's government on the earth. The first is connected with Abraham; the second with Melchisedec coming to Abraham. It is a picture of God's taking possession of heaven and earth in Christ - Christ being King and Priest - Priest on His throne. He will gather together in one all things in Christ in heaven and earth. We know God as Father, who hath "blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." We shall reign with Him; we are associated with Him in suffering (little though we have) and we shall be in the glory. Christ is to inherit all things, and we with Him but the best part is to be with Himself, being children of the Father. Now Christ is sitting within the veil in heavenly places, we in Him, and we shall be associated with Him when He comes to take possession - we shall come out with the Great Heir of all things.

In Nebuchadnezzar's history we find God spoken of as the "Most High." In Psalm 91 whoever dwells in the secret of the Most High (not Father) is safe. Then Christ addresses Jehovah, and in verse 9 the remnant speak and Jehovah answers. All this is when God takes the government of the earth; but He is our Father. Now we may be put to death, and yet not a hair perish. Now is the time to suffer. He is not yet taking to Himself His great power and reigning. Blessed that it is so, because now is the time of His long-suffering; the joint-heirs are being gathered. He will reign, the Prince of peace. Melchisedec was praising from the Most High God and praising for Him. So it will be in Christ, in whom centre all titles of glory. As Jehovah He will be faithful to His promises.

In 2 Corinthians 6 He who is Jehovah says, "Ye shall be my sons and daughters" - I will take a new character towards you. When we have the Father's name as now, we have the Father's house also in prospect.

In Psalm 45 Christ is making good His title as God's King. In Colossians 1 we see His rights as Creator to be heir of all, and as Son of man in Hebrews 2. Here it is the King. In Deuteronomy 32 the Most High, in dividing the lands, makes Israel the centre for the government of the earth. As the church is the centre of blessing in heaven, Jerusalem is the centre on earth.

There are two things to remark in connection with this first, it is part of Christ's glory; and, next, God wills that this world is to be made, under Christ's rule, a place of peace. It is not so now, though "the powers that be are ordained of God." Christ Himself said, "Thou hast no power against me, except it be given thee from above"; and there was no worse use of power than Pilate's, when he verily washed his hands of Christ's blood.

84 When the Lord was rejected, the world was not set right. It was more wrong than ever. When Christ went on high, the Holy Ghost came down. Does He set the world to rights? No! He does not interfere with the evil, but says, "be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." Grace comes in, but God does not take His great power and reign. Christ granted the request of the Syro-phoenician woman; but this was an exceptional case of going beyond the children.

It is not an exception when the Holy Ghost comes down grace is the character of His acting. The proving of man has been closed, Christ is accepted in heaven, and, by the Holy Ghost's coming down, the barriers (confusion of tongues occasioned) are not broken down; but grace overrides those barriers in the gift of tongues. Christ will take to Himself His great power and reign, and He will set things to rights. Many think to set things to rights now, some with Christ and some without; but they will not do it either one way or the other: Christ Himself will do it. If I stop at redemption truth, I am as it were making Christ to act on the world, but He is not - He is in heaven, and links saints with Him up there.

All Christians are saints, not sinners. In ourselves we are all sin; in the flesh is no good thing; but we are not in flesh, but in Christ. When we come in by that door, Christ, we come to sit down in heavenly places. If not come in there, we must remain on earth. Heaven is opened: firstly, for the Holy Ghost to testify of the Son of God on earth; secondly, for angels to minister to Him as Son of man; thirdly, to let Him forth in judgment on the white horse (Rev. 19); fourthly, for a man full of the Holy Ghost, Stephen, to look straight up into heaven; and so should we.

Psalm 45 is earthly: Christ is judging enemies. The King, Messiah, is God; but He is man also. "Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness" applies to His humanity. Hebrews 1 quotes it, where He says He "makes his angels spirits." He makes them such; but unto the Son He saith (He does not make Him anything) "God, even thy God anointed thee above thy fellows." Directly there is His manhood, He has fellows. A poor remnant is there ready to suffer with Him. Zechariah 13. See contrast there God calls Christ His fellow in His humiliation. Verse 5, I am no prophet, but I was man's slave from my youth. He came to be our servant as man. Verse 6. The Jews - He was wounded by them. Then (v. 7) Jehovah speaks, and, passing over His humanity, calls Him His fellow.

85 The kingdom is founded and is taken in a man. All the figures of Oriental splendour are used in speaking of it. It is Jerusalem on earth that is meant in the Psalms. The Lamb's wife is the heavenly Jerusalem. The king's wife is the earthly Jerusalem.

Verse 10. "Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house." That is what the Jews would not do in the time of grace. It was what Christ Himself did when on earth. "Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about on them that were about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren." Under the old covenant they will get nothing. They cannot take the blessings even on the ground of promise - all has failed. They must come in as a Ruth to take shelter under the shadow of the God of Israel. They have no more title than a Gentile. Christ came as a minister of the circumcision and they rejected Him, so that they have no claim to anything. God will accomplish all on His own account, but they must give up claim entirely, and come in on the ground of grace. Verse 9. "King's daughters" are companies of Judah.

Verse 16. "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children." If you look to your fathers, you have no claim - you must break with all the old thing. You must come in, not as the mother of the Messiah, but as the daughter. As to the old, you have lost everything God in His faithfulness must do it. In Romans 3: 7, God's faithfulness glorified by my lie is the true interpretation of that passage.

Psalm 46 is a strain of great confidence, spite of threats and danger. In God is their refuge and deliverer. God is there, whatever men say; Jehovah Sabaoth is with us.

Psalm 47 anticipates Jehovah's reign as a great king over the earth, but withal Israel's king specially.

86 In Psalm 48 Zion is celebrated as His city and the answer is triumphant to the distress of Psalm 44 and to the circumstances of Psalms 42, 43.

Psalm 48 is "an improvement" of all.

Psalm 49 closes the little series from Psalm 42 (not the book, which does not close till Psalm 72).

Psalm 50 and 51 are distinct in their character.

Psalm 50 is God summoning all the world - pleading with His people on the ground of wickedness. He will not accept their ceremonial offerings, but the ground of His controversy is their not keeping the law.

Psalm 51 is confession of sin, and goes a great deal farther than David's confession, when Nathan went to him and charged him. It is the nation's confession of their guilt in the death of Christ, not only their breach of the law. You have the same thing in Isaiah 40 - the flesh is grass, etc. There is failure; and He takes them on the ground of their being distinct from those worshipping idols, yet guilty of idolatry. From chapter 49 onwards it is controversy concerning Christ.

There is a difference between the Jews and the ten tribes, which are Israel. Israel were never guilty of rejecting Christ. They have been cast out for their rebellion and idols. Zechariah 13: 9, Jews; Ezekiel 20, ten tribes.

In Psalms 51-68 we have the thoughts and feelings of the remnant - the expression of their cry to God and their confidence in Him.

Psalm 52 is the expression of faith in God as to the lawless one in power; as Psalm 53 about the wicked Jews in general, the many, for God remained what He is, if they can no longer call on Him as Jehovah (cf. Ps. 14). Psalm 54 is a cry to God for deliverance by His name from strangers and oppressors alike, when His name of Jehovah should be praised. Psalm 55 from without deplores the wickedness in their Jerusalem, yet God is trusted, Jehovah shall save. Psalm 56 speaks of the tears of the righteous sufferers in God's bottle, but owns Him in hope as the Most High, the name of millennial supremacy, and trust displaces fear: in God and in Jehovah would he praise His word. Psalm 57 follows up in the sense of evil, counting on God as a refuge, but triumphing in the end. Psalm 58 owns that nothing but divine judgment can meet the case, and so looks for the unsparing but just vengeance of God in the earth. Psalm 59 pursues this judgment on the outside enemies who shall be scattered by God's power.

87 Then in Psalm 60 the remnant acknowledges that God had cut them off, but pray for His turning to them again, and are assured He will tread down their enemies. Psalm 61 is a cry of depression, but of trust in God that He will hear, if they cry from the end of the earth; as Psalm 62 is a still stronger expression of confidence in Him, and this growingly. Compare verses 2, 6.

In Psalm 63 we see that they are able to find blessing when cast out. When there are no dispensed blessings, they look to God through all the tribulation, longing to go up to the sanctuary. All dispensed blessings fail, but the source cannot dry.

In Psalm 64 the crafty enemy is brought before a God of judgment, and then the righteous rejoice in Him.

Psalm 65 shews praise waiting there. When He has accomplished the victory, praise will flow out. All nations shall be blessed. Their faith had reached the point - trusting, when in circumstances which are against us, is real faith. But once the great deliverance is achieved there is no stint of praise.

Psalm 66 sets forth God's righteous interference; and men are called to come and see His works (v. 5), to come and hear what He has done for the soul. (Verse 16) He has turned away neither the remnant's prayer nor His own mercy.

In Psalm 67 the blessing of the remnant is viewed as the way of making God's way known to all nations; so that all the people should praise God, and all the ends of the earth fear Him.

Psalm 68. Here we have Christ in glory, as Psalm 69 is Christ in suffering, upon which the glory is founded.

There is a remarkable connection between the beginning of Psalm 68 with Numbers to. The ark going before, instead of being in the midst to be guarded and honoured by the people, God bends to their need by going before them to find out a place in grace, and He meets all their enemies. (Verse 33) Israel's enemies are scattered by Him. The Lord is coming at their head when there is no help.

It may be well to notice the character of judgment here. There are two kinds of judgment, sessional and warlike judgment. In the end of Revelation we have the two kinds. In chapter 18 we have the destruction of Babylon by God; in chapter 19 Christ executes warlike judgment; in chapter 20 is sessional judgment. "I saw thrones and they sat on them." In sessional judgment we are with Him, as indeed the saints are seen on high from chapter 4.

88 The Messiah that appears is Jehovah, and then they not only mourn for sins that they have done, but they mourn for Him, etc. "They shall look on him whom they have pierced," etc., and say, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Jehovah." They never see Him till then. They call on Jehovah about all the sorrow, and when the Messiah comes, they find it is Himself. With us it is the same. The deepest sorrow is not that we have sinned, but for Him. It is the consciousness of what we have done to Him that grieves us most. When we have received Him, repentance has lost its legal character. It is for love to Him, and all the sweetness of His love poured into the heart makes it see what sin is, and detest itself for not having received Him fully. Then the soul is free to understand the real relationship that exists between us and Him. There is not merely the consciousness of deserving righteous judgment, but self-loathing, and sense of His judgment more and more. They crave His interference, and it comes.

Daniel 7: 21. The horn wars with the saints, and prevails against them until the "Ancient of days," Christ, shall come. God cannot let evil be paramount. "As wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God." He comes in the character of judgment. "Through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrian be beaten down . . . and in every place where the grounded staff shall pass," etc. (Isa. 30: 31, 32.) It is for the deliverance of the poor despised remnant, and it is the proper character of judgment when He will come to be glorified in His saints, etc. It will be the execution of judgment, not the distinguishing character of it, which goes on now. There is to be a judgment of the quick, as well as of the dead. "The wicked perish at the presence of God."

Verse 9. "Plentiful rain whereby thou dost confirm thine inheritance when it is weary." We are not the inheritance, we are heirs. Israel is the inheritance. We have the same He (Christ) has Himself - peace, love, glory. He has the preeminence. "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." We see this Psalm is prophetic of His taking His place in power, not only in title. The Lord gave the word - great was the company of those that published it. This is a company of women [feminine noun] publishing victory like Miriam, not proclaiming glad tidings (v. 11).

89 Verse 12. Warlike judgment: "though ye have hen among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove," etc. He is coming to take His place in Zion.

Verses 14-17. God has magnified Himself: it is no use for you to magnify yourselves; God has done it, and there is an end of you.

Verse 18 is the deliverance of Israel in that day by Christ who ascended on high - "received up into glory," 1 Tim. 3: 16. Wonderful to say of Him who is going to execute judgment, He is "received up." "He that ascended is the same that descended," etc. It is Christ Himself. The law set up the middle wall of partition. Christ broke it down by His death. It could not be broken down in any other way. We see, first, the incarnation of Christ; next, we have a man rejected, spit upon, who could say, "before Abraham was, I am"; and then He goes up on high.

In Philippians 2 this blessed One comes down taking the form of a man - this was the first way of His, emptying Himself. He proved He had power in the man to deliver this world of all its misery, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devils; but He did it all as a servant; and then, lastly, He humbled Himself, and became obedient to death - the death of the cross.

It is "received gifts in the man." Part of this is quoted in Ephesians 4, shewing its application to the church. The last part, "for the rebellious also," refers to what will be the portion of the remnant when Jehovah God will dwell among them. These delivered ones, the fruit of the travail of His soul, became the vessels of His power against Satan. It is only after the cross that Satan is called the god of this world; but the church is now the vessel of the agency of God against Satan by the Holy Ghost sent down, the witness of grace, not of judgment (though judgment was within, for example, on Ananias and Sapphira). We are all (believers) the living witnesses of Christ's victory, while Satan is going about in the world. How far do we realise this?

Verse 21. "Enemies" are to be destroyed. The church does not call for judgment on enemies, but the Jews look for the destruction of enemies, because they are to remain here. There is to be glory recognised - complete deliverance for them. Christ is gone on high as Son of man. He is set in a divine place at the right hand of God, and we are made partakers of the divine nature, and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. So too we are to be caught up to meet Him above, instead of being like the Jews delivered by the execution of those who despise us here below.

90 Here it is the joy and deliverance of Israel on earth. The beauty of holiness reappears on better and more enduring ground - Messiah's grace and the new covenant, not their own vain pledge to the old. The tribes come up to the sanctuary, kings bring presents, princes come from Egypt, Ethiopia stretches her hands to God. "Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth; Oh sing praises unto the Lord; Selah: to him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens, which were of old; lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice. Ascribe ye strength unto God: his excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds. O God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places: the God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed be God."

Verse 34. He has taken His place in the "cloud" again. The "cloud" is indicative of His presence, the Shechinah and the pillar of cloud by day. And on the mount of transfiguration they "feared as they entered the cloud." Christ will come in the clouds.

Psalm 69 is the righteous One, not here forsaken of God in atonement for sin as in Psalm 22, but crushed under man's hatred and reproach, enemies without a cause in the face of the zeal for God's house that has eaten Him up. Yet all is taken from God's hand; and as He owns Himself smitten of God, so He looks and prays for vengeance, not grace.

Psalm 70 expresses what the Spirit of Christ in the remnant will then desire in respect of both foes and friends; as Psalm 71 gives the link with God's dealings from the first, and prays for His faithful care at last, in order that their lips may shew forth His praise. Finally Psalm 72 presents their desires fulfilled in the reign of peace and blessing under the true Son of David on the earth.

Psalm 63

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God wants every thought and desire of our hearts. That is the effect of His coming down to us, and is very blessed. There is another thing, and even a better, that is, His lifting us up to Him where He is. When God meets our thoughts, wants, and feelings, it is His answering according to the measure of our need; in the other He surpasses all the desires of our hearts and minds. See it in Psalm 132 when certain blessings are asked, and each desire is surpassed. See verses 8 and 13; verse 9 answered in verse 16; verse 10 in verse 17. There is trial of faith: He suffers His people to hunger, etc., that they may know the value of being fed by Him as He will. There is personal relationship between the saint and God "mine and thine" in John 17 - which connects itself with what He is for us.

To Abram God said (Gen. 15), "I am thy shield," because he wanted protection, "thy exceeding great reward." It did not go beyond Abram's want - he wished an heir. This is different from his delighting in God. What God is bringing us to is to delight in Himself. See Abraham in Genesis 17: 17: "I am the Almighty God." This is quite another thing. It was God's revelation of Himself to Abraham. True, all kinds of blessing are connected with it; but it is a higher thing, because it revealed God, and led him up to communion with Him, while the other threw him back on his own need and wishes.

It is a different thing to have the joy of the relationship, and to have the fruits of it. "O my God, early will I seek thee." There is activity of soul thus seeking God. The soul athirst for God seeks - there is diligence in seeking God for Himself - the mouth is open for everything. The Psalm does not speak of seeking for water; when a man is thirsty, he seeks for water; but here it is more thirsting for Him who gives the water.

The conscious relationship was founded. "O God, thou art my God." The more he enjoyed God, the more it was felt to be a dry and thirsty land - not dry because of the weariness of the way. What does it matter, the dry and thirsty land, if I have the living water in my soul? I do not think about the dryness then. It is not being at home yet either. It is the wilderness in Romans 8. If I know I am to be in the same glory with Christ, what will affect me here? What! people going to be with the Lord in glory; and yet the slightest thing can upset me now! I feel the wretchedness, because I have got the glory - I am not acquiring it, but seeking it because I have it. Think of a person who had seen heaven - knowing all the blessedness of it - going through such a world as this! That is what it was to Christ. What made Him feel it was the joy? "Because thy loving-kindness is better than life," this world is a wilderness.

92 "Thy loving-kindness is better than life"; but it brings death upon one. No matter: "In everything give thanks." What! in sorrow? Yes, to be sure, we have the key to the joy in having Himself. "Thy loving-kindness is better than life; therefore will I praise thee while I live." "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." What! in the desert? Yes, that is the very place, because God Himself is His portion. "My mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips." Now we often praise, when we are not very joyful (there is a certain pressure on the heart), and it is right to do it at all times; but here the heart is so full of the blessing that it is pressed out of him. We learn from Psalm 42 that the health of my countenance is the effect of the light of Thy countenance.

The heart is lifted up above the sorrow because occupied with God Himself.

In Psalm 63 the soul is in the state in which Psalm 42 ends. It is not an oppressed heart looking out for what would make him joyful, but rejoicing because the spring is there. "Therefore I will bless thee while I live."

There is help in God (see v. 7) for the difficulties of the way. It is not here the enjoyment of God Himself, but His protection. Do I look forward to my life to come? I defy any one to know anything but that His window is open. God, then, is the only certain thing. I have no certainty that there will be a to-morrow, but there is God. Because the heart is in heaven, we can rejoice in the thing itself we have got for all times. "Jehovah is my Shepherd: I shall not want." It is not, He has put me in certain circumstances, and I shall be happy there; but it is something to depend on, to know He is my Shepherd. Then there is earnestness of purpose in following after. (Verse 8.) So Paul: "I press toward the mark," following hard after Him in a "dry and thirsty land." Paul in prison was pressing on toward Christ, and rejoicing in the Lord; he had nothing else to rejoice in. In nothing too should we be terrified by adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition (v. 9, 10); as on the other hand Christ and they that are His alone shall be exalted for ever (v. 11).

Psalm 72

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The second book, of which our Psalm is the last, closes with the blessing of the whole earth: "The prayers of David . . . are ended." It supposes and treats of the relationship of God with Judah just at the end of the age when forced to flee. The third book is not so much connected with the personal history of Christ as either the first or the second. It is occupied with Israel, and the circumstances of Israel are entirely different from Judah's because they were not in the land when Christ was there, and so they had no actual part in His crucifixion. The second book is more historically prophetic than the first, and not so much the sufferings of Christ.

In Psalm 72 we have the Solomon reign, not the Davidical state. The true Son of David is, no doubt, much greater than Solomon. Here Christ is King. This takes us back to Psalm 2. Jehovah's determination is to set His kingdom in Zion. The kingdom is not confined to this setting up of the King. In Matthew 13: 43 we have the "kingdom of the Father." There we get its heavenly character, not setting aside the kingdom on earth, which is to be established; but it goes farther and higher. "Every scribe instructed . . . brings out of his treasure things new and old." The scribes had the old things concerning the kingdom, but they stumbled at the Christ having to suffer. If they had received Christ, man would not have been proved to be such a sinner. But they hated both Him and His Father, and so proved there is no good in flesh. There would have been something good in flesh if they could have received Him. The kingdom was not set up then through their not receiving Him. Two things came out after that: the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, and the church. What is the kingdom? It is very simple, if we take the word as it is. It is the sphere of the reign, or where the King reigns. if I take the word church as "assembly," which it really means, I can never confound "church" and "kingdom." Compare the word "reign" with "assembly," and the difference is easily seen.

Another thing, often not understood, is the difference between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God had been accepted on earth, it would not have been the same as now, not the actual form of the kingdom of heaven. Matthew takes up the change in consequence of the King's rejection, and speaks also of "the Father's kingdom" for the heirs who follow Christ in His rejection; because He takes it from His Father when rejected. He is set down, not on His own throne (and so the judgment in this Psalm brought in), but for the present on His Father's throne. Divine righteousness is shewn in God's setting Him there and justifying us according to all He had accomplished. There was righteousness due to set Him on the throne of God. That is what we have. "I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do; and now, O Father, glorify thou me," etc. Christ then sits down there; and there is no judicial kingdom at all now - it is postponed, and known only to faith. The kingdom of the world is not become that of our God and of His Christ. The kingdom of heaven is likened to a sower, etc. He has altered the ground on which He deals with the people - He sows; He brings something with Him, instead of seeking something from man. The King is obliged to take this mysterious character of sowing in the world. Then, mark, He does not sow only on Jewish ground; as to outward nearness to God, that was gone. God does not look for fruit. He is going on ground that is settled by judgment. Therefore He is not seeking fruit from man. This goes against man's good opinion of himself. Man is cut down as the good-for-nothing tree, spite of all culture from God. The trial has been made of all men in the Jew. All flesh is grass; and the grass is withered. He sows; He is not exercising His royal title in sowing. It is a new work, different in kind. All are given up (Matt. 12) and He sows (Matt. 13). The field is not the Jewish people, but "the world." God goes outside guilty Judah to begin a fresh work everywhere. The time of the harvest is the judicial time of the kingdom - not the sowing time. Christ lets all go on as if at the beginning, and He saw nothing of the corruption; but then He begins a judicial character. Personally He deals with it on earth. That is the kingdom in the mysteries of it, or hidden. Its outward character is a great tree; the sowing is in the world. Pharaoh was a great tree, and the Assyrian was another. Christendom is now a great tree - an influential power in the earth. It is ruled from heaven, if it be the kingdom of heaven, but the sphere is this earth. The sowing - the field - the harvest - the search for the treasure or the pearl - the net - are not in heaven, but on earth.

96 When the joy of the kingdom is spoken of, it is the kingdom of God. "The kingdom of God (not of heaven) is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." The kingdom of heaven is dispensational; the kingdom of God is sometimes a moral thing. Another thing connected with the kingdom is power and not merely law. There will be "the law written in their hearts," but the kingdom brings in power. It is the setting up of a person in the character of king. The kingdom spoken of in the gospel is in "mystery" during this time; but the thing predicted by the prophets is "a king shall rule in righteousness." It is the kingdom in manifestation. Power and righteousness were entirely in contrast when Christ was here. He said, "This is your hour and the power of darkness." There was Satan's - power, but righteousness in and as to Christ. judgment had not then returned to righteousness at all. It was the close of all hope of it for the time, when Christ was rejected. Up to that moment it might have been looked for; but this was the setting aside of God's kingdom from the earth. The Son tame and they said, "This is the heir: come let us kill him," etc. Christ is not taking possession of the kingdom on the earth now. He is not sitting on His own throne at all yet. It is the Father's throne where He is. He is perfectly accepted in divine righteousness, which is now being ministered by the Holy Ghost to faith, and which is better than any other portion, but there is no execution of judgment. If He had executed judgment when He went away, there would have been no dealings in grace. He must have extinguished the wicked from the earth at once.

The word is, "Sit on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool." There He is sitting down and doing nothing as to the kingdom, but sowing, etc., in this mysterious way. Meanwhile the mustard-tree, in which the birds of the air (the emissaries of Satan) may lodge, is being produced; the leaven is spreading in the three measures of meal (that is, formal doctrine extends itself through Christendom). At the close Christ brings in the execution of His power. This has nothing to do with the church. Instead of His having immediate power on earth, He is "expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." During this time of waiting the church is being gathered; and when He comes in judgment His glorified ones come with Him. He has accomplished righteousness before this gathering began, and sent down the Holy Ghost, by whom we have the revelation of that righteousness. "We are made the righteousness of God in him." This divine righteousness is established on the throne and revealed to us in the gospel and therefore by faith.

97 As High Priest, Christ has gone up within the veil (which indeed is rent), having finished the work for His friends, and waiting for the due moment to put down His enemies. Until He comes out, the Jews do not know that the offering is accepted. Here are the king and priest, represented by Moses and Aaron (Lev. 9: 23), but they stand without till His coming out; and while He is within, to them as a nation He is unknown (to the Jews). The Holy Ghost is sent down to make us know it is accepted. Such is the place the church has - pre-trusters in Christ while unseen in heaven. Righteousness is gone as to earth, but is in the person of Christ exalted on the throne in heaven; and there we know it and are made it in Christ by the grace of God. Compare 2 Corinthians 5 with John 16. While the kingdom is in abeyance, the Holy Ghost has come down to make us know the righteousness of God in Christ, which is fit for the throne of God. We share that righteousness; we do not sit on the throne of the Father, where He now is. This seat He has by virtue of His personal title as the Son of God, and God Himself indeed.

The kingdom of heaven in mystery takes in all Christendom's professors as well as true Christians. Now there are no signs of the kingdom. What sign is it for a king to suffer? But if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. Suffering is no sign of a kingdom at all, but it is likeness to the King. The same thing that made Him suffer on earth made Him glorified in heaven. So is it with us. But instead of His reigning over the church, the church will reign with Him.

He is the Bridegroom of the church, not the King of the church. His right and power will be put forth for the earth. Adam could give names to everything brought before him (a proof of his dominion, such as is often shewn in the giving of a name; for example, Nebuchadnezzar giving new names to Daniel, that of Belteshazzar, etc.); but when Eve came, he called her Isha, from himself, Ish because she was part of himself. He gives her the same name, even as God called their name Adam. We have the same place as Christ Himself, and when we shall see Him, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. We could not now see Him as He is, and live; but then we shall be like Him, and therefore can see Him. "We shall appear with him" - "be glorified together with him." The heavenly saints are to be like Christ and be with Him for ever. We shall take the heavenly places, which spiritual wickedness has now (Eph. 6). We shall be "caught up to meet the Lord in the air." In the parable of the talents, in Matthew 25, there is no allusion to the rule of the kingdom; while in Luke, the use of the pounds is rewarded with cities to reign over. In Matthew, all the servant's reward centres in the joy of their Lord."

98 Jude speaks of the Lord coming with ten thousands of His saints. So in Revelation 19: 14, "The armies in heaven followed him on white horses." The saints come with Him when He comes to,. execute judgment. (So chap. 17: 14). They are associated with Him in the glory He brings, as also in what is much better, in the Father's house. While He is on the Father's throne, the church has no throne, but suffers with Him. When He takes His own throne, we shall be with Him, and share His glory when He appears. It is wonderful to be associated with Him in His glory, but better to be associated with Himself It is better to be thinking about Himself than about Him as a King or a Lord, important as this too may be. When Christ comes to reign, there will be human righteousness perfect, because Christ will execute it; but now it is divine righteousness, ministered by the Spirit in grace (2 Cor. 3) - grace which associates us in the effect of divine righteousness. When He comes back as King, at first it will be the David character of reign. So Psalm 101, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment" (always mercy comes first).

This Psalm states prophetically the character of Christ's kingdom. When He takes the kingdom, all will be judicially set up in righteousness. It will be seen by all that God has laid hold upon this mighty One for His people's salvation and the world's blessings. There will be real righteousness here below, but human as to its measure, and divinely ministered. It will be Messiah and the new covenant. The law will be written on their hearts. The law never required the death of Christ; this is entirely outside and above all that the law could righteously demand. By the grace of God He tasted death. Did the law require an agony from the blessed and holy One? What did that prove? Man's righteousness? Divine love was in it; God (not law) "made him to be sin for us." It was the unspeakable, unfathomable, love of God who was glorified in it about sin. For God to be glorified, everything in God was to be made good in spite of sin, yea, and in respect of sin. No doubt, the elect angels have been kept by divine power; but what a scene for angels to witness - the way men treated Christ in this world! When Daniel prayed there was an order given to answer him, and the angel could not for three weeks, because opposed by the prince of Persia. What a scene is this world! Is wickedness God's glory? Is misery His glory? No wonder one of old said, "This was too hard for me until I went into the sanctuary of' God." When I see the end of these men, that will set it right, of course. God will justify righteousness by judgment, which, long severed, will then return to righteousness. Where, how, would love be manifested, if all His enemies were destroyed now? The cross glorifies God above all law. The announcement of the Man who was God, dying for sinners, is that righteousness? No, it is beyond right; it is love - infinite, divine, and sovereign love.

99 Psalm 94. God does not strike until there is conscience awake in the hearts of those stricken. With the remnant there will be tabrets and harps, wherever the grounded staff shall pass. Then the Solomon reign begins, "He judgeth among the gods," that is, those to whom He has given power. "In his days shall the righteous flourish." Then the kingdom is set up in power. Psalm 72, "Prayer shall be made for him continually," that is, the desire of all the people is expressed, that the king should prosper.

Psalm 67: 7: "All the ends of the earth shall fear him and Psalm 72: 19, "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory." It is the close of all the prayers of him that had the promises as to the blessing on earth. Verse 20.

The execution of judgment, on those found to be His enemies when He appears, is different from the time when God will judge the secrets of men's hearts - that will be for the heathen as well, who have not had special testimony about Christ, but are judged by law's work written on their hearts.

100 While things are not set right on earth, we are getting the full fruit of divine righteousness. While to be oppressed in the world, as He was, is the portion of faith; those who are gathered have the full heavenly blessing. When Christ was suffering for sin, it was not to bring in government on earth, but to work out divine righteousness, by which we might have association with Him. His suffering from God for sin was to make infinite grace flow out.

Psalm 84

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This Psalm is the expression of the desires of those who had long been deprived of the joy of being in the courts of Jehovah during the captivity. It is the expression of the joy of seeing them again, and of taking the road which leads there, even by the valley of weeping, of Baca. The church also moves forward toward the tabernacle of God, but it is that which is not made by human hands.

The subject of each Psalm is ordinarily expressed at the beginning in the first verses. The tabernacles of Jehovah are His house. The faithful is there at home in His rest. One cannot find oneself at rest when the object of the heart is still beyond the point we have reached, even if the place we have stopped at be the most desirable in the world. The first thing which is here presented to us is that the house of Jehovah is the Israelite's resting place (v. 1-4). "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee."

But blessed also is "the man whose strength is in thee in whose heart are the ways," that is, the ways to Jehovah's house. Verse 4 contains our joy in hope; verse 6 contains actual experience along the way. Passing through Baca, they make it a spring; the rain also filleth the pools [or, with blessings]; "they go from strength to strength, appearing [each] in Zion before God." When we begin our course here below, we know God, we learn also more to know Him; it is a feeling which grows and strengthens by communion. God has thereby bound the hearts of Christians. It is the manifestation and accomplishment of His love. The more I know the perfectness of God, the more I know His love, the more also I feel how precious He is to my soul. If my knowledge of God is separated from the knowledge of the love of God, I have not the life of God. The highest perfection of God is manifested to the heart by the first visit He makes to the heart of sinners, and in this respect it cannot be known more by the most advanced child. Here below the heart of man does not answer to the praise of God. One could not praise Him in the streets of a town: the heart of man is enmity against God. The children of God together enjoy God and prepare to go into a world without an echo to raise the voice of the gospel. It is the desire of the converted heart that God may be praised; and he will be fully satisfied in the house of God. Impossible to find repose of soul till God is praised unceasingly by those that surround Him.

102 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee." If I have a difficulty, I in my feebleness have need of strength to sustain me in patient endurance. Peter without this strength denied Jesus. We may be weary when we act in our strength, for what is the strength of the flesh? When we act in the power of God, it is impossible. No creature can separate us from the power of God or the love of God. What is stronger? Jesus ever dependent was the strongest, and overcame the world. God has set our rest at the end of a path that we are treading; and it is good for us in order that we may make the experience of our own heart. It is those who are already redeemed who are on the road toward the rest of God. The word of God renders the thing surer than any other testimony could. It is a defile to pass on the other side of which is the glory. Into this defile we must go down. One may there lose sight of the glory; and the way be difficult; but we have the certainty that it is the road to the glory. God has told us that in this road we shall be despised by the world and in conflict with Satan. He has told us these things before that, when they come, we might believe His testimony to be true.

Here below we find not the rest but the way; but the way should be in our heart. Thus the valley of Baca, a ruined earth, is changed into a fountain. If we are in communion with God, every difficulty becomes the occasion for the display of the glory of God (2 Thess. 1). The timid child finds joy in the assurance of its mother's love when some danger presents itself. We are often overwhelmed because our strength is not in God, who would have His grace sufficient for us; which is more precious than the removal of the thorn in the flesh. "The rain also filleth the pools." It comes not from the earth but from heaven, to which we should be attached and whence we may expect everything. There is no such source of refreshment here below that I may know that God takes extra care of me, to give me water and manna and strength, and in a word everything. It is a blessing that we should be thus brought low: He has not done so either to the Egyptians or to the Canaanites. We ought to live on that which cometh out of the mouth of God (Deut. 8: 2-5).

The effect of these things is to make one "go from strength to strength." The difficulties are meant to make us know new strength on God's part. We are not actually capable of enjoying all that there is in God. Also all is not yet given us. God gets more place in our hearts. The empty or hard places of the heart are manifested; and God has to fill or clear them. The Lord God of hosts, that is to say, the God who governs all things, He who is faithful to His promises, and who has all things at His disposal, the God of His people, God ever the same. God presents Himself in three different ways: Jehovah or the Eternal, God of Jacob, and God of hosts. "Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed." There is that assurance, the pledge of divine favour. God regards us in Christ; and all that we ask of Him in the name of Jesus He will do. Better be a door keeper in the house of God than dwell in the courts of the world. If our confidence is in man, we shall find ourselves sooner or later where man will fail us; and there is what Satan waits for in order to sift us. To trust in God is the hardest thing, as it lays the flesh under our feet, and self can gain nothing by it, but it is inexpressible joy for the heart.

Thoughts on Psalms 91 and 102

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The thing we have to learn is Christ. We may learn a good deal in ourselves, but all that is for blessing will be in Christ. This is what the apostle means (Heb. 6: 1) when he speaks of going on to perfection. It is vain to learn the first principles over and over again; if we have learnt that, let us go on to learn Christ - learn Him in all His characters, and in all our exercises. To know Christ is to know Him in all His various glories. At one time we have to look on Him as Jehovah at another, as a suffering Man.

Here comes a testimony concerning the Most High. We have in this verse 1 a general truth: the person that dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Verse 2. The words of Jesus are brought out: I will say of Jehovah He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him will I trust. The apostle, in Hebrews 2: 13, refers to this and other parts in the Psalms as the words of Christ. The apostle declares, I will put my trust in Him, to be our Lord's expression whilst walking in the midst of trial on the earth. Then (v. 3-13) we come to the testimony of the Spirit concerning Jesus. Verse 9. This was true in its perfectness of the Lord Jesus; it applies in all its extent only to Him. In verse 14 we get the declaration of the Father, "because he hath set his love upon me." This was true, and true only of Jesus. He was the only One who set His love on God. We love Him because He first loved us. In our Lord's sufferings we learn the principle and fulness of love.

"The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me, but that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." He was shewing this principle of love to the Father. There is deep blessing in seeing our Lord thus. "Wherefore God hath highly exalted him" (Phil. 2: 9).

He knew His name. God's greatness is shewn by despising nothing. His love is so great that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His knowledge. Christ always trusted Him (Psalms 20, 21). In the case of Jesus is the practical exhibition of this truth - He dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High; in us in measure. Being one with Christ, we are able to appropriate this to ourselves. All His actings on earth came from the perfectness of communion with the Father. The promise was, He shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I do always those things that please the Father, and abide in His love (v. 2). What He calls for is complete recognition of Himself, then come all the promises. The one thing we have to do is to own God in all His fulness. Imperfectly, but in principle, we dwell in the secret of the Most High. Why we are often in trial, etc., is because we are not dwelling in the secret of the Most High. Verse 4, "He shall cover thee with his feathers," etc. As His power covers and shelters us, so His truth is our shield and buckler. God's truth always comes to us in Jesus. just so far as we are in the secret of the Most High, we are under the shadow of the Almighty. If we are going our own way, we shall have chastening and trial, and in mercy too. What we have to seek is to make the Lord our habitation. He leadeth us forth in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

105 This psalm (102) is one of peculiar strength and blessedness to the believer, as it brings, in one point of view, the identity of Christ in spirit with His suffering people, and, on the other side, His identity with Jehovah. His being Jehovah is the basis of all hopes that belong to the Jews, and to the saints consequently. Our Lord's sufferings become the earnest of glory to those that are His. The triumph of Christ comes to be the pledge of deliverance and blessing to them. This makes the testimony of His deliverance, when suffering for us, so blessed, because the earnest of ours. "In the day when I call, answer me speedily." The craving of the godly soul in trouble is the Lord's hearing him: this is their anxiety, for otherwise there would be wrath in the case. Of this the resurrection of Jesus was the great witness.

In this psalm our Lord enters into every protracted suffering of His people. In all His sufferings, as a righteous man on earth, He could say, "I know that thou hearest me always." I watch, etc. - the very opposite of ease. Verses 9, 10: I never find the deepest sorrow of our Lord spoken of exclusive of indignation. "Thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down." The lifting up here spoken of was true of Jesus with the Jews. For what nation is so great? who hath God so nigh unto them? etc. Jesus is looked at as the Messiah, as coming in the flesh, most exalted, as Head of the people, yet He had to be "cast down" for the indignation that was come upon this people. He never took the headship, but took the casting down. The Spirit of Christ in us always takes portion with sorrow. "My days are like a shadow that declineth." Then comes the assertion of strength, of all comfort, the perpetuity of Jehovah; "Thou, O Lord, shalt endure; thou shalt arise, and have mercy on Zion," etc. Here is contrasted the way in which Messiah was cast down in the lowest degree of suffering, and, in the midst of it, the certainty of Jehovah's taking mercy on His people.

106 If Zion be set up, all the nations who disbelieved that it would be set up "shall fear thy name." Then comes another positive declaration: He shall appear in His glory. How Jehovah is to appear brings out the identity of the suffering Messiah with Jehovah. The people which shall be created, etc. - they shall be new creatures then. Messiah's prayer (v. 17) will be then regarded, and fully answered; it was not apparently regarded during His sufferings on earth. The great statements in this psalm are, Messiah cast down, but Jehovah faithful and will build up Zion. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will look down from heaven on what takes place on earth. Then comes in the repetition of the sufferings of Messiah, next His glory, not merely taken in consequence of suffering, but in virtue of His glorious person. The secret of all our strength is this unfathomable mystery - Christ's being Jehovah, and His identity with the sufferings of His people. It is just the portion of the church to know the glory is His, that He is the Jehovah - God who founded heaven and earth, and to understand how He was on that earth cast down, was bruised, was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and to rest in the happy consciousness of the perfect sympathy of Christ in all our trials, in all that in which wrath may appear to us. In all our sorrows and troubles we must find, whilst under them, wrath, although we know it is chastening in love; it produces in us, not merely the sorrow of the world, but sense of the displeasure of the Lord under them, and we shall be looking out for His hearing our cry, just as a child grieves to see the frown of a tender parent, because of his displeasure shewn in it.

Thus should we, not only on account of the trouble it brings us into - then we are thinking of ourselves instead of God. The great comfort of the believer is, that the Lord Jesus having passed through all this trial is itself a witness to us of the love of God in them; and thus we are more than conquerors, not in carelessness, knowing that nothing shall separate us from the love of God. We may ourselves be the occasion of chastisement - then must there be humbling, but love in it surely. One learns in Christ, having gone through all, the faithfulness of God in all the exercises we may have to pass through. We (believers) must take everything as coming from God: otherwise we do not give sufficient value to our sufferings, but give value to ourselves in them. When wicked men cut our Lord down, He took it all as coming from God: "Thou hast cast me down," etc. Faith always looks to the great source, and not to casual instruments.

Psalm 93

J. N. Darby.

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I have passed over the third book, as it treats more of the detail as to the state and condition and circumstances of the whole people of Israel in the last day. There is not so much of Christ in it, Christ as an object of course there is always, but not so much the expression of His experience when on earth. It is not merely the residue of people in Jerusalem where Christ walked amongst them, nor driven out of Jerusalem, but the whole nation, not exclusive of the Jews, but taking in all. Psalm 73, "As for me my feet were almost gone." They are in perplexity until God arises in judgment. Then when He arises all is gone! As soon as the glory comes in they will be blessed. Verse 24, "Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel and after the glory receive me," and as Zechariah says, "After the glory, hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you." There is a difference for us, we get it before the glory, and when He who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. They will not come into blessing till after the glory, because they have not received Him in humiliation. From Psalm 73 to Psalm 89 we have the future character of Israel; their unfaithfulness, tempting God, etc., and in the last Psalms 88, 89, entire failure. Psalm 88 is failure under law, utter darkness of the law on man's spirit. Psalm 89 is failure of David's family, king as well as people, but the godly remnant, in this state of darkness, in and where all is gone, find Jesus who is set before them in this character of Messiah.

In the fourth book we see the coming in of God in the way of deliverance very remarkably. He is bringing in again the "first-begotten into the world," therefore the preface is "Jehovah reigneth." The everlasting gospel comes after, but the general announcement and subject of the book is the reign of Jehovah. Jehovah has never been reigning in the actual exercise of power until this time comes in. His ways and dealings with men have not been on that footing. He is King always, of course, but He has not taken the position of reigning over man, either in connection with Adam, or in the giving of promises, or law. In one sense God has all in His hand, and He says, "do my prophets no harm," but He has never taken His great power and reigned yet. The patriarchs were patterns of faith, having no possession in the land. Man was set up as king in David; then because of Israel's failure under the kings, their dominion transferred to the Gentiles, (Nebuchadnezzar). Power committed to man, there is no knowing what he will do. Nebuchadnezzar made an image and called on the people to worship it, instead of God, and then put those who owned God into the fire. When Christ was on earth, things were not set aside, He said, "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Christ became a servant amongst them. Pilate represents the emperor who has God's appointed authority.

109 Here our position is "Do well and suffer for it," because the rule of the Gentiles is going on instead of Jehovah's reigning. That you see goes on, until the two things meet again, when the mystery of God has gone on to the open apostasy, and power comes out under the form of Babylon, the "mother of harlots." All the nations in opposition to God's government will then meet up in open rebellion and nothing can bring in blessing but the Lord coming in judgment. Jehovah reigns. The place of the saints, now suffering with Him, will be to reign with Him then. We shall be called up before He comes, and when He comes to reign we come with Him to reign with Him. He will reign over the earth; but saints gone up will reign with Him. The character of our association with Christ is like that of Paul, who got his soul into the glory whilst it was in heaven. Peter had seen Christ's sufferings, he shared the sufferings and anticipated the glory. Paul had the sufferings and entered into the glory by faith, he was filling up the measure of Christ's sufferings. You get from him not the fact of glory revealed merely, but our being with Him, the rays of the glory when it is revealed.

Psalm 90. Remarkable the way in which this book is introduced. The eye is on Jehovah coming in, and faith looks back to see the way they have been led. "Jehovah, thou hast been our dwelling-place." Psalm 91 shews what that dwelling-place was. Turning to Jehovah as coming up, He had been their dwelling-place. To Him a thousand years were as yesterday when it is past. He had come to deliver, but Psalm 91 gives Christ, He that dwelleth. He takes His place amongst these people whose dwelling-place Jehovah had been. He takes up the names of Abraham's God (Most High and Almighty), going farther back than Israel to whom He was known as Jehovah, to Abraham the root of the olive-tree. "Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God," looking on the prosperity of God's people on earth. God Almighty is a name God took in connection with coming out of the world, and He that knows the secret place knows where to look, God as a Father watches us, but it is not that we shall always escape suffering, we have something better than promise of that kind. We may indeed pass through the fire, but not a hair of our head shall perish, but here it is personal deliverance promised, and if we look for that we shall make terrible mistakes. "Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." God will take as much care of the remnant as of Christ. Whoever gets the "secret place of the Most High shall abide," etc.

110 Christ says, I will take Jehovah for my refuge, not as the God of the earth yet, and Jehovah comes in as Most High. Verse 9. Israel speaks, "Because thou hast made," etc. Verse 14. Jehovah takes it up, "Because he hath set his love on me, therefore will I deliver him." Christ took the place of refusing to be the Jehovah on earth, that He might suffer as Son of man. He dropped His title of Psalm 2, that He might take the place of suffering and claim of Psalm 8, and this is Jehovah's approval and reward.

Psalm 92. He is in the place where praise flows forth to this great Deliverer. We get the character of the Most High brought out. Then the Lord reigneth (Ps. 93), the floods have lifted up their voice, etc. "Who is this that we should obey him," the ungodly say: "The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters," etc., and so it will be they rise against Him, but He wakes up as the Judge of the earth, and puts an end to it all. As He stilled the waves on the lake when they thought He was asleep on a pillow, so now He stills the raging of the nations.

Psalm 94. The remnant in distress calling for judgment. He comes in as the Judge of the earth. He has that character, not Saviour, yet the meek of the earth will be delivered. Wheresoever the grounded staff shall pass, it shall be with tabrets and harps, Isa. 30: 32. In order to their getting the blessing they must look for the cutting off of enemies. The "throne of iniquity" must be put down, and the rightful king set up. Can Jehovah reign with Antichrist? If not, vengeance must be executed to put down his throne. Verse 20.

In the Psalms that follow we get the progressive introduction of Jehovah or Jesus (as Lord) into the place of government. In Psalm 102 the sufferings of Christ on earth are contrasted with the glory into which He comes.

111 Psalms 95, 96 to 99. His going on from one step to another to bring in deliverance. Psalm 95, a solemn appeal to the Jews, the sheep of His pasture, at the closing moment, "today, - if ye will hear," etc., the solemn to-morrow is not come. Psalm 96. The last appeal to the Gentiles; leave your idols and come up to worship Jehovah. Psalm 97. Celebrated prophetically, see the quotation of this Psalm in Hebrews. "Worship him," that is Christ, worship Him. Nothing more shews the divine Person of the Lord than these Psalms. Here it is Jehovah in the Psalms, and in the quotation it is applied to Christ. He is here coming to judge the world. Psalm 98. It is done. In Psalm 99 He goes a step farther; not only does He display His power, but He takes pleasure in Jerusalem, and He is sitting between the cherubims in the temple.

Then comes Psalm 100, not summoning them from their idols, but inviting them to join in the joy of the whole earth at Jehovah being established. Israel sings this Psalm. Thus we get the whole cause of the First-Begotten coming into the world again, in these few Psalms; then turning back to the human part in Psalm 101 He comes in as Son of David. He announces prophetically the principles on which He will govern when He takes the throne as Man on earth.

In Psalm 102 the question is raised, How can He who was cut off have a part in this reign? It enters in a peculiar way into Christ's sufferings, as cut off out of the land of the living (not atonement), but how can He who was cut off have part in this land of the living? It takes in the whole scene prophetically. He had been lifted up as one chosen from amongst the people to be Messiah, but cast down, the lowest of the low; God's wrath against Him. Though He came as Messiah, with all the blessings in His hand, He is cast down. "Thou shalt arise and have mercy on Zion," referring to the last days, and then (v. 15) the world is brought in when Israel is blessed. "He weakened my strength by the way"; cut off at thirty-three years, how could He come in to reign? Now we get the answer of the Spirit. "Thy years are throughout all generations"; it is Jehovah Himself. We get that at the very time when He is cut off; in the midst of all the glory He breaks in "but I am cut off," the answer breaks in as suddenly, "Thy years are throughout all generations." The very Jehovah that founded everything (Heb. 1: 10), "Thou Lord, in the beginning has laid the foundations of the earth." It is exceedingly beautiful to get the two together in this way the casting down and the lifting up. If Christ is the centre of our hearts, we take an interest in all that concerns Christ Himself. He appeals to His disciples, "If ye loved me ye would rejoice because I go to my Father," you would be glad of my going away because of what concerns me. If you love self, you will want to keep me. The moment we have got peace and are free to think of something besides self, every ray of glory we can perceive in connection with Christ brightens up the interest of our souls in Him. There is no place where Christ speaks of His desolateness on earth as in this Psalm, where He is declared to be the Jehovah. How beautifully the Spirit of God brings out the loveliness of Christ's heart in the world! His very love isolated Him: He must feel for others; He must feel the sorrow of seeing them rejecting His love. Dreadful to go through a world so dead to its own mercies, in rejecting Him!

112 There was no sorrow that He had not to go through, even to His disciples turning away. Suppose all is very sorrowful with us; if there is any success of the gospel it cheers our hearts, but there was no such comfort for Him. He said to His disciples, Tarry ye here, and watch with me: poorly indeed they watched, for they went to sleep. He was alone in His sorrow, and alone in His joy. "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." Christ's perfectness was the very reason of the way He felt all the path down here. There was everything that could add to the cup of human sorrow. Now, when all the brightness comes in, He says, "I had to be cut off this very one, who is Jehovah!

What a wonderful way the Spirit of God brings these divine truths before us! Speaking of being cut off, why it is the Jehovah! How it breaks in upon all the routing of our thoughts, that such an object should have come in! Surely it is enough to take us out of ourselves. The thread that leads us to it is, the interest that Christ takes in all this. It puts us in a place where innocence could not have put us. God Himself has come into all the evil, bringing in grace above all the evil. That it is which gives the exhaustless source of all blessing; it is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is presented to us to deliver us out of all the wretched routine of this world's thoughts, being Himself the object for the affections of our hearts. God the Father has given us the very object to delight in, that He Himself delights in; one who went down into it all, that is the reason we can have communion with Him. God is the only One who could come into such a scene. An angel would have fallen in taking it; it would have been a fall for any creature to have come into it!

God's Comforts - the Stay of the Soul

Psalm 94.

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Psalms 90-100 are connected together, and seem to me to describe the dealings of the Lord with the Jews, etc., in the latter day, on the earth. But I am not going to speak of that now. We may often derive comfort from principles which we find in such portions of the scripture, revealing to us, as they do, God's character, etc.; but it is important to know the mind of the Spirit in the primary sense, as we shall then be able to discern what God is teaching us through them with a great deal more clearness and certainty.

The two principles which form the basis of what is dwelt on here are, that the workers of iniquity are allowed to lift up their heads and flourish, but that Jehovah is, and will be, Most High for evermore. There is the clear perception of this throughout. Under the temporary exaltation and prevalence of wickedness, the godly are in a very tried state, the righteous suffer; but vengeance belongs to God (not to the sufferer) therefore the cry in verses 1, 2.

To such a height are the workers of iniquity allowed to go, that, in the consciousness that Jehovah's throne could not be cast down, the question comes in, "shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?" (v. 20). So completely has wickedness got place in the earth, that there is a sort of inquiry raised, whether the throne of iniquity could subsist in companionship of judgment with the divine throne. The answer is, judgment is coming - "Jehovah our God shall cut them off," v. 23. Judgment shall return to righteousness in the place of trial and suffering.

The point on which I would dwell a little at present is the consolation of the saints during this time of trial - God's "comforts." In the first place we have the assurance, "Jehovah knoweth the thoughts of men, that they are vanity," v. 11. Then "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah," etc. (v. 12, 13).

As to the pride and purpose of man, it is settled in a word. The "thoughts of man" are not only inferior to God's wisdom but they are "vanity." This settles the whole question. All that begins and ends in the heart of man is "vanity," and nothing else. Whatever the state of things around, though there may be a "multitude of thoughts within," as 'what will all this come to?' 'how will that end?' and the like - every barrier we can raise, all our strength, all our weakness, whatever the wave after wave that may flow over us - Jehovah's thought about it all is, that it is "vanity." All is working together to one object - God's plan, that upon which His heart is set - the glorification of Jesus, and ours, with Him. Every thought and every plan of man must therefore be "vanity," because it has not this, God's object, for its object; and God's object always comes to pass. There cannot be two ends to what is going on. Let men break their hearts about it, all simply comes to nothing, the end of it is "vanity." God's object is, that "all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father."

115 Take a man of the world - the shrewdest calculator, the ablest politician, or the greatest statesman: a poor bed-ridden saint is wiser than he, and more sure of having his plans brought about; for the heart of the simplest feeblest saint runs in the same channel with God's; and though the saint has no strength, God has.

In this Psalm we find, first, the tumult of the enemies and then, that God has done it. So with the saint constantly in trial: he sees the work of Satan, then God's hand in it; and he gets blessing. All the present effect of these dealings of "the wicked" is, "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah, and teachest him out of thy law; that thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked." The pit is not yet digged, the throne of iniquity is not yet put down. If, in chastening, the power of the adversary is against us, the Lord's end in it all is, "to give rest in the day of adversity," etc.

I speak not merely of suffering for Christ - if we are reproached for the name of Christ, it is only for joy and triumph and glory to us; but of those things in which there may be the "multitude of thoughts within," because we see that we have been walking inconsistently and carelessly in Jehovah's ways. Still it is, "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah," etc. Jehovah does not chasten willingly, without a needs - be for it. And when there has been failure or inconsistency that brings chastisement, He turns the occasion of the chastisement to the working out of the heart's evil that needed to be chastened. Jehovah in chastening, throws back the heart upon the springs which have been the occasion of the evil. The soul is hereby laid bare for the application of God's truth to it, that the word may come home with power. It is taught wherefore it has been chastened; and not only so, but it is brought into the secret of God's heart - it learns more of His character, who "will not cast off his people, neither forsake his inheritance," v. 14. What God desires for us, is, not only that we should have privileges conferred upon us, but that we should have fellowship with Himself. Through these chastenings, the whole framework of the heart is brought into association with God. And this stablishes and settles it on the certainty of the hope that grace affords.

116 Look at Peter after the enemy had sifted him, though his fall was most humbling and bitter, yet by it he gained a deeper knowledge of God and a deeper acquaintance with himself, so that he could apply all that he had learned to his brethren.

The Lord gives our souls "rest from the day of adversity" by communion with himself, communion not only in joy but in holiness. We are thus brought into the secret of God. Circumstances are only used to break down the door, and to let in God. God is near to the soul, when He, in the certainty of love, comes within the circumstances, and is known as better than any circumstance.

Jehovah never chastens without occasion for it, and yet "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah." There is not a more wonderful word than that! I do not say that a man can say this always while under chastening, for, if the soul is judging itself, there will be often anxiety and sorrow; but the effects are blessed. What we want is that all our thoughts and ways and actings of will should be displaced, and that God should be everything. All chastening must have in principle the character of government in it, for it is His dealing with His people in righteousness (as it is said, "If ye call on the Father who without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work," etc.), not in the sovereign riches of grace. It is God's allowing nothing in the heart inconsistent with that holiness of which the believer has been made partaker. It is indeed most blessed grace that takes all the pains with us, but that is not the character it assumes.

117 What we exceedingly need is intimacy of soul with God, resting in quietness in Him, though all be confusion and tumult around us. When the man here had God near his heart, though iniquity abounded, it was only the means of making God's "comforts" known to his soul; as it is said, "In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul," v. 19. Our portion is not only to know the riches of divine grace, but the secret of the Lord, to have intimacy of communion with Him in His holiness. Then, however adverse the circumstances, the soul rests quietly and stedfastly in Him.

If, brethren, you would have full unhindered peace and depth of fellowship with God and one with another, if you would meet circumstances and temptations without being moved thereby, it must flow from this: not merely the knowledge that all things are yours in Christ, but acquaintance with God Himself, as it is said, "being fruitful in every good work, and increasing by the knowledge of God."

May we, through grace enabling, let God have all His way in our hearts.

On the Psalms, especially 110

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The character of the fourth book of Psalms is marked by the bringing in of the "only-begotten" into the world again. But first He is cut off, and He who was cut off is Jehovah the Creator. The fifth and last book is the only one which speaks of Christ as Melchisedec. This is the first psalm which speaks of Him as man after the restoration. He now takes His throne as Priest. The last psalms are the hallelujahs.

After Psalm 102, which is the centre of book 4, we find the people repassing all the ways and dealings of God, when they gather round Him their centre, the Messiah. All the blessings cluster round Him in this character of Melchisedec. Psalm 103 is a review of God's moral dealings with the people; Psalm 104, of dealings with creation, celebrating Jehovah, God of Israel, in connection with creation. In Psalm 105 we have God's positive, special favour to them as His people, and in Psalm 106 their failure under it. "Gather us from amongst the heathen" refers to the last day, etc. There is a summary of all God's dealings with them, as to forgiveness, creation, special favour, and their failure and cry to be brought forth in mercy.

There is one remarkable feature to be noticed in these psalms; namely, the manner of their connection with Christ. Psalm 102 shews the way in which He was the poor man cut off, yet Jehovah; and Psalm 103 begins, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, . . . who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases." There is especial interest in seeing how this is connected with Christ in the Gospels. Jehovah is the One who forgives and heals. This is just what the Lord does with the paralytic. It was an example of God's governmental dealings with man. He healed the palsy, and besides, He forgave the sins. They say, "Who is this that forgiveth sins also?" He proved that He was the Jehovah who forgave them and healed their diseases. The Gospels, while most simple (the first three especially) in many ways, have the greatest depth in them, if you get below the surface. They shew what He was, if searched into; and it is most blessed to see who He was that thus walked amongst men, going about doing good. In the Epistles the Holy Ghost gives the explanation of the value of Christ's work, and until I get peace I want that which will settle me on that point; and when settled there, I can turn back and see who He was, and the heart finds more food than even in the Epistles. We find Christ Himself But there is also much relative to Christ in the Psalms and in special connection with the remnant of Israel. He calls Himself the Son of man in the passages about the paralytic referred to; but what He did proved Him to be the Jehovah of the Psalms. We have in them either His own experience; or He is in sympathy with those there (that is, in connection with the remnant).

119 The fifth book has a peculiar bearing, because it rehearses the circumstances of the remnant, after their restoration. It is their retrospect of all that has gone by. Hence it begins with this formula (107) "Give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever." That was the set phrase for the celebration of the faithfulness of God in Israel. David used it when he brought the ark back (1 Chr. 16); and again they used it when they came from Babylon (Ezra 3). "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so," etc. This refers to Israel brought back, and goes back to their history in the wilderness - deliverance from Egypt; "they that go down to the sea in ships," Ps. 107: 23. Israel is being brought back; and it ends in God's setting "the poor on high from affliction." What we get as a sort of preface to the book is that all these are gathered from different places, in the midst of humbled circumstances. They are minished and brought low - enemies are in the land; and the result of all is, that God pours contempt upon the proud, and iniquity in the earth is entirely cleansed.

In Psalm 108 is praise in taking possession. "Through God we shall do valiantly" - "Thou art the glory of their strength." The subject then turns back to Christ's sorrow in the wilderness, Antichrist literally being represented by Judas. See how Christ got Himself in spirit into the very same circumstances in which they will be in the latter day.

There are but few of the psalms apply wholly and entirely to the Lord in His personal sorrows. Psalm 22 applies thus exclusively to Christ, as also Psalm 102, but not many others. Those referring to His glory at the end of course are different. There are a great many in which some passages apply to the Lord and others to the remnant. For instance, Psalm 69 ("They gave me gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink"), refers to Christ; but the subject of Psalm 69 is first Israel. In verse 5 He speaks in the name of His people. The one in whom the Spirit works takes up the sorrows of the remnant. It is the Spirit of Christ; but some are the expression of what Christ Himself went through. In Psalm 22 you have not only what exclusively belongs to Him, but atonement - that which man could have nothing to do with, except in needing and getting the blessing of it. When we find His Person as Creator and His atoning work, we find Him alone; but in all others, others could come and do come into them. No sorrow was like His, even that besides His sufferings in making the atonement. Psalm 69: 26 shews how others are brought in. "They talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded." This is the same psalm in which He speaks of "reproach hath broken my heart"; and we all know the accomplishment of that in the Gospels. Yet in the other verse there were some who, however insignificant, had a part in it.

120 There is a character of suffering flowing from the activity of divine love. There is another kind - anxiety and distress for sin, both of which we may go through, not in atonement as Christ did, whose alone it was to be there. But Israel will feel the distress of their sin in the last day. What is the foundation on which He can sympathise with sinners now in any way? Atonement.

In Psalm 22 you get, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" "I cry in the day time and thou hearest not," etc. But in this Psalm 69, which approaches nearest to that, we get the suffering very different in principle. "Save me, O God, for the waters," etc.; "but as for me, my prayer is unto thee in an acceptable time," though going up to death; whereas in Psalm 22 He is forsaken, bearing divine wrath for sin. There are dogs around and "my soul like wax," He says, "but be not thou far from me." He is far from Him, entirely alone. He could not then speak of "those whom thou hast wounded." He does bring in the church at the end of Psalm 22: "in the midst of the church will I sing praise." The judgment being completely and fully borne, and atonement made, He sings praise to Him who heard Him, resurrection being the proof of it.

In Gethsemane, in prospect of the cup, He experienced man's weakness and the power of Satan. He sweat great drops of blood, and cries to His Father, "Father, if it be possible," etc. He had not got the cup then, though He was thinking of it. The moment He has got the cup He says, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The remnant may dread the wrath of God for sin; but they never endure it. He has endured it for them.

121 We may go through and feel the reproach of Christ in our little measure, a privilege Paul had, in scourges, reproaches, etc. He was wonderfully like his Master; but would he have thought it a privilege to bear the wrath of God for sin? The power of Satan and the power of wicked men might be all let loose upon us; but that would not be like the suffering in atonement. The sorrow and suffering on account of sin He can feel with us, for He felt it in bearing it, and so could say, "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee"; but in the activity of divine love He can feel with us, and we with Him. The other thing into which we can never enter is what He endured for us. The historical circumstances of Christ were just what Israel will have to go through in the latter day - circumstances in a smaller sphere, but in greater depth of feeling. He went through all in spirit and through some in fact. Psalm 109 is Judas' betrayal personally, but not confined to Judas - "them." "Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth," v. 15 - "them that speak evil," etc. (v. 20). What a wonderful provision God has made for the comfort of the remnant in that day! Suppose them reading these words! Christ made the atonement and has put words into their mouths, expressing for them their cry, speaking of their sins, etc., and they will say, "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him," and thus they will be encouraged to think He will hear them. These two things will give them encouragement when they find out their sin otherwise they might say, What will become of us? and get into despair.

When all come up, as recorded in Matthew, asking what authority had Caesar, the Lord puts a question. There was a solemn process going on between them and God; they were with "the officer" in the way. Then He refers to this Psalm 110 speaking of His exaltation on high (Matt. 22: 44), "Sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies," etc. This is the time He is sitting there - doing nothing for Israel, though He is their great High Priest within, and "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance"; but their whole condition, since the day of the cross till He comes again to earth, is that He is doing nothing for them. This is not the time that He is making His enemies His footstool, but He is gathering the joint-heirs, while He is sitting on the throne of God. How remarkably this comes in as connected with making our peace! "When he had by himself purged our sins"; that was part of His divine glory. He could not sit down without it, and the work is complete; "He for ever sat down," referring to completeness in perpetuity. Every believer has immutable, unchangeable perfection before God in Christ. He sits on the right hand of God, and, consequent upon His sitting down there, He has received the Holy Ghost. There is now no true Christian state, but that of unclouded assurance in the presence of God - absolute brightness there. There is no continual cleansing with blood; the water is for practical purifying. Thus in 1 John 1, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" refers to our place or standing before God.

122 Remark, Jehovah says in verse 1, "Sit thou on my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool." He is not treading them under His feet. When He comes forth, we come with Him, not to triumph upon them; that He does alone, and the time not come yet. Our actual condition will then be with Him. It is now by faith with Him. We have association with Him as a heavenly Christ. Now they are giving a place to this Jehovah on earth, who was the rejected man. "The Lord send the rod of thy strength out of Zion." We are going back to the fulfilment of Psalm 2. He has set His King in Zion. "Thy people [Jehovah's people] shall be willing," etc. (v. 3), but not before the day of His power. They were not willing in His weakness; a little remnant were, and they became the nucleus of the church. But now "Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power," that is in contrast with "sit thou on my right hand until I make," etc. In verse 3 "dew of thy youth," means of these youths, the generation just come in, and "the womb of the morning" is the opening of the new day just coming in. The people that shall be born are the dew of the morning. The Jew elsewhere is compared to dew, and to a lion too - strength, and not tarrying for man. "The Sun shall arise with healing in his wings" for this earth; that is, in the "day of the Lord." We shall be with Him in the heavenlies then. We watch for the Morning Star; it is those watching in the night who see this.

The Lord in verse 5 is not the same as Jehovah, it is Adonai. "The Lord shall strike through kings in the day of thy wrath." It is not the day of His wrath now at all, but when that time comes He will strike through kings. The beast will be destroyed first - Gog and these kings; no human power will stand before Him. "He shall wound the heads" (it is rather the head) over a great country (v. 6).

123 "He shall drink of the brook by the way," etc. (v. 7). This is according to the grand principle of God's moral government. Those who humble themselves shall be exalted, while those who exalt themselves shall be abased. Christ was always the dependent One. He drank of the brook by the way. He took whatever refreshment God sent Him - took it as He could get it by the way. As Christ wept over Jerusalem, so He went out really in heart giving it up, finds a poor Samaritan, and He says, "The fields are white unto harvest." He had meat to eat, He drank of the brook by the way, in perfect subjection He took it as He could "by the way." He did not keep what He had to save Him from the sorrow of the way; but He emptied Himself, to be entirely dependent.

"The head over a great country" is a follower of Nebuchadnezzar. What will he have when the humbled One comes in? He will be smitten. He has exalted himself, and he will be abased; and that other Man, who humbled Himself - took only what God gave Him, He shall be exalted. It is a future scene.

How blessed that God should give us Christ's history in this way! If I look at Him as in the bosom of the Father, as Jehovah come in moral glory, the One who was humbled, if I look at the springs that moved His heart, His sufferings under the hand of God, His glory in the latter day, what food it gives me! "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me," and "If ye abide in me, ye shall bring forth much fruit." He brings us by faith into another world altogether, where striving together, and jostling one another up and down, are unknown.

The Lord's walk on earth is good for us. If we believe on Him, we must then abide in Him. The first thing He will do for us, when He comes for us, will be what He speaks of in John 17, "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory." May we learn in dependence on the Lord what will never have an end, the depth and blessedness of what is in the Son; and so walk with Him as that the Holy Ghost need not occupy us with ourselves, which He must do if we walk badly!

Heads of Psalms

Book 1.

<30023E> 124

In the first place we get, in Psalm 1, the righteous man; and, in Psalm 2, the counsels of God as to Messiah. Then, in general, Psalms 3-7 are the sufferings of Christ in the remnant, whether from enemies or from a sense of their own state; and in result, Psalm 8 is the Son of man set over all the works of God's hands.

In Psalms 9 and 10 we have particulars of God's executing judgment against the heathen in Zion, in favour of the needy; and, in particular, the ways of the wicked one, the man of the earth. Then follow, in Psalms 11-15, the sentiments and spirit of the remnant - the moral movements of their heart in this time of trial.

Psalm 16 is the place Christ Himself takes in His dependence, trusting in the time of humiliation, but ending in His joy in God's presence in resurrection. Psalm 17 is His appeal to right, which ends in His being displayed in glory - as man, of course; a lower kind of thing, but still a part of His glory.

In Psalm 18 the sufferings of Christ are made the centre of all God's ways in Israel, from Egypt to the manifestation of the glory of Messiah.

Psalm 19 is the testimony of creation and of the law; according to the letter of which the remnant presents itself in conscience before God.

In Psalm 20 the remnant prophetically see Christ in His day of trouble, and in His sufferings from man; in which God hears Him, in order to His establishment in His royal rights. In Psalm 21 He is answered with length of days for ever and ever, and excellent majesty; and judges His enemies. In Psalm 22 He is in sorrow, in which no remnant can enter; in which, through all the concentration of evil from without, He finds the forsaking of God within, instead of answer to His confidence. But, when He had drunk the whole cup, He was answered in resurrection, and all flows forth in unmingled blessing: first, to the remnant, immediately consequent on His resurrection saluted as "brethren," with whom He unites Himself in spirit, as He says, "In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee"; then, to all Israel; then, to all the ends of the world, the testimony of that which is done going down to other generations.

125 In Psalm 23 He takes the place of the sheep on earth; in Psalm 24 He is saluted as "Jehovah of Hosts," and "King of glory."

Psalms 25-28 are, in general, the exercises of the renewed heart (in the remnant always): confidence in the Lord; consciousness of integrity through grace; consciousness of sin; and earnest desire not to be drawn away with the wicked, counting on the Lord's having called them to seek His face.

Psalm 29 is God's voice (not the still small voice) the answer to it all. Psalms 30 and 31 are enjoyment in the sense of this interference of God (still though in the trouble). Psalm 32 is forgiveness and guidance (still in the remnant). in Psalm 33 creation and the counsels of God in favour of His people give confidence. In Psalm 34 what God has been for them in their sufferings gives confidence. In Psalms 34-39 we find them in the presence of the power and prosperity of the wicked, with the sense of having deserved judgments and having been under chastening, though their cry is to the Lord who chastened them.

Psalm 40 is Christ undertaking the accomplishment of the divine will in perfect obedience: His perfectness shewn in waiting, etc. In Psalm 41 which is the last psalm of the book, we see all the humiliation and bitterness to which He exposed Himself in the accomplishment of it; but in which He is assured to be set before God's face for ever.

There is a very distinct principle brought out in the Psalms, that while in connection with the Jews, yet the nation is not the thing owned. The distinction is made by moral character, and not by nation. It is a certain elect remnant in the midst of the mass that is owned, of whom Christ becomes the representative; Psalm 1.

As a general principle the government of God is looked for, and that that government will sanction and establish the righteous, in contrast with the ungodly. Another principle comes up - the counsels of God as to His Anointed, in spite of the heathen who rise up against them.

Psalm 2. As soon, however, as we get these principles laid down, we find that, outwardly, it is not happening so at all. Hence the discussion of this question in the Psalms that follow.

126 Psalm 3 is faith in what Jehovah is. In verse 7 he sees prophetically that He has done it; therefore he gives praise.

Psalm 4 is dependence in calling on God. Verse 3, the godly are marked out, not the nation.

Psalms 5 and 6 are a great deal more the remnant. In Psalm 5 there is more sense of the evil that is pressing on them; in verse 9 Christ's judgment of the then condition of the wicked. It goes on to the last days. Psalm 6 is quite in the latter day in Israel; it is a question of cutting off. Verse 3, "How long!" is the spirit of prophecy in the remnant. (See Isaiah 6.) The cessation of this is indicated in Psalm 74, there being no one who knew "How long." They were in circumstances like as if cast off for ever; and faith, knowing that it cannot be so, says, "How long!" Verse 4; in the psalms in which the remnant speaks, mercy comes before righteousness. In Psalm 4, where it is more the Lord Himself, righteousness comes before mercy.

In Psalms 3-7 It is much more introductory, and certain general principles. It is Messiah who first speaks, because He has first fully taken, nay, He alone could rightly take apart the place of the remnant, as apart from, and in contrast with, the people. Others had felt it - as having His Spirit, and, as prophets, had portrayed it in Him - but He alone could rightly take it by intrinsic righteousness. Yet in Him it was as forced to it; that is, this righteousness forced out the wickedness in the others, and He wept over Jerusalem when it was done; but then He entered into all that concerned Israel, according to the purpose, love, and revelation of God. The Psalms are the perfect display of all that a divinely perfect heart in the circumstances could feel of, and as to, the relationships of God with Israel, and Israel with God.

Psalm 9 is more the heathen-man; Psalm 10 is more the wicked one among the Jews.

Psalms 11-41 are the development of faith in Christ, or the remnant as associated during the time of tribulation; but before the last half-week. Therefore Psalms 9, 10 come in as a general preface. Psalm 11: 2. It is not "privily" in last half-week. Verse 4 is the answer to verse 3.

Psalm 12 is the holy wisdom of owning Jehovah. In verse 6 the words of the Lord are a stay, when everyone speaks vanity with his neighbour. In verse 7 the second "them" should be "him."

127 In Psalm 16 Christ comes in to give its full character to hope and faith. This psalm is like a stake in the midst of all these psalms. The moment we get Christ, we get the spirit of calmness and grace.

Psalm 17. Specially Christ in the beginning. In verse 11 the remnant comes in.

In Psalm 16 we have Christ's own joy in God; Jehovah shews Him the path of life, and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore. Psalm 17. In presence of the wicked and the prosperity of the men of this world He beholds God's face in righteousness, and is satisfied in waking up after His image. Most interesting is it to find that we have what is analogous in the church - the taking up for its own joy, and the display in glory as the reward of righteousness.

Psalm 18: 4-6 is evidently the death of Christ. The words may have an application, used hyperbolically, to Israel in Egypt. Verse 15 is the Red Sea.

Psalm 19. The creation testimony is used as a figure of that now given by the gospel, inasmuch as it is universal. The testimony had been given of God, whether man saw it or not. (See Rom. 1.) They did not see it as we find, Verses 12, 13, they are kept in detail, and so kept from the great apostasy.

In Psalms 20, 21, we see human enemies, and judgment, but in Psalm 22 divine wrath and perfect grace. In verse 12, bulls, that is, violent men, who do their own will; in verse 16, dogs, that is shameless ones. In verse 21, the lion's mouth, that is, Satan's power over death. Verse 22 is the congregation, that is, the remnant, which afterwards became the church; only here looked at as the remnant of Israel. In verse 25 is "The great congregation," as in Solomon's day. Verse 30, is the remnant who pass through the trouble. Verse 31, is the millennial people.

Psalm 23. Thesis - Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want. It is not - He has given me good things, and I shall not want; but Jehovah is my Shepherd, etc. Verse 3 is the weakness of man, which needed restoring. We need restoring, because of sin as well as weakness.

Psalm 24: 3, 4. "Who?" Verses 7-10 shew the King of glory; verse 6, the remnant coming in when the earth is the Lord's.

Psalm 25 is important as shewing that the remnant do not ignore sin, but look from it to God.

128 Psalm 26: 2. Examine me, O Lord, etc. Verse 3. For Thy loving kindness is before mine eyes.

Psalm 27: 1-6 is the thesis; verse 7 and onward, prayer founded on it.

Psalm 29. In the midst of all these exercises of the heart of the remnant, God comes in. The voice of Jehovah comes in, and puts everything in its place.

In the psalms that follow, they have more to do with God; they are more occupied with the Lord Himself than with the circumstances.

Psalm 30 is more God's anger, and so confession; Psalm 31 is the enemies, so insisting on integrity. We constantly find these two things.

Psalm 32. "Be glad," not in the forgiveness, but "in the Lord," etc.

Psalm 34. A call to the remnant to bless Jehovah in their worst sorrows, "at all times," not when they get the blessing, but now.

Psalm 35 is Christ's spirit, in its perfectness, supplying a vent for their feelings in their weakness.

In Psalm 36 the wickedness is such that there is no conscience in the adversary. Verse 5. The answer - God is above it all.

Psalm 37: 34. "Wait on Jehovah, and keep his way." The whole secret of what we have to do.

Psalm 38. An important principle in this Psalm - the difficulty of looking to the Lord for deliverance from the wicked, when sin is on the conscience. Nevertheless., God is the refuge from the enemy. It is beautiful to see this integrity of heart, when he has not a word to say for himself.

Psalm 39. This leaning on Jehovah, with faults, breakings down, and everything, is very beautiful.

Psalm 40. Beautiful how, in the midst of all these exercises in the former psalms, waves of every kind, Christ is brought in; and He says, I will tell you how I got on. Verse 17, as in Matthew 5, Christ is just giving a description of Himself. And herein is the difference between Matthew and Luke. Matthew tells who enter; Luke says, Ye are the very ones. He gives them the place of the remnant. In this psalm Christ sets aside the Jewish figures, and lays the ground of righteousness Himself.

Psalm 41 is more the Spirit of Christ than Himself personally, though applied to Him in the treachery of Judas.

129 Book 2.

The second book begins not with Christ, but with the condition of the remnant; and hence has more for its subject the facts of the latter day, Israel being driven out. It is not going through all these states of soul, so that Christ might be brought in. It is like the position, when Christ went out to a place called Ephraim. (John 11: 54.) There was a kind of hoping for good, from the multitude before; but now He has done with the wicked, and come out. So now it is not Jehovah, but God. One is cast more simply on God. He is not trusting in the relationship, but in God, in the nature of Elohim.

Psalms 42 and 43. In the two first psalms of this book, Christ takes the place of the godly remnant as cast out of all Jewish privilege by the power of the enemy and the apostasy of the Jews themselves - a nation "Lo-chasid;" - ungodly.

Psalm 42 is more the Gentiles.

Psalm 43: 1. "Ungodly nation," more than Jews. "The deceitful and unjust man" is Antichrist. The whole of this book is applicable to the period during which Antichrist has been received, that is, the last three and a half years.

In Psalms 44-48 we have the appeal of the remnant to God, as the One who, at the beginning, had delivered them, with all the consequences consequent on the intervention of Messiah in Psalm 45, Psalm 49 being a moral comment on human grandeur in view of this.

In Psalm 50 God has summoned all in judgment, and shines out of Zion, owned the "perfection of beauty." Psalm 51. The Jews own their guilt in connection with the death of Christ.

In Psalms 52-58 we see the wickedness and violence within, that is, among the people. In Psalm 59, it is more the heathen without come against them at the same time. But in Psalm 60 in the midst of this distress, there is the assurance that God Himself will interfere, and claim His own rights in the midst of them.

In Psalm 61 Messiah identifies Himself with the outcast remnant; and, in Psalm 62, expresses His confidence in God so as to lead theirs, and that of all men.

All these psalms are to God, and not to Jehovah; that is, they depend on what God is in Himself.

In Psalm 63 it is the earnest desire of the godly soul after God, as he has known Him in the sanctuary. Psalm 64 is the confidence of the Spirit of Christ in God, though obliged to wait for Him till the judgment is executed. In Psalm 65 his faith is pressing: God has only to give the word, and He will have the praise that waits for Him; while in Psalm 66 God's intervention in judgment is celebrated, and their state described until it come. In Psalm 67 the face of God, shining on His people, carries His saving health among all nations. In Psalm 68 the heavenly exaltation of Christ is the source of the blessing of His people. In Psalm 69 is all the depth of His distress as man - not exactly the cup of wrath, though it is on the cross. In Psalm 70 he looks for deliverance; and that those who seek God may be able to praise God because of it, however needy he may be. In Psalm 71 he speaks as the representative of the family of David - all dying out. In Psalm 72 we see the son of David in his new glorious reign on earth. This closes the book.

130 Psalm 44 is the cry of the remnant. Their present confidence is in God, through looking for Him to take the place of Jehovah.

In Psalm 45 Messiah comes in. Verse 6: His divine title is owned, Verse 9: when we have the kingdom on earth, Jerusalem is the bride. Verse 14: the virgins are the cities of Judah. In verse 16 the old thing is not remembered; but the new, which grace has introduced.

Psalm 46. The remnant find that they are owned as the nation, when they have settled in Zion. Messiah having been introduced, God is the God of Jacob.

In Psalm 47 He is subduing the peoples under their feet. The consequence of God's establishment in Zion is His stretching out His hand over the nations.

Psalm 48. Zion takes her place. She is established in blessedness. Verse 8: "As we have heard, so have we seen." It is not merely that He has come there, He is settled there. Not "I had gone with the multitude," but, "in the midst of thy temple." Verse 10: "According to the name," etc. They had trusted the name, and now so is it. Verse 14: Unto death - that is, all their life long. Death not destroyed. The desire of Psalms 42, 43, and 44 is fulfilled in Psalm 48.

Psalm 49 is a moral sermon; a kind of "improvement" of Psalms 44-49. Verse 15 is resurrection, or preservation from death.

Psalm 50. They now come in to the covenant "by sacrifice"; not by obedience, as at Sinai. Verse 3 is the way He gets to Zion.

131 Psalm 51. Their confession. Verse 19: When the heart is set right, their "sacrifices of righteousness" are acceptable. Mercy coming before righteousness is always a sign of the remnant.

As in Psalm 42 we had Israel cast out, and in Psalm 45 the temporal deliverance; so in Psalm 51 is the deliverance within. The secret of the whole we get in Psalms 68 and 69 on to Psalm 72. In Psalm 50: 6, the heavens declare His righteousness: in Psalm 68: 18, we find that Christ has ascended there; in Psalm 69 we learn how He got there whilst Psalm 72 gives His royal place in Zion as Solomon.

As Psalm 52 gives faith in God's enduring goodness for the righteous whilst He would destroy the wicked, so in Psalm 53 we see the wickedness of the people judged by God; and Psalm 54 is the cry to God as such for deliverance, before His name of Jehovah is praised.

Psalm 55 is the horror of Spirit of Christ at seeing the total iniquity at Jerusalem - Judas and Antichrist. Verse to, Jerusalem. Verse 20, Antichrist.

Psalm 56 is more outward. Verse 8, "wanderings that is, up and down, not knowing what to cry; as Psalm 57 directs to heaven for the true source of deliverance.

Psalm 58: it is the meaning of judgment, establishing God's government of the earth.

Psalm 59: 6. Not within the city yet.

Psalm 60: 3. "Hard things" shewn the people. Verse 4, a banner given to them that fear, that it may be displayed because of the truth.

Psalm 61. All is outside; when Jesus went beyond Jordan and abode there - the hill Mizar and Hermon.

Psalm 62 is the cry of confidence in God.

Psalm 68 is the cast - out king; and (v. 2) the desire is not as in mysticism after a thing never known, but "to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee," etc. Verse 3: his life was all sorrow, yet, "because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee."

Psalm 64: 3. "They bend their bows to shoot their arrows"; but (v. 7) "God shall shoot at them with an arrow."

132 Psalm 65: 4. The Jews are blessed; verse 8, then all the earth.

Psalm 66 shews righteous intervention before all; and Psalm 67 the blessing of the remnant as the way of blessing for the nations.

Psalm 68: 18 is the secret of it all - Jehovah received up into glory - the mystery of godliness.

Psalm 69 is the utmost distress of Christ in the midst of Israel. Verse 26: The fact of atonement, though not directly stated as such. He is looking at sorrows from the reproachers (not as in Psalm 22), and therefore the judgment of men.

Psalm 72: 16 does not touch heaven; so it is not the Son of man's dominion, but the King's Son's.

Book 3.

I think that the third book gives the ways of God with Israel, not with Judah merely ("unto which [promise] our twelve tribes hope to come"); the result being, Psalm 73, that God is good to Israel, but to the clean-hearted among them; while the prosperity of the wicked is a long sore trial to faith. Hence, in Psalm 74, all that on which their natural hopes rest is smashed and broken down. Flesh cannot build up what God has put under the power of judgment; but faith can wait on God, till He glorifies Himself. Psalm 75: His judgment is clearly unfolded, and Messiah declares the principles on which He will govern in respect of God. Psalm 76: thus God is known in Judah, His name great in Israel, and Jerusalem the seat of His power and glory. Psalm 77: the believing heart blames all distrust of this, as its infirmity, and remembers the previous days of God's right hand.

In Psalm 78 all the perverse ways of Israel are discussed and the electing grace of God, in the house of David, presented as its only resource.

In Psalm 79 the excesses of the heathen, in the latter days, are brought under God's eye, that He may favour His people, and not remember their iniquities against them.

In Psalm 80, the connection of God, as the dweller between the cherubim of old, and the manifestation of His power as Son of man, are brought together as the deliverance of the vine once brought out of Egypt.

Psalm 81. On the reappearance of Israel, that is, on the new moon, God shews the rectitude of His ways with that people in judgment.

133 In Psalm 82 He judges among the gods.

In Psalm 83 we have the last conspiracy of the Assyrians, and those that dwell within the limits of the land, where judgment displays that Jehovah is Most High over all the earth.

Up to this, we have had God, in His nature and character, as such. Now, in Psalm 84, the people in connection with Him as Jehovah think of the joy of going up to His sanctuary, that is, to worship Him.

Psalm 85. In the favour He has shewn to His land, mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, have all been verified and brought together.

Psalm 86 is a celebration of the character of Jehovah, in respect of the needy, bringing all nations up to worship before Him.

Psalm 87. The excellency of Zion is celebrated as a defiance to the whole world, specially because Messiah is reckoned amongst her children.

Now we come to what Christ gets amidst all this. Psalm 88 is the curse of the broken law, which rests on the remnant, entered into by the Spirit of Christ: while in Psalm 89 all the mercies of God are centred in Him.

In the first Book of Psalms we get Christ more as an object for example, Psalms 2, 16, 20, 22, 40. In the second book, He is presented more as an answer. So it is more the remnant, and how they are to be delivered; there is as much of Christ, but more in the way of Deliverer. In the third book, it is more entirely the remnant, for it is not David, but Asaph. There is a great deal more of grace here, than of righteousness, for the remnant, and not so much of Christ. We get Israel in the old associations of Egypt, and not Christ Himself in the midst of the thing.

Psalm 73 is Israel beloved for the fathers' sakes, modified by the necessity of personal righteousness. It forms a kind of thesis for the whole book.

Psalm 77 is exercise of soul in this state of things. Verses 13, 19: if you get into the sanctuary, there you win be sure to find God's way; but if you look [for it] outside, it is "in the sea." Verse 16 is the Red Sea.

Psalm 78 is an account of how they behaved under these mercies. Verse 67 is the natural heir refused. Even if God is good to Israel, it is God who is good, not that Israel has claim. Verse 68, He chose Judah.

134 Psalm 82. If all the deputy - judges go wrong, God judges among the gods.

Psalm 84: 4 is the "house" and "praise." Verse 5 is the "ways" and "strength"; both "blessed." Verse 6, "Baca weeping"; so, "rejoicing in tribulation."

Psalm 86 is David. A great deal more personal; the consciousness of standing in the gap for Israel.

Psalm 89: 1. "Mercies" celebrated. Verse 19 shews them summed up in the person of Christ, Verse 49, Israel is cast over on the certainty of mercy in God' s promise to David.

Book 4.

In Psalm 90 Jehovah has always been the dwelling-place of Israel; and His greatness, and their nothingness, are - used as a plea for His compassion towards them: while in Psalm 91 Messiah comes in, and owns the God of Israel, even Jehovah; and all the blessings of the name of Almighty and Most High are manifested in connection with Him.

This brings in Psalm 92, the celebration of His name in the rest - the Sabbath - of Israel.

The from Psalms 93-100, we have the thesis of Jehovah's reigning brought out from the cry of the remnant, who seek deliverance from the wicked one; the call to Israel to listen; the call to the heathen; the coming in glory to judge; the execution of the judgment; God's establishment in Zion between the cherubim the summons of the world to come and worship there with joy.

Then in Psalm 101 the principles of Christ's government; and in Psalm 102 the expression of His isolated sorrows; and to the inquiry how He, who was cut off in the midst of His days, could have part in the re-establishment of Zion, it is revealed that He is Himself the everlasting Jehovah.

In Psalm 103 he blesses Jehovah as the Forgiver and Healer of His people; in Psalm 104 as the glorious Creator; in Psalm 105 as faithful to His covenant with the fathers, and to His promises.

In Psalm 106, we see His dealings with them in chastening, but His abundant readiness to hear their cry which they now address to Him.

135 Psalm 90 is a supplication for mercy - a kind of introduction to the book. Verse 9: We are poor and fading things. Verse 14: Make haste to mercy.

Psalm 91. Now comes the deliberate statement of Messiah's taking up the case of Israel; not merely His being found in the position, but a kind of public announcement of it. Verse 1: Whoever takes the secret place, gets the Almightiness. Verse 2: Messiah says, I will take Jehovah as my refuge, etc. Verse 3: The Spirit declares the consequences of this. In verse 9 the remnant address Messiah. In verse 14 Jehovah comes in, and sets His seal on the whole.

Psalm 102 shews the consequence on earth of the trust of Psalm 91.

Psalm 93 has for its thesis, "Jehovah reigneth."

Psalm 94. Mercy of the remnant.

Psalm 95 is the summons to Israel. "To-day" goes on till Christ comes.

Psalm 96 is the summons to the heathen - the everlasting gospel of Revelation.

Psalm 97. He is coming.

Psalm 98. He has come, and executed salvation or righteousness in favour of Israel.

Psalm 99. He is actually sitting between the cherubim, taking His place on the throne.

Psalm 100. Gentiles are called to worship Him. "Rejoice, ye Gentiles," etc., is fulfilled.

Psalm 101 is a kind of supplemental psalm, shewing how Christ will guide His house when He takes it.

Book 5.

In Psalm 107 we get the celebration of the ways of the Lord in the restoration of His people (it is not what they are looking for), which they are specially called to notice; together, with Psalm 108, the celebration of His praises as their Redeemer.

We have then, Psalm 109, at once introduced the sufferings of Christ under the apostasy, whether of Judas or Antichrist: while, in Psalm 110, He is called to sit at Jehovah's right hand, until He makes His enemies His footstool, for the accomplishment of the purposes of this redemption - when His power shall go forth from Zion - while, because of His humiliation, He is exalted for the destroying of him who elevates himself against Him.

136 Psalm 110: 6. "He shall wound the head over a great country."

Psalms 111, 112. Then the Lord is praised for this redemption, and the display of His character in it; and the portion of the righteous consequently.

His majesty and grace are celebrated in Psalm 113, as high above all, extending everywhere, and considering the poor and needy. In Psalm 114 God's presence is the real strength of His people. Psalm 115: in contrast with idols, all the glory is given to His name.

Psalm 116. The afflicted one now praises the Lord before all, whom he had trusted in the time of his distress, when brought low. The Spirit of Christ, in the midst of His people, is especially shewn.

Psalm 116: 10. In the presence of death, He goes in and speaks. So Paul in 2 Corinthians 4.

Psalm 117. The nations are then summoned to praise the Lord, because of His abiding mercy and truth to Israel.

In Psalm 118 Christ takes up the son of Israel in the great congregation, declaring that "His mercy endureth for ever." The enemies encompassed Him, the adversary beset Him, Jehovah had chastened Him, but not given Him up. Israel now owns that the stone which the builders had rejected has become the Head of the corner, and their heart is prepared to say, "Save now," "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of Jehovah"; and they worship with joy.

Psalm 119. The law is written in Israel's once wandering heart.

Psalms 120-134. Then we get, in the Psalms of Degrees, various thoughts and feelings of Israel as now restored, whether as looking back and enjoying the blessing; or under the conviction of sin; or as David (that is, really Christ) establishing the sign of Jehovah's presence in full blessing in Israel - the people being gathered in unity - closing with the blessing of Jehovah from the sanctuary.

Psalm 130. In this psalm they get into the depths, not from circumstances, but from sin. Instead of speaking of enemies as in Psalm 124 ("when man rose up against us"), it is between him and God. It is after the new moon they have the day of atonement.

In Psalms 135 and 136, we have the celebration of Jehovah's praise for His election of Israel, in connection, on the one hand, with the original promise to Abraham, and the mercy connected with His judgments on the other (compare Ex. 3 and Deut. 32); with the formal declaration that His mercy endures for ever.

137 Psalm 137. Babylon and Edom come up in judgment before God; and Psalm 138, God's word, the confidence of His people, is glorified in His ways towards them.

Psalm 139. None can escape the searching out of God; but if God creates for blessing, we can praise Him.

Psalm 139. The searchings of God throw you back on the thoughts that God had in meeting you in grace; and therefore you can ask God to "search," etc. We are the creatures of His thoughts, as well as the subject of them.

Psalm 140. We have the cry for deliverance from the evil and violent man; the head of the faithful is covered in the day of his conflict, for God maintains his cause, and delivers him.

Psalm 141. The Lord is trusted to guide them - that is, the poor - in a right path, according to His mind, so as to avoid the snares of the wicked. In the utmost desolation he trusts Him. Then, Psalm 142, however overwhelmed, God knows his path.

Psalm 143. He pleads not to enter into judgment, for no man can be justified, for the enemy has trodden down his soul; but he still looks to the Lord, and trusts that He will guide him in uprightness, and looks to Him in mercy, to cut off all his enemies, that, Psalm 144, full blessing may come in.

Psalm 144 is different from Psalm 18 in not having the death of Christ as a centre; and, moreover, the heathen are not brought in.

Psalm 145. Messiah describes the millennium in the interchange of Jehovah's praises between Him and the people that are blessed.

Then we get the great Hallel.

Psalm 146. Jehovah is praised as the God of Jacob, as the Creator of all things, the Keeper of truth, the Deliverer of the oppressed, and of all from affliction and distress. He shall reign as the God of Zion through all generations.

Psalm 147. Then He is praised as the Builder up of Jerusalem, taking pleasure in them that fear Him, ruling every element by His word; but giving His word, His statutes, and His judgments, to Israel.

138 Psalm 148. All creation is called upon to praise Him; who exalts the horn of His people (Israel) - a people near unto Him.

Psalm 149. Israel, above all, is called to praise Him in a new song. judgment is put into their hands.

The last Psalm 150, is a kind of chorus. In His sanctuary, the firmament of His power, everything that has breath is called to praise Him.

In this book we have either the explanation of the Lord's ways, or hallelujahs. It is a kind of sermon.

Practical Reflections on the Proverbs

Proverbs 7.

J. N. Darby.

<30024E> 139

In this seventh chapter we have another aspect of Wisdom's ways. It is not open wickedness in which the will is active against which it directs its remonstrances; it speaks of the snares laid for those who have no intention to do evil, but whose lusts and passions lay them open to those snares. Hence the soul is called upon to be previously diligently filled with the precepts and counsels of wisdom, that it may be in no way taken in them.

This is a very important point. It is not sufficient (how often has the Christian found it!) not to have any intention to do evil, nor even to have the intention to do right. We are in a world of snares and temptations. We have to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation - to have the soul filled with the divine things of wisdom, and the thoughts of wisdom guiding the mind and the path, so that the allurements of evil and Satan's wiles take no hold upon us. The mind lives in another sphere. It is indeed another nature to which evil is offensive, and which detects it in the allurement itself, and deals with that as evil, instead of being. attracted by it. The precepts and light of divine wisdom fill and guide the thoughts; and evil is evil - is contrary to the state of the soul, walking in lowliness and obedience, not as fools but as wise, simple concerning evil indeed, but wise concerning that which is good. The words of counsel, implying, as we have seen, obedience and subjection of heart, are to be kept, and the commandments of a father laid up. And they are to be kept as well as laid up, and treasured, delighted in, kept before one's mind., on the fingers, and tables of the heart, and confessed and owned as that with which we are of kin, to keep us from the flatteries and allurements of sin.

The young man void of understanding went, notes the way of her house. It was not a deliberate purpose, as verse 21 shews; but the path of wisdom and her precepts would never have led him there - would have led and kept him elsewhere. He followed at least the idleness of his heart. This is a solemn warning. Nor is there light on this path. He was not walking in that light in which a man does not stumble. Nor is the conscience ever really good there. It is not an actually bad conscience, but a good conscience is always in the presence of God. "He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God." Here there were passions ready to be ensnared, without a safeguard; and a conscience which darkness suited better than light, which was not walking in the light; idleness of will which had shame, in a measure, of its own ways. It was not a path in the broad daylight of God. And, oh, how great a thing it is, and how blessed a thing! Look at the path of Jesus: where was that? We have greatly to seek this.

140 But now we have the boldness of a hardened conscience - a terrible thing. A defiled one with a broken heart Christ can meet; but a bold one is a shocking thing. There is no home to such a heart. But the idleness of passion is no safeguard against its ways. It can flatter, awaken lust, be ready to minister to it to win its ways. It reckons on fear in the unhardened, though it has none. It has its means, however, false, of guarding against it; for one is a mean thing, even if hardened. There was no "good man" at all. It was naked vice; but stolen waters are sweet, though sin fills with fear. And the idle soul is caught in snares its will did not seek; but it was none the less the path of death. Nor is it the only snare the idle soul may meet. The soul that does not watch and pray (that is not filled with wisdom's ways and wisdom's thoughts, kept by God's presence) will meet temptation somewhere. Still, here it is the snare of the strange woman. Her house is the way to hell. She has cast down many wounded, and strong men are all her slain. It is not human strength that resists temptation and passion; and such temptation has been the ruin of many who in this world were mighty, and even morally mighty. They have fallen under the snare, and were ruined; those who otherwise boast themselves have through this been weakness, and brought to ruin. The wise man presses it on him who had ears to hear.

Hebrew scholars make here a word which usually means "strong" to mean "numerous," v. 26. 1 confess I do not see why, nor how, it can be sound with "all." Many wounded has she made to fall, and strong ones are all her slain. I do not see the sense of numerous are all her slain; but that strength is of no avail against the snare, figuratively to shew the danger, and how powerful the snare is. To say that all her slain were strong ones is every way to the purpose. However this I must leave to abler Hebraists than myself. Only the Hebrew word is everywhere else used for mighty, or strong. The Authorised Version gives "strong," but turns "all" into "many." I confess, "strong ones are all her slain" is much more to the moral purpose of the sentence than anything else.

141 Proverbs 8.

Wisdom is not in this world simplicity, but leads us into it. Simplicity is the blessed result in the highest way, when God is all to the new nature. But God is wise in His ways in ordering all things, and we are now in a scene of evil, and a complication of received good and actual evil in will and fact, which needs for him who would go aright a path which the vulture's eye hath not seen. In truth there is none in the world in itself. Where all is morally wrong and departed from God, there can be no right path. Adam did not want a path. As to him he had only to stay where he was. When we have gone wrong, and are driven out by God, and so need a path, none can be found. There is none. But God deals with this scene - now with man in it, hereafter with the scene itself, and has a path and result which was before the worlds, and which wisdom points out to us, calling men into it. Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the path of understanding? It is not to be found in the land of the living. Destruction and death say we have heard the fame thereof with our ears. So they have. They tell us the vanity of all the scene we are in, and, above all, of man at the head of it, the sorest place of all. But it is only negative. This is an immense truth, that there is no way for living man fallen from God. This is what is described in the book of Ecclesiastes. Man under the sun, his will works. What can his will, multiplied in the contentions of many, do? But God understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof He ordered creation, but to man He said, The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding. This, as Ecclesiastes says, is the whole of man. That book does not go farther, and it is a deep and immense instruction to get this by itself, the position and condition of man as such ascertained, bringing God and responsibility to him, without reaching Him, but looking at man as he is here, and without revelation, but knowing good and evil, accompanied by the declaration of judgment.

142 Proverbs takes a wider sphere, because it is occupied with wisdom, not with man simply as he is. Hence we have always God in Ecclesiastes (save the fear of Jehovah at the end), Jehovah in Proverbs. The sphere we live in is one of a perverse will in man, who will not have God, but a knowledge of right and wrong in himself, of the difference of right and wrong, in a scene where nature retains abundant marks of a wise and good Creator, of almighty power, yet in this its lower part in a state of ruin and corruption, away from God, and in what man knows to be corruption about Him too; so that, when he has not revelation, that is, the word, he is fain, in hopeless subjection to what is false, to rear his altar to an unknown God. Such instinctive knowledge there must be as makes him feel that he knows nothing of Him - a sad condition for a responsible soul.

Wisdom, the word of God, comes into this scene, shews what it is, reveals God in it, the way of truth, but that word shews it existing in God before the world was. It looks back to creative wisdom, but to a purpose then set up which will be fulfilled; but it deals with what it meets with, and shews with divine light what is the scene and state of things of which I have spoken. Its utterances are the truth, and reveal withal the counsels of God. Christ was, and of course is, this wisdom, but He is more, for He reveals God Himself; and then comes in necessarily another thing - grace and truth come by Jesus Christ. This last we have not here. It was foretold and prophesied of, but could not be till the Lord Himself came, and effectually for us only when redemption was accomplished, and He had glorified God. (Compare Titus 1: 1-33; 2 Tim. 1: 9, 10.) But we have the general truth of the activity of God's testimony, which, after all, is grace, His dealing with the consciences of men, and wisdom in the creation, and in a general way that His thoughts and purposes of divine delight rested in the sons of men, accomplished so perfectly in Christ's incarnation, proclaimed so blessedly in the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good pleasure in men"; but here, too, wondrously set forth, shewing the dealing in truth by wisdom with men, and the unspeakable testimony of where His delight was before the world was wisdom having its delight where God's delight in eternity was. Its delight was in the sons of men. Now we say, "Christ the wisdom of God and the power of God."

143 But the revelation of wisdom and its exercise is in the midst of an evil world. What wisdom has to say she would not have to say if the world were not evil; yet it is a strange thing, and must be wisdom to speak God's truth in such a world. And such it is. We read in Ephesians, "See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is." "Redeeming the time" means seizing opportunities, as Daniel 2: 8, which I note because it shews the world to be evil, and, though under God's hand, still evil to be in power. And then wisdom has to cry. It reveals surely, too, all the counsels of God in Christ, blessing beyond the evil. We speak wisdom among them that are perfect, wisdom ordained before the world to our glory; but even this is brought about as to the wisdom of the way by the coming of evil and redemption. It is divine wisdom bringing good out of the evil in accomplishing His counsels towards us. Sin, weakness, guilt was our state, but through redemption issuing in glory, according to the display of God in that redemption, whose love, mercy, righteousness, supremacy over evil have been glorified in the work of Christ, and we in righteousness brought into that glory; that as sin appeared sin, working unto death by that which was good, the perfect law of right for man, so God might appear God by the display of all that He is, in bringing us to glory through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here we have it in its elements. We have seen it hitherto as the order of subordinate authority and parental care, the maintenance of paternal order. Here we have something more. The world is evil, and wisdom cries aloud in testimony in the midst of the world as it is, though revealing the grace that accompanies wisdom.

"Wisdom crieth, and understanding putteth forth her voice." Wisdom I take to be the gathering up all that experience can give, so as to judge of all things by it, only that in God it is intrinsic knowledge of all things, and all their relations and state. This He furnishes to us as far as we are capable of it as creatures in His word. Every word of wisdom is perfect as to that to which it applies. It comes from a perfect divine knowledge of all, and our path in it, as God sees it. It applies to what we are in, but it comes from God, who knows His own mind, in what we are in, and about it, and that He gives - only we know in part. As having received it now, we have it all ours. "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things," We cannot instruct the Lord, we are told, but we "have the mind of Christ." As addressed to us, it is the perfect light of God on that of which it speaks to us. The world is in confusion and evil. Grace makes God cry to us in that day. It was present in Christ. (Compare Isaiah 50.)

144 Understanding puts forth her voice, as wisdom comprehended all, and brought divine light to bear on it, Understanding discovered all. Verses 2 and 3 shew remarkably the character of this testimony. She meets man where he is, lifts up her voice above the roar and confusion of man's restless activities in this world, meets him in the throng, and puts herself forward in the highway of passage to bring in the light of God, and His claim on man for his good. She summons man's ear to hear, and think of something besides the urging of his own will and the turbid stream of his passions and earthly hopes. "To you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of man." So Christ, the life, was the light of man. Christ, though He did not lift up His voice in the streets, but only to be so much the more heard of all that had cars to hear, yet sent it on the housetops by His apostles, Himself the perfect subject and wisdom's self, rather than the proclaimer of it, yet sowed the word. Christ, I say, was this wisdom displayed in subjective perfection in this world. Every word He uttered was a part of it, and the right part when He uttered it. How He discovered all I need not say. He did not learn wisdom partially by experience, as that which He had not (though as true man He grew in it); but was that which experience is to learn. Sorrows He learnt for us, difficulties, opposition; but He was wisdom in the midst of it. However, God in active grace brings this to bear on the conscience and hearts of men - says, "He that hath cars to hear, let him hear." The word was proclaimed, on the top of the high places, in the view of men, in the thronged resorts of men, and where every one must enter that belonged to a human dwelling-place or home. And her address was to men. God's word and wisdom are formed for and expressed to them. When it was there in life, "the life was the light of men"; theirs in divine counsels, and adapted to their condition.

It came to bring the truth, not to find it. It came to the simple and fools; it brought light and understanding to the simple - the hearing ear, through grace; it brought to the simplest and most foolish, divine wisdom for themselves - a light and guide in all the circumstances they were in. They were excellent things, for they came from God, and revealed Him, and they were right things - put everything in its true moral place with God, and with God's authority. For wisdom's mouth speaks according to the real nature and state of things, and that as to their relationship with God - tells the truth of everything, and is equally abhorrent from all evil itself. This is the great controversy with man's pretensions. He has his own mind the centre of all the confusion, leaving out God, and pretending to judge by it the scene of confusion he is in - yea, even to judge God Himself, and what He ought to be. Wisdom is bringing, in applicable detail, the light of God and His authority in it into the scene of confusion which is so as departed from Him. The will of man will not have it; his passions and lusts are dearer to him.

145 But there is another character of divine wisdom; it is straight and simple, because it is profound and perfect. It is itself - itself in the midst of confusion and complication, but always itself. Human subtilty and wisdom must take the tortuous course which seeks to avoid the evil which it belongs to and lives amongst, of which it forms a part, though it may be a cleverer part; but it must act by the motives and passions which govern man, because it has nothing else to act upon, nor by. It cannot be above the sphere to which it belongs, though it may see a little farther into it than the simple and foolish but it cannot see beyond present motives - they are its motives Divine truth and wisdom brings in God, and what is right with authority - is it in testimony, or in fact - if we take it as embodied in Christ. Hence it is always itself, for it is what comes into the scene, not what is of it, though light in and adapted to it, and (acting on conscience, that is) is light to the sense of right and wrong by bringing in God, the fear of the Lord, and hence gives a perfect path. The words are in righteousness, and in righteousness for and in the midst of the scene of will and confusion sin has brought in.

I take the most common-place outward example: "Thou shalt not steal." In paradise there was no stealing. In heaven there will be none. In a perfect state such a thought could not exist. Yet property and rights of property have introduced confusion and ill-will and oppression on one side, and wrong on the other - in all ages a problem that no man can solve, and that there is no right to be found in. One form is oppression, another ruin and disorder. Wisdom is content with what it has, and covets no man's; it has the key to a perfect path of its own in the midst of the confusion, because of introducing God and His fear. It takes the heart of man out of all the motives which produce the confusion that exists, and gives it its own path in the midst of it. This is the most commonplace case, which I take on purpose.

146 Hence the Lord declines decision (He came not then to judge) in a case of alleged wrong, and continues, "Take heed and beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth"; and then exalts man's thoughts above such objects even as man, and brings in God as known goodness to those who had faith in Him; and this goes on to the highest display of the life of Christ in us. It was the law's place to mark this path in fact for man, not to reveal counsels or redemption or the display of God in man, but the path of man before God. So far it was wisdom, but it could not display God in counsels or in love connected with them, or it would not have been a law for man. Now we learn not man before God, but in Christ God before man, our rule of life, though this will surely not violate the other - against such there is no law. Thus there is nothing tortuous (froward) nor twisted (perverse), winding through the evil ways and corrupt motives of men to find an advantageous path through them.*

{*I suspect there is more of will withal in perverse, Prov. 8: 8; still it is in the main interwoven, and so subtle and perverse.}

Hence he who walks by divine wisdom is counted a fool - told he will be a prey to the world, for the world after all reckons on evil and looks to its subtilty as its resource to knowing more evil and plans to circumvent it. But obedience to the word is divine wisdom; for divine wisdom, that knows all things, has formed the path. We have to walk according to that lovely and divine precept that grace only could give us - "Simple concerning evil, and wise unto that which is good." Hence to him that understands - has an ear and capacity to receive what is divine, they are all plain. They are God's path, declared by Him, what leads in a straight and blessed path which is its own - that in which Christ walked. He that finds knowledge discerns that they are upright, right in themselves - the divine mind in us, we can say.

147 Now the new man discerns the uprightness of this path. As the Lord says, "Wisdom is justified of all her children," though the world see not or hate it. Plain is that which is straight before us. "Let their eyes look right on"; compare chapter 4: 25, where the word "right on" is the same as plain "here", Prov. 8: 9; and "straight" the same as "right here". It is all simple to him that takes divine light for his guidance, in thankful submission to Him who gave it. The path of Christ is the perfect expression of it: He is the wisdom of God. In value surely nothing can be compared with it - to have God's way, and that a right one, through a world of evil. But, in a world like this, there is need of not being fools but wise. And divine light sees everything in divine light, and detects at once its character. It is of the profoundest subtilty in this way. It has the discernment of God. A scene of satanic deceit is perplexing to the mind perhaps. What is it? The entrance of it is contrary to the fear of the Lord; the whole thing is judged, though I cannot account for the hundredth part of it. The soul, not guided by the fear of the Lord, plunges into a scene beyond its powers, and is the sport of Satan. The fear of the Lord and the Spirit of truth, for the simplest mind, has preserved from and judged it all. But it is really the subtlest judgment which the humanly wise are taken in. Wisdom dwells with prudence, the reflective judgment, which the fear of God calls for and produces as seeking always His will, giving a discernment which judges of the true character of everything. It is subtle, dwells with it, is found where this is. It is strange to put straight and subtlety together;* but it is just what divine wisdom does. In the witty inventions it is the cogitations of the heart which find out these witty inventions. When fully developed in us, we read, "The spiritual man discerneth all things, and he himself is discerned of no man." He judges all around him, and whatever he has to walk in; but his motives, principles, and aims the natural man discerns not; his path baffles the cleverness of him who has not the Spirit. (See Rabshakeh's interview with the servants of Hezekiah.) He is sure of his way, or motives, and principles: unknown to the unspiritual man, his way is a riddle to him. The result proves its wisdom to the world. His "witty inventions" (well considered thoughts) are beyond the ken of the natural man. This leads to the great principle and spring of it - the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord - the bringing of God in so that His thoughts, not our wills, have authority over us. Where that is, we hate wrong, the exercise of will, and selfishness, contrary to the relationships in which we stand. All self-will, and setting up of self, the evil way and perverse words, wisdom hates. But if the heat and pretension of will is hated of wisdom, with it is counsel - the wisdom of a staid reflective mind, subject and looking to the Lord and the resources of sound judgment in difficulty, discernment, and strength. Compare Ecclesiastes 9: 13-18, where mere physical strength is contrasted, and the way wisdom affords security is spoken of.

{*Prov. 1: 4, subtlety, and 8: 12, prudence, are the same in Hebrew.}

148 We now come to its direct earthly aspect in connection with God's government of the earth. Government, righteous judgment, the rule of the great, depends on it. Thus we read of the wisdom of Solomon. They have to represent God in the discernment of good and evil and the maintenance of right by authority on the earth; this they can do only by divine wisdom.

But then there is another point applying to all hearts - loving it for its own sake, and diligence of heart in seeking it. Real delight in God's wisdom in itself, and the sense of obligation to realise it. "I love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me." Wisdom is loved for its own sake, and diligence of heart seeks it as a duty incumbent on us. But in the earthly government of God it brings its reward. This was fully the ground the law went upon. The God-fearing obedient man was to be blessed in his basket and blessed in his store. But there is more than this - riches that do not perish and righteousness that the heart delights in as its treasure. Wisdom walks in the path of righteousness, discerns by the action of the conscience and the word how men are to walk and to please God. It discerns what is right in all the complicated scene of this world, gives a sure path in it according to God. Seeking only to please Him, it gives motives above the circumstances and thus a path through them. We do what is right in them. We walk in firmness and a plain path where the circumstances would afford none. This is a great comfort. We are not careful to answer in the matter. Divine wisdom is in the fear of the Lord and uprightness. There is light, divine light, on the path, where all is dark around, for divine wisdom knows its path here by righteousness. This is its path. That is a light on the path. We cannot do otherwise, though it may seem folly and trial may accompany it. It is God's way, and that turns out right even in this world, though it may at the time seem a sacrifice of everything and bring trouble upon us. So Joseph; but it led him here below under God's overruling hand to a place which, humanly speaking, he would not otherwise have had. This was not his motive. He did what was right and would not do what was wrong, and it brought him from a captive slave to be lord of Egypt.

149 I know Christians have much higher objects in hope and are called by them; but here we are on the ground of God's government of the earth, and that government is carried on now, though not in the direct way it once was in Israel - a people of His own. Nor does wisdom ever get out of these paths. She is found only in the paths of judgment. In all cases and circumstances in which man has to walk, a way cast up in righteousness is the only one wisdom can walk in.* She is always found in the midst of them (that is, cannot be out of the paths so formed and marked out). These are God's, these are wisdom. And where God's government is exercised in this world and for it, as wisdom's place, such a path issues in blessing and prosperity. Suffering in a hostile world may be more specifically our portion now, though from Abel down it was there. Still there is such a government of which God has not let loose the reins. "He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile. Let him eschew evil and do good, let him seek peace and ensue it: for the eyes of Jehovah are over the righteous," etc. It is not only in Job's time that it was true, that "he withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous." This is government and the path of wisdom, an interesting point. But now the Spirit of God comes to counsels and purpose.

{*When it is said in verse 20 "I lead," it is really as in margin "I walk." Wisdom is never found out of this path.}

Wisdom has brought light into this world of confusion, divine light, but existed before the world was in the thoughts and counsels of God, Christ being the centre of all these counsels, and the object of God's delight. He is the wisdom of God, as the power of God when He works. His works were the scene of wisdom and the wisdom was eternal - was there before the works and power displayed in the works, but with a fuller counsel yet. There is a path which God treads, so to speak - a path unfolding what is the fruit of His thoughts; but that path is not mere power without a plan and counsel; nor is He dealing wisely with what He finds, as we have to do. Wisdom is precious in that; but then it is in subjection, and a righteousness which is true wisdom, but which is obligatory on us: we have to find wisdom's path where we are, by doing right, for we owe that to God. But God possessed it in the beginning of His way. The point is not here that there was wisdom displayed in creation (no doubt there was); but the point is that, before the world existed, wisdom had its place with God. We have to find the path of it in creation, now ruined; but God's mind and thought was before it all. This is what is brought out from verse 22 to the end of verse 29. No doubt wisdom was displayed when He prepared the heavens and put a compass on the face of the deep; but before all wisdom was there. It was there when He did it; but itself was from eternity. The earth was an occasion for its display - a work adapted by wisdom to the divine glory and the ends of that wisdom; but it was wisdom, it was itself, before it found a sphere for its display; and creation was its fruit, but not its object. It was itself, had its place with God, and its object on which its purpose rested. The first statement as to this is, that Jehovah possessed this wisdom already when His way began the movement to produce anything outside Himself - to reveal Himself. In the beginning of His way, before His works, wisdom was inaugurated,* established as the authority and order on which, being in the mind of God, all was to be ordered and established; but, secondly, it was there in the secret time of eternity. It is in fact summed up in John 1 concerning the Word.

{*Literally, "anointed." It is the same word as in Psalm 2: 6, translated, "I have set."}

150 Jehovah possessed this wisdom (it was the outset of all things) before the earth - in which His ways have been unfolded - existed. It was produced from Jehovah, brought forth as the fruit of His being in itself before creation - what was outside Himself - existed. And not only this earth, but when He prepared the heavens, wisdom was there. All this marks this wisdom as the produce and mind of Jehovah in itself and in Himself before mere creation (which existed from His fiat and word) had begun to exist. It is divine and in Godhead, as creation exists by His word outside Himself. No doubt it is spoken of mystically here; but Christ is it, and its revealed fulness and manifestation. He who is this was in the Father before the world was, before anything existed but what was in Godhead itself. He was God, but, as thus looked at, as subsisting, He was with God, and all things by Him, as the whole scene of the wisdom of the divine mind. But there was more than this. Wisdom was, Objectively, the delight of the divine mind. The thoughts it produced were perfect, necessarily as itself, and the delight of the mind that produced them. They answered to it. lee do so with our petty minds, and yet ours answer often imperfectly even to our small minds, and all is partial. Divine wisdom was according to divine fulness and perfection, and expressed it as a whole, and was the divine delight. Christ was all this in His person; but here it was taken up abstractedly. It was always with God, by Him, in immediate intimacy of nature and fellowship; One brought up in love* by Him His delight day by day. it is a wonderful description.

{*The Hebrew word has created a difficulty. But it seems to be from a word giving it the force of the "nursling of his love"; the character and intimacy of the divine delight figuratively expressed. The word itself is used only here. Hence some (as Vulg., LXX, Luther) have referred it to another root, making it mean "the workman or orderer of Jehovah." Compare Canticles 7: 1, "workman," or "artists."}

151 But not only was divine delight in this wisdom here fully looked at as a person but it too (or perhaps we should now say He) was ever rejoicing before God at all times. This object of God's delight was rejoicing itself before Him; so, subordinately and by grace, we are holy and without blame before Him in love. But here it was an eternal and divine object - what was in Godhead itself, yet with God objectively. Jehovah possessed wisdom as His delight before anything out of Himself was formed; and this wisdom was One rejoicing before Him. But there was a purpose that occupied wisdom before the sphere and scene existed in which the object of that purpose was to be developed. Wisdom rejoiced in the habitable parts of God's earth, and its delight was with the sons of men. How wondrously does this come in! Though surely a wise God ordered the creation, yet wisdom was set on other things - man was the object in view. That wisdom, whose joy was before God and who was the delight and joy of God, was not delighting in the earth but in the habitable part of it. There was purpose. A poor trivial part of creation, if merely of creation - if we look at the vastness of the scene in which he moves, but the centre of all God's purposes - the object of His thought before creation - complete in purpose, in whom, according to the purpose of that wisdom, was to be set up the whole display of it. The habitable parts of God's earth wisdom delighted in, and its delight was in the sons of men. Man was first created a responsible being, but as a being, God's delight, the centre of His ways here below, made in His image, after His likeness, and the image withal of Him that was to come. But this (though God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life so that he was His offspring) yet was a responsible man as a creature, and as a creature failed. But after many exercises and preparatory dealings of wisdom, He who was the wisdom of God and His power, by whom all things were created, became Himself a man. Life was in Him, and the life was the light of men - in its very nature was such. The angels could then, in unjealous and holy strains, declare that God's good pleasure was in man.* A wondrous and blessed thought! He who had this place with the Father was made flesh - God's delight down here, God manifest in flesh; grace to man, grace in man, man taken into union with God in one person - the pledge of peace on earth, "Glory to God in the highest." But as yet, as to its effect on others, it was connected with the responsibility of those around Him "He was despised and rejected of men." This unspeakable favour and blessing (for the creature's mind was still in question) was rejected and cast away. But now wisdom's purpose could come out, and founded on that perfect work which He accomplished (through this very wickedness to make it more complete and glorious), on that which glorified God Himself; the purpose established before the world was, is revealed in glorified Man, yet righteously in obedient Man, and in One who had glorified God in all that He was, in that in which He who did so was made sin for us. He met all the requirements of God, all the responsibility of those who came to God by Him, bearing their sins; He manifested the righteous ground of grace addressed to all, and glorified God so as to bring many sons - man - into glory, God's glory.

{*The words translated "good will towards men," Luke 2: 14, are the same word (a substantive for a verb) as "in whom I have found my pleasure," Luke 3: 22.}

153 Now came out the manifold wisdom of God by the church, displayed even to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, in the union of man with the very centre of glory, heirs in that, of all which was to be placed under His hands as man. The proper purpose was our own place in and united to Him and with Him, but this involved the dominion which belonged to Him as man (see Titus 1: 1, 2; 2 Tim. 1: 9; Eph. 1: 3-5 and following, and 1 Cor. 2: 6-8); all the responsibility of the first man met, for those who believe, and as to God's glory, absolutely and completely; and the foundation for the accomplishment of God's purpose in righteousness, according to the full glory of that purpose: grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Responsible man came in between the purpose and its accomplishment, failed as such; and then in the perfect man, the Son of God, grace finds its free display in righteousness and the purpose accomplished in glory. When we know Christ, we know the meaning of that; His delights were in the sons of men. Wondrous thought' but how true, how simple to us, when we see the eternal Word and Wisdom a Man! How sweet, for we are men! How wondrous, to see glory in righteousness with Him when grace has reigned through it, when God has been glorified and has glorified our Head with Himself; and we soon to have the rest with Him according to the same righteousness! "For he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one."

It is because God's delight is in the sons of men that wisdom now calls them to hear; and though her ways seem strange to the pride and pretension of man, boasting of righteousness because ignorant of God, yet wisdom is justified of all her children in the solemn call to repentance on responsibility, and the blessed announcement of grace in goodness, both the proofs of mercy, of God's interest in man; and, indeed, all God's nature and ways, all His being, is displayed in redemption and grace. Love, mercy, holiness, judgment, righteousness, patience, intolerance of evil, majesty, and tender condescension in grace; the coming in of evil, its extent, and the surmounting it in grace, and yet through righteousness, such as nought else could have done - all is brought out in the work of Christ and by its effect in the heart of man, so that in him it should be all displayed, yet all be sovereign grace to him; for the Son of God being a Man in glory and having died tells a tale nothing else could tell - divine glory, and death as made sin, yet death overcome in resurrection, death to deliver us, death where all was perfectness for God and in man, and by which God could display all He was. Christ gave Himself up for that, and is in the glory.

154 Therefore wisdom calls on us to listen to her, for it is grace it is because God delights in us. Blessed are those who keep the ways of wisdom. It is the activity of God's goodness calling to that only path which leads to rest and the peaceful favour of God; and I recall here the distinct principle of this chapter. It is not the warnings of natural authority, the ordained channel of wisdom in a relationship formed by God. It is the direct call of wisdom, the call in grace of the divine word itself to man as such, because His delight is in them, as in the ministry of John Baptist and Christ, above the natural relationship, and directly from God to the consciences and hearts of men, bringing about purpose; but in the righteous, gracious summons of God. It is wonderful - this direct appeal in grace. It may rudely break in upon the natural relationships and set five in one house, three against two and two against three, because it is direct and individual from God Himself and it brings about purpose in result. Hence, though peace on earth even was to be the result in purpose, yet in present operation Christ could say, "Think ye that I am come to send peace on earth?" And hence He was straitened till the baptism in which He glorified God was accomplished, because the unbelief of man drove back into the recesses of His heart the love, which, when the work of glorifying God in righteousness was accomplished, could flow freshly forth. Then the ground for the accomplishment of purpose according to glory was fully laid, and Christ enters in resurrection into the fruit of righteousness in glory; and, when all is accomplished, He will raise us up at the last day, responsibility being fully met, yea, God glorified, in that which did it.

When wisdom came addressing itself to responsibility it had only to complain. "Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer?" But the truth was, the Son was too perfect, too glorious, to be discerned by man. God "hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes." Blessed those who (in this gracious appeal to children, which puts God in grace, where nature stood in authority on His part - not my children indeed, but "children," sons, interested in them in that character) keep wisdom's ways, hear instruction and refuse it not. The first we have in the sermon on the mount, keeping wisdom's ways: the second in Mary at Jesus' feet, and in principle in those who knew that the words of eternal life were to be found nowhere else. For whoso findeth her' findeth life and Jehovah's favour. But there is more than pressing men to hear and keep the instruction of wisdom (compare Luke 11: 28; Matt. 13: 23); there is earnestness of heart on our part, waiting upon it, watching daily at her gates, and waiting at the posts of her doors. It is not mental effort, the production of the human mind, but waiting on divine teaching as Mary did, "as new born babes desiring the sincere milk of the word." It is not here the proclamation of wisdom, but the desires of the heart towards it thus manifested. Here life is found, for it is the word of life, and that man finds the favour of Jehovah: the double aspect of divine blessing in us, life, divine life, and divine favour resting upon us. He that sins against it injures his own soul. There is a path in which will walks to its own ruin. It is not God's path. Our own will hates the path of divine will, which is for us a subject path, but that ends in death. It is not the causes in grace which deliver which are spoken of, but the fact of what is found in result. As the apostle teaches us in Romans, him that by patient continuance in well-doing seeks for glory, honour, and incorruptibility, eternal life was to favour. "If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him." "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." It was no question surely whether Christ had life; He was life. But that was the path in which He walked in divine favour. It is not here grace saving sinners and giving them glory, but the path (including the state of the heart) in this world, in which life and favour are found, God bringing in testimony in grace of what He is pleased in, and wisdom shewing us how we are to walk and to please God. It is for us what we have heard of the word of life. We live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

156 We have seen the wondrous revelation of the purpose of God in man, but we must remember that here earth is dealt with when we come to details. The principle is always true in every testimony of the Lord now or then. The immediate connection here is the earth, because there this testimony came, there it found responsible man. Its most direct and evident application is in the person of the Lord Jesus on earth. Only like the parable of the sower, or John the Baptist even, it is always true when the cry of wisdom or wisdom itself is gone forth. John was transitional and pointed to another; that other was wisdom's self, and John (Matt. 11) had to come in on His cry. Still the children of wisdom justified God's wisdom in him. The law and the prophets were till John. He led into wisdom's paths, going before the face of the Lord.

Song of Solomon

J. N. Darby.

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If we examine the Psalms, or even the prophets, with a view to ascertain the character or circumstances of the residue of Israel in the latter days, we shall find, after their undergoing some deceptions through professed friendship, a distressed and oppressed people. The fowls summer upon them, and the beasts of the earth winter upon them; Isa. 18: 6. That is the state of the nation when the Assyrian shall be pressing them from without and the beast oppressing them within. At the centre of their nationality, and where their hearts have sought rest, will be trouble such as never was since there was a nation, and never will be again: the time when God is making short work upon the earth.

Though this will be in the nation at large, the effect on the wicked and on the saints will be very different. The nation at large will have joined with the beast and acquiesced in idolatry. Another, come in his own name, they will have received. The unclean spirit of idolatry, with seven others worse, will have entered into them. They have given up their God, rejected their Messiah, received the Antichrist, and what have they when oppression comes? "They shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness."

But we have to do more particularly with the remnant attached to Israel, to Israel's hopes, and Israel's relationship with Jehovah, but awakened to the sense of the evil that is going on, and suffering on all hands from it where they have not fled. The Spirit and word of God are working in their hearts. They remember the promise to the people as God's people; they seek faithfulness to Jehovah, and are only for that reason oppressed and driven out, hated by unfaithful Israel and cruelly oppressed by her oppressors, but brought to the sense of the nation's and therein their own sins, grieved over its ruin, and seeing approaching judgments and God's hand already on them in sore chastisement. They would hope yet in Jehovah and expect Messiah, though smitten into the place of dragons and finding it hard to count on One against whom they have sinned, and whose hand is out against them and to reckon on promises when all seems dark. Still the promises are there, and God will certainly set His King on His holy hill of Zion. From Deuteronomy 32 onward, the prophets had predicted this state of things; so that, dark and terrible as it is, and humanly speaking, excluding hope, there was that, even in the very threats, which sustained hope.

158 This state of things the Psalms meet, and, as we have often seen in commenting on them, furnish a divine expression for the hopes and sorrows of these exercised hearts. It is only the great principles of these which I would now advert to, to bring out more distinctly the different character of the Song of Solomon, and what this will furnish to the hearts and faith of the remnant. There are two great principles characteristic of their state in the midst of all their sorrows: firstly, integrity; secondly, trust in Jehovah. In these the Spirit of Christ leads them, Himself perfect in both and by His grace enabling them, in the expressions furnished them in these Psalms, to express their confidence in spite of all their failure, which rendered it more difficult than even the deep waters they were passing through. This very integrity, and the operation of the Spirit of Christ in them, leads them, however necessarily, to the confession of sin and long failure even to blood-guiltiness. It is remarkable to see in this way how declaration of integrity, and confession of sins, are found together; so with Job, so even with Peter. Hence also, in looking to God, mercy always comes before righteousness in their thoughts. He had shut them up in unbelief that they might be objects of mercy. No doubt God was righteous in fulfilling His promises; but they must get into the true and right place to have them accomplished, the place where the interpreter, one among a thousand, could put them. And this interpreter is just the Spirit of Christ in the Psalms. He shews them the place of uprightness in confessing their sin; then they can look for mercy, and so righteousness. All these are the moral dealings of Jehovah, most instructive, and most interesting. The Psalms, and the Prophets too, add, that it will be through the intervention of Messiah, and the Prophets at any rate tell us plainly it will be under the new covenant.

But the Song of Solomon seems to me to shew us something further - the drawing out, where the soul is taught of God (an effect realised in some hidden ones, while revealed and open for all), of the soul of the waiting few, into affections here figuratively presented, and the revelation of Messiah's devoted love for the people; for Jerusalem, if you please, as the centre of it, over which He wept, when in its folly it rejected Him, so that the humble and instructed heart should have the consciousness of it, and confide in it, though not yet revealed.

159 It begins with a recognition of the blessedness of Messiah's love. His name, from the graces in Him, is as ointment poured forth, and He is loved by the uncorrupted ones - those, I suppose, who have guarded themselves from idolatry and corruption, the same class exactly as in Revelation 14, these evidently therefore also while waiting for Christ have suffered in a certain sense like Him. Next the bride (Jerusalem) looks to be drawn by Messiah, but says "we," because she really represents all the faithful. The King now appears, King Messiah. He loves Jerusalem intimately. This is valued. It is the upright ones who love Him. We have seen this character of the remnant. Verses 5, 6, tell the tale of Jerusalem, of Jacob's long persecution and desolation. The sun has looked upon her, the heat of trial. Her place was to be a keeper of nations for fruit; she had not kept her own vineyard. Next, in verse 7, she would not be anywhere but with Messiah's flocks, not be like a dissolute wanderer with others than He. The paths marked out by those, whom God owned as guided and guides, the testimony among God's people, were to lead her. This brings her to Messiah's own testimony of His delight in her; and her consciousness that thus grace is drawn forth in her (v. 12). What an image of this, suited to the time, was Mary's act, which Judas blamed! This is a kind of introductory statement, which gives us the aspects in which they stand, and their position, so as to recognise the bride, her place, and the bridegroom.

Now the action and effect of it begins. Chapter 2. The bride takes her place, and the bridegroom owns only her. She is the lily, the rest thorns (v. 2). It is under Christ she finds herself, she owns Him as the true blessed fruit-bearer. And His shadow protects her, and she delights in it, and His fruit is her joy. Jerusalem and Israel are restored under Messiah, delight in Him, are sheltered under Him.

Now we find how much more we have than in the Psalms, the heart's devoted confidence, that His love is the spring of delight, her joy, and overpowering her with blessing. He, too, rests in His love, and in her heart she weighs and estimates the value of His love; all her delight is in His resting in His love (see Zephaniah 3: 17): 'he please' (v. 7) I doubt not is right, though I had elsewhere supposed it otherwise. The remnant are entering by faith into the joy Messiah will have in His bridegroom - love to them, and express their own rest of heart in this.

160 Remark here what follows, for it is a key to the bearing of his: "The voice of my beloved, behold he cometh." This connection is not accidental, we have the form of verse 7, also in chapters 3: 5, and 8: 4, and each time it is followed by His coming, but with progress. Here Messiah comes revealing Himself. After chapter 3: 8, He comes crowned as King Messiah, the Son of David, Prince of peace, crowned in the day of His espousals, as His mother's (Israel's) heart crowns Him. After chapter 8: 3, 4, the bride is coming. back out of the wilderness with Him, leaning on her beloved.

Here we return to the first principle of blessing stated in chapter 2: 3: she was raised up under the apple-tree; there she was brought forth. It was not under Moses, not under the old covenant, that Israel or Jerusalem could truly find their blessing, but under Christ; still less was it under Egypt: Christ was the source, the tree of blessing and life to her. Hence - to complete this part of the connection of thought - instead of vineyards trusted to her, and her not keeping her own, Christ, as royal Prince of peace, has a vineyard at Baalhamon, a difficult word. At any rate, it is now Solomon, Messiah Himself, who has the vineyard. I am disposed to think it refers to Christ's universal dominion over the earth, the peoples, a vineyard which will now bear its fruit. But there was a special vineyard now, once not kept, which was now before the spouse - Israel, who through grace would now diligently keep her vineyard; her vineyard was before her. The song closes the remark with the desire that the Bridegroom would make haste. The companions hearkened to His voice for her. It was the desire of the upright ones, but in the character of spouse she prays to hear it.

All this points out, I think, two things. One is the way faith, in those whose hearts have been opened, enters into the perfect delight of Christ's love in the blessing of Israel, specially of Jerusalem. The anticipative sense of this is here furnished to draw out and encourage this faith. It is not the prophetic statement of moral principles, however deeply important in connection with Jehovah's dealings with Israel they may be, but the sense of bridegroom - love which Messiah has for His people, for the people and city He has chosen; not as stones of course, but as the seat of election. (Compare Ps. 132: 13, 14 - indeed the whole Psalm.)

161 Next, it is only the anticipation of faith: for every time that she realises it, and looks to the Bridegroom's resting undisturbed in His love, immediately follows the thought of His coming. She did not actually possess Him. This, as we have seen, is progressive. In the end of chapter 2 there is the consciousness that the time was come; the Lord's grace was causing blessing to spring forth and bud. (Compare Psalm 102.)

The various exercises of heart connected with it I do not notice in detail - true affection, yet failure. I only remark that the Bridegroom speaks to her, the bride of Him: this is just. Christ can give His approval to those He loves. The saint, Jew or heavenly, enjoys His love, can describe His excellencies with delight, but does not take upon him to tell them to Him. There is progress also in the consciousness of the character of relationship. As has been noticed elsewhere, first "My beloved is mine, and I am his" (chap. 2: 16); this is the first consciousness of relationship. "We have found him." He owns, indeed, His beloved (were it not so, there would be no comfort); and He enjoys with delight her beauty; but the first thought is, "He is mine." It is not till after many exercises, failure on her part, and assurance how precious she was to Him, that she says with calmer spirit, "I am my Beloved's," I belong to Him, though the other part remains true, with deeper feeling too, for His worth and title is more felt and better known, and in it all He is ours, whatever His title over us, and still His joy is in the beauty and graces of His people.

But, after this, we have not exercises, but the expression of the Bridegroom's thoughts - His dove, His undefiled, is but one: there may be nations, and many more or less connected with Him, but His Beloved is one; Israel only on earth has this place. But, when He so looks at it, soon He is carried on their hearts. He goes down to see the fruits of the valley, whether His vineyard bore its fruits, at least whether it flourished, and that which represented true faithfulness, as He delighted in it (as the pomegranates on Aaron's robe), was budding forth - Israel shewing in its humiliation the breaking forth of the signs of living fruit. Or ever He was aware, His soul set Him on the chariots of His willing people; for such is the force of Aminadab, as in Psalm 110: 3, and Psalm 47: 9, translated princes (the Nadibim) of the people. Hence Israel becomes immediately as two armies, or as Mahanaim the hosts of God of old.* When all this has taken place, and the Bridegroom has told her how He estimates her beauty, she says again in the due sense how all ought to be His, and what a blessing it was to be so in one's own right place, "I am my Beloved's." He is that, her Beloved, but she is His, then all her heart could delight in "His desire is towards me."

{*See Genesis 32: 2.}

162 Now this was the thought into which Israel had to grow up. Exercises of Israel, right ones, we have in the Psalms; but this thought of Messiah's delight in her is scarcely found there; but they ought to feel it. It opens out a new and most interesting element of their condition, of what grace furnishes them with, that all the feelings that grace can give may be then divinely given to them, and they drawn on into this blessed confidence, and knowledge of Messiah.

It seems to me that, not merely particular images or expressions, but that the whole structure of this, I admit, mysterious and remarkable poem points to Israel, to the remnant of Jerusalem, as the centre of all this in the latter day and (as I have said) gives a further apprehension of what is provided and in store, for the remnant, than any other portion of scripture does; though we have seen it connect itself with many expressions in the Psalms, which confirm this interpretation of it. It has seemed to me that the passages I have referred to, with their combination, give a distinctive clue to the intention of the whole book.

General Remarks on the Prophetic Word

J. N. Darby.

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1. Old Testament.

There is at the outset a great distinction to make between the prophets. Some wrote before the captivity and called the Jews to repentance, as hoping that they might still heed the warning, whatever the solemn light on the future judgment, but with blessing at last. The others wrote a little during or after the captivity on the basis of the judgment of God. Isaiah is in the first class, Jeremiah and Ezekiel being transitional; Daniel is in the second, as well as Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Jonah stands alone as a sort of final testimony to the Gentiles while Israel was still owned as God's people.

ISAIAH prophesies in general of all the hopes of the people of God and of the nations in their relations with Israel. The book is divided into two very distinct parts, the first ending with chapter 35, the second beginning with chapter 40, and an historical portion forming a parenthesis between those two parts. The former part contains the judgment of God on Israel and on the nations; the latter presents the consolation of Israel by sovereign grace and in view of their guilt, first by idolatry, next by the rejection of Messiah, who comes again for their deliverance to the glory of God.

Chapter 1 prophesies about Jerusalem; chapter 2 is the judging of the nations in relationship with the Jews; chapters 3 and 4 develop yet more the grounds of the judgment and its divine character and result; as chapter 5 sets forth Israel's sin and ruin, notwithstanding all the goodness and painstaking of God from the first. In chapter 6 we see a kind of introduction which gives us the character of prophecy as to the Jews only.* The prophecy of chapter 7 does not close till chapter 9: 7. It divides into two sections: from chapter 7 we learn of Immanuel, from chapter 8 of Immanuel's land. Then commences a new subject at chapter 9: 8, or rather a resumption of what began in chapter 5, which terminates with chapter 12.

{*Chapter 6 presents the general character of the prophecy. Ahaz is about to accomplish the apostasy of the family of David by building an idolatrous altar. Before this happens, the glory of Christ is revealed; by the same the moral state of the people is entirely condemned and judgment pronounced. The fulfilment of the sentence is suspended until they have rejected Christ Himself, as we see in John 12. The promise of a remnant is revealed at the intercession of the prophet.}

164 Chapter 13 opens a series of judgments on the nations, beginning with Babylon, in chapter 24, involving all the earth, and concluding with chapter 27. It is to be remarked here as elsewhere that every judgment ends with blessing, the glory of Christ being the object of all these prophecies.

From chapter 28 to chapter 35 inclusively are found special judgments on Israel in the last times.

In chapters 35 to 39 we see foreshewn the overthrow of the Assyrian, the sickness unto death but raising up (in type) of the Son of David, and the power of Babylon as carrying away the Jews.

Chapters 40, etc., to the end predict the state of Israel, not externally like those before the history, but internally and Godward, as tested by their call to witness the one true God and to await the Messiah, with the grand results when mercy rejoices over judgment, in glory at the end and for ever.

As for JEREMIAH, we see that, Manasseh having fully consummated the iniquity of Israel, judgment becomes necessary. (2 Kings 23: 26; 24: 3; Jer. 15: 4.) This judgment is irrevocable: Jeremiah is the prophet of it in the midst of Jerusalem. Up to the end of chapter 24 he does the pleading of Jehovah against His people to convince them of sin in every manner.

From chapter 25 Jerusalem (considered as quite pagan) is judged with all the nations. The new covenant is introduced in these chapters. The throne of Jehovah ceases to exist at Jerusalem; but Jerusalem shall surely be so called once more when all nations shall be gathered to it.

We have in EZEKIEL the rejection of all that was Jewish or Gentile. He prophesied among the captives of Israel, not of Judah. He pronounced judgments upon the nations as a whole, on those who remained in the land after the captivity, on Pharaoh who wished to help them and hinder the establishment by Jehovah of the first of the four great empires, and he speaks of what will happen to the nation (ten tribes and all) when the last of the four monarchies shall have been judged. The restoration of Israel [begins] with chapter 34.

In DANIEL we have the history of the four great monarchies which have replaced the throne of Jehovah for the earth. They subsist on His part who reigns by them. Thence it comes that Paul declares all the powers that be ordained of God. Kings reign by His sanction; as on the contrary the principle that it is by the will of the people is the presage of the anti-Christian spirit. What restrains the manifestation of the lawless one is the presence of God's Spirit on the earth in the church. This being the object of the grace and work of God, He will not let the bridle loose to the nations for them to spoil and destroy. The presence of the church on earth hinders then the manifestation of the lawless one. The Holy Spirit being in the church recognises the powers as ordained of God, whilst the Antichrist will own no man, either God or any authority whatever. Men are advancing evidently toward this epoch; but there is something that hinders its manifestation and holds back the lawless one: it is the presence of the church, or of the Holy Spirit in the church.

165 In HOSEA we have the judgment of Israel, though also that of Judah, and their restoration together in the latter day. Meanwhile, Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi tell the tale, Judah being specially in view up to the end of chapter 3, whilst in general the details that follow from chapter 4 look at Israel.

JOEL gives the revelation of the great and terrible day of Jehovah. To announce it the Spirit of God takes the occasion of some particular judgments at that time.

AMOS occupies himself particularly with Israel and the nations connected with Israel.

OBADIAH predicts the judgment of Edom, which alone among the nations is to be destroyed without a remnant.

JONAH furnishes the last prophetic appeal to the nations before they have assumed the Babylonish character, to prove the interest God takes in all the creation, although in His mercy He has chosen a people for Himself to preserve the knowledge of His name on the earth. The power of Nineveh was anterior to that of Babylon as imperial.

MICAH prophesied during the period of Isaiah. He treats of the invasion of the Assyrian and his threats, in order to present in a special manner the judgment of Judea, but at the same time Jehovah's blessing in Christ.

NAHUM is the judgment of the world in general, not of the corruption of Babylon but of man, of his power which is presented in the case of Nineveh.

166 HABAKKUK complains of the iniquity of God's people and develops the chastening that will fall on them to be effected by those still more wicked than they - the Chaldeans, who, because they give loose rein to their violence, become in their turn object; of the judgment of Jehovah. But His glory and His righteousness shall be manifested in both one and the other, types of the Jewish people and of the world.

ZEPHANIAH speaks of the awakening that God in His grace works in the midst of His people so that judgment should not fall on them. In that day shall be a time of repentance and salvation for many souls. He proves nevertheless that the divine counsels cannot be changed, that evil is always in man now, and that God will gather all the nations to punish them, but that then the remnant shall be blessed in every way.

HAGGAI, insisting on the re-building of the temple, takes occasion thereby to reveal the manifestation of Jesus in His glory coming to the house of God in the latter day.

ZECHARIAH takes up all the relations of Israel with the nations after the captivity. He sets out the mutual rejection of Christ and the Jews at the time of His first coming, and the ways of God toward the Jews and the nations at the time of His second coming.

MALACHI pronounces the judgment of Judea after the return to the holy land: and he makes known the message of Elijah to call the people to repentance before the day of Jehovah.

2. NEW TESTAMENT.

Matthew 24 up to verse 44 is the judgment of the Jews from verse 45 of the same chapter to verse 30 of chapter 25 it is the judgment of those to whom the Lord Jesus has confided His service during His absence; and from verse 30 to the end of chapter 25 it is the judgment of the nations, not of the dead but of the quick.

2 Thessalonians 2 shews the mystery or secret of lawlessness, even in apostolic days already at work, ending, when the restraining power is gone, in the display of the lawless one in the power of Satan. It is the same personage called in the Epistles of John the Antichrist, who is predicted in Daniel 11: 36 as the king who "shall do according to his will"; that is, his character not moral but political in his relations with the land and people of the Jews.

167 After that which concerns the seven churches, the Revelation presents the government that the Lord Jesus exercises in the midst of the throne on the earth before His manifestation here below. The general history of this government terminates at the end of chapter 11.

Chapter 12 shews the opposition of Satan to the glory of Christ; chapter 13 lets us see the instruments of that opposition, as chapter 14 the ways of God after He begins to act towards the remnant on the earth until He judges finally the body of the apostasy. These three chapter contribute to give us one vision.

Chapter 15, 16 are another vision shewing us the last judgment of God (not of the Lamb) on the earth. The saints were already before God.

Chapter 17, 18, describe the guilt and judgment of the great harlot, Babylon, the features of her character, and her relations with the beast or Roman empire.

Chapter 19 reveals the marriage of the Lamb, and the judgment of the beast, and the false prophet who is identical with the second beast of chapter 13. Chapter 20 gives us the binding of Satan in the opening verses; then from verse 4 the reign of the glorified saints over the earth for a thousand years; next the loosing of Satan for the last insurrection of the wicked then alive, and their destruction; and then the final eternal judgment of the dead, or all the wicked since the world began, followed by the new heavens and earth when God is all in all, the mediatorial office of Christ being closed, and all evil in the lake of fire. From chapter 21: 9 to chapter 22: 6 is a vision of the state of things in the millennium from verse 7 final exhortations.

Remarks on the Prophetic Word

(continued)

J. N. Darby.

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JEREMIAH

Jeremiah is speaking continually in the name of the remnant. In Jeremiah 15, for instance, he speaks for all Israel, and then he returns immediately to the remnant. It is the testimony which God gives to His people of its iniquity, when He is about to withdraw His throne from Jerusalem, and about to punish them. The covenant in some sort is terminated, because He has taken away His throne. Jeremiah 25 begins the judgment of the, nations, or rather the judgment which extends over all the earth. He gives the cup to drink to all nations (v. 15). From Jeremiah 30 there are promises of restoration, and warning to set forth their iniquity. What follows for the most part is the controversy between Jeremiah and the prophets; a kind of history, especially of the fall of Jerusalem; of the flight into Egypt contrary to the will of God; of the false prophets; with judgments upon Egypt, the nations, and Babylon. The last chapter is a history.

LAMENTATIONS.

The wretchedness of Jerusalem; the Spirit of Christ, which identifies itself with the sufferings of Jerusalem, in Jeremiah appealing to the grace of God for restoration in intercession.

EZEKIEL.

Ezekiel applies himself no more to Israel in its land; he prophesies in the captivity only to condemn it; he sees the throne of God leaving Jerusalem, and consequently the beginning of the throne of the Gentiles. Ezekiel 11 shews the formation of the throne; he gives the history of the last king who wished to be the beast (Pharaoh-Necho of Egypt), but who could not; and it is Nebuchadnezzar who is the beast. Ezekiel passes over the four empires; different prophecies concerning the different classes of the Gentiles who are not included in the four monarchies, or prophecies concerning the nations who were not the beasts. From Ezekiel 26-36 the re-establishment of Israel (Ezekiel 28 being fall without temptation; it is possible that it is a revelation of the fall of Satan); the Jews from Ezekiel 10-20. Ezekiel, when the Lord Jesus comes, speaks more of the ten tribes than of the Jews.

242 DANIEL.

This prophecy fills up the gap which Ezekiel left, which stopped with the counsels of God relative to His people, whilst Daniel prophesies about the times of the Gentiles. Daniel gives the four monarchies. In the first six chapters he is only the interpreter of the general things which should be revealed to the Gentiles; whilst in the last six he himself is the vessel which God makes use of to give out his thoughts. This prophecy is much more taken up with what will happen to the Jewish people. In the first chapter we see the knowledge of God in contrast with the wisdom of man, the faithfulness of Daniel keeping himself separate from the spirit of Babylon, in order to exercise his office. The last three chapters relate to the Jews.

HOSEA.

The rejection of Israel and of Judah, and their after-restoration; threatenings specially against Israel (the ten tribes) judgment upon Israel.

JOEL.

Joel, taking occasion of a famine, announces the day of Jehovah upon Jerusalem; a call to repentance in order for blessing; announcement of the gift of the Spirit; the judgment of the nations, and the re-establishment of Zion. It is not specially Antichrist who makes havoc in Jerusalem, but rather the Assyrian.

AMOS.

Amos speaks to Israel and equally addresses all the nations which lie around Israel: the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, and the two families of Israel. It places the two families come out of Egypt, as the other nations. After certain intercessions, the Lord refuses to spare any longer, and He allows them to be led away captive; He takes away the tabernacle of David, and plants them in the land whence they shall no more be taken away.

243 OBADIAH.

is the judgment of Edom (future). The judgment of Esau will be complete without leaving a grape (v. 5).

JONAH.

Jonah is important in certain respects, being the only prophet who was sent to the Gentiles. It was while the throne of God was remaining at Jerusalem and the Gentiles were not acknowledged. It is a proof that, notwithstanding principles the most severe, mercy superabounds. Jonah called Him Jehovah, but he only says to the Ninevites God. The mercy of God towards the Gentiles, likewise towards the creation, is here shewn; deliverance in death through resurrection, and then the mortification of the flesh; the breaking of the will in the ways of God.

MICAH.

Summary of the prophet Isaiah; the great principles at the beginning of Isaiah; the revelation of the judgment of Jehovah on account of the sin of Jacob, and the manifestation of the power of God according to election in grace towards Jerusalem; and then (which is very important) the judgment of the nations when Christ shall be manifested, according to His promises to Abraham.

NAHUM.

The judgment of Nineveh and of the world in general as not being included in the four monarchies, as having been rebellious against God (opposed to the people of God). Nineveh was the enemy of the Jews during the time that the Jews were acknowledged by God, whilst Babylon was the enemy of the Jewish people whilst it was apocryphal. It is very important to distinguish the difference of the relations these two towns stand in, towards the people of God.

HABAKKUK.

Habakkuk complains of the iniquity of the people of God, and asks for judgment; then God shews him the chastisement of His people through means of their enemies; why his love for the people of God returns; and then he cries against the oppressors. God shews that He well knows the oppressor, and He shews that it is necessary to wait, and that the just shall live by faith, because deliverance will come later; then he reveals, on God's part, the judgment which falls at the last on the oppressor, and in a song, calling to mind the deliverance of the people of God at the beginning, he declares his confidence in God, even when the people of God are not in the enjoyment of outward blessings.

244 ZEPHANIAH

is the day of the Lord on Jerusalem; the judgment of the nations who are in the territory (the Philistines, the Moabites, etc.), and judgment on the Assyrian, in behalf of the remnant of Jerusalem; promises and prophetic history of the remnant.

The three prophets who follow prophesied after the captivity.

HAGGAI.

Haggai excites to build the temple by promising the presence of Messiah in the temple; he announces also the judgment of the nations when the heavens shall have been shaken Zerubbabel was the seed of David.

ZECHARIAH.

Jehovah takes notice of the four imperial nations, judges them and accepts and justifies Israel prophetically but places it actually upon its responsibility, shews the church order blessed under Messiah, judgment against evil, and the manifestation of iniquity in its true character, and in sight of all nations, of all the empires of which the second only had accomplished the will of God. He takes occasion from this blessing to declare the re-establishment of the temple by Messiah Himself; this terminates at the end of Zechariah 6. There are only two prophecies in this prophet; the first till the end of chapter 6, and the second until the end of the book. On the demand, if they ought to fast, he remarks to them how the words of the ancient prophets had been accomplished, but that they had returned to do good. He reassures them by saying that He had returned in grace, but for the present time placing them under responsibility, reveals to them the glory to come; judges the people who are in the territory of Israel; takes away strength in order that He may be their strength; He makes them conquerors over all the enemies of Jehovah, and blesses them in His presence as His flock; He blesses Judah and Ephraim, and gathers together all countries; He exposes then (at the end of Zech. 10) the details of their history in that they have rejected Christ and have received Antichrist; they shall be subject to Him (Zech. 12, 13, 14); he speaks of the siege of Jerusalem in the last days, and of what shall happen to the remnant or to the people after the death of Jesus struck by Jehovah as their shepherd; Christ represented ecclesiastically, and Christ in these two characters (Zech. 6: 13); the two olive-trees; programme of the ceremony of this justification.

245 Zechariah 11 has generally been thought one of considerable difficulty; but there are some points in our Lord's character, and the unfolding of the purposes of God in His actual ministry, which I think make comparatively easy what seems most difficult, and may, perhaps, lead the way to what is yet unexplained. The strong expression of our Lord's mind in Spirit - the full representation of the moral force in the sight of God of what took place upon His presence on earth - the breaking up of all God's purposes in their present ministration - the immense importance which we find consequently to be attached to what in the eye of reason might seem small circumstances, because the principles of God's moral government are involved in them, and all brought out into relief in the person of the Lord Jesus; all contribute to attach the deepest interest to this morally comprehensive chapter, as God's version of all that then passed. The glory of the house of Israel is laid low - its external strength and glory. The glory of the shepherds is spoiled - its rulers and guides. The pride of the river of Israel is spoiled - the national fulness and power.

This is the general statement. The command follows, "Feed the flock of the slaughter." Their possessors (though I have doubted it), I apprehend, must be the Gentiles; their own people, those that sell them to the Gentiles; Herod for example, and the preceding chief priests and princes, or any such characters; some one who owned Jehovah, but sold His people. The Lord does not think it necessary to say who they are, as He owns them not at all; they are possessed by those who slay them, and sold by persons more or less owning the Lord openly, but loving covetousness, anything but the Lord's care as to their present estate. This flock of the slaughter - their own shepherds (who they are there can be no doubt), their own leaders and rulers pity them not. Verse 4 is the delivery of them, under these circumstances, into the Lord Christ's hands to feed, or take charge of them. The next verse shews however, that the body of the nation then, who inhabited the land indeed, but were not God's flock (compare 1 Peter 5 and the corresponding charge to Peter in John 21 all of which is properly Jewish), would not be spared. "I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land - Israel's land, saith Jehovah; but, to, I will deliver," etc. When the care was delivered to Him, He would not spare but deliver them to the fruit of their own ways. Such would be the general state of the inhabitants of the land, and then, "I will feed the flock of the slaughter," the poor, despised people. "Blessed are the poor, and ye poor," said the Lord,, Himself the feeder of the flock of the slaughter: generally the nation was the flock of the slaughter; but in His hand a distinction was made, between those who were identified with the slayers, and the real flock of the slaughter, even the poor whom He saved. in judgment He had given up the inhabitants of the land, every man to his neighbour; He would not be a judge and a divider over them; and Herod and Caesar alike preyed upon the land, and they all preyed upon each other - now especially Caesar their king, "we have no king but Caesar." But He took His two staves, of which words we shall see the force presently, and He fed them as a good Shepherd, even them, the poor of the flock: as for their shepherds they were cut off; between them and the good Shepherd there was nothing in common. His soul loathed them, and their soul abhorred Him. He had taken however two staves, one, Beauty; and the other, Bands and fed the flock.

246 Then, viewed as in connection with their shepherds, as a nation which must abhor Him, He would not feed the flock: as such, they were delivered up to the fruit of their own will and depravity as it came upon them. And He took His staff, Beauty, and cut it asunder, that He might break the covenant He had made with all the people, that is, all the peoples (the Ammim). Now this was formally done at the destruction of Jerusalem, and in fact at the rejection or death of our Lord, when He refused the nation, or when the nation refused Him; in principle, when they rejected His word and works. To Him was the gathering of the peoples (Ammim) to be. All nations were to be gathered to the throne of the Lord, to Jerusalem; this was the great, wide, circling covenant, that was made by Christ, made with Christ. This gathering of the peoples to Jerusalem, clothing herself with them all, was the great gathering foretold; it was to be to Jerusalem, but it was of the peoples; but when Jerusalem rejected Him, to whom was it to be? So upon the rejection of Him, He broke the covenant made with the peoples, and the destruction and rejection of Jerusalem made the poor of the flock that waited upon Him know that it was the word of the Lord: they knew in faith upon His rejection. It was then manifested in result, for His rejection had proved the rejection of all their hopes, and they lost the gathering of the nations. The whole plan was not abandoned but frustrated, that is, in present ministration (in the wisdom of God's counsels), in the rejection of the Lord, who had shewn and warned of all this, and Jesus was the Lord.

247 Nothing I think, can be more simple, if the gathering of the nations (Ammim) promised to Shiloh be seen, and that to Jerusalem, nor than the necessary results as testified by Him on His rejection, proving as to them who might be perplexed upon His rejection by the shepherds, who He was - that very Word of the Lord, and Himself the truth of all He said. His word in Zechariah was proved true, it was Himself in all that chapter. But there was another point incident to the acknowledgment of the Lord. Being thus refused, He says, "Well, what do you think me worth?" This would have been most strange, even after His rejection. "You have rejected me, I came for no other purpose, what do you think me worth? what is your judgment of the Lord?" Oh! what condemnation, while they thought they condemned Him. "If you think good, give me my price; if not, forbear." "I count myself nothing worth, I put no price upon myself, you can do what you please." The fulfilment of this - our Lord indeed became as a servant - is too well, too little, known in its verity, to need or to be met by verbal explanation. The transition from all the expectations or titles of Shiloh in meek submission, when He would not have Israel, and He the Lord, is marvellous. It is here we learn what we can learn nowhere else - the strange meaning of that word, obedience - the marvellous mystery of the submission of the Lord. It is here, in the contrast from Shiloh to a rejected slave not opening his mouth even for the price (may we have grace to own Him in humiliation) discerned of us. But He was really the Lord in all this, which is the very revelation of this chapter, and it was the judicial process (yet saving to the remnant) of presenting the Lord to them.

248 There was another consequence connected with the acknowledgment of Shiloh, they were to be made one stick; the union of Israel and Judah was to be in His hand; the accompaniment of the same headship which involved the gathering of the Ammi, "then shall the children of Israel and the children of Judah be gathered together, and appoint unto themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel." And though Jerusalem was to be the head - the Jehovah Shammai*; yet they were to be no more two, but one in the land; and so the Lord always owned them. Zebulun and Naphtali saw a great light, and the poor of the flock, "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," indiscriminately met His care, scattered though they might be, but that unity depended upon David their king, their one head. His rejection broke all this; He cut asunder His other staff "Bands," to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel; and this surely shall not be united again, till the King be owned again, and then indeed shall these things be according to the sure mercies of David; till then, even if in their land, they shall be a divided and a weakened people; and as I a believe, "Ephraim against Manasseh, and they together against Judah: for all which, his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." Verse 15, and possibly also verse 17, but surely verses 15, 16, I believe to belong to the presumptuous shepherd, the fool that says in his heart, "there is no God"; one who shall come in his own name, whom they will receive. Lord, forgive them yet and deliver! The word is not merely "foolish," though I have alluded to that, but the word (eveele) which includes in connection with the Lord, impiety, folly against God, in a word - Antichrist. They are given up after Christ is rejected, the Gentile history coming in meanwhile. The idol shepherd does not seem to me to go quite so far, perhaps it applies to the Jews in that day, who desert the flock when evil comes.** The shepherd who is nothing - emptiness. Yet Jerusalem shall be made a cup of trembling in that day to the nations round about her, but this is the Lord's mercy. Having then given what the leading principles of the chapter appear to me to be, I will not pursue that which follows, though affording the leading principle of the whole of this prophecy would be of the deepest interest, and, I believe, afford much instruction in the testimony of God.

{*Ezekiel 48: 35.}

{**Compare John 10. Here the Jewish leaders, I conceive, in the latter day.}

249 The following chapters are the results in the latter day, with which the prophet then is wholly occupied - the rejection of Christ, and giving up to Antichrist and the idol shepherds, being the basis on which it rests.

We have then in the chapter the judgment in which the Lord found the Jews, Israel, and to which, in point of fact, they were given up; then the history of His assuming the pastorship, His rejecting, as He must, the exceeding evil state of them that dwelt in the land, His taking the poor of the flock, but the rejection by Him of the shepherds, and of Him by them. He had assumed necessarily in the pastorship, humble as He might seem, the double rod, not yet made one, of God's government; but upon His rejection by the shepherds, He broke that which involved the gathering of the nations; and, so to speak, neither He nor Jerusalem were of any more avail as the then fulfilers of this counsel. It was left to the shepherds to count His price, and they gave thirty pieces of silver but Jerusalem and they were comparatively then given up He alone could or would gather them. "How often would I have gathered thy children together!" (Matt. 23: 37). Then what was the use of His other staff? He broke that also, even the bond of Israel itself, that also was gone in Him; they were then given up to the foolish shepherd, though this was left future, with a woe upon their own then faithless one. Subsequently comes the unfolding of God's unaltered purpose concerning Jerusalem, and the sure glory of Him whom they had rejected in His real and gracious character, in spite of their iniquity.

Brethren, beloved of the Lord, how should we dwell upon the extent of gracious and marvellous humiliation of that word, "If ye think well, give me my price; and if not, forbear"; even for Him whose all the glory was, "which things angels desire to look into," "a goodly price" that He was prized at by them. Oh! what is man? and what is Jesus to us? the Lord our God.

250 MALACHI.

The Lord had left them in Zechariah under their responsibility. Malachi feels the reproaches of the Lord Jehovah on account of their unbelief after their return, notwithstanding His goodness; he announces to them the day of the Lord; the distinction between the remnant (the faithful) and the mass (those who are not so), (Mal. 3: 17, 18); he announces the blessing of the remnant, and the coming of Elijah before the day of the Lord.

Thoughts on Isaiah the Prophet

J. N. Darby.

<30027E> 168

The great subject of the introduction to this prophecy is the way in which Jehovah presents Himself after declaring their state of ruin. There is a day of Jehovah on all the earth; and if there were not a remnant, all the people would be as Sodom and like Gomorrah. The hand of Jehovah will be against all that the world exalts. Every thing or one that is lifted up shall be brought low: Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day (Isa. 2: 17). God will purify the earthly people by His judgments. The rest will be the object of a terrible judgment (Isa. 2: 18-21).

I desire to consider the character of the prophecy as given to the Jews. It takes in a circle much greater and concerns the nations as well as Israel.

There is an important principle to remark, namely, that every prophecy supposes ruin of the state of things in which the prophecy is presented. When all goes according to the mind of God, there is no need of warning. It is manifest here in a striking way. Prophecy reveals all the hopes that belong to the faithful when the dispensation breaks down. It announces the failures, and the judgments on what man essays to do because of the evil.

The mass of the Jews is not saved, but there is a remnant saved in the midst of them. The church is but a remnant. We begin as a remnant, and where the Jews end. This supposes that the state of the world is bad and that the world has not gone on well. God sends threatenings and warnings to the mass, when all goes ill; and He makes promises to the faithful remnant to sustain and encourage it. When Israel failed, or the priesthood, in Eli, God raises up a prophet, Samuel. It was when all failed under the kings even of the house of David, that God raised up Isaiah. Ahaz had introduced idolatry into the house of God, and the testimony of Isaiah was sent to announce, not a remnant only, but the Messiah. The state of what God established in presence of the glory of God shews that the people cannot stand before this glory (Isa. 6: 5).

God sends prophet after prophet, and chastisement after chastisement, during seven centuries, and He only struck fully when the Son was cast out of the vineyard and slain. Meanwhile the promise of the Messiah sustained the hope of the faithful. They felt the state of things whilst waiting for redemption. Anna spoke of the infant Jesus to all those that looked for redemption. The principle of such immense importance in prophecy is, that because of the unfaithfulness of the mass God rejects that which He has Himself established; and He announces that He is going to replace what is ruined by something which is infinitely better. God in His goodness gives the light beforehand to brighten up the hearts of the faithful. The goodness of God treats them as friends and fills them with confidence. If one recognises the prophecy, one must recognise that God had judged and condemned that which exists. If God had not set aside man, there were no need of a new Adam. If the ark of the covenant had not been in the hands of the Philistines, there would have been no need of Samuel the prophet, any more than of Isaiah if the house of David were not fallen. Wherefore prophecy is called a charge or "burden."

169 It will facilitate the understanding of the book if one point out the divisions of the book.

Isaiah 1 to 4 is the introduction, and blessing at the end, chapter 1 speaking of the Jews, chapter 2 of the Gentiles.

Isaiah 5 is a prophetic discourse which compares the state of the vineyard with that which God had done for Israel at the beginning; interrupted by

Isaiah 6, which compares it with the glory of Christ. It is thus God judges His people. The prophet is installed in his work.

Isaiah 7 to 9: 7 is a prophecy of Immanuel and of the remnant, of Immanuel's land and of the Assyrian when Immanuel is there.

Isaiah 9: 8 to 12 resume prophecy about Israel.

Isaiah 13 to 27 look at the nations and the circumstances of Israel in the last days (Isa. 18) among the nations.

Isaiah 28 to 35 are details about Israel, each prophecy closing with a blessing.

Isaiah 36 to 39 are a history of Hezekiah and the Assyrian as typical of the dead and risen Son of David, and the Assyrian of the last days, closing with a prediction of the Babylonish captivity.

170 Isaiah 40 to 66 are the restoration of Israel, witness against the idolatry of the nations but idolatrous, and rejected because of rejecting the Messiah. Israel is found at last among the rebellious when Jesus shall come back, the remnant being kept on the earth for the glory of Jehovah.

Isaiah 1.

We see the summary of the burden of the prophecy in verses 1-9.

There was much piety according to the world. They continued in a round of religious forms to render worship to God, without perceiving the lack of life, of faithfulness, and of purity by which they were characterised (v. 10-13). Having a show of godliness they had denied its power. They made long prayers at the corners of the streets; but their conscience was not right with God. There was a moral blindness before the judicial blindness. As we learn from the next chapter, the land was full of silver and gold, with horses and chariots, full of outward blessings but also of idols. The multitude of sacrifices did not make their ways true in relation to God. Hence (v. 14, 15) the very things God had instituted or enjoined became in their hands such as He hated, because the conscience in His people was not according to His mind.

The word therefore is - (v. 16, 17), "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes: cease to do evil; learn to do well." There is the weighty matter. Have a good conscience before God: if not, you become blind of yourselves before you are blinded of God. God distinguishes between actions. One cannot learn to do good before ceasing from evil. One cannot have the light in the conscience, without leaving first that which wounds the conscience.

Jehovah imputes not iniquity (v. 18). Moral government follows (v. 19, 20).

The saddest thing for the heart of God is, not that the world is wicked, but that the city which bears His name, on which His eyes rest continually, should be so evil. "How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water: thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them," v. 21-23. His judgment begins with His house. We see in Ezekiel 9 that, when the remnant are marked, He causes all the city to be smited, beginning at His sanctuary. He points out afterward the iniquities in detail. We have here a great present principle: if Christendom has deserved the judgment of God, His judgment begins with His house to purify it. In this sense we are with difficulty saved. It was over Jerusalem that Jesus wept.

171 "Therefore saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies: and I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin: and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful City," v. 24-26. He will avenge Himself of His enemies who corrupted Zion; He will satisfy Himself in dealing with His adversaries. And when He shall have executed His judgment, He will restore Jerusalem as of old. But if judgment must fall on Israel, the consequence will be that out of Zion shall go forth the law. Jerusalem will be then more truly than ever the throne of Jehovah. "Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness. And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake Jehovah shall be consumed. For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water. And the strong shall be as tow, and the maker of it as a spark, and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them," v. 27-31.

Thus the first chapter of the prophecy applies to the state of the Jews announcing the judgment, and gives the hope across the judgment that God will purge His people therein. This will be the means of gathering the nations.

Isaiah 2.

In the last days the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. Some might think the law's going out of Zion might be by the gospel. But the gospel is not by the execution of judgment on the nations as here. God will deal with the nations by public judgment and righteousness on earth (v. 1-4). It is not the church, but the Lord who is spoken of; and this has evidently never yet been. They have dreamt these things for Christianity; but it is 'he judgment of God that is to bring all this about. (Compare Matt. 24: 6, 7.)

172 The intelligent spirit of prophecy always speaks as in verses 5, 6. "O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of Jehovah. Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers." The rejection of the people had not yet happened. judgment begins at the house of God, but does not stop there. God will judge His people; and will He not judge the idolatrous world?

The nations boasted of their power and of their riches. They will be the first to be judged; but above all, the so-called Christian countries, where profession is found highest, must be found at last the objects of the indignant wrath of God. When He exercises judgment on man's idols and pride, He resumes the course of His earthly government on the earth.

Isaiah 3.

Divine judgment notices every detail of iniquity, oppression, and even vanity. All must be brought low.

Isaiah 4.

God pushes the judgment and the ruin to the uttermost but Christ the Branch of beauty and glory shall appear at that time for the remnant. All the wicked shall have been cut off (v. 2-4). The Branch of Jehovah shall be beauty and glory. The glory will be displayed over all the extent of the holy city (v. 5). Verse 6 describes an active protection on God's part. Those who remain after the purifying are saints, and the glory of God shall be manifested over the city that He has chosen to place His name there.

One can see in these four chapters the importance God attaches to the land. He takes cognisance of the iniquity of His earthly people, cleansing them by His judgment. He washes away the filth of the nations also.

173 This does not concern the church which will come again with Jesus in glory. Such is the position in which Christendom is found. Meanwhile, since the rejection of Jesus until He come again, God has visited the world by His Spirit to gather God's joint-heirs with Christ for heaven.

The nature of prophecy, which enters into the mind of God on the ruin and rejection of His people, is of all importance. It is what distinguishes the faithful who have the intelligence of Christ - faithful in the fallen state of things. Their conduct at the same time is directed and governed by the revelation they possess of another order of things to come.

Isaiah 5.

There are two great principles presented in chapters 5 and 6: in the former the judgment God pronounces on the vineyard in reference to the fruits He must look for from it; in the latter is the introduction of the glory of the Messiah, and what this glory demands from the people. Prophecy supposes a fallen condition, and would be superfluous if the state God established had no need of a special testimony. God bears witness against the state of things and gives promise in Jesus.

God considers whether the vineyard bears the fruit that a vineyard so cared for ought to bear. It is a general principle that applies to the Jews, to the church, and to each individual. If the church has received more than the Jews, God is entitled to expect that it produce more. When one takes the glory of Christ, one sees what ought to correspond to that glory. The two principles constantly turn up. God has formed the state of things, whether among the Jews or in the church, with reference to Christ.

Here is what God says of Israel "Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein; and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants Of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: and I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they "rain no rain upon it." "For the vineyard of Jehovah of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression: for righteousness, but behold a cry," (v. 1-7). The "well-beloved" is the Lord Jesus. God asks that people - even the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah - should judge between Him and His vineyard. He has done much for a nation that had a certain responsibility on the earth. He will accomplish all His counsels, but first of all He proves Israel to see if they will make good themselves the design of God.

174 But man always fails for what God expects from him., and He would have it seen what man is. God does all that man could ask, and this only manifests the ill-will of man. Sacrifices, temple, service - God had arranged all. The people fail in all; and God destroys what He had Himself made. He breaks the fence. All that the father had the elder brother possessed. But God destroys what He had made, and He will accomplish all His counsels (Lam. 2: 1-9). The Lord has cast off His altar, He has abhorred His sanctuary. His people having been unfaithful to His blessings, the means He had placed for the blessing of His people He has taken all away. When the people are far from God., they attach themselves to ordinances; it is the mark that all is going to ruin. From the moment that God is of little importance to the conscience, ordinances become the objects of superstition and take the place of God. Here it is, "the temple of the Lord! the temple of the Lord!" When God is just about to destroy them, it is then men attach the more importance to them. God confided to man true privileges; but man fails: God takes all away, and the result is a judgment.

From verse 8 God enumerates the various sins which were in the midst of Israel. "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night, till wine inflame them! Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope: that say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it! Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!" (v. 8-11, 18-23).

175 The Israelites despise the warning of judgment; the wicked take advantage of the delay; just as the like was to happen in the last days of the Christian testimony (2 Pet. 3). But God does not hurry His counsel. He is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. He knows well that He must judge at the end. Man attaches himself to his own wisdom, and as long as God does not chastise, man hardens his heart. God has done all for His vineyard, but this producing nothing but wild grapes He judges His vineyard on the earth.

The church is also on the earth under responsibility here below. It has more light and more knowledge than Israel. This changes nothing as to the counsels of God, who commits His glory to the faithfulness of the church here below. If we do not represent aright this glory, judgment is impending on the church here below.

Instead of enfeebling the sense of our faults, the more that we feel the blessings, the dearer will be the glory of Christ to us; and the more also that we are alive to His glory, the more do we understand that the church here below must be judged as an economy here below. If any one can say that the church has duly guarded the glory of Christ in the world, he must have lost the idea of what the glory of Christ demands, just as an unconverted person has no notion of what is due to the righteousness and holiness of God.

176 Isaiah 6.

Here it is a question of the glory of Christ, as we see by comparing John 12: 40 with verse 10 of our chapter. The prophet sees here Christ as Jehovah of hosts who is manifested in the temple; the Spirit of God, putting together His glory and the state of His people, judges this state in reference to that glory. This is the Spirit of prophecy and of faith.

The unity and the condition of the church, do they answer to the heart of the Bridegroom? Everything for us is to be in accordance with God. The state of His people, was it according to the glory of Christ which it is my privilege to share?

"Woe is me for I am undone." He judges the state of the people, his own conscience being touched. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me,* etc. God establishes the prophet. The witness of prophecy consists in the setting forth of the holiness of God in the midst of His people. The live coal from off the altar had touched his lips, and his iniquity was taken away and sin purged.

{*Seraphim in itself means burners that fly, and is found combined with serpents in Numbers 21: 6, 8; Deuteronomy 8: 15.}

There is a moment when the people of God become, as happened to the land of Pharaoh, the occasion of the outward manifestation of God's judgments: a serious and terrible thought, yet suitable. For where ought God to execute His righteous judgments if not where His light has been diffused and disobeyed? There must fall most stripes (Luke 12). It is Christendom which is now charged with this responsibility. It is for these times the vine of the earth, the grapes of which shall be trodden in the winepress of His indignation (Rev. 14). God will send them strong delusion (2 Thess. 2: 11). It is just so here for the Jews of that day. "Make fat the heart of this people," not the Gentiles (v. 10). Christendom which received not the love of the truth that they might be saved shall be judged in the same way. God will send them the working of delusion that they may believe the lie.

The judgment must go on to an entire desolation (v. 11, 12). There is a manifestation of glory, the prophetic testimony of purged lips, judgment on the people and land; but there is also the spirit of intercession, along with and by the Spirit of prophecy. Only we must remember that the Jews are to be restored on earth, the church will be glorified in heaven.

177 The spirit of faith knows that it is impossible for God to abandon His people for ever. He subjects them to judgment up to desolation; but says the prophet, "Lord, how long?" He knows that there is a term and that finally grace abounds for the people. There will be a tenth (v. 13); then it is over again cropped down; but the holy seed, that is, the remnant, will be manifested. During winter the tree seems dead; but in spring, when the grace of God renews its shining on the people, the tree recovers.

This prophecy was given in the year that Uzziah died, and iniquity began to draw near under Jotham. The spirit of faith is pre-occupied with the glory of God, does not hide sin, but counts on grace in spite of sin. The principles which apply here are found again also for the church, though the details of application may not be the same. The church cannot say, Lord, how long? for the earth; but the responsibility of the vineyard, cultivated yet bearing bad fruit, abides. We may desire for our souls intelligence in God's ways toward His people, and the application to ourselves and to the church of these great principles.

Nothing is more important for our souls than the church as an order of things here below for manifesting the glory of Christ during His absence. Our judgment on the state of the church should have as its rule the manifestation of Christ's glory as the Head in heaven. I cannot have a deep feeling of the benefits conferred by any one without having the sense of the responsibility that results from the relationship. If we have unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, we shall gain nothing by hiding from us the glory of Christ.

Isaiah 7.

In general the prophets date their prophecies from the name of the kings during whose reign they prophesied. One always finds in their writings something which gave rise to their prophecy. Here it is the reign of Ahaz. The prophecy of Isaiah pertains to his last days.

Prophecy does not appear when the people walk according to God's mind. There might be a walk which appears good, but which goes little by little into evil. Before Israel made the fall of the golden calf, there was no need of a prophet, any more than during the leading of Joshua; for Israel enjoyed the goodness of God. When the state of the people is bad generally, God must encourage the remnant by prophecy, which is not only the revelation of things to come, but also a testimony given. Prophecy is also a means of deliverance; it always condemns those in whose midst it takes place; it is the judgment of existing evil and the revelation of the method God is going to employ to deliver. Noah divinely warned condemned the world by building the ark; he prophesied the deluge for 120 years, because the wickedness of men was come to its height, and deliverance was in the ark. That judgment should be executed on the world, it was needful that it should be announced beforehand. Such is the principle. Prophecy is an appeal to repentance, for it is a manifestation which exists; it is not yet judgment, but still grace. There is always necessarily revelation for the faithful remnant from Him whose strength never fails. It is always Christ, in whom everything ends without exception: even all the course of this world concurs to the glory of Christ.

178 If we examine these two reigns, we see prosperity, and in part fidelity. It is said of Uzziah, "he did that which was right in the sight of Jehovah"; and the same of his son Jotham. God not having yet withdrawn His hand, there were blessings belonging to them; but look at what there was below. When the Spirit of God acts, He takes cognisance of evil and sees what sin is; He does not pass lightly over things and persons as the heart of man does, but wishes the good of the people and their conversion. Therefore does He take account of evil, and that before it is manifested; for He does not withdraw His hand till there is no remedy.

Such is the place prophecy holds in the ways of God, but at the same time it nourishes and strengthens faith by shewing in the glory of the Messiah the remedy for all evil. All the moral power of prophecy is taken away if we consider the things to come without considering the action of God for the moment. Anna spoke of Christ to all those who, feeling the state of things, looked for redemption.

To understand prophecy one must understand what God says as He says it, just believing simply the things as they are said. It is because of not following this plain rule that people find so many difficulties.

There is one circumstance more, which shews God's attitude toward Ahaz and Hezekiah. Ahaz took away the altar which was before Jehovah and put in its place a pagan one. At that time the house of David being the last support, its fall dragged with it and displays the end of Israel; while Hezekiah who succeeded is like the resurrection for Israel, and displays the coming blessing for the remnant when Christ shall appear in His glory.

179 The Spirit of God thinks always of His people according to their privileges; when the heart is far from God, it judges otherwise than God does and according to its actual evil state. But God cannot do so. One must see the church as God formed it for Himself; and God cannot derogate from His holiness nor from the estimation He has made of it. Conscience cannot judge soundly if it judge according to its state and not its privileges; for it is according to our privileges that God always judges. When God judges, He compares the state of things present with what was when He set it up: and He sees only wounds and putrefying sores, and nothing whole. God judges and thinks according to our privileges; and we cannot judge soundly save when we judge as God judges, and this makes us humble.

"Make the heart of this people fat," etc. (Isa. 6: 10) when was this an accomplished fact? Seven hundred years later, after Christ and even the testimony of the Spirit had been rejected. Before the execution faith judges, and the judgment is in God's mind long before it happens. When the Christian is divinely warned by prophecy of the state of condemnation before the end, if he wait for it, all is lost. Prophecy supposes the knowledge of God, who was in relation with Israel till John the baptist.

Let us now look back and compare all we have had with Isaiah 6, 7, and all the rest of the book. When Jehovah says (Isa. 1: 24), "I will ease me of mine adversaries and avenge me of mine enemies," He spoke of those in Israel. It is most terrible when the people of God take such a place as is not said of the poor sinner ignorant of God. There is a consuming fire for the adversaries (Heb. 10: 27). God's people come under His judgments. There will be a remnant, but for the mass of the people judgment. Yet Zion shall be restored according to God's faithfulness. The separation of the remnant will take place at the end, judgment will fall on the people, not on the remnant. Those that return shall be redeemed by righteousness and Zion by judgment. It is a great mistake to think that Isaiah 2: 2-4 is yet accomplished. "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say' Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." There are two things: Jerusalem the centre, and Jerusalem compared with what it was. Judgment must be executed; and Zion, delivered by this judgment, becomes the centre of power, all nations flowing to it. In what follows one sees the moral judgment which was not executed till seven hundred years after it was pronounced. The day of Jehovah will be against all that is lifted up, for His Spirit judges all, and His hand will subject all to His power. It is only His people that are His enemy - none on earth like those who have not received the love of the truth that they might be saved; they will be faithful to Antichrist. There is nothing so opposed to God as what is near God, as we see in Judas. There must be judgment on all that is proud and lofty. The haughty looks of man shall be humbled. If there is in our hearts a single object that we desire to exalt us, it will be judged and broken. That day is against all the oaks of Bashan, etc.

180 Such is the sum given us in this book as to Jews and Gentiles, the first four chapters being introductory, with details in Isaiah 3, 4. Isaiah 5 begins a pleading with God's people, chapter 6 interrupting the prophecy to give the prophet his mission, and Isaiah 7 to 9: 7 the birth of Messiah in relation to Israel and the land, the Assyrian attacks, and the power of Messiah triumphant. Isaiah 9: 8 resumes the chastisements on Israel with deliverance in the end (Isa. 11, 12), for there is always deliverance after judgment.

From Isaiah 13 to 35 are the details of judgments on the nations, and of what will happen to Israel, that is, Judah and Ephraim, followed by the typical history of Hezekiah in Isaiah 36-39.

181 Isaiah 40 begins with comfort for the people from Jehovah, with their chastening from His hand for their wickedness, first, in idolatry, next in rejecting the Messiah, and ends with glory and blessing when they repent and He is received. The thought of God does not stop till He has shewn that grace over-abounds and till He sets His people in blessing. The way in which the Holy Spirit judges all is by referring all to His blessing if we have not full confidence in His goodness. One cannot have full confidence in His goodness without also having a full conviction of the sad state of God's people; if we avoid pronouncing this judgment on the actual state of things and on ourselves as sharing the same moral state we cannot know all the goodness of God. Israel is taken as His witness against idolatry and also of the rejection of Messiah; so that the end is to identify the nations with Israel, and all that which is identified with evil shall suffer the effects of evil. Two things shall happen together, terrible times and the return of Christ in power and glory.

We see in Isaiah 4: 3 that all the escaped in Jerusalem shall be written to life. There will be a manifestation of glory in this world, as in a little measure there was in the wilderness. "And Jehovah will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain." v. 5, 6. We have here the judgment of Israel and the glory manifested. The first four chapters give us the end of all as to Israel, but glory at last. Prophecy always supposes a state of displeasure on God's part, but blessing and glory after judgment. It was given to be believed and understood before accomplishment. If God charges any one by a message, he must understand it before the judgment, else for him it is useless: to say the contrary is Satan's snare, for in understanding it only when accomplished, the moral effect is lost. To have God making known His mind in what does not touch ourselves directly, we have the great proof of His love and enjoy communion with Him, which always separates us more from a world about to be judged.

Jerusalem being the centre of the things which must come to pass, one must be at the centre to take in the circle. There was but one prophet sent to the heathen, Jonah to Nineveh. God ever sends warning before judgment, shewing also the interest He takes in the creature.

182 Hear what the Spirit says in chapter 5. It is important to remark that it is always the Spirit of Christ (1 Peter 1: 10, 11). We shall ever find allusion to Christ; and if we read without understanding that it is Christ who speaks or is spoken of, they are lost for us.

In general, prophecy applies as here to a people with whom God is in relation. God calling His people to consider their state, He would reveal His judgments to them, but begins by making them pay attention. "My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill; and he fenced it," etc. (v. 1, 2.) It is the plaint of God in recalling to His people what He has done for them. This applies to our consciences. God has a right to look for fruit according to the pains He took, and if there were none, there must be necessarily judgment. God never stops at what is spoilt to repair the breaches; He looks at what He did at the beginning, and compares it with the actual state. Therefore does the Lord say to the angel of the church in Ephesus, "Thou hast left thy first love," Rev. 2: 4. What God demands of us is that we look at what He did at the beginning, and that we compare ourselves, not with the actual state that is spoilt, but with the fruits and testimonies given at the start; and if we do not bear these fruits, we are guilty, and here is the consequence: "Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard." The principle of verses 3, 4 applies also to the church.

The fact is that God's people are reduced to silence. Israel was placed under responsibility, as is the church; and, if enjoying all the privileges, they failed, all fails on man's part. God has chosen Israel for His glory on earth, and the church also for His glory in heaven; and we must not confound ourselves with them. We have failed, but God will accomplish all in Christ. There are always men failing under responsibility and Christ who does not fail; and God executes by Him judgment on the creature, whether Israel or the church. Judgment will come before God accomplishes His purposes of glory.

"And now go to: I will tell you what I will do," etc. (v. 5-7). Judah was the plant of Jehovah's pleasure, but it brought forth wild grapes. God judges the vineyard, as also Christendom. We have enjoyed superior advantages, and, our Christian responsibility being greater, judgment will also be greater. God enters into details to shew the righteousness of His judgments. It is not only covetousness ending in desolation, and corrupt luxury in death and hell, but excuses for iniquity growing up to contempt of divine judgment, as we see in the profane indifference of Christendom, when men have God's warnings and think they will never be executed. "There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?" (2 Pet. 3: 3, 4). It answers to the insult of God in verses 18, 19. Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope: that say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it."

183 Another character still is lack of discernment in good and evil. Satan brings about transgression and hardening of the conscience; his desire is always to darken the intelligence, as the desire of the Christian should be always more and more to judge according to God. It was the prayer of the apostle that the Colossians (chap. 1: 9) should be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. So Ephesians 1: 17. It is what distinguishes from those of whom it is here said, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" (v. 20, 21).

"Because they have cast away the law of Jehovah of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel, therefore is the anger of Jehovah kindled against his people, and he hath stretched his hand against them, and hath smitten them," v. 24, 25. God does not strike all at once. He sends partial judgments, and since they do not awaken, worse judgments; but there is always before it forbearance and mercy on God's part. What God did at the beginning is the great principle that God recalls to His people. Therefore is He just in His judgments.

In Isaiah 6 is another principle. God speaks there, not of what He did at the beginning, but of glory. When I compare the state of the primitive church, I say, Where are we? I can also say, What glory! There is what God would give, and He shews the glory of God in His temple. Israel will be blessed by His manifestation and the enjoyment of this glory. But if the people are unclean, they must have only judgment, and not glory. Read verses 1-4 for the manifestation of the glory of Christ Himself. They could not comprehend, because the heart of the people was grown fat, as we see in verses 9, 10. But where the glory was presented to Isaiah, he says, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts," v. 5. Such is the conviction of the prophet before God; he has the understanding of good and evil, instead of being overjoyed that he had seen Jehovah. This makes him say, Woe is me! The only thing that it becomes one to say is, Woe is me! "Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar and he aid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged," v. 6, 7. Because he is thus purged, the prophet is rendered capable of being a messenger, and says to God, "Here am I; send me," v. 8. "And he said, Go and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not," v. 9. From the moment it is a question of presenting the people, it is, "Make the heart of this people fat," etc. It is no longer a question of repentance. The time of judgment is come: repentance is for the remnant. This will be infallibly. Pharaoh was blinded that God might deliver His people; and for those who refuse to receive His testimony, God shall send them strong delusion. For He has been patient to the last degree, but they refuse instruction from Him. He deals with Christendom as with Israel.

184 God is long-suffering; for seven hundred years elapsed since the threat till its execution. When He sent the Heir, every means had been exhausted: I do not speak of efficacious grace. His people said, We shall have the world without God if we get rid of the Heir. If the Christian understands the mind of God, this separates his heart from the actual state of things, because he sees the course of this world, which does not understand God. If the Spirit of God gives intelligence to the prophet and to us, one also understands that it is not for ever. "Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and Jehovah have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof," v. 11-13. One must own that the judgment is just, but God is faithful. It is only for a time; though it will come, and though there be judgments, the church shall be in glory. So there will be a remnant of the Jews, but it be anew consumed; they will come into the land, but the Gentiles will come also: "as the oak and the teil-tree, which being cut down have still the trunk so the holy seed shall be their stock." God guards His remnants.

185 When the prophet's mouth was purged, God tells him the judgment, and then he turns to intercession. We ought to understand these principles, and apply them, not to Israel only, but to the church, and to each individual. The beginning of conversion goes well, but afterwards! One must judge oneself, or God judges us in His love, for He is always love. If God saves us perfectly in Christ, we are brought in to be the objects of His Father by government; and when a Christian walks for the glory of God, he is happy, and can say, Send me for God never fails for those who trust in Him.

We find here not only the great principles of the government of God, but moreover the introduction of a personae (Immanuel, the Lord Jesus) on the scene of prophecy, and the consequences of this introduction. God had raised up to Israel a stay in David. It was the last support of God's people on the earth. Before raising up the house of David, God had tried all means possible to maintain relations with His people. The priesthood had failed in Eli, the ark was taken, and God had pronounced Ichabod, The glory is departed. Samuel is brought in, and God abides by His channel in sovereign grace toward His people. Saul asked for is unfaithful. Under priesthood, under royalty, under prophecy, in a word under all forms and all means that God had prepared, Israel always failed. Yet God raised up the house of David. Solomon fails. Though more faithful than others, his family also fails. God had promised to chastise it, but that He would never entirely withdraw His favour. Christ Himself has been the accomplishment of this promise, as of all others. Man always fails to keep his relationship with God, but all is accomplished in Jesus. The family of David failed, and it is in Christ alone that the Jews find the blessing that is attached to it.

186 In the person of Ahaz the family of David abandons completely its fidelity. Ahaz associates himself with the king of Assyria, imitates the altar seen at Damascus, and places it in the very temple of God. When the family of David itself thus fails, and every hope is ruined, prophecy introduces the promise of Christ to be the support of the faithful. This sign was to be in the family of David itself. It is a fact of all-importance. The Messiah, the Son of God, was to shew himself in Israel, and Israel to shew itself unfaithful spite of the presence of Messiah. What is before us here is the house of David, not Israel alone. By iniquity the conscience is bad and faith is feeble. Ahaz does not ask for a sign. He makes a show of not wishing it by reason of piety.

Though the house of David failed, God does not at all fail and He says to Isaiah, "Go forth now to meet Ahaz." He intervenes at the moment the thing is necessary. Shearjashub signifies the remnant will return. The people, being unfaithful, have no force against their enemies. But there, in the circumstances where all hope is taken away, God presents the promise that the remnant should be sustained by the testimony of God Himself. He comes in between the sorrowful circumstances and the faithful, that their faith should not fail. At the extreme point of the misery God manifests Himself, and all is light. God would have it so: otherwise the heart rests on the flesh, and forgets God. If the heart loved God naturally, this would not be necessary; that is to say, it would not be necessary for every outward prop to fail His children, if their heart were only occupied with counting on Him; but the bent of the heart estranges from God. He had not yet delivered His people from the Assyrian; but where there is a lack of faith, the heart is fearful before the enemy, even before a powerless enemy. God shews comfort to His people. He has a perfect knowledge of all that is done, and despises the strength of the enemy. He knows who Pekah and Rezin are, and that Damascus is head of Syria. When it is God who sends our enemies as a chastening against us, we have no strength against them. God knows all the difficulties. What is wanting is the faith which gives a perfect security against all the circumstances possible.

187 God points out the intentions of the two kings (v. 4-6), intentions which perhaps Ahaz did not know. But God besides has His king at Jerusalem, and they will not succeed in setting up another. "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, It shall not stand, neither shall it come to pass. For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and within three score and five years shall Ephraim be broken, that it be not a people. And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established," v. 7-9. God knew all the details, as He gives Ahaz to see. Whatever Syria, Damascus, or Rezin might plan, it was not what God willed. On this all turns. What the Christian wants is consciousness of His relationship with God: then there is nothing to fear. It is not the strength of the enemy which the people have to dread, but their own iniquity which enfeebles them. The danger presented ends in nothing; but if we seek any support whatever in something of this world, God abandons us, leaving us to the consequences of our relation with the support we have chosen. Thus Pekah and Rezin had no strength against Judah, for God would not deliver Jerusalem to these confederate kings: but Ahaz, fearful and unbelieving, rests on Assyria, and it is from the Assyrian that Judah must be delivered. Meanwhile the true Deliverer, the real support, namely Immanuel, is revealed, when he failed who should have reigned according to God. Therein is a most important lesson.

God offers a sign to the feeble-hearted Ahaz and to the people seeking a prop apart from God. He would shew to the worldling all that is possible for Him to shew of grace and power; and He would make His children feel that their incredulity and unfaithfulness are without excuse. God bids the king to ask a sign below or above (v. 10, 11); but Ahaz (v. 12) shrinks from being too near God, and having a real proof that God was there, for fear of being obliged to follow Him, to abandon the outward supports of his infidelity, and to renounce everything but God. There is nothing that the outward people of God dread so much as nearness to God; though His nearness is a blessing without limit, the heart dreads it, because it will not quit what God condemns.

188 Nevertheless God will not abandon the house of David. He promises Immanuel (v. 13-15). The application of this promise concerns the house of David and the people of Israel, not here the salvation of the church. God gives the sign in spite of them. It is the birth of the Messiah. Ahaz did not wish God to be near him; but God would be with them, and Immanuel is the sign.

The two kings occasioned fear to Ahaz; but he on whom he sought to rest is sent as a chastening on him. (See 2 Kings 16.) There is what one should fear - that God should take the rod. He will hiss for the enemy, for the fly far off in Egypt, for the bee in Assyria He will shave as with a hired razor, so as to sweep all clean (v. 17-20). God would be our strength the heart of man never wishes it. The fear we have of evil befalling us makes us seek support in that which appears to us a way without danger; and these are the very things God employs to chastise us. The kings of Israel and of Syria came against Judah of their own will. God stops them. Ahaz and his people would lean on the king of Assyria; and God makes the Assyrian come against them in the end.

It is always what the will of man seeks that becomes the instrument of chastening. When the assaults against the people of God flow only from the will of man, there is nothing to fear. Beware of dreading the nearness of God: it is to be far from the source of all blessings.

Isaiah 8.

Notwithstanding, the grace of God abides toward His people. The scourge of God comes; but if He brings the Assyrian, He promises at the same time Immanuel. If Maher-shalal-hashbaz testifies to the Assyrian in making speed to the spoil, - and hastening the prey, God cannot abandon the house of David and Immanuel's land (v. 1-10). The Assyrian shall go over, and reach even to the neck, but no farther. God thereon vindicates against him the rights of Messiah, even as it is ever our resource that we are Christ's. This people had refused the softly flowing waters of Shiloah; they had despised the house of David, rejoicing in Rezin and Pekah, not in God's gentle way, which keeps the heart ever dependent. If the flesh can have a support, it is in man, in what looks strong; it has no confidence if there be only God for the morrow. From the moment we would for to-morrow rest on a good thought of today, it is our own righteousness. God would have us be in appearance the most feeble, that He should be our only strength.

189 As they despised the waters of Shiloah, the Lord brings on them the waters of the river strong and many; He sends against them as their master him on whom they leaned. Such is the end of man's wisdom. "Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. For Jehovah spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy: neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid," v. 9-12. How busy is human prudence, and how vain! We are taught of God not to initiate this. The nations shall do all this, but their counsels come to nought, "for God is with us." The one counsel for the faithful is Immanuel. "Neither fear ye their fear nor be afraid." Their word shall not stand. The thought of the Assyrian is to do his own will, not that of God. All depends on this only word, Immanuel. What avails confederacy against Him? The Lord spoke in strength of hand. Therefore His word is, "Sanctify Jehovah of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken," v. 13-15. Give to God all the holy heed that is due to Him. Nothing then can shake us, because nothing can shake God. Yet is He in Jesus for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both houses of Israel; for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem - this because of their infidelity. They too did not like to have the Eternal near them. The introduction of the Messiah is in view of the power and the invasion of the Assyrian. (Compare Micah 5.) But the result for the mass of the people is that they reject Immanuel, and stumble on Him to their own utter ruin.

190 The remnant is separated, the testimony bound up and sealed (v. 16). The Eternal came Himself in the person of Jesus. He is the confidence, the sanctuary of those that believe; He is a rock of offence to the unbelieving. Hence results a relation more intimate: "Seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait upon Jehovah, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion," v. 17, 18. The testimony is sealed there, while God turns away His face from the house of Jacob: nay more, "Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah hath given me." They are for signs and for wonders in Israel.

The people have lost God who disowns them meanwhile, and, seeking light but finding none, they turn to familiar spirits and wizards. But the true heart, having Christ before it, cleaves to God and His word - "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." v. 19, 20. And then we pass from the anguish and darkness of despair for the Jew when he refused the Messiah to the last days when light begins to dawn once more (v. 21, 22; chap. 9: 1, 2).

Thus Isaiah 7 presents to us Immanuel, heir of David's house and hope of the remnant which shall return (Shearjashub); Isaiah 8, the land of Canaan in relation to Him. It is Immanuel's land. There the remnant separated; and the nations in misery and darkness, till the despised light reappears in glory (Isa. 9: 1-7), overleaping the mystery of Christ and the church of the heavenly places, after which the general history of Israel is resumed in continuation of the judgments of Isaiah 5. Isaiah 6 - 9: 7 are a parenthesis to introduce Messiah.

We have seen in Isaiah 7, 8, Messiah born to reign. It is no longer only principles, or reasonings of God with His vineyard. There abides the absolute promise of God, though the son of the virgin, Immanuel, be rejected. Christ and His disciples, instead of being received, become a sign in Israel. Incredulity seeks a support, and this support becomes a difficulty and scourge, but there remains for faith the accomplishment of God's mind in Christ.

The waters of Shiloah being despised, the Assyrian comes into the country. The prophet with the two children is for a sign to the two houses of Israel. The Jews have in unbelief rejected Jesus, who is become a stumbling-stone to them, and their chastisement is in anguish and darkness. Two consequences result from this. The remnant could not enjoy the earthly promises made to the Messiah, but they have the testimony sealed up. Those who have rejected the testimony wander without light from God in the land which is trodden under the feet of the Gentiles. The Jews abide in bondage. Syria attacks Zebulun and Naphtali; it is the first invasion. Tiglath Pileser comes into Galilee - it is the second. But what follows is worse. Nevertheless the light shines in this land of the shadow of death; but all becomes graver still by the rejection of this light.

191 There is then a new element on which depends the lot of Israel. Christ has been there (Matt. 4: 15), and He has been rejected. The election from among the Jews is based on this foundation. All the Jewish election is added to the church (Acts 2: 47), in place of being saved for another end as in Micah 5: 3.

Christ having been manifested to but rejected by the nation, they are blinded. A judicial darkness is fallen on the Jews. His rejection by them opens the way for the election from among the Gentiles, whilst the elect from Israel are added to the church. Jehovah hides His face from the house of Jacob (Isa. 8: 17); but the prophetic Spirit waits for Him to act in favour of Israel. The church anticipates the faith of Israel when the Messiah is rejected, believing in Him; and this even becomes the occasion of provoking Israel to jealousy.

If Israel had received Jesus, Israel would have been blessed the wickedness of man would not have been proved, and Israel would not have lost their right to the promises. The wisdom of God places Israel under mercy like the Gentiles (Rom. 11), and opens thus the door to the Gentiles in accomplishing the promises. Jesus is minister of the truth of God for the Jews and of mercy for the Gentiles (Rom. 15). We have "pre-trusted in Christ" (Eph. 1: 12): that is, those of the Jews whose hope was in Christ before the nation bows at the end when He is seen in glory. We have believed without seeing, in contrast with Thomas and Israel. Those who shall believe when they see Him are to be blessed, but are not to be in His glory. This changes nothing as to the promises on God's part. Israel had lost all right to the promises; but these abide, because God had sworn to Abraham, and He is faithful. He judges Israel, hides His face from Jacob; nevertheless He keeps all His promises, and Israel waits till judgment falls on faithless Christendom, as it fell on the Jews. God will resume His ways with His people, and Israel shall be blessed.

192 From the first to the second verse of chapter 9 the present economy is quite passed over, and we light on the accomplishment of the promises for Israel. It is a question of Israel and the world, not of the church. The prophetic Spirit waits for what God will do, and beholds across the ages, the glory of Jehovah in the Messiah shedding His blessing on His people Israel. The first coming of Jesus has not accomplished verses 2-7. He has not delivered His people from the yoke of the Gentiles, the reign of the false king, or the efficacious lie of Satan. One often sees half a passage of the Old Testament cited in the New Testament, because the accomplishment of the other half is not arrived. Thus Christ is gone on high and has received gifts for men, but not yet "for the rebellious," that is, the Jews who will receive the rain of the latter season. All the present economy lies in the interval. It is no question at present either of Jews or Greeks, but of man, a new creation in Christ and called out of the world for heaven.

The Child was already born, the Son given; but Israel have not owned Him. When they are renewed, Christ will be owned, as born "unto us" and given "unto us." The church anticipates the people in all this; but for heaven.

There is here a principle of intelligence for prophecy, to see how we can employ the passages put in the mouth of the Jews. In Isaiah 53: 1-4 it is the Jews who esteemed Christ "smitten of God and afflicted." They said if He were the Son of God, let Him come down from the cross. Not so the believer, who enters into the enjoyment of the fruits of His suffering. "He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities." "Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." It remains true that He died for the Jews as an elect nation, but also to gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. These in the name of Jesus can say, that God caused the iniquities of us all to meet on Him. But Gentiles as such cannot say, "We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted"; as grafted on the olive, they can now say what Israel will say by-and-by. The church can say more, for on our behalf Jesus sits on the throne, not of David, but of His Father. We shall sit on Christ's throne, but not on the throne of David; to it we have no right whatever, not being of David's lineage. But we shall be seated on the more elevated throne of our Lord as the glorified Son of man. We are one with Christ, the coming King, and shall reign with Him, kings and priests to God, even His Father. In this sense it is not for us to say, like Israel, "Unto us a child is born," because we shall not be subjects of the kingdom, but co-heirs with Christ the King, not the people reigned over, but kings reigning with Him.

193 Christ has not yet the government here spoken of upon His shoulders, nor is there the increase of government and peace without end, nor is His name yet called Prince of Peace as here in the exercise of His functions. He is prince or originator of life whom God raised up from among the dead. He has not come yet to give peace in the earth, but a sword and division. He would have us fight, clothed with all spiritual armour. When Christ shall reign, He will be Prince of Peace as Son of David, and peace shall be on the earth. Christ must have the pre-eminence in all things, and have every sort of glory, as Son of God, Son of man, Son of David, etc., all things put under Him, and not merely Israel or the Gentiles. We shall sit with Him on His throne, as now He sits on the Father's. Up to the present we are seated in heavenly places in Him, not with Him as yet, on high.

But He will also have the throne of David. God loves the people, and Jerusalem is the city of the great King: Jesus will have this glory, the church has it not. The Jews will enjoy it under His reign. It is an earthly state, and more limited. Jesus is also head of angels' and will have that glory too. He is personally the image of the invisible God, and Son of man, Head over all things, as all the ends of the earth shall call Him blessed (Ps. 72).

Jesus only took up the promises when risen, in a life to make all sure on the other side of the grave: a mere man could not do this (2 Sam. 23: 5; Isa. 55: 3; Acts 13: 34). Jesus must introduce the blessing of God among creation. It is not here the Father and the Son, but Jehovah and the Son of David; and there is a counsel of peace between them both, to the end that creation should be blessed (Zech. 6: 12, 13), Israel being restored to their own land.

We have been instruments of mischief to all creation, which now awaits for the manifestation of the children of God for its blessing and happiness too. We are gathered a kind of first-fruits of the new creation, while God hides His face from the house of Jacob. What gracious consideration in God towards us, for whom, having been in Adam the instruments of the ruin of creation, all creation waits, that we should be manifested with the second Man for the blessing! When Christ shall be Priest on His throne, the counsel of peace shall proceed for the blessing of the earth. As to us, identified now with His humiliation, we shall be identified with His glory; we alone shall see Him as He is in the intimacy of His love. The Jews will see Him as He shall be manifested in earthly glory. In the expression of faith, as in the Psalms, mercy is always before righteousness, because Israel had failed completely in righteousness, and there must be recourse to mercy and grace.

194 We find in prophecy great principles of truth which can guide us, Christians, but also circumstances which do not concern us. Spiritual intelligence seizes the place of the church and the exaltation that God reserves for His Son Jesus, that all glory may centre in Him. The Christian's heart is happy in seeing Jesus exalted everywhere and with all glory. The scriptures bear testimony to Him, and, in proportion as we apprehend better the glory of Jesus, the scriptures become more easy for us to understand.

Isaiah 9, 10

The Spirit of God has given in the preceding chapters the Messiah (hope of the remnant and deliverer from the Assyrian), whose presentation to the Jews changes all the condition of the nation. He resumes now the prophetic history of the people of Israel. God has chastised His people, but this has not yet dealt with their pride: they confide yet in themselves (v.8-12). The anger of Jehovah is not yet turned away, but His hand is stretched out still, for the people do not turn to Him that smites them, and have not discerned His hand. And till this is seen, there is resistance and a strengthening of self in one's own power.

There are three things in the chastenings of God's people first, the instrument; second, the enemy's malice; third, the hidden intention of God. If one looks at the instrument, it is only to accuse, or to be discontented. But even behind the malice of Satan there is the goodness of God. Sometimes the heart avows that the chastening is come in consequence of known evil, and then would just reform itself a little. But the hand of God abides stretched out still because there is no return to Him that smites, but the effort by a certain quantity of hypocrisy to appease God. The conscience has not been put in direct relation with God.

195 The consequence is (v. 14) His cutting from Israel head and tail, branch and root, leaders and led. So God takes away even a Christian from this world as a chastisement (1 Cor. 11).

When the people of God go wrong, there is always the spirit of false prophecy which would make them believe that all goes well. Men in authority love that they should not be discouraged: see the opposition to Jeremiah in Jerusalem. To this the false prophet lends help, to hinder the conscience from turning back to God, who would by chastening bring the conscience into direct contact with Him. The spirit of falsehood would persuade that they are very happy. They that call them blessed are the misleaders. Those that are so called and believe them are swallowed up (v. 16).

When the people of God are in a good state, they have at heart the glory of God without which they cannot be satisfied. It is not enough for them that there is no evil going on - this suffices man, but not the glory of God. There are still divisions and miseries because of their iniquities (v. 18-20). But the people is not yet turned to God, and His hand is stretched out still - (v. 21). God does not crush His people even when He smites. He leaves some consolation. Nevertheless His people take up their pride again (chap. 10: 1-4). At last God calls the great instrument of His anger. (chap. 10: 5, etc.). The Assyrian is the rod of His wrath.

There are two phases in the history of the Jewish people. There is first the time when they are owned as the people of God, who chastens them by Egypt and Assyria, yet owns them. Later on He rejects them, and the people become Lo-ammi, Not-His-people. When Israel was carried away captive, it was Lo-ruhamah, but there was not yet an absolute cutting off as a people. When Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem, the people become Lo-ammi. Israel is rejected. God no more owns His people. He watches over them still for final restoration to their land, but "the times of the Gentiles" begin.

Messiah has been presented to the Jews, but not to the ten tribes which had been carried away by the Assyrian. All the history whilst Israel is not owned belongs to the times of the Gentiles. Now in this part of Isaiah we leave aside the times of the Gentiles to follow Israel. God owns His people even in chastising them. The Assyrian is the instrument of the chastisement even at the last.

196 We see in Micah 5: 1-7 that, when the Assyrian shall come into the land, Christ the ruler in Israel will be found there, "the peace." This is not yet arrived. He shall be the peace then when the Assyrian enters. There is a remarkable type of this final attack of the Assyrian in the history of Sennacherib against Hezekiah. Therefore it is that chapters 36-39 are given. The Holy Spirit takes the actual and real circumstances of the Jews to bind up with them the prophecy of the last days. When Sennacherib came, it was Hezekiah who was in Jerusalem. He is a type of the time when Christ is to be there.

God employs the pride and iniquity of the wicked for the chastisement of His people; and afterwards He destroys the instrument. The Assyrian, God's rod to strike Israel, glorifies himself against God, who breaks the rod. So in the early part of the nineteenth century Napoleon Bonaparte smote all the people of the Roman empire, but, being wrong, was after that smitten himself.

When the Assyrian shall have done his work, it is the ceasing of the indignation against Israel: an important point in Israel's history. The destruction of the Assyrian (not of Antichrist) is the end of Jehovah's anger. The Antichrist will have appeared and been judged before. The remnant shall return, the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God, who will search out and punish the glory of man's high looks on all sides, and shall make a consumption even determined in all the land. Christ will maintain Israel.

Isaiah 11.

It is no question here either of Christ as Head of the church or of the church's glory. He is presented as Messiah for the earth ruling, the judgment on the enemy being executed. He is not here called the Root of David, the source of blessing, but a Branch. In Revelation 5 He is the Root of David, in chapter 22 He is Offspring as well as Root. For the church He has a suited relation. He is not judging the earth yet. When He comes again, He will judge, and slay the wicked. (Compare v. 4 and 2 Thess. 2.) Consequently Christ must be looked for to reign over the earth, ruling in righteousness and deciding with equity for the meek of the earth. Actually it is the haughty and unjust who possess the earth. Christ and His own have not yet His rights here below.

197 In verses 5-9 we see the fruit of the curse gone from the earth, which, by the presence of Christ and the Spirit poured from on high, shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. Christ here is not glorified above, nor is it the gospel here below.

Verse 10 is not at all realised yet. Christ is an object of reproach, not of glory. But "in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious." He will be the centre, and the Gentiles will seek Him then: now it is the hour when God the Father seeks true worshippers, a people from among the Gentiles for His name.

In that day not only will the curse of the earth be taken away, and the nations flock to Christ the exalted King; but "the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth," v. 11, 12. As He of old brought His people out of Egypt He will recover the remnant of them from the north and south, east and west. Ephraim and Judah will not only be re-united as a people, but in heart also (v. 13), as they never have been.

From verse 14 we learn that the neighbouring nations, which escape the last great Assyrian, or king of the north (Dan. 11: 41), shall become objects of judgment to returned Israel, when they spoil their more distant enemies. The comparison of the two prophets shews exactness in detail, where unbelief sees only extinct races and thinks accomplishment impossible.

198 It is plain that verses 15, 16 can only apply to an earthly deliverance of Israel like that out of Egypt.

Isaiah 12.

Here we have a song of praise and thanksgiving for their deliverance. "Thou shalt say," etc. (v. 1) means unequivocally Israel. God's anger has not only turned away and ceased, but He is their salvation (v. 2). For all Israel in that day shall be saved. Therefore with joy they draw water out of those exhaustless wells and say Hallelujah (v. 3, 4). But it is Jah Jehovah, not the Father as we know Him now through the Lord Jesus. The effect of their deliverance is that His glory as the Eternal is known in all the earth (v. 5). The Father is known in His family, not in all the earth as such, though by His children everywhere. But here it is the kingdom, and He is known as the Holy One of Israel in Zion. Jehovah reigns, and by Israel He makes Himself known in all the earth.

If we have well seized these two chapters, we cannot confound what is said of Israel and of the church. Christ as the Judge of all must have slain the wicked with the breath of His lips (see chap. 30: 33) in order that the blessing should come to pass. Otherwise we confound the kingdom of Christ's patience with the kingdom of righteous government. If one leads the church to believe that this happy time is come, and that she is to make good all these things, it is to mislead the faithful and to encourage unbelievers. For natural pride is increased by these misapplications of what can only be realised by Christ's coming to reign. Our place meanwhile is to suffer with Christ.

Here we can remark the force of 2 Peter 1: 20: no prophecy of scripture is of its own [particular] interpretation. It is not a question of Nineveh, etc., nor of any other thing in or by itself, but finally of the glory of Jesus, where all meets and all ends. It speaks of a vast and connected system of glory which must be taken as a whole, even as the Spirit wrote it.

In the preceding chapters we have the relationship of God with His people closed by the manifestation of Christ in glory. Here begins a new prophecy, which presents to us the relationship of Israel with the nations. This section of the prophecy goes from chapter 13 to the end of chapter 27, terminating with songs of joy and deliverance, as in the first section.

199 Isaiah 13.

The first of these predictions begins with what is in contrast with Zion, that is to say, with Babylon, and the answer to the messengers of the nations, which is in chapter 14, that Jehovah hath founded Zion, and the poor of His people shall betake themselves to it, when Babylon is destroyed.

Babylon is not only the capital of Nebuchadnezzar and of the habitable world; it is Babel, signifying confusion. It is there men are united to exalt themselves and make themselves a name and a reputation in the world. At the end all the world sets itself to get exaltation for which commerce furnishes the means; and everything there, men's bodies and souls, will be for sale, as we see in Revelation 18. The Spirit of God taking the city of the Chaldees as an occasion gives the mind of God on the city of idolatrous corruption and pride up to the end, and even brings in here future circumstances of which history presents no accomplishment, and whose order is in contrast with that which is already arrived. Thus the Assyrian, if we follow the history, was destroyed before the grandeur of Babylon; whilst the Spirit, speaking of what will happen in the last days, tells us that the Assyrian is to be destroyed after Babylon. In the time of the prophet Babylon had not yet any pretension to be the capital of an empire, but was a provincial city or at most a secondary power, seeking independence of Assyria, and at times gaining it, till it at last became not only aggressive but supreme.

In verse 6 the fall of Babylon is announced as the day of Jehovah. That which will happen in that day is indicated in verses 6-12. There is all that the world has to look for.

One sees in the world either the arrogance of him who has the upper hand, or the envy of him who is below. God will cause to cease the pride of man in both ways; He will punish (as here) not the dead only, but the living, the habitable earth, all that from which the world draws its glory. Its great chiefs, its victories, its wealth, ease, luxury, splendour, what is it but arrogance and self-exaltation? That day will be blessed for those who are poor in spirit, because they will enjoy peace; but the destruction will be so great that a man will be more prized than the gold of Ophir.

"Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove," etc. (v. 13-22). All this is "a promise" to the Christian. (See Heb. 12: 25, 26.) If he is in his place, he is separate from all the interests of the world, he belongs to heaven, to Jesus, which cannot be shaken. The world passes away, and God will make it cease, and this will give rest. It is for us a "promise," as we have seen. Jesus speaks to us from heaven and makes us this promise of shaking once more, not the earth only, but also heaven; because all that which surrounds us is an obstacle which hinders us from enjoying what Jesus has promised us. Christians hasten this time by their faith. God would have us wait for it because His patience is great, and the work of saving souls still goes on here below (2 Pet. 3). If the destruction of all the world-system is not a promise to us, it must be that we are attached to what is on the earth. There is a kingdom which cannot be moved and which will move all others; and it is for this that Christian simplicity waits. Can we truly desire, as the accomplishment of a promise, that God should shake the heavens and the earth? Are our hearts attached to not one thing which shall be the object of that destruction? May God make us see the end of it, that our hearts may be separated from all that is going to be destroyed!

200 Isaiah 14.

When God acts in judgment, there is always care taken of His people. "For Jehovah will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of Jehovah for servants and handmaids and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were and they shall rule over their oppressors," v. 1, 2. When the devastation of the habitable world takes place, there will be the deliverance of the people of God, Israel, who will take possession of the earth.

From verses 3-23 there is a beautiful picture of the fall of Babylon's king in its last representative - the beast of the close. The prophet takes occasion from events at hand in that day; but no prophecy of scripture is made to be of its own interpretation, none has been fully or entirely accomplished. And the reason is that the Holy Spirit has always Jesus and His kingdom in view. God has always the second Man in His mind. Even the first prophecy, that the woman's Seed should crush the serpent's head, is not yet fulfilled. All that there is in God's word points onward to the glory of Christ.

201 There is a crowd of prophetic examples in the word of God, where but half is accomplished. Thus Psalm 8 is not yet accomplished in verses 6-9. We do not yet see all things put under His feet (Heb. 2). Again Psalm 68 is not yet accomplished fully. Hence the apostle omits "for the rebellious also" in Ephesians 4, because it will apply to the Jews in the latter day. It would be to lose the purpose of God to believe the prophecies accomplished on this side of Christ's glory; for it would give to prophecy a particular interpretation.

In verses 12-15 we see that, as long as "the beast" is on the earth, he passes himself off for God. Nevertheless he is doomed to destruction (v. 19). God has but to give the signal, and he who broke kings like reeds is himself a broken reed.

To the Christian Christ is the true Morning Star; but "the beast" claims to be so. He attributes to himself all the glory of Christ. All these details here vaunted in verses 12-15 are true of the Lord Jesus; but the last holder of the power given first to Babylon's head, would also ascend into heaven, and sit too on the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north, taking possession of Christ's kingdom in Zion. Compare for part of the language Psalm 48: 2: there was the city of the great king. The beast would also possess himself of Christ's heavenly glory, and be like the Most High; but He who is Son of God and Son of man will overthrow the man of the earth, who shall cause no more fright after that (Ps. 10: 18).

The beast and the false prophet being destroyed, Christ is King in Zion. In due time comes the destruction of the Assyrian, as we see here in verses 24-27. "Jehovah of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass: and as I have purposed, so shall it stand: that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders. This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations. For Jehovah of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?" The Assyrian is no less senseless in rising up against Christ associated with Israel, the Prince of princes. The indignation is accomplished then, and Israel long chastised is owned of God. When Christ reigns in Zion, Israel is owned, but all the enemies are not yet destroyed. That which follows the destruction of Babylon and the beast is the destruction of the Assyrian, or king of the north. It is a mistake to confound the little horn of Daniel 7 with the little horn of Daniel 8, which last elevates himself not against the God of gods, but against the Lord of lords. For the indignation to cease completely the Assyrian must be destroyed (Micah 5). He will trample down the Assyrian in His land, because He owns Israel for His people. God will assert in the person of Christ all His rights over the earth.

202 In verses 28-32 is the judgment of the Philistines, the remains of the Canaanites. Hezekiah laboured for their submission. The Lord Jesus will finish it by a destruction more terrible when He stablishes His throne in Zion. When Babylon, the Assyrian, and the Philistines are put down finally, the poor and needy remnant shall he down in safety, and Zion shall be their bulwark. (See Ps. 132.) Never in God's word does that mountain mean anything but itself, being wholly inapplicable to the church.

Isaiah 15, 16.

From chapter 13 we have begun to see Israel the centre of all the providence of God in the world, in contrast to all the other nations. Deuteronomy 32 shews Israel as the centre of God's ways in the world. In antiquity there is no profane history of any importance which is not in connection with the Jewish people. God has a people in the midst of whom He governs and manifests His ways and the consequences of His character. This is true of Israel and the church. All that happens to them is the manifestation of the principles of God's government. God abode visibly in Israel, His throne was there. He abides by the Spirit in the church. He acts always in government in the midst of His people; it is there He would manifest Himself and not abide only in heaven.

From the moment God is in Israel He identifies Himself with His people. In consequence of this the nations are treated according as they treated Israel. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me," says the King. The moment they touch Israel, they touch the apple of His eye. In all these chapters we see the relations of Israel with the nations, and the nations judged of God because they trod down His people, though He used them also to punish His people. But the world enters into God's mind and assails His people, because they are (not unfaithful to Him but) hateful to them, as they would swallow up all they have. When His people are unfaithful, God sends a testimony to them, as Jeremiah; but they accuse him of conspiring against them, of weakening them, etc., because he tells them that in consequence of their departure from God He will give them over to the Chaldeans.

203 Here we have Moab wasted and cut off with bitter sorrow, the more humiliating after all their pride. And the very burden which proclaims Moab reduced hopelessly, declares that David's throne shall be prepared in mercy with One sitting on it in truth, judging and seeking judgment and hasting righteousness.

Isaiah 17.

Next comes the burden of Damascus and its degradation from a city to a ruinous heap. In verses 4-6 we see the judgment of Israel, but gleaning grapes are left there. God chastises His people till they cease to rest on their own strength, instead of relying on God alone. Yet when dwindled down to a remnant of two or three here and four or five there, they shall look to Himself, the only source of strength, the Holy, One of Israel. For their idolatry they had been desolated. But in the hour of their desperate grief, when nations seem once more ready to engulf and overwhelm them, rebuke comes, and the rushing multitudes are as chaff before the wind (v. 12-14) - When God's people are faithless, they are able to act even after the prudence and wisdom of the natural man. When they do not rest on God, they are feebler than the world; and when they are given over to a chastening, they are immediately broken to pieces.

The prophet Habakkuk demands the judgment of God, because He is broken-hearted at seeing iniquity in the dwelling of righteousness. When God says He will punish and shews the prophet the desolation of His people, Holdest thou thy tongue, says the prophet, when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he? Jehovah then answers, "The just shall live by his faith." Our relations with God, because He dwells in the midst of us, bring His judgment on men because of what they do to the people of God.

204 Isaiah 18.

It is needful to remember the position of the land of Israel. The rivers of Ethiopia (Cush) are the Nile and the Euphrates, which represent the two nations on the frontiers of Israel that had oppressed them, Egypt and Babylon.

The country here summoned, "shadowing with wings" (v.1), is beyond those rivers. It was a country unknown at the time when the prophet lived, and was consequently in no connection as yet with Israel; but it will be so in the last days. To shadow with wings is an expression often employed in the word of the Lord for marking protection. It will be a powerful nation, outside their ordinary limits, undertaking to protect Israel.

The great nations of those days occupy themselves with the Jews (v. 2). From the time the nations begin to be the object of God's judgment, they will be crushed (Zech. 12: 1-3).

"All ye inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the mountains" (v. 3) God summons attention to that which He is going to do. "See ye when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye."

"For so Jehovah said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling-place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest," v. 4. We see what God will do when the nations, following their own policy, will have restored the Jews to their land. He lets them act, and keeps quiet; but He keeps His eye on His dwelling-place.

"For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the springs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches," v. 5. It is not yet judgment, so all comes to nothing, whatever the promise, as in all human things where God is concerned. Compare Isaiah 6: 10.

"They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them," v. 6. The people are brought back to their land to be given over as a prey to the nations, like wild beasts in winter or ravenous birds in summer. Such will be their fate when anew returned to Palestine, for God is not yet putting His hand to it. Jerusalem will again be the central object of political schemes for the world, though the world despises God's people, and never occupies itself with them but to exalt itself. The Jew will be oppressed by the Gentiles once more in their land; but deliverance is at hand.

205 "In that time shall the present be brought unto Jehovah of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, the mount Zion," v. 7. A present is to be brought of Israel and from Israel to Jehovah. They will bring an offering, and themselves be as it were an offering., to Jehovah, who will manifest anew His abode in Zion (after all the long sorrows and desolations), but also His hand in judgment of the nations. After this will begin His relationship with Israel for everlasting blessing under Messiah and the new covenant. The mount of Zion is the place God has chosen, in contrast with Sinai, the mountain of the nation's responsibility and ruin. (See Heb. 12.) At Sinai God gave, not His promises, but His law; and Israel stood afar off and fell under its curse. Zion is quite another thing. Israel failed under Moses and Aaron, the judges, Eli, Samuel and Saul, under priest, prophet and king. But David is chosen in sovereignty and places the ark of God in Zion, which becomes the display of royal grace on earth, after man in every respect had failed in his relations with God.

The mountain of Zion is for the earth the same thing in principle as heaven is (save royalty) for God's relations with the church. The majesty of God no more requires righteousness in man. It establishes itself in grace on the earth when man broke down in everything. This will be true in all, though we shall not be there but above. Jehovah of hosts (that is, the God of government here below) will place Israel, not the church, in connection with the mount Zion. The Father will have us with the Son in His house on high as His children, instead of governing us as His subjects on the earth. It is always important to distinguish our pan from that of the earthly people; if not, we necessarily lower our calling, our privileges, and our responsibility. God puts Himself in relation with the world as King by means of His people Israel.

206 Isaiah 19, 20.

There is a change to be noticed, in that from this point the Spirit of God does not so much give us the deliverance of Israel as the desolation of the nations in question. Here in chapter 20 it is the burden of Egypt, its judgment and its blessing, when not Israel only but Assyria, their then conqueror, shall be blessed. If ruin befell that land meanwhile, if anarchy followed, if cruel lords after this oppressed, grace will succeed and bless in the end. But how complete the change when the land of Judah shall be a terror to Egypt, etc. (chap. 19: 17), a thing never yet fulfilled! On the contrary Egypt dominated the Jews under the Ptolemies, as of old under the Pharaohs. When Israel becomes at length the inheritance of Jehovah, both Egypt and Assyria shall oppress no more, but come into special relationship and blessing from God. Chapter 20 is but the sequel, marking by a sign in the prophets person the vanity of hoping in Egypt or Ethiopia against Assyria.

Isaiah 21, 22.

These two chapters introduce us to God's mind by shewing the contrast between Babylon "the desert of the sea," and Jerusalem "the vision of peace." The idea of the Holy Spirit speaking of Babylon is that it becomes a "wilderness," the "sea" in prophetic language signifying the mass of peoples.

It is in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit sees the glory and the peace of Christ, Salem as is well known meaning "peace." The confusion is evident historically, if one essays to consider the prophecy as a whole already accomplished, however visibly Babylon's fall is given. It is plainly here a question of God's ways in times to come. All the events are brought together here without any reference to the chronological order of the past, but in the relation that they will have among each other to the last days. For Jerusalem falls after Babylon, the inverse of history. We find here also instruction for ourselves now.

In chapter 21 we see God preparing a rod of vengeance for Babylon, as of chastening in the following chapter for Jerusalem where the power of evil was displaying itself after another way.

207 How instructive for the soul which like a sentinel pays attention to that which God is going to do in His government of the earth! Men are of no value and know nothing at all: all their wisdom and their prudence only contribute to bring about the result that God has prepared for the manifestation of His glory in the person of Jesus, in the midst of the Jewish people. Prophecy makes us understand that all is judged in the world, and that all the world's course is but "the desert of the sea."

In Babylon had the Jews been captive; and there is found the pride and glory of the world. It has been thought that Babylon will be literally re-built by the unbelief which will vaunt itself against God to shew that what has been said of Babylon is not true. But if so, this will draw the final judgment on it.

Verses 11, 12. Dumah, or Edom, has a perpetual hatred against God's people. His people may be in an extremely poor state, and the world say with insolence against them, Where is your God? Here is the answer of the Spirit of God to this insolence (v. 12): "What of the night?" The Edomites spoke against Jerusalem, not because it was corrupt, but just because it was the city of the great King.

For us the night will soon be past, the morning will come. It is still the night as to the world. For the people of God the morning comes; it is their hope and their consolation. But for the world it is a question of the night. So long as Jesus was in the world He was the light of the world, but the night is there since Jesus is there no longer.

The insolence of enemies serves to exercise and strengthen faith; it recalls to the child of God what his privileges are and his position. If the people of God are unfaithful, God chastises them, and may call them Lo-ammi (Not-my-people); but in the presence of the world one remembers that they are notwithstanding the people of God. Jacob had often been unfaithful and chastised in every way, saying to Pharaoh, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been"; yet he blessed the king. Jacob as God's servant and chosen, though wretched and feeble, was in a position superior to that of the king of Egypt. The feeblest child of God is superior to the world in all its glory and strength. The church is unfaithful and has lost the manifestation of the favour of God. This should be a subject of humiliation. But if the world is insolent, we can answer to it, "The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come."

208 These are the counsels of God, and the character of God who acts in His government according to the conduct of His people. He has manifested His character in shewing an admirable patience till there was no remedy. As to this world, where God manifests His way, the church is responsible and treated according to its responsibility, As to heavenly glory, the church cannot fail any more than the grace of God which calls to it.

The burden of Arabia follows in verses 13-17; all the glory of Kedar shall fail.

In chapter 22 comes the burden of the valley of vision. What is this that happened to Jerusalem? What is it that they expect? "What aileth thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the house-tops?" (v. 1). To-day also is the world on the house-tops, looking out; and the church so called no less than the world, for each feels that all is crumbling.

Verse 4. The prophetic Spirit does not hide the evil, but, in place of rejoicing over it like Edom, it is afflicted, and weeps bitterly, as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. This is ever the effect of intelligence in the ways of God. There is no need of prophecy but when things go to wreck. It awakens the affections of the heart. The spirit which is in us answers to the Spirit of prophecy, which is the expression of God's affection for His people. One loves with God; and there is always a great sweetness in this fellowship of thoughts with God, where the subject of them is painful.

Verse 5. God demolishes the wall, He rejects His house, His altar. It is the judgment of God which leaves Jerusalem a prey to the Gentiles. If there is evil, God cannot manifest His favour. He can restore His people, but He cannot glorify them in the world if they are unfaithful.

Verses 8-11. All that the wisdom of man can suggest to him is to fortify the wall God broke down. They take wise measures, they make a ditch for the water of the old pool. It is very prudent to hinder the water flowing outside the city to refresh their enemies. But with all this wisdom they forgot to look to the Maker and fashioner of it long ago. "And in that day did the Lord Jehovah of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die. And it was revealed in mine ears by Jehovah of hosts, Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord Jehovah of hosts," v. 12-14. Such is the result. The prophetic Spirit seeing this cannot but weep for the ruin of the daughter of His people. It is a spirit of humiliation. The history of the same acts is presented to us in the Chronicles as a proof of blessing, and it was such on Hezekiah; but the worm was at the heart, and the people did not return to Him who struck them, but all went from bad to worse. In comparing this with the history, there is not a passage which bears more on the heart than the judgment God here pronounces on the efforts of man to re-establish what God would break down.

209 From verse 15 to the end I do not doubt that one should see in Shebna Antichrist set aside for the Messiah typified by Eliakim (that is, the God of resurrection). All the glory, great or small, attaches to Jesus on the throne of David; and all the power of Antichrist shall be cut off. Till Jehovah speaks, Antichrist looks strong and sure, and he counts on the future but from the moment God speaks, he falls (v. 25).

We have also the judgment of the city. But we see the fall of Babylon necessary in order that Jerusalem should appear on the scene, though its state be one of perplexity and distress, desiring and undertaking to restore things, but God blowing on all. And all falls with Antichrist, whereon God sets up the throne in Jesus and gives His blessing to all the earth.

We see in these chapters how God destroys the insolence of man and judges the unfaithfulness of His people. The world's insolence as to God's children ought not to shake their confidence, but on the contrary to strengthen it. For God takes knowledge of everything; and their cause is that of God, who will be glorified in them at the end.

Isaiah 23.

In chapter 23 we see the burden of Tyre. The immediate aim was the capture of this great seat of ancient commerce by Nebuchadnezzar; but the Spirit of prophecy does not stop with Jehovah's purpose then against its merchant princes, when the honourable of the earth were brought into contempt, and the pride of all glory stained, and the ships of Tarshish smitten in their strength. Whatever the re-appearance of Tyre after the overthrow of the Chaldean, the prophecy looks onward to a brighter day when her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to Jehovah.

210 Isaiah 24.

Since chanter 13 we have in general judgments on the nations, and have seen the Jews given up for the Gentiles, the beasts of the earth, to winter upon them. Here we see judgment on Israel, and from verse 13 extending to all the earth and the isles of the sea. At that time the resurrection will be, and after the judgment blessing. How many Christians walk as if the coming of the Lord were a fable, without a thought that the present age is an evil one! It is sad that through lack of spirituality so it should be with saints. If their affections were only set on heavenly things, things here below would no longer act on them.

The counsels of God are manifested in the ways of God. One may begin to retire from the world by the precepts of the gospel; but prophecy confirms these precepts by the light it casts on the world, when these precepts yet more separate us, shewing their practical value.

It is a question at first of the men of Judea. But all nations of the earth will be occupied with Jerusalem and gathered there where the judgment of God is to fall. From the land the transition is to the prophetic earth, and then to all the world (v. 3, 4, etc.)

It is a frightful character in the joy of the world that it cannot subsist before God. His presence puts an end to all that the world loves and desires. How terrible the thought if realised by faith! Bring in the manifestation of God, and the world's joy, gaiety, pleasure is all destroyed (v. 7-12). The Christian ought to abide in complete separation from all that. It is important that the testimony home against (not the world only, but) worldly Christians should be distinct and positive. With a worldly person, not bearing Christ's name, one thinks at least of speaking to him of grace. But to a Christian who, knowing his privileges, walks with the world, it is hard to speak of grace, because he abuses it. Love does not consist in walking with such, but in warning them. That which gives intelligence is the unction from the Holy One. It is not possible to walk in the light and in worldliness. One must shew oneself more decided with the Christian who is worldly than with the worldly man: "If any man that is called a brother be . . . with such an one, no not to eat," 1 Cor. 5: 11. There is love. If we believe that God is going to judge Sodom, how could we be at ease in Sodom with Lot? This is of all importance to-day.

211 The latter portion shews the consequence of the vintage for a little remnant. If one passes across the world, one sees how God is forgotten. Before executing judgment, God separates from the perverse generation which is about to be judged, those who are going to be saved.

If a Christian passes through the world, there is nothing to find there which speaks of Christ; and he is called to confess Christ where no one thinks of Him. Do you believe that, when the judgment shall have fallen, what will remain will be only as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done? The Holy Spirit reveals to us beforehand what the reality will manifest, the glory of Christ, the ruin of the world, the blessing of the remnant. It is evident that the judgment of God will effect a total separation between the righteous and the wicked. If the Holy Spirit acts with power, that is realised beforehand in us. The effect of judgment is to give a glory and a joy without mixture.

From the moment that judgment is executed, God appears as the Jehovah - God of Israel (v. 15). Verses 16-18 shew the state of the Jewish people. Man may vaunt himself long against God, but he will not escape judgment when the Eternal is manifested. "The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again," v. 19, 20. Such is the end of all that surrounds us.

But there is more: "And it shall come to pass in that day that Jehovah shall punish the hosts of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth." The high ones are spiritual wickedness on high, or in the heavenlies, the source of the evil; the kings of the earth are the chief instruments here below. "And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when Jehovah of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously," v. 22, 23. The glory of Jehovah replaces all the false glitter of the world.

212 Isaiah 25.

This is the song of Israel which corresponds with the subject. We have need of long patience. The counsels were of old, and they are faithfulness and truth; they are not yet accomplished, but they will be manifested in all their precision and solidity according to God. 2 Peter 3 shews us the world clinging to visible things: the sun rose to-day, as it did yesterday and will to-morrow, and with more prosperity still in hope. Let us eat and drink say they: the things that are have ever been, and nothing is so permanent; the earth, the world, goes on for ever. So men speak and act. The child of God, on the contrary, rests on the firmness of God's word. By His word the world was made; by His word it has been judged and will be destroyed. If we judge by the events before us, as incredulity does, we shall attach ourselves till the last moment to the things about to pass away. If I conclude from experience, I try to make the best of things around me, instead of adhering to the word of God. It is a principle of all importance. Faith separates from evil, because it is evil; but it is quite a different thing to separate from a thing because God is going to judge it. One sees Christians who do not recognise evil until they are injured by it. But one ought to recognise evil beforehand by the word of God, in order not to be in the midst of evil when it shall be judged. It is not the man entangled by evil who can put his brethren on their guard.

In verses 2-8 we have the things that God does in that day. Not only will He put down wickedness and pride, but He will make unto all people a feast of fat things, that is, a full blessing; and He will destroy in the mountain of Israel the covering that covers over all people - an expression very applicable to the day when judicially God will send men strong delusion that they should believe a lie. Moreover He will swallow up death in victory, wiping away every tear and taking away the rebuke of His people from off all the earth. This is applied in 1 Corinthians 15: 54 to the first resurrection, of which the apostle treats throughout. All is presented together in a general way. We may so, for the Eternal has spoken, and it is our blessedness to believe God when there is only the word of God for our faith. The world will think only of what it likes; man believes Satan and despises God, who demands faith in His word; and we believe God in the midst of all the illusions, and the wiles of the devil by which we are surrounded in this world. We must believe God though encompassed with the effects of sin. Adam believed Satan though encompassed with the effects of the goodness of God. Faith gains the victory over the world, and acts in fact of that which is not as if it already existed.

213 Comparing verse 8 of our chapter with 1 Corinthians 15: 54 we see something different in tone from the resurrection of the wicked, who are to be by rising again plunged into the lake of fire, the second death. We clearly see here Israel restored at the time of the first resurrection. All the brightness of the sun will be as nothing in comparison with the glory of Jehovah, when the covering of darkness shall be removed from the nations. For God will have delivered the Gentiles to blindness (Rom. 1; 2 Thess. 2). In the two chapters that follow are given the blessing of Judah, and the destruction of Satan or leviathan.

"In that day" (v. 1) is an expression of frequent recurrence which marks the time of accomplishment. "In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah." Israel becomes again the centre of God's government for the earth (Deut. 32: 8). At present the nations have the upper-hand; these are the "times of the Gentiles"; but at length Judah re-appears on the scene as the object of God's counsels.

Though Israel has been for a time delivered to the nations as to fierce beasts of prey, nevertheless the nations are not the direct object of the government of God, whilst providence directs everything. From Psalm 67 and many other scriptures we learn that the face of God must shine on Israel in order that His way may be known in the earth. When God strikes the nations, they are set aside, and He resumes the course of His government toward Israel. God overthrows the power of the Gentiles, and as to Israel shews Himself to be Jehovah, the Eternal.

"The way of the just is uprightness" (v. 7) - of him who walks faithfully. The immediate government of God takes place only in the midst of His people. Them God judges; and when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world. Every act in the life of the Christian has its consequence. God judges immediately, and the unfaithful Christian has not a path of uprightness. This is what Israel has already proved, as it will prove more. God smooths the way of him who is faithful.

214 The remnant of the Jewish people will have waited for Jehovah, spite of Antichrist and all the difficulties. Psalm 44 shews the anguish of the remnant at this time. God has to chasten them; nevertheless they are watched tenderly by God. Jesus perfectly realised this waiting of the faithful which counts on God, whatever the anguish to which obedience might bring Him. Never did He turn aside from the path of obedience, although it led Him on to drink "the cup."

"The inhabitants of the world" will only learn righteousness (v. 9) by the divine judgment which strikes the earth. The Christian ought to take his part in suffering; if he walks with the world, he does not understand the interests of Christ and is weakened, he has not the desire for the glory of Christ and does not suffer for Christ. "The inhabitants of the world" are not of God; their portion is on the earth, they enjoy this world. We (Christians) are the dwellers in the heavens, or at least belong to heaven (1 Cor. 15: 48; Phil. 3: 20), though too often Christians learn the ways of the dwellers on earth. God waits till iniquity reaches its height before striking; meanwhile the wicked will deal unjustly still.

"The land of uprightness" (v. 10) is what is promised to Israel, Canaan under the Messiah.

The wicked fail to see the uplifted hand of Jehovah (v. 11) until it falls upon them, when they shall see. As to the result here below, grace does not accomplish the conversion of the world, Every hope of the world's conversion by the gospel is without ground in the word of God; and it is even worse with Christendom, hardened as it is against the truth, than with pagans. Christendom as it refuses the love of the truth will receive a spirit of error.

The Jewish remnant (v. 12, 13), have nothing but the name of Jehovah to boast. There are moments in life for the saint where nothing but that remains for the soul.

215 The nations which ill-treated Israel shall not live longer; their day is over. Not chosen of God for this world, they have failed in their responsibility; their day of visitation comes, and all their memory is made to perish.

Verses 15-19. Israel ends by renouncing all hope in itself; whilst now-a-days we see the Jews in their unbelief full of hope in their re-establishment. Yet they shall live. (Compare Ezek. 37.) They shall rise as a nation.

The remnant (v. 20, 21) are called to hide themselves during the time of indignation or the day of vengeance. It is the time when the lawlessness of Antichrist will draw down the consuming wrath of God. The sole testimony will then be His judgment.

Isaiah 27.

We have here another fact of all importance. The power of Satan in the world is destroyed, a power which governs and deceives the nations. Israel becomes the vineyard of red wine that Jehovah keeps, waters, and guards: whoever would harm it must face His judgment; but He offers peace with Him, and His strength to make it good. Israel became the centre of earthly blessing. To this the church has not been destined; and the moment it is her pretension, it is nothing but pride. In fact the church has failed in the mission she received of announcing the gospel and of being the witness of Christ's heavenly glory; and if she would after that pretend to it and count on it as a right, is this any more than pride? Even things which at one time are of faith are in other circumstances only pride. For instance Isaiah tells the king in chapter 38 to count on the deliverance of Judah from the Assyrian; whereas Jeremiah tells the king at a later day to save himself by submission to the Chaldean. in Isaiah 51 God tells His people to look to Abraham, and as He called their father when he was alone and blessed and increased him; whereas when the Jew boasted of Abraham in pride, God confounded them, as in Ezekiel 33: 24; Matthew 3: 9; John 8: 39.

In verses 7, 8 we see Israel chastened, not destroyed. It is a purifying dealing. "By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin" (v. 9) in the very day when judgment takes its course on the wicked who have no understanding (v. 10, 11).

216 From verses 12, 13 we see that there will be among the nations a remnant of Israel to be recalled one by one (Matt. 24: 31). Such is the unravelling of the history of this poor world. All should bid us now stand entirely aloof from its course. The pride of Israel transfers itself to Christendom which arrogates to itself what God never gave it. Worldly-mindedness and the hope of gaining over the world always go together now. When the church thinks of converting the world (instead of gathering out of it to Christ in heaven), it allies itself to the powers of the world. They begin, it is true, by sincerely desiring the conversion of souls; then to arrive at this they join the world and fall into spiritual feebleness. When we rest on the world, we own and affirm its power. Rightly viewed, the conversion of three thousand in one day in Jerusalem was the precursor, not even of the conversion of the city, but of the judgment which was about to fall on it. God abides sovereign, and the Christian admires His sovereignty, and rejoices in it.

Thus from chapter 13 to chapter 27 we have seen judgments falling on the Gentiles, the Jews being found there. From chapter 28 to chapter 35 we shall see the details of what is to happen to the Jews, etc., in the last days of this age. Each revelation closes with a testimony borne to God's glory in Israel.

Isaiah 28.

In this division chapters 28, 29 shew the judgments on Ephraim and Jerusalem (Ariel, that is, lion of God). We see there what God thinks of that which inspires most confidence in man, His judgment condemning it all, and the deliverance of the meek, the remnant of His people.

The first thing judged is the crown of pride, the carelessness of luxury, which leaves man intoxicated and blind. God raises up the Assyrian a mighty and strong one against those who had abandoned themselves to pride and excess. "Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine! Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: and the glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be a fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before the summer; which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up." After this judgment there is a change, and Jehovah becomes a crown of glory, and a spirit of strength for the remnant (v. 5, 6). Pride, ease, luxury, and the world's vain glory hinder the word from striking the conscience; but for the poor, despised, afflicted remnant, God is their resource and strength, and becomes a crown of glory. It is very possible that the people of God should be despised till then.

217 As to the church there is this difference, that from the beginning it is a remnant. "Ye are the fight of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." The ways of God were not such in the Jewish economy. The nation was the people of God, and the remnant remained hidden. Elijah believed himself alone, the remnant was not manifested, though God knew seven thousand. When the church began, the Lord added together such as should be saved, the remnant from among the Jews. The actual principle for the present time is the gathering together in one of the scattered children of God. Among the Jews God did not thus gather His children: they were the elect people that He owned.

It is a mistake that some Christians make of the church an invisible thing. Such was the case with God's children in Judaism, but it is not the principle in Christianity. For the Jews there was only individual faithfulness, besides their common national privileges. But to-day; that is, since Pentecost, the presence of the Holy Spirit is a power that gathers the children of God and produces a corporate testimony in the world. It is a city that cannot be hid. When Israel departs from God, God sends, as to children, precept upon precept, line upon line. "But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, fine upon hue; here a little, and there a little: for with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. But the word of Jehovah was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line: here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken" v. 7-13. God cannot cease to bear testimony till He has exhausted all the means to bring back to Himself.

218 The result of resistance is to bring upon those that resist a blindness so much the greater as it is proportionate to the light refused. If the first testimony is received, more is always added, for it is given to him that hath, and he shall have more abundance. Those who bowed to the witness of John the Baptist received also Jesus; those who rejected it rejected also the Messiah, and the testimony of John was withdrawn, and the people blinded. Jesus bears a greater testimony, the remnant attach to Him. The Holy Spirit bears afterwards testimony and gathers the church; but the Jews rejected Him, and were rejected. These testimonies bring on their judgment. The more God manifests Himself, the more does the heart's natural opposition shew itself. Those who receive the first grace receive the rest until glory, and go from strength to strength. God did not let judgment fall on Jerusalem till Jerusalem rejected the Holy Spirit. When grace is exhausted God sends judgment. The flesh seeks ever to keep the enjoyment of its lusts and would harden the conscience against the testimony that God sends.

The Jews would not have their kingdom and their holy place destroyed; but their unbelief led to a complete blinding, and Satan pushed them on to destruction, going so far as to make them say of Jesus, that He cast out demons by Beelzebub. There is no blindness like that which results from resisting the light, and in presence of the light not renouncing one's own will.

When Jerusalem sees the judgment on Ephraim, to escape it they unite more firmly with the power of evil. "Wherefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hid ourselves," v. 14, 15. In the close it will be Antichrist in alliance with Satan and his instruments. But God gives the remnant a sure foundation-stone in Zion. "Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious comer stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand: when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it," v. 16-18.

219 In the judgments of God, the question one sees debated is between the rights of Satan because of sin, and those of God. It is necessary that the people of God should be judged on the one hand and on the other, that in the midst of the judgment salvation should be found, as Noah in the ark was carried over the waters of the deluge. It is in the cross of Christ that faith sees the judgment of God against our sins, and for ourselves; we are thus saved righteously. So here also judgment will Jehovah lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, when He lays in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone. The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, the waters overflowing the hiding place; but the Stone abides sure and stedfast. The very same thing - God's judgment - which destroys the wicked guarantees the believer against all evil, for he is made God's righteousness in Christ.

The foundation Stone has long been laid at Jerusalem. The blood of the new covenant with His people is carried within the holiest of all, The church is already laid on this Stone meanwhile, because it has owned the Stone which later on is to become the confidence of the Jewish remnant. The church profits by it beforehand, as Israel will doubtless at a later day. The passages where it is a question of this Stone are cited in the New Testament, in the past generally applicable. One often sees passages thus half cited, because as a whole they do not apply to the present. Judgment is not yet laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet. To-day is the time of grace, and not that of judgment.

But judgment will surely come for the earth. "From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report. For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. For Jehovah shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act. Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord Jehovah of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth," v. 19-22. What is Jehovah's "strange work" and "act"? It is the judgment of His people towards whom His goodness has no bounds. This "act" strange to the heart of God, which made the Lord Jesus weep, is the execution of judgment on His people' then apostate. It is a thing God does only when He is forced to it by their extreme iniquity. The Jews have rejected the Christ, and they will have the Antichrist. The consumption, even determined upon the whole earth, will be much more terrible on them. It is the same principle, but even worse, for Christendom which had the light but rejected it. The more truly one is in the light, the more is one necessarily allied to Satan if one rejects the light. Nothing more terrible than a conscience hardened by a perverse will, which commences by the most ordinary lusts. Judas is not the only man fond of money.

220 The end of the chapter (v. 23-29) shews the wisdom of God in the smallest things. He gives to man wisdom in cultivating the earth, in sowing, reaping, and dealing with the crops. And will He not know what to do best for His people?

Isaiah 29.

As chapter 28 gave us Ephraim and Jerusalem, spite of its evil alliance, taken; chapter 29 shews that a second attack against Jerusalem, brought to the utmost distress, will fail through divine power which will destroy its adversaries (v. 1-8).

If Jerusalem is a lion of God, when God speaks of the judgments He says, "I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and I will raise forts against thee," v. 3. The Assyrians were but instruments in His hand. He would Himself strike, but not exterminate His guilty people. He does not destroy, but chastens them. This humbles but it comforts; for love is there. See the case of job: there are the instruments of judgment, and Satan behind them, but God above who directs all for the good of Job, who at the end is more blessed of Jehovah than at the beginning, bright as it was. Psalm 118 shews us these three things clearly. (See v. 10, 13, 18.) The nations surround in enmity, Satan seeks to destroy, but above them all Jehovah chastises and sorely, but does not deliver to death. All the nations of the earth shall be round Jerusalem and opposed to her, but they shall pass as a dream before Jehovah. See also Zech. 12: 2-4; 14: 2, 3; Ps. 108; Micah 4 :11, 12.

221 But we see here that the most ancient relations with God serve no good purpose when man lays his trust in them. When he is far from God, he attaches himself to the old things that God instituted, to reject what God may be actually giving. But one cannot deceive God as to right and wrong. "Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! add ye year to year: let them kill sacrifices. Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be heaviness and sorrow: and it shall be unto me as Ariel," v. 1, 2. He says elsewhere, He would destroy His house, His altar; as He did to Shiloh, so to the temple, whatever the presumption of His people, because He will have righteousness and holiness, not the things He established. God had established the altar, temple, sacrifices, feasts, and priests; but when iniquity is there, judgment must begin with His house, and its judgment is only the more terrible if the effects of the Holy Spirit are not there; the sole consequence of being near to God outwardly is the more unsparing judgment. Again, the more Christendom departs from truth and righteousness, the more it rests on institutions as being of God. It is not those who are occupied with the Lord of the temple that say, "The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are these." The more evil the conscience is, the more it attaches itself to forms.

No doubt sovereign mercy and faithfulness will work in a remnant, and God will deliver for His own name at the end. But we see in verses 9-14 at the side of these forms, that God despises the incapacity of His people judicially blinded of God: learned or ignorant alike reject the word of God. To the one the book is as sealed, and the other pleads that he is not learned: the revelation of God by prophecy they cannot seize. Yet He reveals all for the blessing of His people, not that aught should be covered. He has not given the Bible that it should not be understood. If Christians say that they cannot take it in, they say just what the Jews do here, the proof of their state of ruin. They thus evade the testimony which would save them from the consequences of the judgment. But in vain. "Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from Jehovah, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding? Is it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest?" v. 15-17.

222 But babes receive God's testimony. "And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in Jehovah, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel," v. 18, 19.

The Lord does not present us here with the detailed history of His people in the last days. He takes cognisance of all that will happen to them; He has measured the force of the enemy; He has not only foreseen all, but makes us see that light behind all these means.

The state of the people in the time that precedes destruction is a voluntary ignorance, after which God closes intelligence and sheds profound slumber. This will happen to Christendom also. There will be "strong delusion" because they wished not the truth. It is the same here in verses 8-11. This iniquity will be like the bowing of a wall about to fall. They wish to hear no more vision threatening them with the terrible things that are to happen. It had been similar with the heathen who had not kept the knowledge of God, and were given over to a state of blindness (Rom. 1: 22-24). God had already said of Israel, "Make the heart of this people fat," a word applied for the last time in Acts 28. It is the case then for the heathen, the Jews, and Christendom, and it will be yet again true for the Jews. They have said to the seers, See not (chap. 30: 10). It is frightful to know the people at such a pitch that they can no more be extricated. This obstinacy assumes an appearance of reason, because it is a strong delusion.

223 Verses 13, 14. This is not an avowed infidelity which brings on the judgment. The people draw near to God with a shew of piety: they have a fear taught by the precept of men. It will be the same with Christendom: there will be a form of godliness; yes, and men will be lovers of themselves rather than of God. Such is what characterises the perilous times, the show of piety, but no conscience before God (v. 15). Then God turns all upside down. Lebanon is turned into Carmel. The fruitful field is esteemed a forest, and the forest a fruitful field. This is always what characterises such a state; but when God turns all upside down, verses 18-24 will be seen accomplished. All that is yet to come.

Isaiah 30.

Woe is pronounced on the rebellious children who act according to their prudence, but not counselled of Jehovah (v. 1-7). This is found too often even with the Christian. It is folly, even with the best intentions, to take counsel of oneself. It characterises the evil in the last times. For the Christian, is it not to take counsel of God, if one forms a plan, and then pray for a blessing? Often it is necessary for us to run back the road so as to return to the place which one had quitted. All that is time lost.

Israel sought an ally in Egypt strong as the Assyrians (v. 2). It is to seek strength in the flesh. God would make this prudence vain; He would have His people confide in Himself. So Abram went down into Egypt without consulting God (Gen. 12), and found himself the worse for it. What things have we, dear friends, done to-day without consulting God? It has been all lost time thus to act without God' Man would always act; though on many occasions God would have one keep quietly waiting (1 Sam. 15). Whatever be the appearances of reason and prudence, it is always folly for man to wish to go before God's time. God does not slumber, He tries our hearts and intervenes at last in a suitable time.

Nothing is more despicable than the people of God in alliance with the world. They can but add their misery to that of the world, and the world profits them in nothing (chap. 31: 3). Ruin will come on all that the deceivers do (v. 8-14). There is no people like God's when He abandons them: the evil reaches them, the good escapes them; there is neither force nor intelligence (v. 15-17).

224 Nevertheless Jehovah waits that He may be gracious unto them (v. 18). The Pharisees, who would have made a heap of the adulteress, disappear; whilst Jesus stays to shew grace, of which they felt no need. (See John 8: 9-11.)

"For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee," v. 19. This is given also in Joel 2: 12-14. From the moment the remnant take the place where God put them, He listens to their cry. Faith takes the place of the sinner and humbles itself, and then God answers. If the church is in a sad state, faith has the consciousness of the state the church is found in; owns it, humbles itself, and God can answer. It is what Christ has done for us; He has owned fully before God the state of sin in which He put Himself for us, and He has wrought redemption. The remnant will feel the ruin of Jerusalem, and will cry according to the misery and the ruin of Jerusalem. Faith gives the consciousness of the state of ruin in which sin has placed us.

"And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left," v. 20, 21. This is consoling. The remnant will be in the utmost distress, but they shall see their teachers, and hear the word of guidance. Misery may be deep, but God will shew the way. Once they are brought down to the point where God sees things, He has always a way for His people, and as they depart from all iniquity, so He will bless with every blessing on the earth (v. 22-26). The nations are to assemble in the power of their will, but God will sift and scatter them in devouring judgment (v. 27-30), while the remnant rejoice in their place.

The Assyrian is always presented here as the one with whose destruction ends "the indignation." (See chaps. 10: 24; 14; Dan. 8.) When the Assyrian is destroyed the indignation will be closed. (Compare Micah 5: 5, 6.) Jesus "shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land." "For through the voice of Jehovah shall the Assyrian be beaten down, which smote with a rod. And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass, which Jehovah shall Jay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps: and in battles of shaking will he fight with it. For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of Jehovah, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it," v. 31-33. The staff of Jehovah shall fall on the Assyrian. One sees the aim of this judgment of God. He is full of patience and longsuffering. His people meanwhile are in alarm at the power of the enemy. When God strikes the enemies, it is always the deliverance of His people. Tophet, the place of the Assyrian's judgment, is already prepared, not for him only, but also for "the king," the Antichrist who shall do according to his will. (See Dan. 11: 36-45.) Antichrist will be cast with the Assyrian into Tophet. "The breath of Jehovah like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it." (Compare 2 Thess. 2: 8.) He will destroy the wicked with the breath of His mouth.

225 If we listen to our own will, it would put us in movement according to the strength of man against the evil which surrounds us. But we have nothing else to do but wait on God, abiding faithful to Him who will not let us fall into ruin through the adversary. May God give us grace to receive His word that this rebellious people would not receive. For God waits to be gracious to those that receive His word. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell on the earth," Rev. 3: 10.

Isaiah 31.

The Lord warns His people against the tendency to seek aid in Egypt. It is not any longer only taking counsel without God, but leaning on the flesh. It is the tendency of us all not to have recourse to God unless forced to it. The prodigal son ate the husks of swine before he thought of his father's house. To lean on God one must be in the truth, having the consciousness of what we are; one cannot bring lies before God. What often hinders conversion, or at least retards it, is that one misunderstands what one is by nature, that is, without strength and ungodly. It is the same in all our ways, seeking to lean on any rather than on God. Israel had been taken out of Egypt and carried to Babylon. Called out of the world one falls into corruption. Egypt typifies the natural strength of the world, Babylon of the world's corruption. Israel seeks support in the natural strength of man. That does not irritate pride nor unveil what we are. One cannot lean on God without the beating down of flesh's pride and the learning that we are nothing. The tendency of sin is to veil sin from our eyes. Far from God we cannot know what is the power of God, though we might have known it at other times. Far from God we forget what He is. It is not a question only for us of God in heaven, but of His manifestation in the midst of His people, mixing Himself with all their affairs, and accompanying them in all their journeyings (Ex. 29: 45, 46).

226 What is true for the joy of God's people is also true for their strength; it comes from the presence of God. It is also the case with the church which is God's habitation through the Spirit. It is true of each Christian individually. God does not manifest His power in the activity of the flesh. If one acts in the flesh, one loses the consciousness of what God can do. When we see that God acts, one does not even think of seeking the resources of the flesh. In the activity of the flesh, one feels that one has no right to count on God.

The flesh seeks to hide the thing from itself, or to take its side of going with the world, or to find somewhere a resource to hinder chastening. The consequence of this is that one does not at all perceive when good comes (Jer. 17). Israel set themselves outside the way, and when the Lord acts, they do not at all see it; they will then be overthrown with those from whom they sought succour.

Often the Lord makes one wait long as if He did not trouble Himself with the lot of His people. But when they are in the greatest distress, God acts. The extremity of man is the opportunity of God, the moment favourable and suited for Him to manifest Himself. It is difficult to convince man of this - that God loves him enough to think of him and deliver him. Faith has only God, and God alone is the resource of the people in the resurrection.

We have already seen that the Assyrian is the last enemy of the people (v. 8, 9).

227 Isaiah 32.

The moment that God acts, Christ appears. This chapter is the one God used to open my understanding to the coming of Christ. We see, first, Christ coming to reign in righteousness on the earth; second, an entire change in the economy, a new Pentecost for the Jews and also for the Gentiles. An outpouring of the Holy Spirit cannot be repeated in the present economy. There are but two outpourings of the Spirit, the rain of the former season and that of the latter. The Jews must necessarily have returned to their own land in order to receive the rain of the latter season which has been promised them. Thus there must be the presence of Christ on earth, and a second effusion of the Holy Spirit. But this will be a testimony rendered to the glory of Christ, and no longer a manifestation of grace. We see in Zechariah 2: 8 that it is "after the glory" the Jews become a blessing to the nations. The testimony to the glory of Christ thus manifested is not in this economy.

We see here then the return of Christ (v. 1), and the Spirit poured out from on high on the Jews (v. 15), entirely new events. All that has taken place before in Christendom will be counted only as a forest and not a fruitful field, or a Carmel the hail shall fall on the forest (of the Gentiles), and "the city Babylon shall be utterly abased."

Verses 1, 2. The first thing is a king who is to reign on earth in righteousness. The church on the contrary ought during the actual economy to follow Jesus, righteous indeed but suffering, put to death by a judge who owned His innocence. The righteous man suffers, and injustice the most flagrant is committed against such. Such is the position of the Christian and the church. It is not yet a king reigning in righteousness. In the age to come righteousness shall reign. Even then it will not be the eternal state where righteousness dwells in the new earth. During the millennium there will be the need of a reign to repress evil. The principle of the present economy is the suffering of the saints though walking righteously: in the future age "judgment will return to righteousness," whilst at the present time it is opposed to righteousness.

Verses 9-14. judgment must go on, Zion even be a wilderness, until (v. 15) the Spirit be poured upon us (the Jews) from on high: then all should be changed for good, the wilderness be a Carmel, and what was a Carmel be counted for a forest.

228 God, having put man near Himself, above by resurrection and ascension, pours out from on high the Holy Spirit upon those who believe, as a Spirit of power, which it is needful to distinguish from His work in conversion or the new birth. At the time of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came down on the converted only. We see that not only does the Holy Spirit act on us to make us believe, but moreover when we believe He is therein given to us as a Spirit of power. All this got blotted out little by little in its effects by the unfaithfulness of the church, which grieved the Holy Spirit who dwells there. When the church is caught up to meet the Lord, the Holy Spirit goes along with it; but after the Lord returns in power and glory, the Spirit is poured out afresh as the rain of the latter season, and the world recommences as a thing quite new. "Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places," etc. (v. 16-18). But it is the moment of the world's judgment (v. 19), followed by the blessedness of peace on earth (v. 20).

The chapter thus presents us with the complete change of the economy. It is not here a question of the church. The relationships and the state of the faithful will be then quite opposite in character. To-day it is a question of conformity to the grace of Jesus in suffering, then to His glory and power on earth. The earth cursed because of sinful man will be blessed; flesh and unrighteousness will be uprooted. The vile person will no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. Peace and righteousness shall flourish; and the Holy Spirit will no more have to resist the power or wiles of Satan who will then be consigned to the abyss. We see the later history of the Jewish remnant in Psalms 42-49, especially in the three earliest of these psalms. Then Psalm 45 introduces the Messiah, and joy comes. We have here this instruction to sustain us on the Lord when He does not manifest Himself. Those who have believed without seeing are to be specially blessed. This is the church's portion; and it applies also to all the circumstances of details. Moreover the presence of the Holy Spirit is all our strength. It is when put to the proof that we are tempted to lean on the flesh, and then faith manifests itself in leaning only on God. But we must be in the truth before Him, and it will be manifest that the remnant seek not help in Egypt.

229 Isaiah 33.

We have seen from chapter 28 the special circumstances of the Jews in the last days, terminating as always in the introduction of the Messiah. Here in chapter 33 we see judgment fall on the last enemy of Israel (it would seem the Gog of Ezekiel); then in chapter 34 on all nations of which Edom is the scene, followed by the unparalleled sketch of the earth's blessing, and joy, and prosperity under Messiah's reign in Zion, when "the last end of the indignation" is closed. Therefore in the midst of the prophecy is found introduced the history of Hezekiah menaced by the Assyrian and his deadly sickness turned, as a type of Messiah and the power of resurrection, and the destruction of the last mighty foe of Israel in the last days, but not without the captivity of Judah and its royal line to Babylon meanwhile.

Edom is another bitter enemy that ever put obstacles in the way of Israel, and yet to be judged in a particular way, when his destruction will be so complete as to leave no remnant. See Obadiah.

We have then in this chapter the judgment of the last great enemy of Israel, typified by the Assyrian, then of Edom and the nations gathered there, to introduce the blessing of Israel and the earth, the land especially when every curse shall be removed.

The invasion of the Assyrian into Judea was groundless he dealt treacherously (v. 1), deceived Hezekiah and, after receiving his treasure, broke the covenant and besieged Jerusalem; but the effect of the distress of Israel at the coming of the Assyrian was that Jehovah rose, was exalted, and lifted Himself up (v. 2-10). One may remark the spirit of intercession in Christ for His people, and how He identifies Himself with them: "Be thou their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble." We see it also very often in the Psalms when He speaks of "mine iniquities" in speaking of those of His people.

230 Verse 5. "Jehovah is exalted," etc. The circumstances indicated in verses 7-9 shew the power of the enemy unlimited. It is thus faith regards all the power of the world. From the moment it sees neither fear of God in the world nor deliverance for itself, it gives itself up to wait on God. Faith judges justly of all. Unbelief judges the circumstances correctly, and the consequences of things visible; it forgets but one thing, God, who comes in and upsets all these combinations, be they ever so wise. Faith pierces even to God across all circumstances and all difficulties. It does not stop to consider, it does not reason on the possibility of things because it only stops at God, and when man despairs, faith is perfectly calm and happy. Faith has no need either of human reasoning or of human prudence. Hezekiah puts before Jehovah the letter of Sennacherib. The wisdom of faith is looking to God, doing His will, and troubling about nothing. When Christ comes, one then sees that the fear of God is wisdom and treasure (v. 6).

The circumstances which are too strong for us ought to have no other effect upon us than to make us realise the presence of God. We see in Psalm 18 how God answers to the distress of His people. He rises, and all crumbles in His presence: the full accomplishment of this Psalm will manifest it.

Verse 14. It is a terrible thing to be found without faith between the power of the enemies of God and the manifestation of the power of God when He descends with devouring fire. The hypocrite cannot dwell there between the two, nor is any one so wretched as a merely professing Christian or a sinful Jew in those times. It is the position of the foolish virgins; the Bridegroom comes, and they have no oil. It is the position in which all Christendom will then be found, all that which has but the form of godliness; and therefore during the judgments in the last days they will be as men giving up the ghost through fear, and saying to the mountains, Cover us. Conscience foresees those everlasting burnings, and that the judgment of God will rise against every power of Satan.

Verses 15, 16. The remnant will be kept; the devouring fire does not touch them. But further (v. 17) their eye shall see the King in His beauty. The thunderbolt that falls on the wicked passes them harmlessly, for Messiah is there. Peace is established; and men look round freely even to the most distant quarters of the land, and reflect on the terror which no longer fills them: so overwhelming the danger! so sudden and complete the deliverance! (v. 18, 19). All that was dreaded is vanished away.

231 From verse 20 we see what Zion will be for the faithful people. It is a peace God has made and given for ever, not an atom to be disturbed any more. Even in the last revolt when Satan masters the distant nations at the end of the thousand years' reign, the enemies may compass the beloved city and the camp of the saints, but they touch nothing. It is a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down. "Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken," v. 20.

Verses 21, 22. The confidence of Israel is in Jehovah, the source of all blessing, and withal their unfailing security. "For Jehovah our Judge, Jehovah our Lawgiver, Jehovah our King, He will save us."

The strongest of their enemies was foiled and prostrate, and a prey to the feeblest in Israel (v. 23), who will then be enabled to enjoy the blessing, the curse being gone, all their iniquities forgiven, and all their diseases healed (v. 24).

Isaiah 34.

All the earth is called to hear (v. 1); it is very far now from being willing to answer such an appeal.

The nations will be assembled in Idumea, and there will be judged. (Obadiah 13-15; Ps. 137: 7; Isa. 63: 1-4.) The sword of Jehovah shall come down on Idumea, and on the people of His curse to judgment (v. 5). Edom is marked out as a centre of judgment for the quick. He has chastened His people to sanctify them; but He will judge the nations. His indignation against idolatrous and apostate Jerusalem closes with the judgment of the Assyrian, and the destruction of the nations in the land of Edom. In chapter 63 we see what will happen to them at this time; Jesus will judge and trample them down in His fury: a scene which has no reference to the cross where Jesus was Himself trampled down.

"The sword of Jehovah is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Jehovah hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness." This terrible judgment of the living is lost for Christendom. The Jews had no adequate idea of a judgment of the dead; they were familiar with judgments on the living by the direct government of God which exercised visible judgment on the living, as we see in Korah, Achan, etc. All has been changed in relationship with God for the church by the resurrection; and Christians have in great measure lost sight of the judgment of the living, because they are used only to expect judgment after death. But there will be a judgment of the living as well as a judgment of the dead. They like to forget it because the judgment of the dead, being more distant, does not touch so directly the course in which one walks on the earth. It will fall on the neighbourhood of Jerusalem as well as on Bozrah.

232 The rest of the chapter is the detail of the judgment in Edom.

Isaiah 35.

We see the full blessing of the land, of which Zion will be the centre. All will be blessed. God does not despise this earth, nor any creature, though the curse is fallen on all because of Adam's sin.

The miracles of Jesus working every sort of cure were a sample of what His redemption will do for all creation, and hence called powers of the world to come (Rom. 8: 19-22; Heb. 6). There will be deliverance when He appears; the evil will be taken away. Hence also when the disciples rejoiced over the demons cast out in His name, He predicts the fall of Satan from heaven. His death breaks Satan's power for the believer's conscience: but though thus emancipated, we groan and suffer in the body still. But the Son of man's victory goes much farther than to cast Satan from the conscience. By His word He takes away every evil, all suffering, for faith. But here it is no question of conscience; it is a marvellous manifestation of God's intervention into all the miseries of man. Jesus will exercise this power fully when He returns, but on quite a different plan from that which He exercised in Judea during His ministry. It will be no more by the Holy Spirit awakening souls for spiritual joys, but delivering creation from the slavery of corruption.

233 "Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you," v. 4. The faithful remnant is restored by this announcement. Is it also for us the greatest source of joy? or would His coming be a sort of tearing us away from the earth, instead of lifting us up to set us where our treasure is? The Spirit and the bride say, Come. Do we?

Isaiah 36-39.

These chapters are the history of the Assyrian invading and overthrown, of the sickness of Hezekiah and of the embassy from Babylon with the captivity foreshewn. There is the outward deliverance (Isa. 36, 37), and the inward (Isa. 38), resurrection power being applied to the sickness of the son of David, type of a greater who actually died and rose to bring in the sure mercies of David.

Verse 16 above all explains why God wished Hezekiah to pass through this trial. It was needful that flesh should be judged as nought, and that the power which opposes the people of God should be destroyed solely by God's power. So will it yet be made good spiritually in the Jew, the principle of death for the destruction of the flesh, that the nation, deprived of all confidence in self, may be delivered by the power and grace of God. Yet was it but a type now: Hezekiah was a saint, but not the Messiah; nor had he learnt the lesson of death and resurrection adequately; but lifted up with pride after his recovery and the destruction of the Assyrian, he displayed the rich stores of his house and dominion to the ambassadors of Merodach-baladan, and hears from the prophet the solemn word of Jehovah that all should be swept away to Babylon, not only all that had been laid up for generations by the royal house, but of his issue to be eunuchs in the palace of the conqueror (chap. 39). The historical portion is of the utmost weight for the elucidation of this prophecy, which it divides into two very distinct sections, both of which it illustrates, the earlier being external, as the latter is more internal and consequently viewing Israel not merely as a people among hostile nations, but as witnesses to Jehovah as the one true God and awaiting the Messiah, the elect Servant, which they were not, while they failed in both respects, but finally, when bowing to the Messiah in detestation of their idolatry, they become and are owned as His servants when His glory appears, and all ends in the blessing of the faithful and the judgment of the rebellious. Christ will defend Israel by His power when the Assyrian shall come into their land: "This man shall be the peace," Micah 5. "And they shall abide; for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth." Till then it is vain to expect it.

234 Isaiah 40.

After this historical parenthesis we have henceforth in one prophecy a more intimate and detailed revelation of the relationships of God as to His people and of His ways toward them.

It is a question of the counsels of God as to Israel in grace, but in this point of view, Israel is a witness of God, the only true God, and His servant Christ, comes, and Israel will not acknowledge Him. For this reason the remnant alone is recognised and the people condemned by the judgment which is coming, and the remnant glorified with Christ.

He speaks of comfort, notwithstanding the many iniquities of which Israel has been guilty, and He manifests His positive will to be glorified by His people upon the earth. The church glorifies God before principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph. 3). The church is the means of making known the wisdom of God in heaven; Israel is the means of making it known in this world to powers upon the earth. Until the church, the ways of God had always been in connection with the earth; God's king had been seen on the earth; His wisdom on the earth, with regard to His earthly people. But in looking at the church, the principalities and powers see a wisdom which is entirely new, the glory of Christ in a people which God strengthens by His Spirit, to whom everything is promised for heaven at least, and which does not consider its own life, in order to be manifested in the glory of Christ. That is why we see in Ephesians that the wisdom of God is different in every way. When this purpose of God is accomplished in the church, He takes up again His ways with the Jews, and He says as a summary of all that is to follow, "Comfort ye my people."

235 In the preceding chapters, He reasons with His people, in order to prove to them their sin; Here it is the proclamation of a new way, and of His positive will to comfort His people. But in order to do this, He must enter with more detail into the miseries of His people. He makes an appeal to their conscience, then an explanation of the thoughts of His heart. He enters into these special purposes with His people and shews that He has not always been able to do so. He desires that the conscience of the people should acknowledge the justice of His ways, and enters into the delicacy of their new relations with God. God makes manifest His way of dealing, and all the manner of His people's acting, in order that everything may be acknowledged, and that the people may understand that in God all is love. It is continually a question in this latter part of the book of Isaiah, not only of the ways of God with His people in regard to the nations, but chiefly of the coming and the rejection of Jesus - a sin which was the crowning point of all the sins of Israel.

God had an object, whether it was in calling Israel or in calling the church. If God wished to glorify Israel on the earth, He presents His people according to the intention of God regarding them. He might have said, This is my will, and have left to man the task of doing it: that is law. He could produce and accomplish in man what He desired, and shew the resources there are in God for doing it; that is grace. God did this with Israel. Israel was a people in relation with the eternal God, in order that the eternal and only true God might be manifested to the world in all His ways. This will happen also at the close.

There are two things true, with regard to the power of Satan. He got possession of the earth as being the theatre of the government of God, and he got possession of man and his affections. Therefore does the Holy Spirit say, that the friendship of the world is enmity against God. He therefore who would be a friend of the world is an enemy of God; as also the mind of the flesh is enmity against God.

The church has been formed and maintained here below to manifest to the world the victory of the second Man over Satan and the glory of the second Man seated on the throne of God the Father, infinitely greater than that of the first man Adam in Eden. Israel and the church should have been witnesses of God, one for the earth, the other for heaven, and this in putting aside the power of Satan.

236 Before the flood there was no government; since then a new principle of evil manifested itself, man entering into direct relation with Satan by idolatry. Man does not confine himself only to being wicked and rebellious against God; he replaces God by Satan. "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons." Then it is that God calls Abram in order that His name should be known on the earth, and His called be witness to His glory. It is grace that acted; for Abram had been an idolater, like others. He is chosen, called, and made heir of the promises: grace acted thus. Later on the Israelites, Abram's posterity, were placed as God's witnesses in Canaan under the law - law which could not annul the promise. God manifests in Israel the principle of His government. Israel having not only failed but apostatised, God had to chase them thence. How could He tolerate a people which compromised His glory, having ceased to be a witness against idolatry, Satan's direct power in the world? The greatest part of the world is still under this direct power of Satan besides his influence on the heart, for this moral influence of Satan is quite another thing. In idolatry the demon is adored to get his protection or escape his malice; they attribute to him all that God does. Israel having become idolatrous totally failed in its responsibility, the ten tribes first, afterwards Judah who has been yet worse. Then God carries them successively away from the land. With Nebuchadnezzar begin the times of the Gentiles (Daniel 2: 31-34, 37-43).

There is a particular circumstance to remark. We see in Isaiah 41-48 Cyrus, conqueror of Babylon, marked out as about to close the captivity by executing judgment on idolatry. The temple is rebuilt, and Israel enters on a new trial. For Jehovah comes Himself in the person of Jesus to present Himself to His people as king; and thus there is a new responsibility for Israel, or at least the Jew. Cyrus was but a type of a greater; and the return from Babylon only a partial deliverance. Much more was coming. Hence with Isaiah 49 God enters into a new controversy with His people, on the ground not of idolatry but of the rejected Messiah. It is not only that Israel announces to the nations that God had called the seed of Abraham to be His servant, witnesses of Jehovah against idols, and that then they utterly failed and came under judgment, but that after this they were actually to refuse their own Messiah, the divine king, the Lord Jesus Christ, who takes the place of His people Israel, and Himself becomes "Servant" of God, a title which serves to open the latter half of the prophecy. In Isaiah 42 at the beginning He is just characterised in humiliation till the end come; but the people are immediately turned to in their failure, though with wonderful expression of sovereign goodness to Israel spite of all. So it is in the second controversy, from Isaiah 49 to chapter 57, whereas before, God's love to Israel is fully set out before the proof of their sin and ruin. Then when Messiah's humiliation and atoning death but exaltation have been fully set out in Isaiah 53, the result is added for Jerusalem at the close in Isaiah 54, and suited exhortations follow in the three chapters which conclude the sections: free grace even to the nations (Isa 55); the indispensable character formed and requisite even for Israel (Isa. 56) and, whether Israel or not, no peace to the wicked (Isa. 57).

237 Then, in view of divine intervention and glory with its consequences morally and in every other way, which forms the closing part (Isa. 58-66), the Holy Spirit operas with the most extreme denunciation of form and hypocrisy in Israel, obedience being due to Jehovah. Only He could meet all, and will by coming as Redeemer to Zion (Isa. 59); for whatever the glory in judgment which will invest Jerusalem (Isa. 60), He must first suit Himself to their need in grace (Isa. 61) in order to secure peace and blessing (Isa. 62) though none the less in unsparing judgment, Isa. 63, Lastly the Spirit in the prophet speaking for the remnant reasons on this, Isaiah 63 to the end of Isaiah 64, and Jehovah answers in Isaiah 65 and 66, which concludes the book.

In this chapter Jehovah intervenes and announces that He is come to comfort His people. Verse 2 is the expression of His heart which will have it that Jerusalem has received double for all her sins at His hand. Verse 3 opens the preparatory warning, but it is of Jehovah's manifestation. "Every valley shah be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it," v. 4, 5. The Eternal presents Himself to His people and the remnant is manifested by this means. "The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of Jehovah bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever," v. 6-8. The answer is a sentence on all Israel. The passage is cited by the apostle of the circumcision to prove that all is rejected save the remnant. It is also a sentence pronounced on all that which is "flesh." For all flesh is grass. The power of the Spirit discovers to our souls that in the flesh no good dwells, it will not submit to God's law, nor does it love Jesus, nor is it led by the Holy Spirit. And man who is not of Christ is "flesh."

238 There must be submission to the righteousness of God in order to walk in the Spirit. Otherwise it is just the flesh and worth nothing, whatever the appearance. But at that time Israel according to the flesh was but vanity. Also, because they were flesh, the resurrection was needful to secure the mercies of David, even to Israel here below, namely the godly remnant who will own the risen Christ. Man torments himself vainly by seeking in himself wisdom, strength, righteousness. All is vanity and vexation of spirit. God's word alone abides. The consequence is that the promises to Israel stand for ever, that He will comfort His people even according to His earthly promises.

The rest of the chapter points out God's glory in creation for His people, the sole and true God in contrast with an idol. If on the one side all flesh is withered, on the other after the ages of sorrow Israel must know that God is always the same and wearies not. The state of the people has in no way been unknown to Him during this long interval. Those who wait on Jehovah renew their strength, He faints not, but He gives power to the faint. This is a hard lesson to learn; but it is necessary to believe that the flesh is nothing, its wisdom, good plans, etc., nothing but vanity. What God does and says abides; man perishes. How important to let God act, knowing that we are nothing.

Thus the people of God are to be comforted. Prepare ye the way of Jehovah; all flesh is as grass, but the word of God endures for ever. He takes the people of God for a witness against idols; the people which He made for His glory. He takes Cyrus as a type of the deliverance of the people captive in Babylon, also being a witness to the Gentiles, and Jehovah, who is to be glorified in Israel. What has just been said is from Isaiah 40-48.

239 Isaiah 41 is full of the righteous man from the earth, not merely as the destined conqueror, but as the avenger, 20 call on Jehovah's name and execute judgment on idolatry. But a greater than Cyrus is beheld at the beginning of Isaiah 62, who, meek and lowly, shall not fail nor be discouraged till He has set judgment in the earth: and the isles of the Gentiles shall wait for His law. At the end of the chapter Israel are the deaf and blind, perfect in privilege as Jehovah's earthly people, but alas! blind. Self-will and disobedience had darkened their eyes. But grace will intervene and save them from the ends of the earth (Isa. 43) though they be the blind people that have eyes and the deaf that have cars. The dealings with Babylon, which prefigure the judgments at the end of the age, shew that Israel are His witnesses, and that He notwithstanding their iniquities, will blot out all for His own sake. In Isaiah 44 He promises the full positive blessings of grace, while exposing the folly of idols and pointing out the coming conqueror by name; and this is followed up in Isaiah 45 with plain predictions of Babylon's fall, and Israel's salvation. Isaiah 46 declares how the idols of Babylon must come to nothing through the "ravenous bird from the east," the man to execute Jehovah's counsel from a far country, as we see from Isaiah 47 that the virgin daughter of Babylon must sit in the dust. Then Isaiah 48 closes the section by an appeal to Israel, though to those sprung of Judah, because these would alone represent the people in those days. We know from the Lord's word in Matthew 12 that the unclean spirit will return with worse for the closing scenes of "this wicked generation."

Isaiah 49 begins the second charge, the rejection of Christ, not idolatry, and it goes on to the end of chapter 57. (Compare the end of Isa. 48.) Israel, having rejected the Messiah, it is said that it is to be of little value. He is put as a light to the Gentiles, and Zion is to be re-established.

Isaiah 50. Manifestation to all flesh: indication of the rejection of Jerusalem (the Jews) because they have despised the Lord in His humiliation. The remnant hearken to the voice of the servant and will be in darkness.

240 Isaiah 51 till the end of verse 12 of Isaiah 52: three addresses on God's part to the people; verse 4, His people; verse 7, in whom is the law; verse 9, the people being awakened; verse 17, Jehovah.

Isaiah 52: 13, begins with the revelation of this servant.

Isaiah 53. The Jews (the remnant) who recognise the rejection of Christ, and God who bears witness to Him.

Isaiah 54. Jerusalem, barren, is acknowledged, and Jehovah becomes her husband.

Isaiah 55. It is not only Jerusalem, it is such as are athirst - grace, the great principle.

Isaiah 56 continues the same part; the end is in chapter 57.

In Isaiah 58 He begins, as the third part unto the end, to reason concerning righteousness, Israel, etc.; redemption comes in at the end of chapter 59, and the promise that the Spirit shall remain with Israel.

Isaiah 60. The terrestrial glory of Jerusalem; the same thing is said of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Isaiah 61. Christ come in blessing, and rejected.

Isaiah 62. For the blessing of the earth by His people.

Isaiah 63 is the day of vengeance.

Isaiah 63 to 64. All this excites in the prophet the spirit of intercession.

Isaiah 65 is the reply to the intercession of the prophet God distinguishes between the nation and the remnant; He condemns the nation and saves the remnant, who own Christ the Servant, and become Jehovah's servants throughout.

Isaiah 66. He condemns the outward form of religion, and comes to deliver the remnant and to bless Jerusalem.

In Isaiah the Holy Spirit does not speak of Antichrist but of the judgments of Christ against the Assyrian, etc. The Assyrian will come rather pushed forward by Gog; but he comes the first - Gog will come after (with the power of the Assyrian, it is true); Antichrist, in his character of beast, head of the Roman empire, will make war with the nations.

Notes on the Gospel of Matthew

J. N. Darby.

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{See Expository, Volume 3, for Notes on chapters 1-15, of which this is the sequel written since.}

Matthew 16.

We arrive at that part of the Gospel where other ways of God, other manifestations of His character and of His glory, are substituted for Judaism. The kingdom and the form that it would take have been already revealed to us in Matthew 13. However, though the form announced in the parables was to be new, the kingdom itself was in view since the time of John the Baptist, though it could not be established then, Jesus being rejected. Purposes of God, important in very different respects, were to be accomplished through the death of the Lord. And although the judgment of Israel had been plainly declared, and the new condition of the kingdom depicted in the parables of chapter 13, the power and the patient grace of the Lord were manifested in the midst of the people, up to the close of Matthew 15. But now all is terminated: the church and the kingdom of glory take the place of an Emmanuel Messiah in the midst of the people. The unbelief of the heads of the nation is manifested in their request for a sign from heaven; signs enough had been given. It was not genuine faith, and the Lord reproves them and goes away. They knew well enough how to observe the signs of the weather that was coming; how was it then that they did not see the far clearer signs of Israel's condition - signs which were precursors of the judgment of God? It was nothing but hypocrisy: they should only have the sign of Jonas; the death and the resurrection of Jesus bringing the judgment, the terrible punishment of the nation, as a natural and necessary consequence of the scornful rejection of their Messiah come in grace.

The disciples themselves participate, not in the want of sincerity, but at least in the want of intelligence, of the Jews. Their faith understood no more than that of the Jews did the power that had manifested itself daily before their eyes. Jesus was to find nowhere a heart that understood Him. This isolation is one of the most striking features of the ordinary life of the Saviour, a Man of sorrows in this world. The Lord introduces what was going to be substituted for the kingdom in Israel by a question destined to bring out the doctrine of His person, the first foundation of everything recognised by faith. "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" This is the character assumed by the One in whom God was proving men according to His own thoughts and according to His counsels. The heir of all the glory which belonged to man according to the determinate counsel of God taking His place among men here below, and before God the representation of the race, a race then accepted by Him, although heir He associated Himself with all their miseries, the true representative of the race alone perfect before God.

252 Psalms 8 and 80: 17, and Daniel 7 represent Him thus to us in the Old Testament according to the thoughts of God. Men, struck by His miracles and His walk, had their opinions; faith, through the revelation of God, acknowledges His person. Peter answering the question addressed to all, proclaims this truth, the foundation of every hope, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." It is worth while saying a word as to the character of the great apostle.

We know what was the burning ardour of this man, an ardour which placed him in difficulties from which his moral power could not succeed in extricating him and which even brought him, when God permitted it for his good, to deny his Saviour and his Master. So far as he was sustained by human strength, this ardour was a continual snare; but under God's hand, when grace took hold of the vessel, he became the instrument of the most blessed activity. I find this instructive difference: human energy cannot sustain the trials of faith. It may bring us into circumstances where these trials are found, but the strength of man's will cannot make us triumph. If the power of God is there, we triumph over temptation; the flesh which has brought us into it cannot do so. Nevertheless God can make use of the vessel which He has formed; then the power of God is there to hold us up, sheltered from evil by His arms. Now what I desire to remark here is that God makes use of the vessel for His glory; whilst, when the vessel alone and the energy which is in it are at work, it fails in time of trial, and the energy, which God makes use of as an instrument, brings us, when it acts alone, into temptation, in which it cannot cause us to triumph. Sincerity and zeal in that case only cause us to fall because there is too much confidence in ourselves. Here it is the ardent confession of what the Father Himself had revealed to Peter. There are two parts in this confession - Jesus is the Christ, that is what the Jews denied. This was the first thing to be acknowledged in Jesus. He was the One who had been promised to the fathers and to Israel; but further, He was of the fulness of that eternal Godhead, in which was the power of life; "the Son of the living God." Resurrection was the proof of it in the very place where death had entered. Thus, at the commencement of the Epistle to the Romans, He is of the seed of David according to the flesh, and marked out Son of God in power by resurrection of the dead. The promises of God were thus not only accomplished in His person, but the person in whom they were accomplished was Son of God in a power of life which is in God only; not only Son of God born into this world according to Psalm 2 - Nathaniel had acknowledged that - but Son of the living God as to His person. Up to that time this had not been acknowledged; the Father had revealed it to Peter, the Father in heaven had made known to him His Son upon earth.

253 At the same time the Lord also shews His authority by giving to Peter a name in accordance with the confession that he had just made, with the truth which (while establishing His divine person, His relationship with the Father, and that as a man) laid the firm foundation of what was above all promises, of what had never been promised of the new thing, the church of the living God. Against this power of life in the person of the Son, the might of Satan, who had the empire of death, could not prevail. It is not here the death and the resurrection of Jesus, or His work, and the proof by this power of life that He was the Son of God in power; it is the essential character of His person revealed by the Father to Simon Bar-jona. Christ also says something to Him. As the Father had revealed the true character of Jesus to Simon, Jesus also (it is thus that we must take the sentence) gave him a name and a position. His person as Son of the living God was the foundation of the church called to have its true place in heaven, for it is in this character that it is presented to us here. It is Christ who builds, and up to this day the building is not yet completed. What we have here is not what Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 3. He, Paul, had laid the foundation of that house: others brought materials, each one on his own responsibility, so that wood, stubble, hay, were to be found in the building. That was what has been built under human responsibility upon the earth. What we have here is found again in 1 Peter 2: 4, 5, where there is no human architect, but where living stones come and are builded together into a spiritual building. The same thing is found again in Ephesians 2: 20, 21. It is Christ who builds a spiritual house, and the power of Satan could not touch it. It is the assembly which Christ builds for heaven and for eternity.

254 But there was yet another thing. The Lord, Master of all, gives the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter. He receives from Christ authority to administer the kingdom upon earth, and whatever he might decree here below would be sanctioned. It is no question, remark well, of keys of the church; one does not build with keys. Further, although Simon may receive the name of Peter, a testimony to his personal faith, which linked him with the Rock, and an acknowledgment of the fact that like a stone in its nature he belonged to the Rock; nevertheless here he does nothing at all, nor has he any authority, in the church. Christ Himself builds, "I will build my church." No one else has any part in this. Peter himself acknowledges it in his epistle (1 Peter 2: 4, 5), by an evident allusion to this passage; the living stones come to the "living Stone." The administration of the kingdom of heaven is confided to him. The keys of that kingdom are confided to him. For, I repeat, no such thing exists as keys of the church. Christ builds it, that is all. Now one can see well in the Acts that Simon Peter was the chief instrument of God in the work; and no true Christian doubts that what he established by his apostolic authority, with the sanction of the Lord, is from heaven. We must further remark that the only succession in that authority is found in two or three gathered in the name of the Lord (Matt. 18: 17-20). Christendom has accepted with strange facility the idea that there are keys for the church, an idea which is nowhere found in the word. Then, this error being once admitted, another was accepted, namely, that the church and the kingdom of heaven are the same thing, an idea also which has no foundation in the word. The passage that we are considering clearly shews that they are two distinct things. Christ does not build a kingdom, He is the King of it; whether as such He be either hidden or manifested. Further, a kingdom is neither a bride nor a body, as the church is, and the reader must remark, that since it is here Christ who builds, He certainly places none but true living stones in the house. At most there is a certain analogy in regard to historical limits and circumstances, with the house of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 3 in which were found hay and stubble, the building in that case being left to the responsibility of man. What is positive is that in no case are the church and the kingdom the same thing. Further, to have confounded the church, which Christ alone builds, and which is not yet completed, with the house which Paul founded upon earth, is one of the origins of the Romish system, and of the high church, wherever it may be.

255 The church then, so far as built by Christ, is* the kingdom of the heavens replacing the Christ coming to the Jewish people according to promise, and the disciples receive the peremptory command not to announce henceforth Jesus as the Christ. On the other side, the Lord from that time begins to make known to them that He was to be rejected, to suffer and rise. Peter cannot receive such a declaration. We see here how one may receive from God a revelation of the truth and be found in a practical state below the effect of this truth on the life. Peter had been taught by God Himself touching a truth which necessarily brought on the cross. For this his flesh was not at all prepared; further he who had just been called blessed by the Saviour is now denounced as doing the work and as having the thoughts of Satan. As a natural affection there was nothing to blame; but it was the mind of the flesh, not of God. It is a solemn thought for us that one may possess a truth as really taught of God and be opposed to the consequences which flow from it in the life. In this case the flesh is not judged according to the measure of the truth known, so that the divine effect of this truth should be produced in us. But the Lord, always perfect, puts Himself under the yoke of what was absolutely necessary to realise that which was worthy of God - redemption. The things which are in the world, its case and its glory, are not of the Father. Man is carnal: Peter savoured what was of man. It is terrible to see that it suffices to say the things which are of man to shew what was evil and opposed to God. It is only the cross which is truly worthy of God. Christ always walked in obedience and in the love of the Father, which were fully manifested in Him. Also the earth was for Him a desert land, dry and without water. He savoured always and perfectly the things which were of God; but this brought on the cross in this world. Also each of us who would enjoy the blessing of God must take up his cross and follow Christ. If one spares himself, one spares flesh; one loses Christ so much and finds oneself in opposition to God. He that loses his life for the love of Christ will have it with joy when all is according to God. The soul is not to satisfy vanity and carnal selfishness; it is gained for ever in tasting the things of God: such is what the cross means in a world opposed to God in all that He is.

{*Query if this should read "is not the kingdom of the heavens" [Ed.]}

256 There is besides more than this moral fact; there are positive ways of God. If the Son of man is actually rejected by the world, as presenting perfectly the ways and the character of God in its midst, the time comes when God will make valid the rights of Him who was faithful, and when He will manifest it in the glory which is due and belongs to Him. The Son of man will come in the glory of His Father not in the humiliation of the obedience in which His moral perfection was manifested, and in which, at His own cost, He perfectly glorified God, but (for He is Son of the living God) in the glory of His Father, and with His angels, then He will tender to each according to his conduct.

This gives room for the manifestation of the kingdom such as it will be manifested when the Son of man will come in His glory. It is what the transfiguration meant as shewn in Matthew 18. Matthew 16 had replaced Israel and the Christ in Israel by the church and the kingdom of the heavens, by a Christ put to death and risen, basis of the establishment of God's counsels in divine righteousness, man being thus placed in a position entirely new.

Matthew 17 replaces the transitory system of the law and of the prophets in Israel by the kingdom of glory and by the order of things flowing from it. The mountain of transfiguration is not Horeb. It is no longer the first Adam put to the proof by a law, perfect rule of what ought to be in this fallen world. It is the last Adam seen in the result of the trial He had undergone; He, the victorious Redeemer who could bring other men to the same glory; He the Head of all, perfectly approved by the Father; a Man in whom He found all His good pleasure; His Son, His well-beloved seen in glory, and Moses and Elias with Him. And these two represent the law and prophecy in its highest order, for Elijah was not a prophet at a time when the law of God was recognised. He was in the midst of apostate Israel, as Moses in the midst of a captive people. Elijah returned to Horeb to denounce this apostasy and the refusal of the testimony of God, whatever had been His patience; for in fact nothing was then left but the election of grace, and Elijah went up to heaven after having displayed his grief on Horeb. Elisha was the prophet of resurrection, having returned across the Jordan which Elijah had crossed to go up to heaven. People have wished to see in this the living changed and the dead raised, and I have no objection. In fact, these two classes will be with the Lord in the glory of the kingdom. Still I do not see that this is the chief object of the Spirit, but rather the putting aside of the law and the prophets, of the law and the patience of God towards Israel. They now give place to the Son Himself, to God's well-beloved, whilst they bear witness to Him.

257 Something is still left to be remarked. A bright cloud comes and envelopes them: it was the Shekinah of glory. The cloud had led Israel and filled the tabernacle with the glory of God, in such a way that the sacrificing priests could not stay there for their service: the word used here is the same as that used in the Septuagint when the cloud filled the tabernacle. It was in the cloud that Jehovah came to speak with Moses at the door of the tabernacle which he had set up outside the camp. Peter calls it "the excellent glory," 2 Peter 1: 17, 18. What is presented to us here, however, is the glory of the kingdom in which Jesus is recognised as Son by the Father. The disciples do not enter into the cloud - like Moses and Elias, as takes place, I suppose, in Luke 9: 34. That is to say, the heavenly part, the Father's house, is not found in Matthew; the glory indeed is, and the Son come in glory with His own, but not the dwelling near the Father on high: here we are in relation with heaven, but not in heaven.

These words, "hear him," present to us the voice of the Son as the only one which ought to be heard henceforth. Not that Moses and Elias had not preached the word of God, but the order of things which they represent is past; and the words of the Son revealing the Father are those which we have to listen to. The law and the prophets have given testimony to the Saviour Himself, as it is said; but they addressed themselves to man in the flesh. Now it is the Son of man after death, raised and glorified: redemption being accomplished, the counsels of God in grace are revealed. The former witnesses disappear and Jesus remains alone: Son of God to whom the Father gives testimony, in whom the Father reveals Himself. Peter, like so many Christians, would have wished to mingle the three, but such is not the instruction of the Father. However, until Christ was raised, this new testimony had neither its place, nor its cause of existence (v. 9).

258 The difficulty, suggested by the opinion drawn from Malachi by the scribes, the last testimony given (namely, that Elias was to come before the glorious day of the Lord), presents itself to the disciples. The Lord confirms this testimony and speaks of it as a thing which was to come to pass. Elias is to come first - the idea is true - and he will restore all things. The prophecy of Malachi shall be accomplished, but as Jesus came to suffer before His glory, so too there had come one to go before His face, and he must needs be rejected like Him whom he announced. Then the disciples understood that He spoke of John the Baptist, come before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elias. For what concerned the kingdom, all in fact, was only provisional. The king was there indeed, the Son of God Himself, but for a greater work even than establishing the kingdom: to save sinners and glorify God Himself by His death. To establish the kingdom He will return; but then all was prepared for faith to have its foundation, and for man to be without excuse. It was for that reason that the Lord could say, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come" (chap. 10: 23), although He was there. However, His establishment as king has been deferred, the last half-week of Daniel still remains unaccomplished, and even the whole week for unbelief. Christ is seated at the right hand of God till His enemies be set as the footstool of His feet, having by Himself purified our sins, gathering, as we know, His co-heirs according to the counsels of God, co-heirs given to Him before the foundation of the world.

Afterwards we find here, on our way, that which, without arresting the accomplishment of the counsels of God, made impossible all idea of the establishment on earth of His power, such as it was then manifesting itself. The disciples themselves did not know how to profit by the faith of this power to make it effectual; the power of Satan was in the world, whether directly or indirectly. The Lord was there to remove all the effect of this power and the consequences of sin. He had bound the strong man. A case of this power of evil presents itself to His disciples, and they cannot make use of the Lord's power to subdue it. It was then useless to continue to exercise this in the world if His disciples themselves did not know how to profit by it. And the Lord says, "How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you?" However, as long as the power is there, Jesus, unchangeable in His faithful goodness, exercises it in grace. "Bring thy son hither." Great consolation for us! If the faith of all fails, the Lord's goodness never is lacking. We can count on His power and on His grace, as always sure and indefeasible till all is finished. However the want of faith in His own is the sign that the patience of God is on the point of finding no more room for its exercise. The power of evil brought the Lord to this point: the practical unbelief of His own drives Him away; it puts an end to these ways, in regard to which unbelief manifests itself.

259 Two great principles are laid down by the Lord in reply to the question of His disciples. First, faith can do everything, according to the willed action of God at the moment of its exercise: but to overcome the enemy, where he shews his strength specially, a life of retirement is needed, which, in the consciousness of the strife in which we are engaged, refers to the presence of God, and places itself before Him in abasement of the flesh, and in entire confidence. This confidence displays itself in dependence on Him, owned in order to seek divine action. The Lord (v. 22) returns to His instructions with regard to His rejection and His crucifixion. Delivered up to men, He must be put to death and He must rise again. The disciples entirely ignorant of salvation are deeply pained by it', but at the end of the chapter the Lord places His disciples, at least Peter, and according to His grace all of us, in the same relation with His Father as that in which He was Himself, whilst at the same time manifesting the divinity of His person. It is one of the most touching expositions of what was about to happen through the change that His work would produce - the revelation of a position always true as to His person, true as to His relationships, having become man before God, but which was about to be demonstrated in a glorious manner by His resurrection. At the same time He introduces His own beforehand into His own position, now that He was about to give up the kingdom in Israel as far as it belonged to Him there; now that He had just announced to His disciples His death and resurrection as necessary for introducing them into greater blessings than those which they enjoyed through His presence.

260 Peter wished that He should be considered a good Jew. When the tribute collectors asked Peter if his Master paid the didrachma (owing by the Jews for the service of the temple), the disciple answered, Yes. When Peter returns, the Lord anticipates him, knowing, without having been there, all that had passed. He asks him if it is from their children or from strangers that the kings of the earth take tribute or taxes. Peter answers, From strangers. "Then," said the Lord, "the children are free." He and Peter, sons of the great King of the temple, were not liable to pay; but, adds the Lord, "that we may not offend them, go thou to the sea and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a stater [two didrachmas]." Then the One who not only knows everything, but who disposes of creation with equal power and knowledge, places Peter afresh in the same position as Himself: "That take and give unto them for me and thee." Peter therefore is also a son of the great King of the temple. At the same moment in which the Lord shews that He knows everything divinely, and that He disposes of everything as Master of the creation, He places Peter in the same relationship as Himself with Jehovah. He submits to the prescription of Judaism in order not to stumble the Jews. But He and Peter are really exempt, as sons of the great King. What perfect grace! At the very moment in which He must give up His relationship with the unfaithful people, He introduces those who follow Him into a far more intimate relationship with the God of Israel, and at the same time with Himself. He is Son, being man, and His own are with Him in the same blessed relationship.

Matthew 18.

The three chapters, 18, 19, and 20, up to the end of verse 28, form a subdivision of our Gospel. They shew us from the Saviour Himself the principles that ought to characterise the disciples in the new order of things on which they were entering - principles of life and conduct, individual and collective. Nature, as far as established of God, is owned: but the state of the heart is sounded, grace and the cross characterising all the new system. The first principles enjoined by God in the Christian order are humility and simplicity.

261 The disciples, as usual, wished to have a good position in the kingdom, each for himself, this time however more in relation with moral character, with qualities. The Lord's answer is limited to calling a child, and placing him in the midst of His disciples, as an example of the spirit which ought to characterise them: he who resembled that little child should be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. The child pretended to nothing, and passed for nothing in the eyes of the world. He who was nothing in his own eyes should be great in God's eyes. Whoever should receive a little child in the name of Jesus had entered into His thought - into the estimate that He had of the world, and of the things that were in it. As to the principles of his conduct, he received Jesus Himself, acting upon the principles which governed Him. But, further, should there be in the child faith in Jesus, then, whoever should cause him to stumble in the way of the Lord, or should put an obstacle in the way, so that he should not follow Him, was fastening a millstone around his own neck to drown himself; and, worse still, there were stumbling-blocks in the world, but woe to him who should place them before the feet of others. The question between man and God was entirely laid down. They were either for or against Him. Neither was it any longer a question of a captivity in Babylon, of a governmental chastisement, however severe it might be, but of being finally cast into hell; it would be better to lose the best of one's members than to find oneself there.

But the special principle of the ways of God which were then being manifested was grace. The Son of man had come to save that which was lost - a testimony of immense range! It was no longer the accomplishment of the promises made to Israel, nor the Messiah, as Head of the kingdom, expected by that people, and reigning in their midst, but a Saviour Son of man, but of man lost without Him. Man was lost. The difference between the Jew and the Gentile disappeared before the total ruin which was common to them, and before the salvation which was coming in His person. According to this spirit of grace, it was unsuitable to despise even the least important of human beings. Salvation was there, and the little child was of value in the eyes of God. God, who was giving His Son for the lost, took account of children. He took an interest in the happiness of men, and the child was not the least part of it. The work of Christ was available for them; He had come to save that which was lost. It is no question here of bearing the sins of the guilty, but of the general principle of the coming of the Saviour. "Lost" speaks of our condition; "guilty," of what we have done: we are all lost together; every one will give account of what he has done in the body. Judgment relates to this latter point; bearing the sins of many does also; but "lost" is the condition common to all.* Now children under the benefit of the work of Christ are accepted of God; "their angels continually behold the face of my Father which is in heaven," said the Lord: a comforting passage, which gives us the happy assurance that children who die when quite young go to be with the Lord - the result of His work.

{*It is the difference, developed elsewhere, between Romans 1: 17; to 5: 11 on one side, and chapter 5: 12, to end of chapter 8 on the other side.}

262 The Lord uses the image of the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep, as in the case of other sinners. It is a question here, not of bearing sins, but of saving the lost. As to the condition of man, all are together lost; children, as a condition before God, are the objects of His love; through the work of Christ they can see His face. The Lord does not go farther than the fact of their position, through the work that He has done according to grace. Small, and despised by men (by the learned, great in their own eyes, but who are, after all, of this world), God set great value on them. They had not yet learnt the spirit of the age: evil itself, in them, had not developed itself before the eyes of God; there was simplicity and trust, so that, as a condition, they were a model. Nevertheless the work of Christ is laid down as the foundation of all. It is not man in his pretensions, it is God in His grace, that we have before us.

The same principle of grace (v. 15) applies to the Christian walk in regard to wrongs which may have been done to some one. Only what we have just been looking at spoke of what concerned the individual and sin before God. In what we are about to examine, we find our relations one with another, and along with that the assembly and discipline.

In what precedes we have seen what must characterise the individual and the counsel of the Lord with regard to the evil which would exist in the individual himself We have seen that man ought to be like a little child, and that, having to do with God Himself in the light, evil should be intolerable to him. He must put it away at all cost. With others evil is not allowed, but the Christian must act in grace. He warns his brother, if the latter has done him a wrong; then he takes two or three witnesses with him, in order that the facts may be confirmed, and that it may not be mere personal recrimination without proofs, if the brother does not yield to them. In this case, the complainant will tell all to the assembly, and the witnesses are there; and if the one who has done the wrong does not listen to the assembly, the one who has suffered is free to regard him as a stranger to all common privileges. It is no question here of the discipline of the assembly. It may be that the one who has done the wrong deserves to be put out, but what the Lord regulates here is the conduct of the individual who has suffered the wrong. The first object is to gain the guilty brother. If one cannot do this, one must no longer act of one's own accord as judge of one's own cause. The facts must be confirmed, as well as the perverse will of the individual, by others who have no interest in carrying their own views; then the assembly intervenes with its authority.

263 Here we are entirely upon new ground. It is not a question of Jehovah's patience in grace with His people on the earth, but of the conduct of those who have part in the new privileges which flow from the new position taken by the Son of man. Important principles are also brought out. Authority resides in the assembly, the authority to bind and to loose. The true apostolic succession is in the two or three met in the name of Jesus. It is not in individual successors, either of Peter or of the other apostles, but in the assembly, that is found the spiritual authority sanctioned by heaven. Let the wisdom of an apostle, if there is one, guide them: it is none the less the assembly which judges as a last resource. It is the assembly that must be listened to. In it is found judicial authority - the power of binding and of loosing; and the reason for this is given, namely, that, where two or three are gathered to the name of Christ, He Himself is there. The same principle applies to the requests one presents to God. Where two or three agree to ask a thing, it is granted. It is not individual will, nor a purely personal desire. The two or three being gathered to the name of Jesus, Jesus is there. The request is the fruit of a spiritual agreement, and God answers the request. The value of Christ and the mind of the Spirit are found there.

264 This position of the two or three, and the relationship in which grace has placed them in virtue of the name and presence of Jesus, is evidently of all importance. The privilege, which was given to Peter to establish the kingdom upon earth, falls as a heritage to the two or three truly gathered to the name of Jesus. There, and there only, is the divine sanction put upon what is done on earth. God can, no doubt, sanction and guide an individual; but an individual has not the authority which is conferred upon the two or three thus gathered. The promise made to the prayer of the two or three thus gathered to the name of Jesus, and agreed as to what they wish to ask, is also infinitely precious. Thus placed, Christians dispose of the power of God. It is a question of the things to which the Spirit of God leads their thoughts by common agreement. Now, for a soul which is sincere, and which seeks only the will of God, to be assured of God's power being employed with that object, is a great favour. In what a blessed manner this associates us with divine activity in love in the work that this love wishes to do on earth! The basis on which this favour is confirmed to us is equally precious. Jesus Himself is present where two or three are gathered to His name. What encouragement! Now that He is in heaven, absent bodily, He is Himself present spiritually with those who trust in Him here below. What an immense privilege it is to feel that, until the Lord Jesus come to take us to Himself, we may count on His presence in our midst when we gather to His name!

The remainder of the chapter (v. 21) presents to us the spirit in which a Christian must act with regard to the one who may have offended him. It is no longer a question here of the way traced higher up, if he refuse to acknowledge his wrong, but of the disposition of the Christian to forgive it him, even if he should often repeat it. The Christian should always forgive - should never get weary of shewing grace towards the one that may have offended him; for a man might acknowledge his wrong, and yet repeat it. Ought this always to continue, and the Christian always to be ready to pardon? Yes, we must always act in grace. God has pardoned us much more. In Luke 17 the repentance of the one who has offended his brother is supposed. Here the principle is that forgiveness - such a case occurring - must always be granted. It is the Christian spirit which is established. I do not doubt, although the principle may be universally established as a Christian principle, that allusion is made here to what happened to the Jews. God in His ways with the nation having pardoned them the crucifixion of His Son, they would not have grace shewn towards the Gentiles, and were placed in consequence under discipline, under punishment, until they shall have paid the last farthing. It is not a question of expiation, nor of an individual, but of the nation and of the government of God.

265 Matthew 19.

Next the Pharisees raise the question of marriage, which gives the Lord occasion to lay down some principles as the basis of natural relationships, and of grace in the Christian; then, at the same time, to bring out man's true moral state according to nature; and, finally, the consequences and the principle of devotedness according to grace.

That which God ordered in the beginning is strictly maintained. God created man, male and female; He united the two to be but one flesh, and this union is indissoluble according to God. Sin may break the bond, but divorce is totally forbidden under any condition but that of the fact by which the bond is thus already broken. It is God who has formed this link; man has no right to break it. Since then a power was come to work in man outside and above nature, which can put him outside natural relationships, it can take and endow him with energy in order to keep him, apart from those relationships, for the service of the kingdom. The relationship of marriage is fully recognised, its holiness, its indissolubility; but God has taken possession of man, so that he might be for Him. In His creation, that is, God has made marriage; but the Holy Ghost, acting in power, appropriates to Himself a man, who, from that time, recognises marriage, and yet does not marry for love of the kingdom of God.

Next (v. 13) we have nature viewed on its beautiful side little children, and a young man of charming character. In the Gospel of Mark we read, "Then Jesus, beholding him, loved him"; but his heart had to be put to the proof. Little children, with whom malice, falsehood, and the spirit of the world were not yet in action, furnished the model of what was suitable to the kingdom of heaven. The root of evil, no doubt, was there; but it was the creature in its simplicity and confidence, things which the world despised, and not will bearing fruits of wickedness and corruption. Thus their character, being such, served as a model. The difference between the amiability of nature and the state of the heart before God was to be shewn in the case of the young man. Irreproachable in his conduct, he sought the Teacher, who appeared to his conscience able to give the most excellent directions for well doing. He comes with the thought that there is goodness in man, and in his eyes goodness was manifested more in Jesus than anywhere else. He seeks His counsel as to how to gain eternal life by his doings. He addresses the Lord as a man, a Rabbi, attracted nevertheless by what he had seen in Him. He calls Him good. The Lord stops him short, "One only is good." Now the young man did not know Him as such. He had asked what must be done, not to be saved, but to have eternal life. The Lord reminds him of the commandments, the rule for the man who wishes to have life through the law: "This do, and thou shalt live."

266 Now the young man did not know himself, nor what the law of God was in its holiness. He wanted to do in order to gain eternal life. The Lord does not speak of eternal life; He takes the young man on the ground of the law, which promised life to those who fulfilled it. The young man, irreproachable in his conduct, like Saul, and not knowing the spirituality of the law, replies that he has kept the law in everything the Saviour speaks of. What lacked he yet? If he would be perfect, he must sell that he had, and follow Jesus. The state of his soul is at once made manifest. The heart of the man, irreproachable in his morals, was under the yoke of attachment to what he possessed. He leaves the Lord sorrowful, his heart having been shewn out in the light which poor human nature can never endure. Nature, however amiable it may be in its character, is morally entirely at a distance from God. Here is an amiable young man, seeking to do well, shewing what is called the best dispositions, with the means to do a great deal of good, as soon as the light comes, convicted of being under the dominion of an idol - of preferring his ease and his riches to the One whom he knew to be good, to whom he had come to seek direction as to the One who could best direct him. His heart was entirely possessed by evil, by an idol.

267 The Lord had already judged man, when declaring that none was good save God Himself; nevertheless He goes still farther. The disciples (astonished at such a result, and at that which the Lord had said about riches, which, in the eyes of a Jew, were the sign of the favour of God, and which, at all events, furnished the opportunity for doing good works) cry out, "Who, then, can be saved?" If none were good, and if good dispositions, with the means of doing good, were worth nothing, if these means were rather a hindrance, who could be saved? The Saviour's answer is categorical. If it was a question of man, no one. As far as man is concerned, it is impossible; good is not in him. Man is the slave of evil by his will and his lusts. But God is above evil - He can save. It is evident that we are on an entirely new ground - on the ground, not of a law which puts to the proof, but of the truth itself which, while magnifying what is created by God, declares the entire moral ruin of man. God can save. This is the only resource. This is the fundamental truth as to the natural man. Now let us see what is the effect and the principle of grace, where it acted, and where men had left all to follow the Lord.

The apostles had done what the Lord had invited the young man to do; they had left all, and followed Jesus. What should they receive? The Lord answers by turning their eyes towards the kingdom established in glory. They would be on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The Son of David, the Son of man, seated on the throne of His glory, would have His princes over the twelve tribes, judging them, and themselves also seated on thrones. But He will be Son of man, and will have taken out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; then princes shall rule in judgment. Isaiah 32.

And not only the apostles, but every one that had forsaken that which nature loves, which God Himself owns in its place; every one who should renounce himself for Christ, renouncing also everything that was dear to him, should have an hundredfold in reward, and inherit eternal life. It is not a question of the special position of Israel, as in the case of the twelve companions of Christ at the time of His humiliation in Israel; but at all times, in every place, he who should lose the present life for His name's sake should receive an hundredfold, and eternal life. This is the Principle, for we have already an hundredfold down here, and afterwards everlasting life. The Lord says here, "eternal life"; to the young man He only said, "Thou shalt enter into life"; for the law had no formal promise of eternal life, it only said, "This do, and thou shalt live." Life and incorruptibility have been brought to light through the gospel; God had promised it before the world began, but in due times manifested His word through the preaching of the apostle (Tit. 1: 2, 3). Eternal life is twice mentioned in the Old Testament (Ps. 133; Dan. 12), but the two passages refer to the millennium. No doubt there were facts, such as those of Enoch, of Elijah, and passages like Psalm 16, which gave ground for that belief which the Pharisees had rightly received. The Sadducees had known neither the scriptures nor the power of God. But the passage which the Saviour quotes shews how obscurely this doctrine was revealed, save for a spiritual eye. Christ was the eternal life come down from heaven (1 John 1). With Him, and specially after His death, it was fully manifested. This already takes place here: one renounces the good things of life here below for oneself; one receives an hundredfold, and inherits eternal life: When He says, inherits, He turns our eye towards that which is properly eternal. I have already said one may have an hundredfold here below, even with persecutions, as Mark says; but then the inheritance surely is not limited to this world, and the eternal life, although we possess it already down here, belongs to another world, and never ends. The Lord here reveals it clearly, while carrying our thoughts to new things, and declaring that this denial of oneself should bring advantages a hundred times greater.

268 There was a danger, as did not fail to happen, that man might think of a kind of bargain with God: so much labour and sacrifice, and a proportionate recompense. Wretched principle! but which man is quite capable of inventing. The Lord therefore adds verse 30, that many first should be last, and last should be first.

Matthew 20.

Chapter 20: 1-16 shews, to explain it, that, while recompensing each sacrifice faithfully according to His goodness, God is sovereign in what He gives; and that if He judges good, He can find the occasion of giving to those who, in man's estimate, might not have laboured so much, the same reward as to those who wished to gain according to their labour. The first workman has for principle so much labour for so much pay; the others betake themselves to the good will of the Lord of the vineyard. You shall receive what is just; and grace recompenses beyond all desert of labour. Such is the great principle of all true service rendered to the Lord. There is the principle in question, and the final phrase (v. 16) refers to what was said at the beginning: "So the last shall be first, and the first last." It is the inverse, however, of what is said (chap. 19: 30) at the beginning of the parable, where this sentence refers to the thought of man, "What shall we have therefore?" whilst the final phrase refers to the thought of God who takes pleasure in blessing, according to the riches of His grace and power, according to His goodness. It is always thus in every case. The workman shall receive according to his labour, as that happened to the first that was called. God gives according to His goodness and His grace. There had not been a refusal to the invitations among the last (v. 6, 7): God called them when the moment that pleased Him arrived.

269 In the last words by which He closes the parable, the Saviour establishes in a formal manner this principle of grace. Many are called, but few chosen. This principle is laid down as the foundation of all for many. We find the same principle in chapter 22: 14, where it is also laid down as the basis of all. A single man furnishes the example of it. A mass of people unite under the standard of Christianity, giving themselves up to the call of God; a small number only among them comes under the influence of the word of God, and is the fruit of it. It is this sovereign grace which is the true and only source of all blessing. Here the Lord, after having spoken of the operation of this grace in the parable, lays it down in an abstract way as the basis of".

There are yet some other moral traits of deep interest which relate to this in connection with the Saviour's humiliation (v. 17-28). The Lord warns His disciples on the way to Jerusalem, that He must be condemned to death by the Jewish authorities, and delivered to the Gentiles, but that He will rise again the third day.

The sons of Zebedee (v. 20) raise the question, which is that of the whole Gospel we are studying, but in a thoroughly selfish spirit. They think, for they believe in Jesus as the Messiah, of the immediate establishment of the kingdom, since the King was there and they would wish to possess the most exalted places in it - to sit on the right hand and on the left of the King. But God was thinking of things of a very different character of excellence which also belonged to the moral state of man and his relations with God; now God was revealed in Jesus. There, moreover, is the key to the Lord's history - the Messiah in fact, was there - this King announced in the promises and prophecies. Now, after the flesh, the Jews were the children of the kingdom and the heirs of the promises. But the revelation of God, necessary to the accomplishment of these promises, revealed the hatred of the human heart against God, and this the more that the revelation was being accomplished in humiliation by the grace that saves. Had He come in judgment, all should have been taken away. He came then in grace. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them."

270 Farther, there was need of expiation, without which no sin could have been forgiven. Always, whatever might be the grace in which God was there, it was always God, and man would have none of it; and Jesus, the true Messiah, in whom all the promises were Yea and Amen, found Himself rejected. But God in His divine wisdom made use of this hatred to accomplish expiation, absolutely necessary to save any one whomsoever, or for Israel itself to be blessed; shewing thus the state of man's heart with respect to God, and opening at the same time the door of salvation to the Gentiles.

Thus the Son of man (a far wider title than that of Messiah, since it embraces all the rights of Christ in the counsels of God) was to suffer, to be rejected and put to death, then to arise from among the dead in order to lay the foundation of the eternal blessing of man and even the temporal blessing of Israel, on the assured basis of the atoning work which Christ was about to accomplish. These things could only be accomplished according to the power of an altogether new position - beyond death, the power of the enemy, and the wrath of God, according to the position of man risen, fruit of a work accomplished and approved by God, and a proof of divine power; a position consequently unchangeable, and not a blessing dependent on the responsibility of man, under which all was called in question, as in the case of Adam, who, in fact, failed in it. Here the blessing was to rest on a work in which God was about to be perfectly glorified. He has been, in fact, put to the proof - this gracious Saviour, but only to manifest His perfect faithfulness and obedience., whatever besides may have been the depth of His sufferings. But then He must drink the cup; the cross was His lot. Not only so, but His disciples must follow Him in that path. A victorious Messiah would place His own on thrones of judgment, but with a Saviour dying on the cross, all that must, for the moment, be laid aside. He must first accomplish a work of far different character of glory, and open to His disciples (with regard to what would result from it here below) a pathway like His own. They must follow it; there was the path which He Himself trod, and which He was tracing for them to follow Him. The two disciples (their hearts filled with carnal desire of greatness, their spiritual sight wholly obscured by the thought of Messiah's earthly reign, and only looking at human glory) ask of Jesus the favour of sitting on His right and on His left in the kingdom of their desires. But, as in many other circumstances, the folly of the flesh is only an occasion for the Saviour to bring to light the thought of the Spirit.

271 In the world this kind of greatness was doubtless met with everywhere; but this was not Christianity. He who seeks to be great, and to take the lead among Christians, has entirely falsified the Christian character. He will be the last of all; and the true way of having the highest place is to serve, considering oneself as the slave of the wants of other disciples. It was so that Jesus had done; He was not come to be ministered to in this world but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many. A lesson simple and clear indeed, but of all importance! The seeking for personal exaltation is only the selfishness of the flesh, the spirit of the world which is enmity against God. Love delights to serve - this is what Christ did; pride and selfishness love to be served, and to take precedence of others.

In reading of such instructions, we are evidently beyond the idea of a Messiah come to reign, and we find ourselves in the thoughts of a God of love; in presence of the revelation of grace and the Word made flesh, of Him who emptied Himself, who humbled Himself, and who is now exalted. This passage is so much the more important because it terminates all the history of the Lord except His last days at Jerusalem. All His life of service ends here, and these words impress an indelible character on this blessed life, shewing us solemnly, and in a manner as touching as it is powerful, what ought to be the character of our own - to serve in love, and, as far as this world is concerned, to be content to be nothing, while following in the footsteps of our precious Saviour. Oh that His own may learn this lesson in which the flesh could have no part whatever, but which gives us the joy of finding ourselves following Jesus, where purified from selfishness, our eyes may contemplate the beauty of that which is heavenly, and where we enjoy the brightness of God's face; where, in a word, the life of Jesus in us, enjoys that which belongs peculiarly to Himself.

272 In the first evangelists, those called Synoptic, the account of the last days of the Saviour commences here. Then in order to present Himself for the last time to the Jews, He resumes the character of Son of David. Would Jerusalem yet receive her king?

We may here indicate briefly the difference between those three evangelists and John. The three are historic: they relate to us the life and the ministry of Jesus from three different points of view: as Emmanuel the Messiah, as the Prophet-servant, and as Son of man in grace. Moreover, in these evangelists, His service is accomplished entirely in Galilee, in the midst of the poor of the flock. The result is that He is rejected; but He is presented to men in order that they may receive Him. They will have none of Him, but He is there for them. We have already seen that, while there as prophet and Son of David, He manifested God in this world. If man, or Israel, had received the Son of David, Son of man in grace, they could only receive Him with all the divine features which were peculiar to Him; consequently they could not but bow before the manifestation of that which was divine. It could not be otherwise, for God was there. This is what man did not wish.

In the Gospel of John He is presented at the outset as God Himself, and consequently as already rejected, as He is seen in chapter 1: 10, 11. The Jews from the beginning, and throughout the whole of this Gospel, are treated as reprobates. The necessity of the divine work in its two parts, the new birth and the cross, is asserted. Election and the sovereign action of grace, and its absolute necessity for salvation, are brought out everywhere. No one can come to Jesus, unless the Father, who hath sent Him, draw him. His sheep receive eternal life and shall never perish. In this Gospel nearly all takes place at Jerusalem except what is related in the last chapter.

273 Let us remember that Jesus presents to the heart of His own the spirit in which they must walk in this world as the spirit in which the Saviour Himself walked; He, the Lord of all, meek and lowly in heart, serving the others by love.

The Lord, going out of Jericho (v. 29), accepts from the blind men the title which He bears in relation to Israel, to whom also He is about to present Himself for the last time as having a right to this title. "Have mercy on us, O Son of David," say the blind men. Not lending Himself to the impatience of the world which would not occupy itself with the misery of the blind men, the Lord stops to heal them; and they follow the Son of David, a clear testimony rendered to the reality of His title. But He presents Himself here too as the "Lord," that is, as Jehovah Himself.

Matthew 21.

Arrived at Bethpage, near Bethany, He sends two of His disciples to the village, where they should find an ass and its foal, in order to His sitting thereon, and thus entering the city of Jerusalem, which was near. Prophecy had announced this fact: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy King cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation [or, saving himself]; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." Remark, however, that these words, "just and saving himself,"* are omitted here. He was first to come in humiliation; later He, the true King of Israel, should come with power, bringing with Him the deliverance of the people. Notwithstanding, though in humiliation, He acts already with royal and divine authority, and God disposes hearts to own Him. The owners of the ass let it go at the demand of the disciples. In the Gospel of Luke we find more details; here we have the fact that He acts as King. The crowd, under the divine influence, recognise Him also as such, and He enters, in the midst of this triumphal procession, into the holy city, accompanied by the cry, Hosanna to the Son of David. All the city was moved, and the multitude said, "This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth."

{*The Hebrew phrase is a little hard to render grammatically, but the sense is, bringing with Him salvation by the power of God.}

274 Now that He is owned prophet and king (His priesthood was to be accomplished elsewhere), the hand of Jehovah displays itself clearly. It was not then the testimony which failed in the heart of the people. The Lord exercises His authority in purifying the temple, profaned by the trading which took place there, and which provided for the wants of those who had need of animals for their sacrifices. This traffic brought in with it another, that of money-changers. They had made the house of God a den of thieves. Matthew only cites the passage. It was the house of His Father, but such is not the point of view presented here. He is the King, Emmanuel; also His power is manifested in grace; He heals the blind and the lame.

All this provokes the hatred of the chiefs of Israel, who express their sore displeasure. The Lord quotes to them Psalm 8, which reveals to us the Son of man, according to the counsels of Jehovah, when the Messiah is rejected of Israel. it is well to remark the two citations in verses 9 and 16. The first is taken from a psalm constantly cited by the Lord and His apostles, which reveals the restoration of Israel in the last days, when they shall own Him whom they pierced. (Ps. 118: 25, 26). Hosanna means, Save now, or Save, I pray thee. Other verses of this psalm are frequently cited. Psalm 8 presents the position of the Son of man, all things being put under His feet, when (in Psalm 2, which shews Him King in Israel and Son of man) He has been rejected, but with the declaration on the part of Jehovah that He will be King in Zion, spite of Israel and the world, which is invited - at least its chiefs - to bow before Him. (Compare John 1: 49, 50; Matt. 16: 20, followed by chap. 17; Luke 9: 20-22.) Now (v. 17) the Lord wishes no more of Jerusalem; He quits it, goes to Bethany, and there passes the night.

The fig-tree (v. 18-22) represents, I have no doubt at all, Israel, or man under the covenant of the law, who is judged definitively and for ever. There was nothing but a fine appearance, without fruit, and there never should be any more on that footing. But the Lord takes occasion of the fact, that at His word the fig-tree withered forthwith away, to shew His disciples the effect of faith in them from the time it was found there. All difficulties should disappear. Not only would Israel under the law wither away, but all the worldly power which raised itself against them should disappear under the waters of the judgment of God.

275 In verse 23 the Jewish authorities raise the question of that of Jesus, the usual way with those who officially possess authority, when God is acting outside of them by His spiritual power. The Lord, in His divine wisdom, does not contest official authority in its sphere, but He presents a case which went to put its value fully to the proof. Divine power does not want authorisation, and it had fully manifested itself; but Jesus answers as in humiliation, and morally, as we can always do with His aid, if we cannot manifest this power outwardly. At any rate God does not work miracles to satisfy incredulity. The Lord proves, by their own confession, their incapacity to form a judgment on what was done on God's part. John wrought no miracles. The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? If it was from heaven, John had borne witness to Jesus, and why did they not believe? But they were afraid, because of the people, to answer, "Of men." "We cannot tell," said they. How, then, pretend to judge of the mission of Jesus? But now they have to be judged in their turn, as well as all the sections of the Jewish people.

In all this part of the Gospel, Christ being rejected, the present time thenceforward is bound up, without interval with His second coming in judgment, as we have seen it in the citations from Zechariah 9, Psalms 2, 8, 118. Only the Lord lays down, quite from the first, the character of this rejection.

In verses 28-32 He proposes to them the case of the two sons: the first saying, I will not go, but afterwards going; the second answering, I go, sir, but not going. Such was the pretended obedience of the Jews, whilst poor sinners repented of their sins and followed Christ. His interlocutors owned that it was the first of the two sons that did the will of his father. The Lord applies the case to them, and adds that, though they had seen the repentance of others, they did not repent one whit more.

Then, in verse 33, He sets out their history in the parable of the vineyard let to the husbandmen. The vineyard had been carefully put in order, and hedged round about. The owner sends his servants to receive his share of the fruits. Such were the prophets; but they were persecuted and killed, as Stephen too accused the Jews in Acts 7. Last of all he sent his son. But man [the Jew], with all the advantages he could enjoy on God's part, would have the world - the religious world, if you will - without the Son of God, without God and His authority, for he who has not the Son has not the Father. The husbandmen cast Him out of the vineyard, and kill Him. The Jews said that such miscreants ought to perish miserably. Then the Lord quotes the same Psalm (118), already mentioned in the earlier part: "Did ye never read in the scriptures The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? The kingdom was taken from them, and given to those who should bring forth the fruits thereof.

276 Then (v. 44) the Lord makes the difference between the effect of the judgment which should befall them, and that which should happen in the last days. They should fall on the stone of stumbling, and be broken; whereas those on whom it should fall in judgment should be crushed, and ground to powder.

Having heard these words, the chief priests and Pharisees perceived that He spoke of them; but they were held back by the fear they already had of the mind of the multitude for these regarded Him as a prophet.

What a solemn testimony the mouth of the Lord renders here of the crisis through which the human race was then passing, through which the soul passes still, when Jesus is announced! He who stumbles against the stone is ruined; but the Lord will come in judgment of His adversaries, who will be overwhelmed by the power of His advent in glory. The rebellious authority which rejects the truth is always feeble, and depends on the opinion of the world. A bad conscience is always feeble. He who has the truth and faith can say the truth; he is in the hands of God, and knows it. Let us remember that the world in which we live has rejected the Son of God. The gospel says to man on God's part, What have you done with My Son? What can he answer? God announces grace with long-suffering, until His longsuffering would be useless; but the world is judged, having not only sinned and violated the law when it had the law, but rejected God Himself come in grace.

277 Not only has man been driven out of the earthly paradise, a world (so to speak) which God had created around Him, but, as far as it depended on man, he has driven God from this world outside, which sin and lusts had formed around man. He drove out God, when His love brought Him here below, where He was delivering man every day from all the evils which sin had introduced into the world. Man does not want God; he will not have Him at any price.

Matthew 22.

The parable of the husbandman refers to the responsibility of man, even when it treated of Christ's coming. Now the Lord proceeds to speak of the ways of God in grace toward Israel and also toward the Gentiles. In the preceding parable it was a question of seeking fruit as God was doing in Israel. Here a king makes a marriage - feast for his son, and invites the guests to the feast. Remark also that it is a likeness of the kingdom of the heavens (v. 2), whilst in the preceding parable they were seeking the fruits according to a fixed measure of obligation, that is, the law, though this were by the ministry of the prophets and the Son, without the kingdom being in question.

Those first invited were the Jews, and of course also during the lifetime of Christ (v. 3). Afterwards, when all things were ready He sent once more His servants - the apostles after His death - to invite them to the wedding-feast (v. 4); but they made light of it. We find here the two characters of men: the pre-occupied whose interest is in the world, and who do not trouble themselves about the Lord; and the violent who persecute His messengers (v. 5, 6). Luke, as is so often the case when moral things are treated of, enters more into detail, whilst for the other part he recounts in few words a crowd of incidents which do not make a moral picture. Luke, I say, enters more into details for the purpose of shewing what excuses men present for neglecting Christ; then he gives us to see the Lord seeking in grace the poor despised ones of Israel when the chiefs would not have the Messiah.

Here we have the great historical fact that Jerusalem and the Jews as such would not have anything to do with Him and would persecute those that are His, bringing on themselves as they have done the judgment of God and ruin.

278 Afterwards He causes them to seek out the Gentiles, sinners where they are, and the guest-chamber of the wedding-feast is filled with people. But then comes a judgment which is exercised with regard to all these guests. We have only one example here, but this to lay down the principle. Christendom gathered by the message of the gospel is the object of God's judgment according to the nature of the invitation which has been made. For a wedding-feast there must be a wedding-garment. One must have put on Christ to have part in His joy.

We find here too another principle important and worthy of remark, a principle which flows from the form of the parable: the judgment is an individual judgment.

Here is that which I would say. The first part of this parable, of which the subject is grace, brings judgment on the Jews, who had despised the invitation of the King acting in grace and summoning them to the feast, who had evil - entreated the messengers, and who, following up their refusal to render Him the fruits of the vineyard, had outraged His servants the prophets, and finally laid their hands on His only Son and put to death His beloved. But at the end of the parable, when, the invitation having been sent on all sides, the house was filled with guests, though Christendom be cut off like Judaism, another sort of judgment is revealed to us, an individual judgment, in which it is a question of knowing if the individual is in a state which suits the privileges he enjoys. It is not a question of the destruction of a city and of the nationality of God's earthly people, of an exterior judgment which closes the economy, the existence of the nation under the old covenant, all the Jewish system. It is a question of knowing whether the state of him who is present at the feast suits the marriage-supper of the Son, of the great King: if not, whilst the feast continues, the individual unfit for the marriage-supper is cast into outer darkness where is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The principle established, one sees that it applies alas! to many: many are called, but few chosen.

The parable of the husbandmen is the history of Judaism up to the rejection and the crucifixion of Christ; that of the marriage-feast is the history of the reception of the gospel, first by the Jews, then by the Gentiles, with that which results from the exterior participation in that grace, and the sorting which takes place in the very bosom of those privileges.

279 In resuming the order of the thoughts from chapter 20: 29 we have seen thus far: the presentation of Jesus as Son of David at Jerusalem; the state of the Jews laid down as to the fact in the parable of the two sons; their judgment as a nation in the parable of the vineyard, a judgment which besides had been already described in the fig-tree become dried up.

Here it is useful to draw attention to the difference between these two cases. In the two it is Israel without fruit, judged and set aside; but in the case of the fig-tree it is Israel in fact, such as the Saviour found them: plenty of leaves, a fair appearance, but no fruit answering to what the Saviour was seeking, to what His heart wanted; also the judgment has another and more profound character. The tree was bad; human nature under the culture of God Himself was worth nothing. On His entrance into this world there was on the Saviour's path but one people which had enjoyed this culture; it was Israel - man having all the advantages which man could have as placed on his responsibility here below. Now man according to the flesh is condemned; never will he bear fruit: it is all over with him.

The parable of the husbandmen attaches itself rather to the nation, as sphere of the ways of God, an economy on the earth; not human nature under the law, but the chiefs of the nation to whom the vineyard of God had been confided. God had had long patience; He was seeking fruits which were due to Him; and His messengers, His servants, had been dishonoured, ill-treated, and even killed. There was one thing more that God could do, and He did it; He sent His Son. The husbandmen cast Him out of the vineyard and killed Him; they must undergo the judgment they had deserved. It is not the incurable evil, the flesh which cannot please God, which perishes before His eyes; it is an exterior and terrible judgment falling on the nation which, notwithstanding all the patience of God displayed toward it in its long career, has crowned its iniquity by rejecting and crucifying His Son. This people suffers the public judgment of God; it is a body ruined, broken in consequence of its sin; it will be ground to powder (save the small remnant God has reserved for Himself) when in the last days it will be found an adversary and apostate.

280 After this parable we have the kingdom of the heavens, the grace which Israel equally rejects, but which, being spread far and wide, fills the house with guests, Gentiles as well as Jews. Here we find also judgment, but bearing on the question whether the individual is suitable for the position in which he is found.

Now after these great principles, after these features which give us the situation, all classes of the Jews, each in its turn come to be judged, just when they thought they were to cast divine wisdom into perplexity by questions it could not answer; for they believed themselves wise and thought they had to do with a poor unlettered Galilean. How blind this world, and religious men; and how wicked the heart of man! The Lord is in their midst in grace, and these men, the one as much as the other, would shew that He is in the wrong!

First (v. 15), the Pharisees gather together and take counsel together, seeking to entangle Him in His words. They hold strongly themselves to the Jewish self-government, as being the people of Jehovah who were not to be subject to the Gentiles. The Herodians, on the contrary, attached themselves to Herod's dynasty, representing the imperial power of Rome which had placed him there as a subordinate king. They thought that, if Jesus acknowledged the Roman authority, He would lose in the eyes of the people His character of Messiah who was to deliver them from that yoke; if He rejected that authority, they might denounce Him to the civil power. It was of small moment to them that they should be inconsistent, if they could only get rid of God and His truth. The bitterest foes become friends to rid themselves of Christ. As Herod and Pilate, Pharisees and Herodians, Pharisees and Sadducees, all the world agree for that. The Pharisees and the Herodians came then together to question Him, and ask, while flattering Him for His integrity, if, yes or no, one ought to pay tribute to Caesar. The Lord, perceiving clearly their hypocrisy, points it out to them; then He asks them to shew Him the current money with which they paid the tribute in the country. Whose image and superscription did this piece bear? They say to Him, Caesar's. Render then, said He, to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's. God had subjected the Jews for their sins to the Gentiles; they should own His hand and submit to this yoke, until God according to His promise should free them from it. Meanwhile they should render to God the things which are God's. They were doing neither the one nor the other. Rebels against God in all their ways, they were constantly rising against the Romans. Astonished at the Lord's answer, they leave Him to go their way.

281 The same day the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, came to submit to Him the case of a woman who, according to the law of Moses, had had seven husbands. Whose wife of the seven, demand they, should she be at the time of the resurrection? Here a fundamental truth was in question: also the Lord's answer is formal and precise. To put the resurrection in question was to be ignorant of the scriptures and of the power of God. Death did not terminate the existence of man. If God was the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, He was not the God of those who did not exist. All live for Him, if they are dead for men; and, though life and incorruption are only brought to light by the gospel, the Old Testament sufficed to shew that God had been, and was, and would be, the God of the faithful, in order that they should be with Him, not only as souls but as men, soul and body, even as He had made them; only risen, a thing necessary after death. When God said, I am the God of Abraham, Abraham was a man living for Him and was to be raised. But the Lord treats also the positive side of the question. In the resurrection all is changed it is no question either of marrying or of giving in marriage one is as the angels of God in heaven. It is not the question here of the position one may be found in, but of the character in which one subsists. The resurrection is a foundation of the gospel. Our faith is vain if Christ is not risen: a thing evidently true, for if man rises not, Christ Himself is not risen. He is then dead also without remedy or answer; He is vanquished, not victor. The Sadducees are put to silence, and the two great sects of the Jews have nothing more to say.

But the Lord having done what the Pharisees, adversaries of the Sadducees, could not do, the curiosity of the Pharisees is excited, and they were gathered together (v. 34) One among them questions the Lord; but his demand 'has for result that Jesus lays the true foundation of the law and the prophets, and then establishes clearly the situation of things, the question of the moment, as God regarded it. Which, asks the lawyer, is the great commandment in the law? A question much debated among the Jews, for whom each commandment had a special value, the observance of each of them gaining, as in an examination, so many good marks from God. The Lord seizes the occasion, offered in the ways of God, to establish the fundamental principles of the divine law. To love God with all the heart, such is the first commandment. The second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. All in man hung on these two things. It is the summary of what man ought to be, the root and the measure of human righteousness. It is not in any way a revelation of divine love; it is not at all a question of grace, nor of an open way for the sinner to come to God; but it is the perfect rule of what a man should be, a divine compendium of the substance of the law, the law on which the prophets insisted in seeking to recall the people to its observance.

282Now all changes. In His turn Christ questions them. He had been clear and positive as to the resurrection, clear and positive as to the essence and the foundation of the law that man should have kept (and in keeping it he would have enjoyed the life of God; but he is a sinner). Now He presents to them the question, grave and decisive for them, of the judgment they formed on Christ and thus on His own person. What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He? They say to Him, David's. How then, says Jesus to them, does David in Spirit call Him Lord? saying, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool? This is what was going to happen. He was about to quit the position of Son of David on earth, Heir of the promises made to the Jews, to take His seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high. No one could answer Him a word, and from that day no one dared to ask Him any more questions. All was closed between the Jewish people and the Lord, save alas! to put in execution the thoughts of hatred which they had in their heart.

Matthew 23.

Without speaking of the instruction it contains, this chapter is important because it shews the manner in which this Gospel moves in the relations of God with Israel, whilst indicating the judgment which the people were drawing on themselves by the rejection of the Messiah.

283 We find here, first the position of the disciples in the midst of the Jews, as long as God would endure these last, and that which, in this respect, suited the servants of Jesus; then the iniquity and the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees; lastly the love and sovereign grace of Jesus, grace which overflows and displays what He is, even when He is announcing judgment. Hence a this part of the Gospel is bound up with the ways of God in relation with His earthly people, as the then moment when all that was passing is bound up with the last days. All connects itself with the Jews of that time and with the relation of the disciples with this people, and thence passes to the last times, leaving the church aside, save that the mention of the last times introduces necessarily the responsibility of those who replace the Jews as servants of the Lord during His absence, and finally the judgment of the Gentiles.

The disciples are left by the Lord in the relation with the Jewish chiefs in which they were then found and up to the judicial rejection of the people at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. The Saviour places them in the same category as the multitude. All were subjected to the authority of the scribes and the Pharisees. These were seated in Moses' seat; and one ought to hear them as to injunctions which they drew from the law given by his means. Nevertheless one must carefully guard against following their walk: they were hypocrites who spoke and did not act. They made the law very strict for others and very light for themselves; they loved to appear before men with the forms of piety to acquire a religious reputation; they sought the first places in the synagogues, salutations in the public places, and to be called Rabbi, making themselves esteemed in the eyes of the world by religion.

The spirit of the disciples was to be the opposite of all that. They were not to be called Rabbi, for Christ alone was their Master, and they were brethren; they were not any more to call others by the name of father, for one only was their Father He who is in the heavens; finally they were not to be called teachers, for Christ alone was He who taught them. He who would be great in their midst was to be their servant, for whoever exalted himself on earth would be abased, and he who abased himself would be exalted. This is just what Christ has done, whilst man, having wished to exalt himself and be as God, has been abased and will be yet more in facing the judgment of God. (Compare Phil. 2.)

284 Afterwards (v. 13) the Lord denounces the scribes and the Pharisees, those religious doctors of the day, putting His finger on the different traits of iniquity which characterised them. They shut up the kingdom of heaven before men, and would neither enter nor let others enter; for religious doctors always oppose the entry of the truth into other hearts. Their life was a life of hypocrisy. They sought to profit through their religious character by the purse of those whose weakness exposed them to their artifices. They made long prayers. They would be proportionately severe. They shewed (v. 15) a prodigious zeal for their religion, but they made their proselytes morally worse than themselves. They proposed the subtleties of casuists and neglected the essential things of the law of God. Exact as to the minutiae of the tithes demanded by the law of Moses, they neglected justice, mercy, and faith, all that which was really important in the eyes of God. They washed the outside, and within they were full of rapine and unrighteousness. Hypocrites! they used to build the tombs of the prophets and were sure that, had they lived in the time of their fathers, they would not have imbrued their hands in the blood of those messengers of God. They testified thus to being sons of their fathers. Well! let them fill up the measure of their fathers.

Never did the Lord accuse any as those whom we may call the clergy of His time, those who, under religious forms, were the great obstacle to the success of His work here below. Serpents, offspring of vipers, said He, how should you escape the judgment of Gehenna? The meek and lowly Saviour, He who had begun His career by describing the character of those who should be blessed, closed it, rejected by the religion of the world and of forms, by describing the hypocrisy and unrighteousness of those who were opposed to the blessing of their neighbours; and He has done it with severity so much the more terrible as it was the mouth of love and peace which expressed itself thus.

Such is the starting-point of these burning words which put in light, as He could do it, the true character of the religion which will not have the truth. At least, said they, they would not have taken part in the persecution nor in the death of those who brought the message of God. But God had His eye on them; they would be put to the proof in that respect. Christ, for it was the Lord Himself who judged them thus, would send prophets, wise men, and scribes (which He did after having ascended on high); whom they would persecute, kill, scourge in the synagogues, to maintain religion intact, but (it is God who pronounces the judgment) in order that the righteous blood shed on the earth since Abel up to Zechariah might come on the generation on which God had bestowed His last and greatest boon, and which had also shewn in the highest degree the perversity and the iniquity of man. We know, according to Revelation 18: 24, that it will be just so with Christendom under its Babylonish form.

285 The very solemn point which is here put in evidence is that iniquity accumulates. The patience of God waits, and not only that, but it employs all means to recall to sincerity and to Himself those who possess the truth and who have at least its form. The most touching appeals, the most energetic warnings, the condescension which makes use of reasonings almost from equal to equal, all this is rendered useless by the obstinacy of men in despising grace and in practising iniquity. Finally, when God has exhausted all His means of calling to repentance, then comes the judgment that this divine patience had suspended. It is at last brought in by sin accumulated from age to age, and by the hardness of heart which has grown with the despite done to divine warnings and to grace.

Nevertheless grace overflows from the heart of the Saviour who speaks here in His divine character. Nothing more touching than the complaints of His grief in apostrophising Jerusalem, which would neither receive His appeals nor come to be guarded and sheltered under the wings of divine love. The city is just characterised by the persecution of all the messengers of God; and how often He would have gathered her children together, as a hen her chickens under her wings! But now He Himself come in love is rejected, and "your house" (for He does not call it His) "is left unto you desolate" - not for ever, be it noted, for the gifts and calling of God are indefeasible, but desolate - till the repentance of the people manifested in the desire to see and to salute Him who had been promised according to Psalm 118, so often cited in connection with those days and the return of the Saviour. This was what the children had cried in chapter 21, a testimony willed of God and produced by His power, when the people would not have their Messiah, true Son of David. The iniquity of the people, set under their responsibility, was come to its height; but Jehovah, according to His sovereign grace and according to His faithfulness, will come again in power as Deliverer, at least for the repentant remnant, when the iniquity of years, in this case as in all others, will have wrought the blessing of Israel according to God's promises, an act of pure grace and mercy towards children of wrath (Rom. 11: 29-32).

286 Matthew 24.

That which precedes shews how in all this we have the Jewish people under our eyes. What follows is the history of the Jews, or rather that of the testimony of the servants of Christ in the midst of the Jews, in the interval which separates the rejection of the Messiah, here in question, and His return in glory. They are still - or anew - in Palestine; not yet delivered nor publicly owned of Jehovah, but under His hand in chastening, if it is a question of those who are under the influence of His grace and of His word, and finally in judgment against those who cast themselves into the arms of Antichrist. This statement comes very naturally following up the testimony of the last verses of chapter 23, and is connected, as to its contents, with that which is there said.

The Lord quits the temple, now forsaken in judgment up to His return, and sits on the mount of Olivet, separated by the valley of the brook of Cedron from the lofty plateau on which the temple was seen in all grandeur.

The disciples approach to draw His attention to the beauty of the majestic building. The Lord does not seek to turn away their eyes from the object which was pre-occupying them, but He foretells the complete destruction of what seemed to be the indestructible palace of their religion, necessary in fact for the accomplishment of the duties which it imposed, and the compulsory place for the offerings which were the only means of putting the people in relationship with God. All was about to be destroyed, from top to bottom; and their religion and all their relations with God, according to the ancient covenant which had to do with the temple, would be entirely abolished with it.

As far as it depended on the responsibility of man, the departure of the Saviour left the temple void of its God.

287 The disciples ask Him when these things should come to pass, and what would be the sign of His coming and of the end of the age. They mean the end of the age of the law by the arrival of the Messiah, that is to say, of Jesus in glory, for the Jews acknowledged "this age," that is to say, the age of the law, and "the age of the Messiah," which should terminate it.

Let us examine the answer of the Lord. It is divided into two parts. The first (v. 4-14) gives a general sketch of their position, and of what would go on to the end. The second (v.15-21) presents the picture, the application of which is the development of Daniel 12.

This chapter, indeed, of the prophet announces the great tribulation through which Jerusalem will pass in the last times, a tribulation that has no parallel in the history of the world; after which the Saviour will appear for the deliverance of His own, and to gather together from the four quarters of the earth the dispersed of Israel, that is to say, the elect of that people. The Lord occupies Himself more particularly with those who would be witnesses to His name, whilst describing the condition of things which so closely affected them. He leaves out of the question the church and all relating to it, and speaks of witnesses among the Jews, whom He warns against false Christs.

Now that the true Christ had been rejected, the people would fall a prey to these impostors, and many would be deceived. There would also be wars, and rumours of wars; the disciples were to be quiet; the end, that is, the end of the age, would not be yet. Nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there would be famines and earthquakes in divers places. It was the beginning of sorrows that would end in the accomplishment of the ways of God.

But in those days of trouble for the nation men would only become more wicked, and would break out in hatred against the witnesses for the truth. They would be killed, given up to be tormented, and they would be hated of all nations for Christ's sake. When once the bridle is loosed, the Gentiles, like the Jews, will have neither Christ nor truth. False prophets would arise, who would deceive the mass, and the love of many would wax cold because iniquity should abound. In such cases moral courage fails, when faith is not in activity to sustain the heart by causing it to look to the Lord, who is above all difficulties whatever they may be. The disciples were to persevere to the end, for deliverance would come in due time. Our business is to reap, applying ourselves, without discouragement, to the work of the Lord; for them it is a question of being delivered. It is true, in a general way, for us also, that we must persevere to the end. When the word of God speaks to us of the desert path that has to be trodden, it insists upon perseverance, and upon the maintenance of confidence unto the end, though there is no uncertainty about the issue for the true believer, because God will keep him to the end. He is faithful to do it, but He it is who must do it: there is the way, and we must walk in it. Danger is there, and we need to be preserved; but the sheep shall not perish, and none shall pluck them out of the hand of the Lord. We must, however, go on to the end: it is our duty to count upon God for that, but here in the last times there should be a deliverance. The word of God, notwithstanding the predominance of evil, should not be hindered; it would go beyond the limits of Palestine, and would carry to all nations tidings of the establishment of the coming kingdom. Then the end would come. It is not here the gospel of salvation, such as we have in Ephesians 1, but the gospel of the kingdom, as John the Baptist and the Saviour Himself had proclaimed it. The kingdom of God is at hand.

288 All this is a general view of the state of things which would take place at the end, and which began to appear immediately after the departure of the Lord - a state of things of which there would be a foretaste in what was about to take place between His departure and the destruction of Jerusalem, of which verses 4-14 give us a general idea.

The church, as we have already said, is left entirely out of view, the testimony sent to the Gentiles being that of the last days when the church will be in heaven, and which will give occasion to the judgment described in chapter 25.

The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus is not found here at all: nevertheless this destruction was of great importance, because it put an end to all relation of God with the people, as such, until it should be resumed on their return to the land at the end of the days. Luke 21: 24 speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, adding that it should be trodden under foot of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles should be accomplished. Daniel 9: 26 speaks of it thus: The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary and the desolation will be there by the judgment of God. At the end the Messiah will take the kingdom, when Jerusalem and the Jews have suffered to the utmost the judgment decreed by God.

289 Verse 15. The Lord comes now, in the course of His prophecy, to the moment predicted by Daniel, when the abomination which makes desolate would be set up in the place that the throne of God ought to occupy. There would then be, as we have seen, a time of testimony in Israel, which would reach to the ends of the world to all nations; the servants of the Lord were to possess their souls in patience, and, although hated of all, to persevere unto the end. But for those who should be in Judea, the moment would come when an idol (for this is the meaning of the word "abomination would be set up in the holy place. This idol is called the desolating idol; because the confidence placed in it, and the public affront given to God, would bring about the desolation of the people and of the holy place. When it should be placed there, the faithful ones in Judea were to flee unto the mountains. The Lord uses many figures to shew the urgency of the case. He who might be upon the housetop was not to come down to take anything out of his house; he who might be in the fields was not to return back to fetch his garments; the moment would be so terrible, that it would only be a question of flight. But God ever thinks of His own. They were to pray, the Lord said, that their flight might not take place in winter, nor on the sabbath-day. When their time of tribulation - unparalleled in the history of the world - has come, God will consider the temperature most suitable for the flight, and also the conscientious spirit that would stop the faithful soul on a sabbath-day.

This passage clearly shews us that in all this it is a question of the Jews, and of Jerusalem and the neighbourhood. It is the last half-week of Daniel, "a time of distress for Jacob," but he would be delivered out of it. But woe to the women with child, and to those that give suck in those days, though in times of peace such things would be subjects for joy to Jewish women: there should be a tribulation such as never had been. But the heart of the Lord thinks of all the difficulties, of all the dangers of His own. For the sake of His elect He will shorten those days, for otherwise no flesh should be saved; and in point of fact it will but be a misery prolonged according to man's will, for in three years and a half all will be ended.

290 The quotation from Daniel clearly shews us that it is not a question of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, for Daniel informs us that this time of tribulation is without a parallel, and consequently there cannot be two such. But further, the duration of the tribulation is twelve hundred and sixty days, or three and a half years: then followed seventy-five days for purifying everything, and then Daniel, having been raised, will have his part in these things at the end of the days. Now, whether you take the twelve hundred and sixty days as days - as I believe them to be - for a half-week of three and a half years, which corresponds to Daniel 9, or take them as twelve hundred and sixty years, the fact remains that nothing happened, either at one period or the other, corresponding to the Saviour's prophetic words, or to those of the Spirit by Daniel.

Luke neither speaks of Daniel, nor of the abomination of desolation, for he occupies himself more with the present period and with the principles that belong to it. Thus he tells us on this occasion that Jerusalem would be surrounded with armies, and trodden under foot of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

After that (v. 23) come the great signs. There will also be in those last times false Christs and false prophets, promises of deliverance which hearts will so greatly need at that terrible moment when all the false hopes of an unbelieving nation will have passed away. "Behold," they will say, he is in the desert; behold, he is in the secret chambers. There will also be those who will work great signs and miracles, so as to deceive, if possible, the very elect. The wickedness of men and the deceits of Satan will again be employed to turn souls aside, and to hinder them from humbling themselves, and from seeking deliverance where alone it can be found.

It is the terrible time of the enemy's power, and of the judgment of God upon the people, by means of the instruments chosen by the people to aggrandise themselves, and establish themselves in their unbelief. It is no question here of Christians; they know that Christ is in heaven. To tell them that He is in the desert, or that He is in the inner chambers, would not meet any need of a Christian, and would produce no effect on those who might be Christians only in name. For the Jew, who will undergo the agony of an unparalleled persecution, and of the anger of Satan, who, cast down from heaven, will be filled with burning rage, knowing that he has but a short time; for the Jew, amidst all this suffering, the despair of a heart, bitterly deceived by the promise of a deliverer already come, will be an evident snare. It is purely and simply a question of the great tribulation of Jerusalem in the last days, the time predicted by Jeremiah (chap. 30: 7), and by Daniel (chap. 12: 1), the deliverance of the remnant which becomes the nation being foretold in these two passages. The power of Satan, which develops itself at this time, is shewn us in Revelation 12, the order of the time in Daniel 9.

291 The Lord warns His disciples, for in the whole of this chapter they are looked at as witnesses in the midst of the Jews. They were not to follow any of those will-of-the-wisps lighted by Satan to deceive souls; for the Lord, the Son of man, would come as lightning, suddenly and with a brilliancy which would leave no uncertainty with regard to His person thus manifested; He would come in judgment there where the effect of the judgment was found before the penetrating eyes of God (v. 28).

The Lord makes some allusion to Job 39: 30, though it is a proverbial expression, which one need not go far to find the meaning of. Where the carcase of Israel is, there will the judgment of God descend with the sight and rapidity of an eagle.

After this rapid and prophetic testimony of the Lord foreseeing the judgment of the latter days, He announces with greater calmness the wide results of the judgment of God, as well as the grace that will gather together the residue of the people (v. 29-31). It is not so much a prophetic transport, placing the mind in the circumstances which it announces, as the revelation of the ways of God, given with the calmness and dignity that are suitable to the One to whom all is certain. All the authority, all the power, which exists will be overthrown and will fall. I do not doubt that there will be in the last times extraordinary phenomena (Luke 21: 25); but I think that the Lord is here speaking of the fall of everything which by exalting itself governs the world. God interferes, and all the powers then in rebellion against Him will be overthrown for ever.

This will happen immediately after the tribulation announced by the Lord and by the prophets. The disciples had asked what would be the sign of His coming. He had given them abundant warnings, and had declared to them the true character and dangers of those times; but the sign of His coming to the earth would be the appearing of His glory in the sky. He had laid before them what was connected with the earth, according to the need of those times. But the coming of the Saviour was heavenly, and it was in heaven that the sign of His coming to the earth would be seen, the appearing, I do not doubt, of His glory in the heavens. They would see the Son of man coming in the clouds with power and great glory, and then all the tribes of the land (the land of Israel, I think) shall wail because of Him, those who had rejected Him, and who now see Him returning in glory. The faithful sharing in a general way the fate of the nation, but delivered from their unbelief, will mourn, we know, in another manner (Zech. 12: 10-14), looking upon the One whom they had pierced. The rebellious Gentiles, who exalted themselves against Jehovah, and against His Christ, will be destroyed; but here, I think, the Spirit has more in view the children of Israel.

292 But there is more; not only in Palestine will those who are written in the book of God (Dan. 12: 1) be delivered, but the Son of man will send His angels (for now the angels have become the servants of the One who inherits all the rights of man, according to the counsels of God) to gather together all the elect of Israel from the four corners of the earth, from one end of heaven to the other.

This terminates the history of the Jews and of the testimony of God in their midst, from the time when they rejected the Saviour up to His return. We have seen the relation of the testimony of the disciples with the Jewish people, and the circumstances in which they are to render this testimony until the Lord's return. This ends at verse 31 of chapter 24. Verses 30, 31 of this chapter are connected with verse 31 Of chapter 25. The historical portion of the prophecy is taken up again in this last verse, the throne of the Lord being established, so that He judges the Gentiles. Between these two we have exhortations to the disciples, and the responsibility of Christians during the absence of the Lord . The general result for Christianity is developed at the end of chapter 24. All depended on the living expectation of the Lord. If those should fail, the servant would take the mastery over his companions in service, and would tyrannise over them; he would join himself to the world, in order to enjoy its fleshly delights: the consequence would be, that he would be cut off, counted among the hypocrites, and cast outside. This gives occasion to more precise details as to the condition and the responsibility in which Christians are placed during His absence, and this is what we are about to examine.

293 Matthew 25.

The coming of the Saviour gives occasion to look at Christians as ten virgins gone forth to meet the Bridegroom. The true force of the word is that the kingdom of the heavens will then have become like to ten virgins thus gone out. Nothing more solemn and more instructive than this parable as to the state of Christians. It is a question of the return of the Saviour and of that which will happen to Christians, to the members of the kingdom, at that epoch. If the servant said, "My Master delayeth his coming," it would be his ruin, the demonstration of the state of his heart. But in fact the Bridegroom would delay; and this is what has happened.

It is of moment to remark the mutual relationships in which the personages of the parable are found. It is not a question here of the church as bride. If one would absolutely think of a bride, it is Jerusalem on earth. Christians are regarded as virgins gone out to meet Him who was the Bridegroom. The Jewish remnant does not go out. When Jesus shall come again, it will be found there on earth in the relationships in which it will have remained here below. The Bridegroom tarried, and the virgins, the wise like the foolish, went asleep, no longer expecting the Bridegroom. Further, they go in somewhere in order to sleep more conveniently. Nevertheless there are of them such as have oil in their vessels with their lamps: it is divine grace which sustains the lamp of the Christian profession. They are not surprised. It is a question of those who make profession.

The moral state of the kingdom consists in this, that all are gone asleep: the coming of the Lord is forgotten by all. At an unforeseen moment the cry makes itself heard, Behold the Bridegroom! God re-awakens souls that they may think of it; but what a testimony rendered to the state of Christians! That which should have characterised them, the thing for which, as a living state of the soul of the Christian here below, one had been converted (according as it is written, "How ye turned to God . . . to wait for his Son from heaven") had been entirely forgotten. They were no longer waiting for the Lord; and though there was oil in the vessels of some, the lamps were not trimmed. It is the soul that awaits the Lord which watches to be ready to receive Him. Their lamps shone no longer suitably. There might be smoke and ashes; the fire was perhaps not extinct; but there was little light, enough however just to manifest negligence and slumbering. Where was then the love for the Saviour, when all forgot Him, no more occupied with His return? Fidelity and love to the Saviour were equally at fault.

294 One is asked sometimes how it has happened that those so excellent men of past times had no knowledge of this truth - were not animated by this hope. The answer is easy: the wise virgins slept like the foolish. Waiting for the Saviour was lost in the church. And, mark it well, it is the cry, Behold the Bridegroom! which awakens from their sleep slumbering Christians. One must not fall under illusions the proper state of Christians depends on this expectation "Ye yourselves" it is said, "like unto men that wait for their lord." Without doubt the new nature that the Christian receives produces essentially the same fruits, whatever be the circumstances in which it is found; but also the character is formed by the object that governs the heart; and there is nothing which detaches from the world like waiting for the Lord, nothing which searches the heart like this expectation, in order that there be nothing that suits not His presence. Nothing consequently introduces like it the feelings of Jesus in the judgment that it conveys on good and on evil; nothing like it for cherishing affection for Jesus in the motives which govern our conduct. Remark also that in reality it is the same waiting for the Saviour, the fact of watching in waiting for Him, which is in question here: not at all the service that we have to accomplish during His absence. Service and the responsibility that attaches to it are found in the following parable (chap. 25: 14-30).

The same distinctions are found in Luke 12. In verse 27 it is said, "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching"; then the recompense is that they will enjoy the blessings of heaven and that Jesus will gird Himself to make them happy. Afterwards (v. 43) it is a question of the service to render during His absence and then the reward is the inheritance.

295 Returning to Matthew 25: 1-13, I think the fact that the other virgins had to go away to buy oil means only that it was too late to have part with the Bridegroom, and that the faithful virgins could not then communicate grace. One must have it in time for the service itself I will add that I do not think the foolish virgins were saved souls. The Bridegroom says to them, "I know you not" - what Jesus could hardly say to those who were His own.

In the parable of the talents (v. 14-30) it is a question of service. The Lord goes away and confides to His servants a part of His goods to trade with them. They are the spiritual gifts that the Lord Jesus has imparted to those that followed Him when He went away. It is no question of that which providence has given us, nor of all men, but of the servants of Jesus, and of that which He has given them at the moment of His going away. There is a certain difference between this parable and what is found in Luke 19. In this latter passage the same amount is given to each of the servants; human responsibility enters into it for more in the thoughts of the Spirit of God; also the reward is proportioned to what love gained. Here the amount is according to divine wisdom, in reference to the vessel to which it is confided; and each faithful workman is equally called to enter into the joy of his Lord; he is set over many things, but he enters into the joy of his Lord. Faithful to Jesus according to what was confided to him, Jesus makes him enjoy His own joy. The principle of work is the confidence that the workman has in the master, and the spiritual intelligence which that confidence gives him.

The talents had not been entrusted to them for doing nothing with: in that case the Master might have kept them to Himself. They understood well that they had been put into their hands in order that they might traffic with them for the Master during His absence, and they employed those talents, those spiritual gifts, for the Master's service. Their heart knew that Master, desires His profit and His honour, sought no other authority or warrant for work than the fact that He had confided these gifts to them, and the zeal of a heart made confident through the knowledge that they had of Him. What the third servant lacked was exactly this true knowledge of the Master. In his eyes He was an austere man. And, mark well, when there is not the true knowledge of God as He is revealed in Christ, one has always an entirely false idea of Him. The heart ever betrays itself by the idea that one forms of God, and unbelief always makes of the true God a picture from which the heart revolts. Knowledge of the rights of God as well as of His love is lacking. If God were such as unbelief imagines and His authority were recognised, one would act accordingly: but when His love is unknown, His authority is despised. God only reveals Himself in Christ, in Christ alone can He be really known.

296 This case of the unfaithful servant marks also distinctly the difference between gifts and grace, and the effect of grace in the heart. We have no practical example as to this in the New Testament, yet the principle is clearly established in 1 Corinthians 13. In the Old Testament we have examples of the Spirit's power without conversion taking place - far from it indeed. This is what also explains Hebrews 6. Here sloth and unfaithfulness flow from the ignorance in which the servant is concerning his Master's character, as well as from the false and guilty idea that he had formed of Him.

Let us remark in our two parables an important fact which we shall find again elsewhere. The Lord, in the teachings which relate to His coming, says nothing which can give one occasion to think that it must necessarily be delayed beyond the life of those whom He addresses. Thus the virgins who slept are the same who awoke; the servants who received the talents are the same as those whose work is taken account of at the end. We know that many generations have appeared and disappeared since the departure of the Saviour, but He did not wish that they should be expecting beforehand any delay. In the same way when He wishes to give the history of the church to the close, the Spirit of God takes up seven churches which existed at that moment in order to describe in seven epochs the great features of that history; so that, although we may recognise now these features and these periods, there was nothing when the Apocalypse was written which announced in a formal manner any continuance of the church on earth.

There is another remark I have to make. What is said in verse 23 seems to me to state a general principle. Those who possess Christian privileges without any living enjoyment of them, without truly knowing the Lord Jesus Himself, lose all that they have (this answers to Hebrews 6); whilst those who are faithful to the light they possess acquire more. This, too, is the explanation given in verse 29. The judgment upon the wicked servant is executed in verse 30.

297 We have gone through in these three parables the judgment of Christendom, of the church viewed as a divine system established on the earth, but exposed to the consequences of being established on the foundation of human responsibility; then of individuals who profess to be Christians considered with regard to their duty of waiting for the coming of the Lord, and in relation to their service during His absence. In verse 31 the Lord again takes up the thread of what He had already said with regard to the history of the earth and the things which will happen at His coming. This verse is linked, as I have said before, with chapter 24: 31, before which all the relationships of the remnant with the unfaithful people and with the Gentiles, first in testimony, then in unparalleled sufferings, had been set out as preceding the personal coming of the Saviour, who will put an end to these sufferings. Now when the Lord shall appear in these circumstances, it will not be only to shine and then to disappear, as a flash of lightning; He will sit on the throne of His glory. Then when His warrior judgment, namely what is executed on His adversaries shall be accomplished (see Rev. 19: 11), the Lord seated on His throne will judge the nations of the whole world to whom the gospel of the kingdom shall have been sent. This mission is found announced in verse 14 of chapter 24, which closes the first part of the prophecy of that chapter. It is a question there of the gospel that Jesus preached during His lifetime, as well as John the Baptist; it is not the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus (that is to say, a work of eternal redemption fully accomplished), but the solemn fact that the kingdom was going to be established; it is the "everlasting gospel." The Lord was about to begin to break the serpent's head by the establishment of this kingdom, to take in hand His great power and act as King. This testimony is to be rendered after the catching up of the church and before the manifestation of the Lord. The testimony rendered to the Jews is found in Revelation 11; but here we learn that it will be heard also in the entire world before the end comes.

At the time then when the Lord shall be seated on the throne of His glory, He will begin to pronounce His judgment on the nations and to execute it. The word mentions two kinds of judgment, the warrior judgment, and that wherein the Judge is in session as supreme and recognised authority. Thus Revelation 19 is the warrior judgment. In chapter 20 begins the judicial session which is held when the power of the King has established His throne, and He sits there to judge (Rev. 19: 11; 20: 4).

298 As to the destruction of the beast and his armies, it takes place by the coming of the Lord, who destroys his armies and casts the beast and the false prophet at the same time into hell. Then He establishes His throne in Jerusalem. After this Gog comes, thinking to have all his own way; he finds the Lord Himself, and perishes on the mountains of Israel. Then, the throne being established in peace, the Lord sits there to judge the nations to which previously the gospel of the kingdom had been sent. The terms of the judgment shew us that it is no question whatever of a general judgment, as people commonly think of it. They are there judged according to the manner that they treated the messengers of the gospel of the kingdom. It is of this only that they here give an account to the Judge; it is on this only that He questions them. Now, as the greatest number of pagans have never heard of such messengers, this judgment cannot be theirs, being wholly inapplicable to them. Besides at the beginning of the Epistle to the Romans the judgment of the nations is pronounced, their guilt established on entirely different principles, namely, that they gave up the knowledge of God when they possessed it; that they disregarded the testimony of creation, then that of conscience; finally, that they plunged, consequent on this voluntary alienation from God, into idolatry and corruption, who should do worst.

Next we find here three classes, the goats, the sheep, and the brethren of the judge; that is to say, those who had not received the messengers, those who had received them, and the messengers themselves. It is the judgment of the quick, of the nations; a final judgment. They go thence to Gehenna, to everlasting torment, whilst the righteous possess everlasting life here on earth, but enjoy it with God. It is the judgment of the valley of Jehoshaphat when Jehovah shall have gathered the nations, and there shall be multitudes in this valley of decision. The judgment of the quick is a scriptural truth as certainly as the judgment of the dead. Not only so, but the Jews were much more familiar, and this according to their own scriptures of the Old Testament, with the judgment of the quick than with the judgment of the dead. Doubtless there were in the Old Testament words which had given the Pharisees to understand the latter, as also the Lord justifies them on this point whilst He condemns the Sadducees. Yet these were held as good Jews, and the high priest and his family were of this sect. Nobody put their orthodoxy in question. They were wrong, we know; but when we see the passage by which the Lord convicts them, we understand how some who had not the Spirit of God might remain in ignorance of the truth in this respect. If one did not seize the fact that God looks at man as having a body as well as a soul, so that the life beyond death demonstrates also the resurrection, one has still trouble to seize the force of the proof alleged by the Lord. For him who knows that the Lord is risen and that we are to be conformed to Him, the thing is simple. Death touches only the body; if one subsists afterwards, it is to be a complete man. One thing proves the other. The soul is happy with Christ meanwhile, but the man is not complete. He lives, the man who died; after death, all live for God, they are only dead for man; this last state of death must cease, but will only cease at the resurrection. Meanwhile the soul is with the Lord, the witness, since life is not terminated, that death is not to retain him who is subjected to it.

299 Now Christians have trouble in believing a judgment on the earth, though they profess it in the Creed. But the word of God is clear thereon. Prophecy speaks of it largely. There is a judgment of the quick, as there is a judgment of the dead; and this judgment we have here, at least the most formal part, that where the Lord sits on His throne and personally judges the nations. Elsewhere they are suddenly destroyed by His glorious appearing, being found, either gathered to make war on Him as in Revelation 17: 14, and Revelation 19, or surrounding the camp of the saints and the beloved city (and here they are suddenly destroyed by fire come down from heaven) as in Revelation 20: 7-9. But here the Lord, seated on His throne, after having already come as lightning on those who were warring against Him, judges as King all the nations of the earth, according to the reception that each shall have given to His brethren the messengers of the kingdom, counting all that was done to them as done to Himself personally.

300 Such is the grand principle of this judgment. "The sheep disavow all pretension to have had regard to the King personally; but He takes as done to Himself all that they had done to His messengers whom He owned as His brethren. "The goats," on the contrary, pretend never to have failed toward the great King; but on the same principle the indifference they had shewn toward His messengers counts in the heart of the King for indifference toward Him. Thus it is just His judgment of the nations, but it is also a great encouragement for His servants whom He will send to the nations; it is also, in principle, an encouragement for all times. He thinks always of His own as if they were Himself. "Why," says He to Saul, "persecutest thou Me?" This goes farther, it is true; for those that Saul persecuted were members of His body whilst He was in heaven; the others were His brethren on the earth. I speak of this as testimony to the great and precious truth that He ever bears the profoundest interest in His own - interest which never fails nor slumbers; which can doubtless allow the trial of persecution if needful, but an interest which, across all, holds the reins in His hand and owns the sufferings of His own for His name as a title of worth for the happiness of the kingdom which will be surely awarded them in its time.

I have still some remarks in detail to make. The Lord takes account of all the circumstances of the life of His own. The great aim of the parable is to shew that what is done to His servants is done to Himself; but He knows who is hungry, who is in prison, etc. Nothing escapes Him. Further, it is well understood that His own suffer, not only now, but at every time during His absence. Afterwards it is before the Son of man that the nations are summoned to render account of their ways. Besides the Father judges nobody, but has committed all judgment to the Son. Here it is the Son of man come and seated on the throne of His glory.

Remark that when He sits on the great white throne to judge the dead (not the living, as here), He does not come at all. Heaven and earth flee away from before His face. This is not to come there. Here, it is, when He comes in His glory (compare Joel 3: 11, et seq.) that He sits on the throne of His glory and that He gathers the nations. The blessed put on His right hand are blessed of His Father, but they are children, not companions of the Judge, like the risen and the changed; they do not come with Him; they were mixed up with the goats until the King separated them. Now this is not true of Christians, for the dead in Christ rise apart, then go to meet Him with those changed. They are risen in glory. Jesus, who was their first-fruits in His own resurrection, comes and transforms the body of their humiliation according to the likeness of His glorious body. Their resurrection is as a thing wholly apart, and alone the faithful go to meet the Lord. Here He comes to the earth, separates the faithful and condemns the wicked who had despised their brethren, at the same time that He gives to those who had received them (His brethren, the kingdom prepared for them by His Father. This is not however the kingdom of the Father as in Matthew 13: 43. Nevertheless all flows from the Father and from His counsels as the source and cause of the blessing. It is an earthly kingdom, the blessing of which flows from the counsels and the goodness of the Father of Him who was there as Son of man - a kingdom prepared for them not before, but from the foundation of the world; the result of the government of God here below, but according to the counsels of God. The fire into which the wicked are to be cast was prepared for the devil and his angels.

301 Matthew 26.

Now, having finished that which He had to say when He had quitted or rather abandoned Jerusalem, the ford recalls the attention and the thoughts of His disciples to His suffering and His cross. Two days later came the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man was to be betrayed in order to be crucified. This was not the mind of the sages of the world, of the great men and the authorities, who found that the moment was hardly opportune at the time when there would be such a gathering together of people. For these, having enjoyed in vast numbers the effects of His power and His goodness, might stir up a tumult if the authorities attempted to get rid of Him in a violent and unjust manner. But in the counsels of God that was to be accomplished at this time.

True Lamb of God, He was to suffer for us in realising the type of the deliverance out of Egypt by means of a redemption excellent in a very different way. Also the Lord, in the value of His perfection, announces to His disciples that which was going to happen, making use of the very plots of the guides of the nation to accomplish the counsels of God, whilst all their precautions were reduced to nothing. Now man was sufficiently wicked, and the enemy sufficiently powerful, when God permitted it, that there should be no tumult. The world shews itself completely under the power of its prince, and the enemy of God. As far as tumult was concerned, there were only those cries, Crucify Him, crucify Him.

302 All that which follows is the solemn testimony that, at this supreme moment, the Saviour, the Victim of atonement, the Lamb destined for the slaughter, the Sheep dumb in the hands of him that shears it, was to find no succour, no refuge, no support for His heart, not one to have compassion on Him though He sought for it. At the same time His perfection, His grace, are displayed so much the more that He is put to the proof.

We are going a little in detail to run over the account of this grace and of this patience. One learns in it the perfection of the Saviour, where it is presented in the most touching and at the same time the most admirable manner. The close of the life of the Lord is distinguished in this respect that it is regarded at a different point of view in each Gospel, as also all the rest of His history, whilst Mark and Matthew present the same portrait with but little differences. But the Gospel of John shews us the person of the Lord God, the Word made flesh, eternal life in the world. Also in Gethsemane and on the cross, we find there neither suffering nor humiliation, but a divine Person who passes through them in His power. In Luke, it is the Man who in Gethsemane feels more the trial as man, but who is victorious in it, so that on the cross the expression of suffering is not found. In Matthew, as the victim of propitiation, He answers nothing if it is not to make a good confession and render testimony to the truth, the sole motive of His condemnation. The Spirit of God shews here in a positive manner the forsaking of men and even of His disciples, in which the Lord found Himself without any consolation for His heart; then finally the forsaking of God on the cross when He cries to Him, praying that God should not be far from Him, when bulls and dogs compassed Him. In a word we have, in John, the Son of God always man; in Luke, the man; in Matthew, the victim of atonement; but the circumstances are of profound interest, and we wish to touch on them.

303 Matthew 27.

The death of Jesus being already determined in the unpremeditated council held at the beginning of the night, when He had been brought before Caiaphas, the scribes and the Pharisees held a formal council very early in the morning to pronounce His definite sentence; then they lead Him away to Pilate. Here we find the iniquity and blindness of all in presence of Him who was about to die. Judas, who evidently as it seems to me, thought that Jesus would escape them as He had so many times escaped, as long as His hour was not yet come, struck in any case in his conscience at seeing Jesus condemned, comes to the chief priests with the thirty pieces of silver. Seized with remorse, he declares that he had sinned in betraying the innocent blood. Little sympathy awaits him there. They had attained their end; their business had succeeded; as to the sin of Judas, it was his affair. Such is all the compassion that remorse finds with those who make use of the iniquity that produces it. The end is attained; and if their instrument is lost for ever, so much the worse for him; it is his business. They have gained their end. Judas casts into the temple the silver, poor price of his soul; then goes away to hang himself, sad end of a life passed without conscience near the Lord. Nothing hardens like this. The cruel and insolent indifference of the chiefs of Israel, which does not relieve a bad conscience, pushes to suicide this man, who loses his life, his soul, and the money for which he had sold it.

But what a picture of the heart of man we find in what follows! Men who had no scruple in buying the blood of Jesus could not put in the treasury the money they had thus employed, because it was the price of blood. What a testimony to the blindness of conscience! How much scruples differ from conscience! Good and evil affect the conscience, which in itself is the noblest of the faculties. The scrupulous man is servile, dreads for himself, is occupied with ordinances, and fears to violate them. The god that the scrupulous serves is a god who watches over what affects him; and he abandons his miserable servant who does not take account of that which concerns the honour and the will of the master that he fears. It is a false rancorous god, the god of a heart that knows not the true God, even when the heart names him the Eternal. If the heart is but externally in relation with the true God, it will neglect that which bears upon His true character (righteousness, true holiness, love), to be occupied with His ordinances, which man without faith and without knowledge of God can accomplish, and which he fears to neglect because he is afraid of God. Now the chief priests could attach importance to Israel which was being ruined and which had been rejected before because of its iniquity: Israel ought not to be defiled; but for miserable Gentiles, to whom the door (closed on Israel) was going to open, a field defiled by the money which had bought it was good enough. It is thus that a place of burial is bought for strangers. All is blindness, pride, and darkness. Light they would not have. But the counsel of God, declared long before by the prophet, was to be accomplished. When their counsel was opposed to that, it came to nothing; but their own acts of folly were accomplishing the prophecies that they heeded not, though they were constantly read in their synagogues.

304 Now Jesus was standing there before their governor. He bears a good confession before Pontius Pilate. He is the King of the Jews. When the Jews accuse Him, He is mute. He is there to be victim. God gives testimony to Him by the dream of Pilate's wife; then the governor makes efforts to deliver Him from the bloodthirsty malice of the Jews, profiting by a habit they had of releasing a prisoner at Passover. But the unhappy Jews must consummate their iniquity; for the moment arrives when God permits iniquity to have its course even unto the end, in order that it should be manifested such as it is. Thus was propitiation accomplished by the suffering and death of Jesus. Pilate shews only the feebleness of a man who despised all that which surrounded him; of a man who would keep his conscience, but had very little of it and still less of the fear of God; of a man who, when it becomes too inconvenient to him to maintain righteousness, yields to the violence and perseverance in evil of a will which fights utterly against God and good. In the eyes of Pilate it was not worth while, for a poor just man who had no human importance, to compromise both his person and the public peace. He washes his hands of it, and leaves the responsibility of this death on those who desired it.

Poor Jews! This responsibility they take on them; they do also bear its penalty up to this day. "His blood," say they, "be on us and on our children." Terrible curse that this poor people calls on itself; curse which weighs on it until sovereign grace, in bringing a little remnant to repentance in which it will feel the sin which has been committed, changes the blood of a curse into the blood of expiation; and this on God's part who will cleanse them from the sin which they committed in shedding it. The sovereign grace of God is that alone which can find in the very iniquity of man the means of accomplishing the salvation of him who has been guilty of it. It is thus that we, who have been saved of this same grace, can render testimony to it everlastingly. In the work which saves us we have no part but our sins and the hatred which accomplished it on man's side. This poor people was on this occasion to shew to what point it had fallen, abandoned of God. They chose a robber in place of the Son of God, a murderer, but a man who flattered their own passions in exciting them against the Romans, their masters, to whom they were subjected because of their sins. Now Pilate releases to them Barabbas, and delivers to them Jesus after having scourged Him already owned to be innocent; for that which characterises Pilate here is want of heart and a proud indifference wholly stamped with cruelty.

305 Now the beloved Saviour endures all the indignities which can rise in the heart of man, brutal and free to exercise a power which finds its pleasure in making those suffer over whom it rules for a moment. For man is a tyrant by nature, and when several are united, there is no moral force found where the most amiable dispositions exist, and thus one falls to the bottom of the ladder; one is ashamed of amiability, and all is on the level of what is the lowest. Poor fallen creatures! Besides, Pilate, their chief, had given them the example of it.

Nevertheless, that which especially concerns us here, that which ought to interest us, is the Lamb destined to the slaughter, the Sheep dumb before its shearers. The precious Saviour bears the insults and injuries of those who were only capable of taking joint pleasure in evil and of acting in consequence, He was not the One who would resist or do anything whatever to withdraw from it. He was come to suffer and give His life as a ransom for many. Only we can remark that Jews and Gentiles unite to reject and trample under foot Him who does not resist them. The chosen nation and the last beast, the Roman beast to which God had given the reins of power on the earth, put themselves in agreement, quite hostile though they were among themselves, to persecute and insult the Son of God. If the Jews go on before to demand His blood, the Gentiles lend themselves to the Jews to shed it. Now all is accomplished. The Saviour is led away to be crucified, the victim of propitiation for our sins.

306 It would appear that Jesus was physically feeble, for they compelled a man of Cyrene, named Simon, to bear His cross. They at least would not do so; alone, Jesus could not. Insolence and tyranny are here in play; in men there was joy in oppressing and putting to death the Son of God. Man was getting rid of Him to his ruin. But though these bulls of Bashan were there, though these dogs surrounded the Saviour, the great and for us the precious figure of the outline is the Victim silent and mute, the Lamb which goes to the slaughter. The account has a perfect simplicity; but the fulfilment of the prophecies unrolls before our eyes in an admirable manner; the spiritual view pierces across circumstances, contemplating the patient and divinely calm figure of the Son of God, perfect in His submission. They offer Him vinegar mixed with gall, the effect of which was to stupefy in the midst of the sufferings; but the Lord did not seek such relief. He was there to suffer and to accomplish the will of His Father, not to escape the consciousness of that which this obedience cost Him. They share His garments and cast lots on His vesture, which, without that, they must have torn. So it was written. Now the Saviour, exposed naked to the derision of the soldier, was not insensible to the ignominy which He suffered, although He did not turn away His face from it. There was no one to have compassion for Him; no one to confess His name, had not God the Father forced man to render testimony to Him, for Pilate had inscribed His title on the cross: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." The Jews had wished to avoid this affront; but this must turn to their confusion without remedy and veil, and He whom they had rejected must receive His true title in spite of them. Their King was crucified; but God had taken care that He should be owned and proclaimed such.

Nevertheless personally He was to be outraged to the last point. The lowest state in which man could find himself left him always man; and at this supreme moment it was no question of making the difference between us, more openly wicked, and another who should have escaped the degradation that sin produces. It was a question of placing man, such as he is, in face of the Son of God. Also a robber it is here on the side of men, associated with them against a God of love. In that they are together and equal. This robber could, in concert with the others, insult the Son of God. All is levelled; Christ alone is abased beneath man; a worm, as He said, and no man; yet was He God revealed in man. The Man who revealed God was there; and the reproaches that reproached God fell on Him. The Lord suffered and accomplished His work, more sensitive than any man to all that, for in Him was no trace of the hardness which renders insensible to circumstances, nor of the pride which conceals them or which at least seeks to conceal them: He felt all with a sensibility which all the malice of men could not change and perfect in patience appealed to His God from them. "But thou, O Jehovah, be not far from me."

307 The Jews boasted of having attained their aim. Man deceived by Satan thought to have rid himself of God whose presence troubled him. They wagged the head, saying, "He saved others: himself he cannot save." What words! To own His power fully manifested, to reject what was divine, to avow that they actually banished God from their midst! In fact, He could not save Himself, not being able to think of Himself: the love which had saved others went farther and gave Himself for us. Perfect love for His Father, obedience to His commandments, His perfect love to us, hindered His saving Himself. He might have had His twelve legions of angels, but He was come for others, not for Himself; finally, loving His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. If He was to save others, He could not save Himself. His love and His obedience were complete. That which marks the frightful blindness of these poor priests is, that they cite the words which, in the Psalm where His death is described so as it is here described, come out of the mouth of the godless and the wicked (Ps. 22: 7, 8). In all this it is a question of men and of Christ; but as I have said, He appeals from them God. Such is what we find in Psalm 22: "Be not far from me."

Now comes the moment when His position, His relation with God, must pass before our eyes. "Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour." Thus, even by outward circumstances, God separated His Son from outrages and insults purely human in order that He should be alone with Him and entirely for His solemn work. He was alone with God, made sin; nothing to turn aside the cup of justice; nothing to deaden it. The power which was in Him did not shelter Him; it rendered Him capable of bearing that which weighed on His soul, the feeling of horror of the curse in the measure in which the love of the Father was familiar to Him, the feeling of that which it was to be made sin in the measure of the divine holiness which was in Him; and neither the one nor the other could be measured. He drank the cup of the judgment of God against sin. All forces Him to utter the cry - a cry which we are allowed to hear that we might know what passed there, the reality of atonement: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" - a forsaking which none can fathom, save He who felt it, but which, in the little measure where its shadow only touches us and passes over us, is more terrible than all which the heart or body of man can undergo. In the mouth of Jesus it expressed all that which His heart, and that heart alone, could feel.

308 Moreover, Psalm 22, from which it is taken, is the voice of Jesus Himself. Psalms 20, 21 speak of the sufferings of Christ, such only as man can understand when he sees them. They are, as it were, inflicted by men, and bring about the consequences which result from them for their victim and for those who inflict them - the exaltation to the right hand of God of the One who suffered; destructive wrath upon His enemies. But who was the enemy of Christ, in His character of expiatory Lamb? No one. He suffered, in giving Himself, on the part of God in righteousness; the stroke itself - the sufferings was the stroke of justice. Moreover, as to its consequences, in Psalm 22, all is grace and blessing for all those who are the objects of it, from the little remnant which thus acknowledged Jesus, and which became the church, to the millennium and "the people that shall be born." All declare that He has done this.

It is interesting to see all the testimonies of God in these Psalms (19-22). The creation above (for down here it is too much ruined to serve as such), and the law (Ps. 19); next (Ps. 20) the testimony of Jesus, looked at prophetically, such as He presents Himself to the heart of His disciples; the answer (PS. 21); next finally, what Jesus alone can manifest, that which passed between His soul and God, that which His soul only was capable of expressing. Now this was not either weakness or exhaustion, as some men of petty thoughts have taken into their heads to say; a materialism to which not only is the Christian doctrine unknown, but which betrays a total want of feeling and of sound judgment.

309 Now, not only the work has been accomplished, but all the circumstances which prophecy had announced as about to happen, have received their accomplishment. Moreover He Himself was to give up His life into the hands of His Father. It was not to be taken from Him. He gave it up Himself. He entrusts His mother to John; He then fulfils the last prophetic circumstance. A true Man, absolutely calm, and, as we men say, with perfect self-possession, He declares that He thirsts as the result of His sufferings, and tastes the vinegar which is conveyed to His mouth by means of a sponge attached to a reed. All was finished: atonement, perfect according to God; the work of redemption; all the prophetic circumstances, absolutely everything, had received its accomplishment, whether as to man or as to God. Then, with a cry which indicated at the same time a strength in its fulness and an entire confidence in His Father,* He commits His soul to Him in that critical moment in which death had part, but in which it lost from that time forward all its power - at least for the believer. With this cry, which announces the end of all human relationship with God, save in judgment, and the end of all the means which God could employ to re-establish such a relationship with the children of Adam, Jesus expired.

{*It is this aspect of His death which Luke more especially puts in the foreground.}

At this very moment, that which expressed the impossibility of man's approaching to God, the veil of the temple is rent from top to bottom, and the sanctuary, the holiest of all, where the throne of God is found, is opened. We can enter with boldness (Heb. 10: 19, 20) by this new and living way, because of the precious blood which has been shed. The ancient state of things was ended, whether as the relations of man with God, or in that which concerns the very creation. Not however that the new order of things is yet established, because grace still seeks the co-heirs of Christ; but, in the rejection of the Son of God, all relationship of the first man and of the first creation with God has been ended for ever. A new basis has been laid down in righteousness and by the full revelation of God in sovereign love, for the eternal joy of man, in the last Adam, and in the new creation. The veil, which characterised the state of man as to his relations with God, of man who was not only a sinner in Adam, but who had always failed, spite of God's employing all possible means in order to form fresh links of relationship with him - the veil which said, "Man cannot come to God," is rent; the earth quakes, and the rocks are rent. The power of death is also destroyed, as well as that of the devil Who possessed it.

310 Historically it was only after the resurrection of Jesus that the dead rose and appeared to many in Jerusalem, as a witness of that which had been wrought. Nevertheless the fact is here connected with the death of Jesus, because it is by this death that the work of deliverance has been thus accomplished which made resurrection possible; a work to which testimony has been thus rendered in an extraordinary manner. It is a question of the bodies of saints - a precious anticipation of the first resurrection, when death will be swallowed up in victory. It will perhaps be asked, "What became of them?" None knows, because God has not said. The fact itself is a testimony rendered to the efficacy of the death of Jesus. The question only proceeds from the vain curiosity of man, and God does not make revelations to satisfy that curiosity.

The Roman officer who was on guard, consequently on the sentence pronounced on the prisoners, as well as the soldiers who were then with him, seeing the earthquake and all that had happened, are seized with fear, and acknowledge that Jesus is indeed "the Son of God." This was the cause of His condemnation by the priests and scribes. They had involuntarily borne testimony to Pilate that He called Himself so, which had alarmed the latter, whom a bad conscience was already making afraid - so that, with all that had been noised abroad in Palestine through the deeds of power He had wrought there, this thought ran throughout the world; it was known of all. These extraordinary facts which accompanied His death, the cry full of strength with which without apparent motive He drew His last breath, all the circumstances which surrounded His departure from this world, bore witness that His death was more than a human death. The hearts of those who were taking part, overpowered by such events, might (even in their natural state) declare that this was the Son of God. As to the result in themselves, no one can know anything of it. Here it is the testimony which these poor pagan hearts, under the influence of the events which were passing under their eyes, could not refuse, while the hardened hearts of the Jews - "his own" - of those to whom He had come, were rejoicing in His death. Nothing hardens like religion when the heart is not changed. The natural heart is evil, not hardened, and facts in which God manifests Himself can act upon such a heart.

311 From this time forth it is a question of the resurrection, testimony which God renders to the perfection of the Victim and the perfection of His work; to the divine perfection of the One who went down to death, into the lower parts of the earth, so that, having ascended on high, He fills all things, not only as God, but according to the efficacy of the redemption He had now accomplished (Eph. 4). For the moment, what occupies us is the part which men took in these events, but, above all, the part which women took in them. It is here that the good handmaids of the Lord have their good portion. The disciples count for nothing in it; they had fled; and in all this scene of grief, with the exception of John, they are not seen. Moreover it is Mary Magdalene who becomes the messenger of the risen Lord, to communicate to the disciples the privileges He had just acquired for them. The women had already followed Him from Galilee, had furnished Him with what was needed for His wants while He walked as man on the earth; now they were going to care for His burial, if God Himself had not anticipated them. Already they had accompanied Jesus to the place where He was to be crucified, looking from a distance on the solemn scene which was displayed before their eyes.

Now Jesus was to be "with the rich in his death." Joseph of Arimathea goes in therefore to Pilate, who delivers to him the body of the Saviour. God wished to honour Christ, spite of the dishonour which was inflicted on Him on man's part, and even on account of that dishonour. Joseph puts Him in his own tomb, wherein man never before was laid, wrapping Him in a winding - sheet; next he waits, as the law required, till the sabbath should be past, in order to carry out the honourable sepulture which he was preparing for Him meanwhile he rolls a great stone before the mouth of the sepulchre. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (wife of Cleopas) are found there, watching and contemplating with the profound interest produced by an ardent affection and by a bond of attachment which divine grace had created in their hearts, specially in that of Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.

312 Nevertheless it was not only three blessed women and Joseph, the disciple up to that time timorous, but whom the extreme iniquity of the Jews, as often happens, forced to shew himself, who were occupied with the remains of Jesus: the chief priests, goaded by a bad conscience, which always inspires fear, think of what Jesus had said - for they knew it very well - namely, that He would rise again. With them it was a fixed determination, and enmity against good and against all testimony borne to its power,* an enmity which left them neither rest nor respite. They go in to Pilate, asserting that His disciples might come by night, take away His body by stealth, then say that He was risen. They wanted Pilate himself to secure the body of Jesus. But they themselves were to serve as involuntary witnesses to the resurrection of the Saviour. Pilate, full of contempt and not caring to serve their malice, leaves them the task of guarding against the removal of the Lord's body by His disciples. They place seals on the tomb, besides a guard to watch against every attempt of the Kind. This was only to make the fact of the resurrection more patent, and to secure its proof in such a manner as to leave room, where there should be good faith in man, for no controversy.

{*They had wished to put to death Lazarus who was raised, a hardness of conscience and perversity almost inconceivable.}

Matthew 28.

Here the recital becomes rapid and abrupt. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrive at the end of the sabbath - that is, the evening of Saturday - to see the sepulchre. Then, in the morning of the Sunday, the sepulchre opens, an angel having rolled away the stone from the entrance. The glory of this angel terrifies the soldiers who are guarding it, so that they become as dead. The same angel comforts and encourages the women; he shews them where the body of the Lord had lain, saying, "Fear not; for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said."

313 That which follows has altogether the character of this Gospel: it is important to remark this. We find neither the profoundly interesting and instructive conversations which are recounted in the Gospel of John, nor the ascension which took place at Bethany and is related by Luke. The angel bids the women to go quickly and tell His disciples that He was risen, that He was going before them into Galilee, and that there they should see Him. This makes conspicuous an entirely new character of His relations with them since His resurrection. He is still with the remnant, with the poor of the flock, in the place where the Messiah was to appear to Israel according to the prophecy of Isaiah. These relations are renewed on the footing of resurrection. No doubt He possessed all power in heaven and earth; but He was re-establishing His relations with the remnant of Israel, not yet as King manifested in glory to subdue the nations, but as associated with His disciples, viewed in the character of messengers of the kingdom, then when Christ, rejected from Jerusalem, had gathered the residue of Israel, and had recognised them in grace. Such is the character which the disciples wear here. The women go to announce these things to the disciples; they enjoy, by virtue of their faithfulness and their attachment to Jesus, this special privilege. They are the first witnesses (and that even to the apostles) of the victory which the grace and power of God gained over the efforts of the enemy, now conquered for evermore.

Nevertheless it is not only the angel who sends them. As they are going to carry the message to the disciples, Jesus Himself, full of love, comes to meet them, so that they may be eye-witnesses of His presence on earth: a touching response of the Saviour to their fidelity, a blessed testimony which proves that the heart of Jesus is as full of love and of human condescension now that He is risen, as when He was walking in lowliness down here the most accessible of men. He also encourages them. But this fact is related to other truths which are connected with the position which the Lord takes in this Gospel, and specially on this occasion. In John, where the heavenly side and the actual position of the Saviour are in question, He forbids Mary Magdalene to touch Him. She thought she had again found Him whom she loved, as come back on the earth to remain there in His character of risen Messiah. Such was not the case; He was ascending to His Father and our Father, to His God and our God. His bodily presence on earth was no longer to be the object of affection to His own. He had placed them in His own position before His Father, in the same relationship as His own - ever a man with God, the well-beloved Son of the Father. This is why Thomas will only believe on condition of touching Him. The Lord grants him this favour, but makes him feel nevertheless, that those who believe now without having seen are more blessed than those who will only believe when they see. Christians, though now they see Him not, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; while the remnant, typified by Thomas, will only believe when they look upon Him whom they have pierced.

314 The unhappy Jews seek to hide their confusion, without humbling themselves, without repenting. By bribes they induce the soldiers to spread the report, even at the risk of falling under the severity of the Roman discipline, that the disciples had taken away His body while they slept.

Finally, the eleven go into Galilee to a mountain which the Lord had appointed them. Doubt still remained in the heart of some, but they worship Him as soon as they saw Him. Their doubt is changed for us into certainty, based not only on the operation of the Holy Spirit in the soul - the true foundation of faith - but on the clear evidence that it was neither a fable of their invention, nor a history arranged beforehand, nor the fruit of an ardent imagination which only saw what it wished. Some of the disciples themselves doubt, as we have seen in the case of Thomas; they believe only on irresistible evidence, sealed by the gift and the mighty operation of the Holy Spirit come down from heaven on the day of Pentecost. I think that there were present on that occasion other disciples besides the eleven; perhaps the five hundred of whom Paul speaks.

Here the mission of the apostles has its point of departure at the interview in Galilee with their risen Master; it is a remnant already associated with Jesus; it is not, as in Luke, a Saviour, who ascended to heaven, and who from heaven begins with Jerusalem, just as took place. Here Jerusalem is forsaken, and delivered into the hands of the wicked and of the Gentiles, while the remnant of Israel is associated with the Messiah rejected, but now risen; then those who are thus associated with the disowned Lord are sent to make disciples of all nations, baptising them to the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. This mission, up to the present time, has never been accomplished. The mission to the Gentiles was formally transferred to Paul by those who were pillars among the apostles (Gal. 2), with divine authority from Jesus glorified, and by the direct mission of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13: 4; Acts 26: 16-18).

315 It is possible the other apostles may have gone later; but the history which is given us in the word does not speak of it, unless it be in a very general and even vague verse at the end of Mark. The apostles remained at Jerusalem at the time of the persecution which took place after the death of Stephen; then the gospel was carried to the nations by those scattered abroad, and later on committed to Paul. John is found in Patmos, left last of all to watch over the church in its decline. The last verses of Mark say that they went everywhere, and that the Lord wrought with them to confirm the preached word by the signs which it was granted them to perform. However it may be here in Matthew, the commission is given them. They were also to teach the baptised nations to observe all that Jesus had commanded the disciples, and He Himself would be with them to the end of the age. It is not the Christian mission properly so called; this is found rather in John 20, Luke 24, and Mark 16.*

{*Down to verse 6 of Mark 16 the same history as that of Matthew is found; in the last verses, that which we read at the end of Luke, and that which is found in John 20. The discourses of chapters 13 and 26 of Acts are connected, as those of Peter, With the mission mentioned in Luke. In the Gospel of Matthew it is not said they were to go and make disciples of the Jews, because the remnant is looked at as already separated from the nation, and associated with Christ. It is a kind of extension of chapter 10 of the same Gospel, where they are forbidden - at least as to their mission at the moment then present - to go to the Gentiles, indeed even to the Samaritans, but are told to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Here a wider mission is given them: they are to go and make disciples of the nations. This supposes that the work in the midst of the Jews is other than that of chapter 10, and, in some respects, chapter 24 only explains why the mission which is in question here applies exclusively to the Gentiles. The mission from heaven for the salvation of souls is naturally addressed to the Jews as to the Gentiles. This last is what we find accomplished in Acts: only the part which includes the Gentiles was transferred to Paul, as we have seen.}

Thoughts on the Revelation

J. N. Darby.

<30030E> 316 {file section a.}

In pursuing the present explanation of the Apocalypse, I shall endeavour to give all the light which I may have acquired; but with the fullest acknowledgment, that many parts remain obscure; and explaining, what I judge to be clear, without in all things teaching it as ascertained truth, as in many parts of scripture the Christian ought to do. Further, I shall here consider the whole defined period to be one half-week, not two. The facts and personages, in this point of view, remain unaltered; it is merely the relationships of detail as to time, and the particular force of certain passages which are affected by it. Many treatises have been published viewing the Apocalypse as revealing the distinct events of two half-weeks. The comparison the reader will be enabled to make of the explanation of the book after the two methods will lead to a fuller judgment of the connection of the various parts of it.

Besides the direct blessed witness of God's love and of personal salvation, there are two subjects which scripture presents to us as a whole; the government of this world, and the church. The latter is now, through the Holy Ghost, the recipient and depository of divine knowledge.*

{*Those who are its members are the means of spreading it. The church does not teach. Apostles and prophets first, and then teachers in their place, as evangelists in theirs, do that; the church receives, holds fast, and professes the truth. The state of the church may be such as to cast the holding fast and professing the truth on the fidelity of individuals; but the church's duty, in her right and normal state, is to be the pillar and ground of the truth.}

The church's portion is heavenly: to be in heaven in spirit now, and when the fulness of times has brought in the accomplishment of God's purposes; to be there, in fact, associated with Christ in the government of the earth. Her own proper place is the bride and body of Christ. But the church has also an outward and responsible existence on the earth. She ought to be the epistle of Christ, known and read of all men; and to present thus the character of God before the world. In this respect, she is looked at as a responsible dispensation in the world, God's husbandry, God's building, where men may build badly, though the foundation may have been well laid. Christ will build His own work, through all phases of the church's existence; and have the church, as His house, of which He will be the light and glory, perfect in glory. Against this work on earth, or its result in heaven, no power of him who has the empire of death can prevail; but, as intrusted to man's responsible service on earth, the church stands in the position of a dispensation: to be rejected and cast off, if it does not maintain its faithfulness and manifest the glory intrusted to it. It is like all the various ways and dealings of God with men: sinless man at first, the promises, the law, the priesthood, the Jewish royalty in obedience with the law, Gentile supremacy without any, have respectively been trusted to men; man has failed in them all. All will be set up in grace, in or under Christ. The last Adam will be there (of which the first was but an image), the promises fulfilled, the law written in the heart, priesthood in its excellency made good, Jewish royalty in the Son of David, supremacy over the Gentiles, in Him who shall rise to reign over them. The church - though forming no part of this series of dealings, yet, as the sphere of the manifestation of Christ's heavenly glory, by man's faithfulness on the earth, as the house of God, through the Spirit - is subject to the same divine law, first of responsibility in man, failure, and divine accomplishment in grace and power. Local assemblies - candlesticks - come under the same rule. In their normal state, they locally represent the normal state of the church, that which is manifested of Christ's body on earth; but, as is the case with the general assembly, they may be so corrupt as to require that the candlestick should be removed. There is this difference, that the removal of the candlestick leaves the assembly in general subsisting on the earth; whereas, of course, the closing of the responsibility of the whole assembly removes it as the scene of God's dealings on earth. Hence, we are sure, that the latter never can take place, till the time for the bride and body of Christ to have a better place in heaven be come also.

317 The Apocalypse reveals to us Christ as Son of God, or Ancient of days, in His divine title of judgment; and it contemplates the judgment of the assembly, and the judgment of the world, particularly of the last apostate power. In this point of view, we must read it, or we shall never understand it. Hence the communications are prophetic in their character. The direct relationships of the Father to His children, and of Christ to His bride and body are not before us; though, at the close, the bride be spoken of in order to identify the city with her. The saints have the consciousness of the grace in which they stand, as also the church at the end of its own relationship; but these are in no way the subject of the book, but distinguish themselves sharply from it. The book is prophetic, because it is occupied with government and the world; and the assembly itself is viewed in its responsibility on earth, in which character it will finally be rejected; not surely as the body of Christ united to the Head in heaven. It is all-important, not only in respect to the Apocalypse but as to truth in general, to enter clearly into this distinction. Without it the church will never be known; as the knowledge of the church, on the other hand, makes it instantly and necessarily felt. All belonging to Christ, save His relationship to the church, is found in the Old Testament; this could not be. All was open, publicly revealed, that concerned Himself. The church could not be. It lay at the foundation of the church's existence, that the middle wall should be broken down. It lay at the very foundation of the existence of Israel and the law, that it should be kept up. Indeed, the responsibility of the first man would not have been otherwise fully tried. The church, and our relationship to God, repose on the fact, that that responsibility is closed by our being wholly lost, and a wholly new place taken by the second Man risen from the dead; His work being accepted, and thereupon Himself also accepted and glorified, and we in and because of Him.

318 Our responsibility, even, is of another kind. It is to walk as He walked, not to live up to what Adam ought to have been, or what the law required; but to let this life of Jesus be manifested in our mortal body as dead to sin, the world, and the law; and living in that life which came down in the person of the Son from heaven.

I must, however, add here, that the revelation of the Father by the Son, as dwelling eternally in His bosom, is not to be looked for in the Old Testament. The relationship of son is, doubtless, found therein, so that the thought is not foreign to it; but it is sonship employed in a conventional way (I do not mean, of course, not a true way), or viewed in time, and not founded in the nature of His person in the Godhead, but as a relationship formed on earth. "He shall be to me a Son," and "I will declare the decree. . . . Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." This is in time on the earth, the glorious and true title and character of Messiah. So, in the passage referred to, "I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son." "I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth." But in the New Testament we find the Son in His own proper relationship to the Father. "No man hath seen God at anytime:* the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." He has declared, even when on earth, the Father's name. He came forth from the Father. By the Son, God created all things. He puts us in this relationship of children and sons, adopted no doubt, but by becoming our life. So that life is never said to be in us, though we have it, and are said to have it. But "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." This leads me to examine, more nearly, the nature and character of the Apocalypse; because it is specially John who brings forward this last point of view, while speaking of the truths connected with our salvation, especially the presence of the Holy Ghost, and, in the Epistle, of propitiation. In his Gospel it is the Son who is come as life, the life being the light of men. In the Epistle this is taken as the ground-work; and the life communicated to us, and its existence tested by its true character to guard us against deceivers. It is remarkable, that, save in a few passages coming in to complete the truth here and there (and they are very few and short), John never sees this life carried up to its ultimate result in the purpose of God; but manifested in this world, whether in Christ Himself or in us. The fact, that we shall go up on high to the Father's house, is blessedly stated in the beginning of chapter 14, and desired in the end of chapter 17; but it is no where the general subject.

{*Compare here, 1 John 4: 12, to see the unspeakable privilege of the Christian.}

319 Paul, who was born out of due time between the first and second comings of Christ, who knew Christ only in the glory in which He was in heaven (man glorified, the result with God of His accomplished work), who was not to know Christ after the flesh, Paul, who was especially apostle of the church, the minister of the church to complete the word of God, who was converted by the revelation of the heavenly glory. of Christ on one hand, and of the union of the saints with Him so glorified, on the other* - Paul puts us, perfectly accepted, in the glory in Christ, and sees this life in the risen and glorified One, and in us crucified with Him but alive; not "we live, but Christ lives in us." But John (and hence the exceeding sweetness of the writings he has given to us by the Holy Ghost) presents the divine person of the Son in life (and that in grace in flesh, divine love shewing itself and the Father), in His blessed superiority to evil, and as divine love does, adapting itself to the want and sorrow around it, to everything the human heart could need, yet light all through. We do not get man taken up to heaven, so to speak, in John; but we get God Himself in grace, the Son revealing the Father down on earth. The Gospel - and Epistle, as we have seen, reveal this life in itself or in us; but the Gospel (for the Epistle gives us the life between the departure and return of the Lord) gives us at the end a hint of the apostle holding on a testimony to the coming of Christ. He did not say he should not die; but if He would that he tarried till He came. Paul might build the church, or lay its foundation as a wise master-builder; Peter might teach a pilgrim how to follow Him that was risen, and had begotten Him again to a lively hope by it - how to follow his Master through the wilderness, in which, after all, God still governed. These, and others, warn too of coming evils. But he, who was so personally near to Christ (Jewish in his relationships and full of them, but in whose eyes, at the same time as taught of God, [Christ was] a person who was, in Himself, above all relationship, save with the Father, and who had a place in which He could be in the Father's bosom, yet walk as Man, in the title and manifestation of the Son, upon earth, and withal a place in John's heart; through grace, which attached him to His person, and life in it); such an one (and such an one was John, the disciple whom Jesus loved) could watch, with the power of divine love, over the departing glories of the church on earth in the energy of a life which could not fail in it. And he could pass on with prophetic vision to establish the rights of the same person (out of and on the part of heaven, yet still on earth; rights, whose establishment should bring peace on the earth, and set aside the evil, and make these rights good, where the prophet had seen them despised, in One he so loved, as manifested on earth, and connect the excellency of the glorified Sufferer with the blessing of a rescued world, which grace could bless through Him, though it had once rejected Him. The way of bringing about this, with the failing church's previous history, is what is given us in the Apocalypse, with the prophetically known person and glory of Christ connecting itself, first with the responsible assembly on earth, though then judicially, and then with the earth.

{*Although this doctrine is found in many parts of Paul's writings, it may be interesting to remark, that though in God's plans (chap. 8) he sees us glorified, and Christ in heaven interceding - in doctrine, the Romans presents man as a sinner and Christ only risen so that the individual is justified - not the church, save in relative duties. In Ephesians, on the contrary, he does not see Christ living on earth, nor us as living in sin, save, as alluding to it as a past history, when speaking of practice. Christ is first seen as dead, and God has raised Him and set Him above all: we, dead in sins, and God has raised us with Him. Hence, it is wholly a new creation, absolute relationships, according to this. Hence, we have the church, and our place before God, as Christ now has it.}

321 From the beginning of the book we have the revelation given treated as a prophecy. It is a revelation given of God to Christ to shew what must shortly come to pass. The churches themselves thus come in merely as a kind of necessary introduction their rejection by Christ as to their testimony on earth, as yet the subject of prophecy and warning, was needed for Christ's assuming the government of the world. Christ sends it by His angel - not exactly an angel, but one who specially represented Himself - to His servant John. He bears record. It is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, a vision.* This sentence is important. It is, no doubt, the character, except the being a vision, of all scripture; but it gives us the fact that the present prophecy is the testimony of Jesus, and the suffering in the time of and according to this prophecy is suffering for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. It gives us, moreover, what indeed is evident and cannot be otherwise, but an additional proof of the same, that the prophecy is addressed not to the people of God or saints, as in their normal state, like the epistles, but is a revelation about them to another. In the prophets, those who prophesied when the people were warned carried the word directly from God to the people immediately addressed by Him. So in the epistles, though in another form, the Holy Ghost addressed Himself directly to the saints for their good and instruction. In Daniel it is for the people, but not to them; and even in Zechariah, and in a measure in Habakkuk; so in the Apocalypse. It is something given to John, of course, as all the New Testament, for the church, but not directly to the church in its own natural state.

{*It is known that it should not be read, "and all things," but simply, "things."}

322 The church on earth is itself looked at as the subject of prophetic address, and as in relationship with the God of prophecy who governs the world, not with the Father. The Son of man who is Judge walks in the midst of the churches. Grace and peace is wished from Him who is and was and was coming - from the seven Spirits in which the fulness of all His attributes in government is developed, and from Christ as connected with the earth though risen. But the time of the church as such is left out in this greeting of grace, that is, the character of Christ at that time. He is faithful witness; this He was in manifestation on the earth; first-begotten from the dead, He is risen (that, too, on earth not ascended); then prince of the kings of the earth - what He is indeed, now, in title, but one in which the passage springs over from His resurrection to His governmental title when He comes again.* We have no church relationship; but all that He was, has been, and will be, as to the earth, and what gives Him His right in the kingdom set up in right and power on the earth.

{*It is remarkable, that in John 1, where we have the names and titles of Christ so wonderfully displayed, exactly those are wanting which belong to His place in heaven, and present relationship with the church exclusively. He is neither Head of the church, nor High priest. This is significant as to John's writings.}

I have no doubt there were these seven churches in the state thus alluded to; and in the language used, we must keep this in mind. But I cannot think that, with this number seven, the character of the addresses, and details of expression, it is possible not to see that a wider sphere of thought is before the apostle's prophetic eye. But subjects previously spoken of by the apostle call for our attention first. We have Christ in three positions, or characters, in the Apocalypse: walking robed down to His feet in the midst of the candlesticks; the Lamb in the midst of the throne; and Christ coming forth on the white horse (not to speak here of the description of the city, of which He is the light-bearer).

323 The character of God here is Jehovah, the Ancient of days, who is, and who was, and is the coming One. This is, in fact, the character in which God is revealed, as the One who is to be a great King over all the earth. He was Almighty for Abraham - will be Most High over all that is. But Jehovah is His personal name, in which He takes the rule as One who had counsels and purposes, would fulfil them by His own power, and has given the revelation of it.

As is said in Psalm 83: 18, "that men may know that thou, whose name is Jehovah, art the Most High over all the earth." So Psalms 87 and 91, where the three names are brought together so beautifully and strikingly, when the power of the Almighty is promised to secure him who knew the secret of the Most High, and it is answered (by Messiah) "I will take the God of the Jews I will say of Jehovah, he is my fortress," the psalm then going on, speaking in the person of the godly Jew, to celebrate the rightness of the answer, and Jehovah Himself closing it with His approbation: "Because lie has set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him."

It is in this name that blessing is now wished to the "seven churches which are in Asia."

Next, we have it wished from "the seven spirits, which are before his throne." This last word may be remarked. We are in presence of a throne on which Jehovah is, and seven spirits are before it. It is not from the Father, and from the Son, in their communion, and from the divine nature, in its own blessedness, but from Jehovah, the Supreme Governor, upon His throne. And the spirits, as the lamps in the tabernacle, all before the throne. The Spirit itself has His place as the perfect development of governmental power in exercise from God. The spirits are the manifestation and display of this before the throne.

The characters of Christ are also of importance here. have already spoken of their being in connection with the earth; but there is something more. We have all that was needed to give the rightful place of government over the earth, with which He is here in connection. He is, but much more, He was, the Faithful Witness of God upon the earth. He spoke what He knew; He testified what He had seen. He declared righteousness in the great congregation, did not refrain His lips (that Jehovah knew); at all cost to Himself lie bore witness to what God was, made good the witness of it before men. This was an immense service. He made good the perfect witness of light in the world. "While I am in the world I am the light of the world"; and "God is light"; and that in spite of hatred and opposition because of it. So that John had to say, "This is the message which we have heard of him, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." And what He declared He was in manifestation, He was in every sense - a Faithful Witness. When asked what He was, He could reply, In nature and principle what I also say unto you, "Altogether that which I also say to you," John 8: 25. His words were the witness and expression of what He was; and this and its rejection is just the subject of that chapter, and the proof of man's guilt; they loved darkness.

324 No doubt His witness was a witness of life in Himself, too for the life was the light of men; but this remained in abeyance, so to speak, as to its revelation to us, and the part we could have in it till after His death,* when we have the Spirit, blood and water (which flowed out of His side when slain, as the Spirit came because He went away), as witnesses that God hath given unto us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son. The life was the light, and the light of men, properly of men as such; but except a corn of wheat fell into the ground and died, it remained alone. Hence He was straitened till that baptism was accomplished. And the witness of all this was consequent on His death, a witness about Him rather than by Him. Hence I do not speak of the witness that eternal life is given to us in the Son (that springs out of death, and as to any persons who are such, His servants are, with the Spirit, His witnesses), but of Christ Himself as the Faithful Witness. There is always this necessary difference: as for reconciliation, in 2 Corinthians 5, God was in Christ reconciling; then, Christ being rejected, a ministry is committed to Paul and others, Christ having been made sin for us.

{*In chapter 10 with the sheep the Lord speaks of eternal life, but He speaks also of His laying down His life for the sheep. It is after chapters 8 and 9, that is, rejection of word and work.}

Christ, then, has made good His title as against the world for God and as of God, as the Faithful Witness. It is, when we have eyes to see (that is John 9), an immense blessing to us. Light has come into the world, yea the veil has been rent, and we have the light of God Himself, yea the revelation of God as light (and we are also light in the Lord, He being our life), so as to walk in the light as He is in the light. Oh, that that light may penetrate utterly through us, so that all may be light in communion with Him! Yet this is a great thing to say, but the perfection of the Christian, not to say perhaps attained, but seen and, in the nature given to us, sought after.

325 But there was more. He was a faithful Man; but there was an adversary who had the power of death over man, and ruled the world, and could bring the world against this witness as having the power of death. No doubt in Christ, as the Faithful Witness, he had nothing; but then, if Christ had not subjected Himself to death, He must have remained alone, as we have seen, having gone to heaven with twelve legions of angels, in the right of His own perfectness, but left us out and the world under Satan's power. But these were not His thoughts, nor the counsel of God, nor suited to His glory: the scriptures had spoken differently, and they (the expression of God's mind; and what could give them greater authority that this reference to them of the Lord's?) must be fulfilled. "How, then, shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" Christ Himself, the Son of God, was to die; the scriptures, the witness of God's mind, the truth, had said it; and He gave Himself, drinking, in blessed obedience and love to His Father, the cup He had given Him to drink. But it is the special side of this which regarded His power and title over the world, and victory over the prince of it, which we are here to consider. Satan committed himself completely in the exercise of this power of death, and dominion over the world; but it was all he had. He was the prince of this world, and it was the hour of darkness. And Christ, in obedience, subjects himself to this last and absolute putting forth of Satan's whole power over men and in death, a power sustained too by the pronounced judgment of God. But it is with the former we have to do here, though it were nothing without this latter. But the prince of this world was judged. By death Christ brought to nought the power of him who had the power of death. In the resurrection He comes up in that power of life which left no trace of Satan's power behind. Indeed, according to His trust in Jehovah, no corruption passed upon Him, no moment's trace of anything that was not the power of the Holy Ghost. He gave Himself up to death, His spirit to His Father, and never saw corruption. In Him, so to speak, resurrection and transmutation were united. In resurrection, according to divine righteousness, He took the condition to which power belonged in grace. He died and rose that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living, being competent and having the title to have all power in heaven and in earth.

326 In the passage we are considering His ascension is not touched on, but His coming forth from the whole result of Satan's power through sin, through the work which gave Him the place and power of man in the new estate in which the power of God would place Him. He is the first-begotten from the dead, the Man who has made good, in this final and conclusive conflict, the title of God in spite of sin, and against sin; and baffled all Satan's apparent success, so that God is perfectly glorified in respect of that in which man has dishonoured Him, and in which, so to speak, to the creature's view, all that God was, all His moral glory, was brought into question. Christ has taken thus the place divinely prepared for man, the headship of man according to God, the whole question of good and evil having been resolved by His subjugation to the whole power of evil in death (in life He had ever kept it at a distance in the power of the Holy Ghost), and, divine judgment being glorified, made it possible, yea necessary, for God to bring up Him (and, blessed be God! all in Him) into the perfect place of blessing, where divine goodness could have its absolute flow, and that in righteousness - yea as due to Christ, and so to others as redeemed. But here, we take it as the place of power and right, according to God's counsels, in man. The head of every man is Christ, and He will take all men out of the power of death, and Satan's power, though for the wicked it will be for judgment. He is the first-begotten from the dead.

Our book treats of the throne, and of the government of the world. Hence the third title of Christ applies to that. He is the Prince of the kings of the earth. This title is so plain, that I do not enlarge upon it. The making it good is, after the letters to the churches, the great subject of the book; first, by God's power in preparatory dealings, and then by the exercise of Christ's own power when He comes. We may remark, that so entirely is government the subject of the book, that when the bride itself is mentioned and displayed in glory, it is as a great city, the capital (so to speak) of God's kingdom.

327 But here the church breaks in. When Jesus is mentioned, it cannot be otherwise. So at the end of the book (chap. 22: 17), and necessarily, in both cases, with the sense and feeling of her own place and blessings in connection with Him. If a general entered in triumph, if a judge was celebrated as the wisest of his race, the wife's and child's feelings would be, when it was seen or spoken of - "That is my husband - that is my father." Such is the necessary effect of the feelings which the consciousness of the relationship gives, and it is beautiful to see. "To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood!" He may be the greatest above all princes of the earth, but that is what He has done for us. His own blood has cleansed us. He may be great, but He loves us. He may be great, but He would have us great with Him, and near Him. "He hath made us kings and priests to God and his Father." This last is the association with Christ in the royal place He has connected with the earth. It is not children, sons, His bride, but kings and priests; royal, and nearest, under God, to a divine place in government; and nearest in access to Him, when the world is in relationship with God. It is not children at home in the house. It is official glory, though in its highest character and conformed to Christ's own, for He is King and Priest. The exact words are "a kingdom, priests," as in Exodus 19, and pretty nearly literally as in the Hebrew. This only confirms the character in which all is seen here. The saints ascribe glory and dominion to Christ for ever.

Here, remark, we have John himself, the Spirit in the name of the saints on earth: "loveth us." In the following verse the Spirit announces His coming to the world, when every eye shall see Him coming in the clouds of heaven, the Jews too and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. All this is closed, I apprehend, by the Amen of God Himself as first and last - Jehovah, Elohim, Shaddai.* These are the three names I have already noticed, and which are the well-known names of revelation in the Old Testament:** God, who was revealed to Abraham by His name God Almighty (El Shaddai) - to Moses and Israel as Jehovah. Only He who speaks affirms here, as in the prophets, that as He was at the beginning and the Alpha of all else, so is He the Omega when all is brought to completion by His power, embracing all things and subsisting in Himself, embraced by none. This closes the introduction; and the revelation of the book itself begins in what follows.

{*The reading is this: "I am Alpha and Omega, saith the Lord God, the One who is, and who was, and who is the coming One, the Almighty."}

{**Compare the use of these names in 2 Corinthians 6: 17, 18, where He who bears them takes the place and name of Father with us.}

328 In the address of John, we find the same character of relationships, and order of thought as that which we have already seen. We have neither an apostle, nor "he that is of God heareth." He is a brother and companion in the tribulation, kingdom, and patience of Jesus Christ. His ideas range in the kingdom, and Christ's waiting for it. Christ sits at God's right hand, expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. At present His saints are in tribulation. The persecution of John was for that which is found through the book - the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ. All the word is such, but it takes this character when it becomes prophetic. He does not say the gospel, though that is, of course, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. It would not do here at all. He is not teaching among the saints, but alone in the Spirit seeing visions. On the Lord's day is entirely different, to my mind, from what many take it to mean. It is the lordly day (not the day of the Lord), the Lord's day of the week, the position in which Christianity set us as risen. And thus, though the apostle's testimony was prophetic, it was as personally in his risen place he stood when he gives it. This is always true. No prophet now can cease to be a Christian. When he gets out of a christian place, it is false prophecy. His prophecy may have the character which belongs to the subject of prophecy, that is, God's government of this world; but he is on the Lord's day. I do not say this in reference to prophecies given now, as if there were actually such, unless they be false ones, but as to the necessary position of one who has been, or should pretend to be, one in christian times. It is not that the prophet was in "the day of the Lord" (at most chapter 19 is such), but on the Lord's day he was in the Spirit. He then received his commission: "a voice as of a trumpet," but now speaking on the earth. He does not at this moment see, but hears a voice "behind him."*

{*I am strongly disposed to think this intimates that his real prophetic position is looking out to the government of the world as then immediately before him. The church was past; and, as prophet, he was in times beyond it, but he must turn and give a rapid and general account of the way in which the course of the church led up to this time. Prophecy always leaps over from the present time to the end, and specially does not know the church; but here it was necessary to give the course of the church on earth.}

329 The voice* tells him to write what he saw in a book, and to send it to the seven churches in Asia. He turns to see who speaks to him, and sees, first, seven golden candlesticks, which was the substantive object of the vision; but, for the moment, his attention is attracted to another object. In the midst of the seven golden candlesticks he sees One standing like the Son of man. Here we have the vessel of responsibility for fight on earth, corresponding to the unfolding of power in government above. The seven spirits were before the throne and, later, we find them as eyes in the horns of the Lamb. Here we have seven candlesticks which should give light by one Spirit on the earth. It is not the unity of the body of Christ: this is perfect, and belongs to heaven. It is the responsible vessel of light on the earth, of the state of which, as we shall see, Christ judges. Here is the key to the apprehension of this part of the revelation. God's throne carries on all secretly, and in the time of this book in revealed ways and power according to the seven-fold excellency of the Spirit - Christ, too, as taking the kingdom. The candlesticks are vessels of light. Do they give it?

{*The first part of verse 11 is left out by the editors.}

Nor is it here Christ interceding for the weakness of individual saints on earth, nor representing them before God or the Father. He is standing with no garments of service (He is clothed to the feet) but taking cognizance of their state. Next, though the details are important, He is the Ancient of days. It is remarkable how we are brought ever into millennial connections, kingdom associations: I do not say, millennial times. That is only at the end - and Daniel, with whose prophecy this so closely connects us, is never in millennial times, but he is always in millennial connections, only in the times of the Gentiles which precede them - and then the judgment. We have Christ's character here, not His going about amongst the candlesticks. He stand there. That is His place; and His character is such and such. The prophet sees one who answers to the idea of Son of man. It is not, I apprehend, any personal acquaintance of John with the Lord as an individual, but he sees one in the character of Son of man: and He is, as I have said, not in service with His loins girded, but His garments down to the foot. He is at ease with power to judge; girt under the breast with divine righteousness. Then we find Him, just as in Daniel 7, to be the Ancient of days. But further, His eyes are the all-seeing, piercing, power of judgment; His feet, the firmness and perfectness of divine judgment as applied to men according to God's glory; His voice as the overwhelming sound of majesty, out of the reach of man's power. He held in His hand all subordinate authorities, who represented Him in light in the church, and the word as judging men's hearts and intentions; His countenance witnessed supreme sovereign glory.

330 There is a threefold expression of character and dignity here. Firstly, the garment, girdle, and the hair of His head apply to His person and personal state. Secondly, His eyes, feet, and voice, what He is in divine judgment and majesty towards man. Thirdly, His official authority and glory as man: the stars, the sword out of His mouth, and countenance like the sun.

Let the reader remark this character and various glory of Christ here. The apostle - and this also is man in flesh before the glory, characteristic of visional prophecy - falls at His feet as dead. The reply is the fortifying witness - not of an angel-messenger, as in Daniel - but of the prophet's well-known Lord and Saviour, strength for them that are His, in Him that has overcome. He laid His right hand on him, saying, "Fear not." It is not peace, but dealing with man on earth, as when Jesus was on earth, only that now He possesses the dominion. "I am the first and the last." It is still the Jehovah of the Old Testament, but more, the Living One. But this is not all; He has the victory over the prince of evil and weakness. "I was dead, and am alive for evermore." It is Jehovah; but it is man victorious over all the evil and death itself into which man had fallen; and He held the place of victory for ever. And not only was He in His person victorious, but He held the power over what had been the sphere of the enemy's - death and hades. No angel could have said this to Daniel. Power - power that had wrought deliverance - was there; power superior to all that the enemy could do; and a power which John knew and now felt to sustain him, and make sure the blessing which God's will purposed to bring in, before the evils and sorrows and trials of the saints came before his mind.

331 The prophet then receives his commission. There are three classes of things which he is to write. "What thou hast seen"; "the things that are"; and "the things that shall be hereafter": but the two first are closely united together - "the things which thou hast seen"; and "the things that are"; then what is to come afterwards. He had seen Christ standing in the midst of the candlesticks. That was not "the things that are"; but the developed state of the candlesticks is so, and Christ's judgment as walking among them; so that the connection is very close. Besides, this was connected with Christ as John had now seen Him, and as he knew Him himself: not the highest knowledge of Him, but a present one - the church on earth; not properly prophetic, that is, entering into the direct government of the world, though it might, as moral threatening, foretell many things as to the church. Still all here was "things that are," belonging to the church period and state, though to the outward form of it. It has been remarked, that "the things which are" is plural; and "the things that shall be hereafter," singular. This is quite in place here: "the things that are" in detail before the prophet's mind here; the future, yet distant, as one short whole.

It may be well to notice here the use made of the characteristics of Christ in the churches, as confirming the interpretation of them. The first two give the state He was in as Son of man generally; the second that He is the Ancient of days. Neither of these is specifically used; nor is the sound of many waters, which is also personal greatness and majesty, nor His countenance as thus seen, shewing in its strength the vastness of His divine majesty, beyond man's reach and control, and His personal supremacy as man. Those applied are His eyes as flames of fire, His feet like burnished brass, His sharp sword out of His mouth, in His right hand seven stars, and His reply to John when he fell down - the relative qualities, so to speak, chiefly in judgment, but also in sustaining power. We shall see that they are all employed in the first four churches, and none, save His title over the seven stars, found in the three last.*

{*It is very possible that John had been visited by messengers (angeloi) from the seven churches; though, of course, as it is not revealed, I speak of it, but as suggested by the term angeloi, and as he was really writing to these churches. Were it even so, the purpose of the Spirit was not to send an ordinary epistle to the churches, but to use the occasion for a prophetic unfolding of the whole scene of God's ways as unrolled before God's eyes.}

332 The angels stand as moral representatives of the churches. They are addressed - not the letter sent by them - and they are owned of Christ. They are stars (that is, subordinate authority, but in the character of heavenly light and order in the darkness) in His hand; so that we must see that which should stand as a representative authority before Christ, and in His hand. But the church is that which is judged, and, as has been remarked by another, whenever judgment is threatened,* it is not on the angel; it is, in fact, on the church, or a guilty part of it. The angels stand, therefore, as the accepted representatives of the churches. Both they and the churches are seen in the mind of Christ and of God. The stars are in Christ's right hand, and the candlesticks are golden. Both are looked at abstractedly. The candlestick may be moved out of its place; but, in God's mind, it is a golden candlestick of which He speaks.

{*At least in the first four. A closer examination of the churches will lead us to see that in the four first, where there is blame (in the epistle to Smyrna there is none) and threatened judgment, the threat is to be executed not on the angel, but on the candlestick in Ephesus or on the guilty parties, as in Pergamos and in Thyatira. But in the three last it is not so. in Philadelphia there is no blame; and here, as in Smyrna, the angel and the church are not distinguished in the address itself; but in Sardis and in Laodicea the threatenings are continued as a part of the address to the angel himself. This, I suppose, connects itself' with the distinction already made between these two classes of churches; the four first have a definite church-place, and the angel, that part which in God's sight really represented the church, is abidingly owned at all events, and the judgment is on the inconsistent part, or what falsified the public testimony. But, when we come to Sardis, we go back (for Thyatira goes on to the end); when speaking of the mass, the better and witnessing part comes out as witness, witness against Jezebel; if they are not a witness they are nothing at all. The corporate constitution is null here. Hence, if there be failure, the whole thing fails and is judged with the world, and any faithful ones become a distinctive blessed remnant; because faithful witness is the whole thing. Hence, when Christ has to become that, the church so ruined is to be spued out of His mouth.}

333 So the star is that which has the authority of Christ in the church, and stands before Him as representing it, but cannot be separated, in idea, from the church itself. I say this, because I find "Thou hast left thy first love." Who? the angel: so it is said; but surely the church as such. Yet it is "thy candlestick," that is, its public acknowledged status before the world as light-bearer. So that what the ear that can hear is to hear is what is said to the churches, but all is said to the angel. So to Smyrna, "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; Satan shall cast of you," etc. Similar things are found in Thyatira. So in Pergamos, "Antipas was slain among you." Indeed, it is impossible to read the epistles to the churches without seeing that the angel and the churches are identified; only that the angel is looked at abstractedly in its representative character, the churches dealt with in their actual state, and as composed of individuals. The whole body is responsible, and dealt with in detail of judgment; but Christ looks at the ideal responsible personage: a thought which will be in fact realised by every one that hears His words. An individual may be in this, if he be the intelligent vessel of Christ's mind, in the midst of an assembly; so all those who are so. But the assembly is responsible, and all that hear Christ's warning.

The history given to us is the moral state of the church, and applicable to every assembly; and, indeed, to every Christian at all times, according to spiritual wisdom in application. This state I shall refer to, and it will, as a consequence, give its historical application in the succession of churches. The first has left its first love; the last is to be spued out of Christ's mouth. They follow thus: -

(1) Ephesus: the church has left its first love, and if it does not repent will be removed out of its place. (2) Smyrna: it is persecuted. Those who pretend to be the ancient people of God are specially in view. (3) Pergamos: martyrdom has been going on, and the church is there where Satan's throne is - the world which has thus persecuted. But corruption of doctrine and practice is beginning within, particularly in associating with the world. (4) Thyatira: we find devotedness and labour, but withal, on the other side, along with it, a sad state of things - Jezebel, who not only seduces as Balaam, to mix the world with Christianity, but commits adultery, and begets children. The evil is active and fruitful in its own way. This reaches to the end; and the Lord's coming is the resource of faith. Judgment will be special and terrible. (5) In Sardis we find a name to live, but death; and, if repentance does not come in, its judgment, just as the outward world. (6) In Philadelphia is little strength, but faithfulness to the word, and the patience of Christ. These are encouraged by Christ's speedy coming, and will escape the hour of temptation which will come on all the earth. (7) Laodicea is to be spued out of Christ's mouth as nauseous, being neither cold nor hot; yet warning is given.

334 These are "the things that are." I have no doubt that in the Revelation, as in all New Testament prophecy, while the prophecy, properly speaking, takes up the close, when God begins again to interfere directly with the government of the earth, or at least to prepare the way for it, what is analogous in spirit is viewed by the Spirit of God as a matter of His instruction and warning. There is Babylon, and what is unmistakably Babylonish, before it is fully revealed. There is Antichrist; and yet many antichrists, the "power of the antichrist," 1 John 4: 3; of whom we have heard; and, as Jude presents it, the manifestation in apostolic days of those of whom Enoch spoke, who are to be judged at Christ's coming. Barriers would be taken away which hindered the public manifestation of the wicked one; but the mystery of wickedness was already at work, and how has it ripened since! This is an undoubtedly scriptural principle, and I have no doubt it applies to the Apocalypse. We may take the churches as the then state of the province of Asia, a picture of the general state - specimens or samples of all - and God's history of the world thenceforth unto the end; or we may take the things really signified, and the prophetic part, as God's history at the close of things.

In chapter 12, where a new part of the book begins, the prophetic character is absolutely according to the form of Old Testament prophecy, Israel coming symbolically directly in scene. Christ's first coming, as in Isaiah 8: 10, is directly associated with His second. The man-child is born, the church has been taken up in Him, and the last close is then there. Analogies may be found in what follows, and identification with subsisting elements under other forms, as Babylon; but the history is the history of the end.

335 I return to the churches most rich in moral instruction and warnings; but have, however imperfectly, treated of this elsewhere. I now turn rather to interpretation as more immediately in place.

In Ephesus the Lord appears entirely in His general relationship to the responsible church. He holds seven stars in His right hand, has the authoritative control of all in power, and is occupied with the inspection of all. He walks about among the golden candlesticks. The failure of the church is also seen in its first principle, not in consequent details. The judgment is the general and absolute one, if repentance do not come in. The result of overcoming, also, is the general one of eating of the tree of life in God's paradise. This general character of the first church, its statement of general principles in every respect, is a strong confirmation of the successional character of the churches. It is much commended; but oh how weighty a notice for all! It had left its first love. The measure of self-judgment is its first estate. It is not a fallen church awakened up to Christ's coming, and by it; but a falling church reminded of its first planting in blessing. In the responsible church individual responsibility comes in. He that has an ear is to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The promise is the calm and peaceful one, belonging to a walk with God, of full enjoyment of the ripened fruit which belongs to His paradise - not a special one in special danger.

In Smyrna trial sets in, the natural conservative consequence, under God's hand, of growing cold; and the natural portion of the saints, too, yet often not coming till coldness begins, as God holds the first planting safe. But it is measured. The pretension of those who set up to have a hereditary title to be God's people is the commonest feature of persecution, and the church is in a very low and despised state in such. Of the rest men durst not join them. But it is rich. Hence of them, the angel representing the church, as we have seen, would be cast into prison. God permitted, though He measured, the persecution. Did death ensue, the crown of life would follow it. Overcoming, may our souls remember it is still, and always, the path. They that did would not be touched by the second death: of the first they might. Here Christ - as Satan seemed to have power against and above the church - is presented in a divine character, "first and last," and in evident special application to the circumstances he had been in - dead, and had lived again. He did not put His people through what He had not gone through Himself before them. He would assure them, in that path, of divine perpetuity and of life through death.

336 In Pergamos He has the sharp two-edged sword. Here worldliness comes, when the first love had already waxed cold, and when persecution was over, and a hostile world had ceased to drive the church from itself, and force a difference on the church, though not always driven it into its own place - into those joys and hopes which were its own. The motives, the thoughts and intents of the heart came under the searchingness of God's word in Christ's hand. The church found itself now in the public place of the world. Not a first action of the Spirit in living beauty, but unnoticed out of its little sphere of testimony; not a Gentile persecution, stirred up because it jostled old prejudices in its progress. It dwelt now, had a position and standing, in the world, of which Satan was the prince - where his throne was. "Your fleets and armies are filled with us," says Tertullian. "If we leave your cities the empire will become a desert." Could Peter and Paul have said that, or those who were of one heart and one mind? It was another kind of testimony, not a first love. It had grown to this, in spite of martyrdom through Gentile persecutions. Then it had stood firm and weathered the storm. Now Christ's sword, not Nero's must be applied. Inward corruption, the seduction to association with the world, and to lead those who bore Christ's name to go in the public path of the world, away from God, when, as an enemy it could not curse and destroy them - this was now the danger - more than the danger. It was going on, and corrupt practice was taught; deeds Christ hated had become a doctrine. The Lord would interfere if they did not repent, and apply His own judicial power within the church, giving His word judicial action in their midst, against those who sinned, no doubt, but so as to act on the conscience of all. It was His coming to the church in judgment though; His war, by the sword of His word, was made on the guilty. The word, despised as instruction and warning and correction, becomes judgment in the power of Christ. He is Son over His own house. But if the sword distinguishes in judgment, faith does in receiving the warning and word in the heart, and receives its reward according to this spiritual faithfulness. That word, which would come judicially to distinguish and sever in the church, wrought in the heart of the faithful; and the spirit and character of Christ was distinctively realised, and communion with Him in His separate path on earth enjoyed. To this the promise answers: they would have the hidden manna to eat; that is, Christ as known in His walk down here, though now in glory - the corn of that heavenly land. The hidden manna was not the daily manna, but the manna which had been laid up in the ark and kept as a witness in Canaan. They would have the distinguishing white stone of Christ's own approbation, and on it a name, a term of relationship with Him in this approbation which they only would know.

337 We now come, in Thyatira, to the general public state of the corrupt church, yet accompanied by long and unwearied devotedness. Christ, as we see His servant Paul ever doing, first notices all the good He can. The saints have done the same when their hearts were right with God. How have the sorrows and sufferings and labour and painful devotedness of the hunted but persevering witnesses in the dark ages occupied the mind and feelings of thoughtful Christians! Nowhere, perhaps, is there a more deeply interesting story; nowhere longer and more unwearied patience; nowhere truer, or perhaps so true, hearts for the truth and for Christ, and for faithfulness to Him against a corrupt church, as in the saints of the middle ages. Through toil and labour, hunted and punished in spite of it, by a system far more persevering, far better organised, than heathen persecutions, violent as for a time they surely were; with no fresh miraculous revelation, or publicly sustaining body, or profession of the church at large, clothed with universal acknowledgment as such, to give them confidence; with every name of ignominy that people or priest could invent to hunt them with, they pursued their hemmed but never abandoned way, with divinely given constancy, and maintained the testimony of God, and the promised existence of the church against the gates of hades, at the cost of rest and home and life and all things earth could give or nature feel. And Christ had foreseen and had not forgotten it. Weakness may have been there, ignorance have marked many of their thoughts, Satan may have sought to mix up mischief with the good, and sometimes succeeded; and men, at their ease now, delight in finding the feeble or faulty spot, and perhaps succeed too; but their record is on high, and their Saviour's approbation will shine forth, when the books ease - loving questioners have written on them will be as dust on the moth's wing when it is dead; and shame, if shame can be where we trust many of them may meet those they have despised, cover their face. This the Lord owns in Thyatira. It made no part of the church for men then. It makes none for many wise people now. It is the first part for Christ. And here we have a larger scene, a general condition going on to the end.

338 I do not think at all that this refers, as some have thought, to the principle of works as found in popery. Verse 19 speaks of what is approved of; verse 20, of what is disapproved of We have now one who takes the woman's place, symbolical of a state; not individual responsible activity, but a state, as long ago remarked in the types of the Old Testament. I do not think it matters much if it reads "thy wife Jezebel" or not,* as the name is moral and the wife of the mystic representative must be the public general state. But those who were morally responsible, as actively representing Christ in the church, suffered this state of things. It had grown into a settled system. She pretended to express the mind of God, to be the authorised expounder of His mind, having the Spirit; and she deceived, and taught Christ's servants to go on in worldliness and corruption. It was not seducing them when the seducer was separate from the body, putting a stumbling-block before them. It was an allowed state; all let to go regularly on. Corruption and idolatry in worldliness characterised the state. This had gone on long. It is looked at as the thing with which God was dealing. He had given her time to repent; and she would not repent of her fornication; she was teaching it, but she was committing it. It characterised the public state of the outward church. She would not repent. It was the present state. "I have given her . . . and she will not." If those who were committing it with her (all who entered into the spirit of her ways, and carried them on with her) did not repent, they would be cast into great tribulation. And her children - those whom she had begotten and formed in these principles God would destroy, and would be known as the Searcher of hearts and Judge. I do not take this as necessarily the judgment of Babylon - as such farther on, but the application of God's judgment to all the religious part of it; though the scene be substantially the same. The character of Christ here given (the reader may see, I believe, justly given) in what precedes, the all-seeing piercing power of judgment, and the firmness and perfectness of divine judgment as applied to men according to God's glory. "He that hath an ear" is here first seen apart from the general body of the church, contemplated apart. Up to this, "he that hath an ear to hear" comes before the promises to them that overcome; here after.

{*All the best authorities, read "the woman."}

339 When the state - the woman - is the thing to be dealt with in judgment, the ear to hear is not associated in God's mind in the same way with that which is judged. The prolonged state of the professing church is looked at here. It is not, as at Ephesus, the general idea, "I come quickly, and remove the candlestick," because it does not exactly answer His mind, and He expected it. This supposes, in a certain sense, confidence that all will be exactly as it ought to be: otherwise the relationship ceases. Here, as to the public state, all was very bad, though there was personal devotedness. And God, the One going to judge it definitely as bad, and as an object of judgment, has long patience. Abraham must go down, or his children, to Egypt, for the iniquity of - the Amorites was not yet full. Moses He was going to kill, because Eliezer was not circumcised. This is God's way; jealous when He admits to confidence; infinite in patience when He must take His character of judge. Here He is judge - He gives to every one according to his works. How solemn a thing it is, when the public professing body of the church becomes the direct object of God's judgment!

In verse 24, "to you,* the rest in Thyatira," that is, those who had nothing to do with Jezebel and her ways, her doctrine, who held the church - the woman - to be (no prophetess, but) apart from the world, and pure for Christ; they had but to be faithful to this. God did not expect from them in this darkness, the light of other days. Only they must hold fast what they had. Remark here, they were only a numbered and distinct "rest." confirming the idea that Jezebel represents the public state. Not knowing the depths of Satan, that is, what they called so, I apprehend to be plain morality and separation from the world. They indulged in corruption and idolatry; it characterised them - pretending to see a liberty which their acquaintance with the depth of Satan's wiles gave them; and pretending to look on the others as seduced by the deep wiles of Satan, to hold aloof from the church's path, from what God owned on the earth, and where He had placed His Spirit and word, for all this Jezebel pretended to. They said, that "the rest" did not know the depths of Satan, in making them think outward morality and holiness was called for in the church. So the true saints got the character of being led of Satan; and the instruments of Satan, that of possessing the word and Spirit of God. They were to keep Christ's works: that was the depth of truth at any rate. Knowledge they had little of, even in respect of justification by faith. The saints of that day were very ignorant.

{*Not and "the rest". "You" is plural, and means "the rest."}

340 George, who began the practical separation in Bohemia and Moravia, after the fall of the Hussites, began with morality, knew nothing of justification by faith as to clearness of doctrine. It was introduced later among them, and through much opposition, and alas! through the Lutherans with great relaxation of practice.

So with the Waldenses; practice was their great theme. And this was in its place according to God. Not that the truth was mighty as afterwards to deliver countries; but conscience was found in those holding Christ as the one foundation, which, through grace, made them suffer and live for Him.

The promises here are important. They are not simply special promises for those faithful within, though suited to them but the whole scene of promise and millennial glory to come, as belonging to the whole church. This is notable and connects itself with the view we have taken of the passage, as presenting the whole public state of the church in which corruption had become the mother of children, and its public state.

The Greek church comes little in scene here, though partaking of much of the corruption, because it did not stand before the eye of prophecy (as it has not been, in fact), as that which represented the church in the world. No doubt the accession of Russia has given a large population and importance to it. But this is quite modern; and all the East was overrun with Saracens and then Turks, in a word, with Mahommedans; and these stood in God's eye as holding the population there - the world's religion; and the Western system as that which was the church before the world. So, we know, it has historically been.

341 The promises given to the church are the power of the kingdom, but, besides that, Christ Himself. This is so simple and distinct, that what is called for is not interpretation but spiritual understanding. Only remark, that the subject here is not Christ's universal power over all things, but over the nations. It is the rule of the world, when the outward church has been the world and falsely "reigned as kings," falsely set up the millennial reign, and faithfulness has caused suffering; and Christ Himself, as the world will never see Him or know Him, as the Morning Star. As Sun He will reign over the world; as Morning Star, He belongs to faith alone, and is never seen by the world. As Sun, the saints will be seen with Him; as the Morning Star, they will see and enjoy Him themselves. Thus, both answer to the trial of the saints in the church; though it is the general glory of the church - all glory, save indeed as Christ is over all things, and such to the church His body. Here it is the world. The promise Of Psalm 2 made to Christ as Son of God is conferred on the overcomers. But, besides that, there is the proper Christian privilege. That which the watching eye, he who watches in the night sees, when the sleeping world enjoys itself and sees nothing, to be awakened by sudden judgment as a thief in the night - the Morning Star which Christ declares Himself in this book to be - that is given. Christ Himself thus known, known to the heart in the trial and difficulty of faithfulness, is given to him that overcomes.

The reader will remark, that this church professedly continues on to the end. Here first the coming of Christ is introduced. In fact, the others were passing states of the church. Here God's loving patience waited, and the saints were called to hold fast what they had to the end, till Christ came.

As a distinct form of existence, the Jezebel character marked it, when there was nothing else. It is the state before God's eye without as yet any other (the three last churches were not yet come up before Him), and to this state the instruction directly applies. But, in a secondary way, the fact that such a state of things would continue comes out, as the saints are called to hold fast till Christ comes, and the promises are directly and openly the church's at Christ's coming.

342 The church of Sardis presents Christ to us in a striking manner. He is in the very fulness of His power in respect of His relationship to the church - the fulness of power in government - the fulness of spiritual energy to work. He has this; but it is merely the fact. The stars are not seen in His right hand. It is not the regular formed order in its right place, but all spiritual power of working not mentioned in His relationship to the churches, nor what had been seen in the things that were (chap. 1: 13-20).

But although thus far seen in a general character, and not a special one, Christ is not presented here as walking in the midst of the candlesticks. I do not mean that Christ had ceased to do it; but He is not so presented here. He is the source of all spiritual power, the possessor of all spiritual authority; all that actively represents Him on the earth belongs to Him. But the previously existing relationship is not expressed.

It is further to be remarked, that the seven Spirits of God belong to the comprehensive qualities and power of the Spirit in connection with bringing about God's will, not the Holy Ghost dwelling in the church: of this we have nothing here. The seven Spirits are seen before God's throne, and they are seen as eyes in the Lamb. We have got into new characteristics of Christ, in reference to His own power and rights, not what was already revealed of Him as walking amongst the candlesticks. His coming has been announced, and the outward successional church followed to the end. It was a system wholly corrupt, a mere Jezebel, a mother and source of wickedness. The Spirit now takes up Christ's personal character and rights, and, in this respect, looks out beyond church scenes.

The story of Sardis is soon told. We have no corrupt state, though there was much personal individual evil. On the contrary, there was the reputation of a moral activity which had delivered from evil - a name to live. But the real character of the church was a state of death. And here remark, that the work of the Holy Ghost is itself not, and cannot be, the object of judgment. This is evident. God does not judge His own working; nor Christ, the Spirit's. It is the result in man's hands. Thus the work which produced Protestantism was God's work, the action of His Spirit; the result is the use man has made of this blessing. Some things remained; and they were exhorted to strengthen them, for they were ready to die. The Lord had not found their works complete. There was something failing - lacking. It had man much in it. Christ had not found. them complete before His God.* It was not anything corrupt or superstitious exactly, but wanting in their character and motive. Activity, but not such as met the relationship of Christ with God on the earth; they were not Christian enough. Yet they had received much, and were to remember this, hold fast, and repent. If the church did not watch - this was the great point - they had got into the ease of the world, and were living as if things were settled and to go on for ever; it was not corruption and superstition' but deadness and worldliness; if they did not wake up and watch, they would be treated as the world. Christ would come on them as a thief in the night, and they would not know when.

{*Note that "complete before my God" is the correct reading.}

343 I have remarked elsewhere the extreme importance of this threat. Because it is directly declared in 1 Thessalonians 5 that those whom the Lord owns as Christians would not be so treated; "Ye are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief" And they are exhorted to watch. But on the world that day would come unawares, as travail on a woman with child. The professing church, in its Sardis state, would be treated as the world if it did not watch. Not only is the judgment most solemn, but it shews that the spiritual judgment, that professing Christianity in this state is (morally speaking) the world in God's sight, is just. And note, here, that if we connect (as we should) 1 Thessalonians 5: 1, with chapter 4: 14, this judgment will take place when the saints come with Jesus. Protestantism, for such I doubt not it is, sad as the thought may be, will be found and judged as the world at Christ's coming with the saints. It is not terrible tribulation and special judgment as with Thyatira, but found to be the world. Here, too, the true saints are treated as a remnant. "Thou hast a few names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments." They had practical christian walk. The white linen is the righteousness of the saints. "They shall walk with me in white." The church's works were not complete before Christ's God. There was a lack of what was properly Christian in them. Those who kept themselves in their walk as Christians would walk with Him in white. The same is repeated to him that overcomes, with the addition that he would not be struck out of the registers of God's people. When the once nominal church was treated as the world in judgment, it would not be even in the register. All professing Christians are, and in that sense, in the book of life. They have not life, surely, unless born of God, but they all stand on the public registry of life; a Jew, a Mahommedan, an open apostate, does not. When the saints were gone, and the nominal body visited as the world, that would have no real meaning, perhaps no nominal existence. The saint, faithful while it went on, would not lose his place on the register. Christ would confess his name as really His before His Father, and before His Father's angels. Here we have the saints very definitely individualised as to Christ's owning them, and in contrast with the professing church judged as the world below, confessed by Christ above in the presence of His Father and His angels. The warning to hear, as in Thyatira, comes after this distinction.

344 The church of Philadelphia is the rich and unqualified encouragement of that which was feeble but faithful. There is little church - character, I may say none. All is a statement of what Christ is and will be for them; only that they have the comfort of knowing that Christ has fully taken cognizance of their state, and that, satisfied of this, they are to go on, encouraged by His own grace. "I know thy works." This is all that is said. This character of the address to Philadelphia is very remarkable. The church, the saints, have to think of Christ, not of themselves. Faithfulness to Him, however, is noticed. His word had been kept, His name not denied, the word of His patience also kept, that is, of the way in which He awaits the time of His glory and power, through the long-protracted evil of the professing church, in the accomplishment of God's ways.

In this also they are specially associated with Christ. This association characterises all the promises made to him that overcomes also. Hence what Christ is personally with respect to such relationship, and His availableness, so to speak, for those seeking so to walk, is presented in the revelation of Him. He is "holy." This character must now specially be responded to. It is individual conformity (though in the common body and walk of all) to Him that is looked for in this near personal relationship. He is "true," the one who is truthful in all; the true Son of God, the truthful revelation of what He is, and we are sanctified by the truth; true in His word, so that it can be counted on. But "true" especially here refers to the power of the truth, but the truth seen in Christ's nature and person, and so known to us. "Sanctify them through thy truth; Thy word is truth . . . and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." So is He the Holy and the True One; and it is especially where all has failed, that this character of Christ has its application, but a people are yet called to be faithful in special connection with Him.

345 So it is in John's Gospel, as regards Christ Himself in the midst of Israel; and in his Epistle, where seducers were leading men astray, and piety became individualised. Not, of course, as if brotherly love and union were not to exist, but that personal adhesion to Christ, the Holy and True One, was needed for it. Out of twenty-six times the word true is used, it is used twenty-one times by John, as a kindred word is sixteen times out of twenty-five. It is the personal character of Christ separated to God from all evil, and the true and living expression of all that He presented Himself as; as that manifested also the nature of all that was not it.

The next point is that He has the authority of the house and government to which, as Christ, He has a title, "and openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth" - an important word in present service. So to Him the porter opened. No human power, nor Satan's either, could hinder it. So now for those who hold fast to Him. And He had set an open door before them, and no man could shut it. But little strength they had, but (with the door open) if there was faithfulness, the service was easy. This, "Thou hast a little strength," is real approbation. There was not Pauline energy, nor God mighty in any one as in Peter. Not the energy that led to martyrdom, or brought kingdoms under its sway; but love to Christ and His word, that gave desire for the good of souls, and His being known, He was held to - had authority over the heart. Hence, there was a little strength: a great thing where all was loose as to Christ, and His word was held fast, and His name not denied. People might pretend to be the ancient people of God; but Christ had His place in the heart, and hold on the walk and conduct of those whom Christ here approves. His word was kept, His name owned.

346 Two evils were before the eye of the Spirit in these times: - the synagogue of Satan, those who founded religion on ordinances and not on Christ: a present and pretentious evil - "they say." The other a judgment of the Lord Himself, the hour of temptation which was coming on the whole world to try those attached to the earth, as it had been formed under the eye of God. As to the first, their judgment, after all, was light, but a great strength to the saints; who might seem to act for themselves, and despise the old traditions and truths, or what were said to be such, sanctioned for ages. They would be brought to own, by God's ways and dealings, that it was those who had little strength but were faithful to Christ, His word and name, whom He loved. They would have to come and bow before the feet of the despised remnant of faithful ones, weak as they might have been, and to confess, at any rate, that Christ had loved them. And this is what contents and satisfies the heart - the approbation and the love of Christ. This is what is presented by Christ, and what constitutes the ruling principle of the heart of the faithful here.

The first point, then, was Jewish principles invading the church outside her Jezebel character; that is, ordinances, traditions, and human authority in contrast with Christ. The second is connected with the consciousness that the world is going on to a scene of confusion and judgment, a time of universal trial. In the light in which Philadelphia stands, this is clear to those who have the understanding given by the Spirit of God. Christ is coming. Christ has to be confessed and held to fast, when all principle is loosed, God setting an open door before faith, but the world itself uneasy. The saints who hear with the ear given to faith will escape the hour of temptation. The reason is given. Christ is waiting for His allotted crown, and maintains His exclusive heavenly character, till He rises up from His Father's throne.

But the mass of professors are dwellers upon earth, not pilgrims; they have not their conversation in heaven waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. But there are those who have kept the word of Christ's patience, who know that He must wait until His enemies be made His footstool, and wait as strangers in heart on the earth till then. Christ has taught them this, and given the word that in teaching directs the path and spirit and conduct of him that waits. They wait with Christ, according to the word of His patience. It is into this, connected with the love of God, that Paul prayed the Thessalonians might be directed (2 Thess. 3: 5). They are thus in the spirit of their mind separate from the world, as He is, associated with Him. It is not needed to try and prove them as dwellers upon earth. Here, therefore, His coming is given as direct encouragement and joy. 'You have to keep the word of my patience. Have patience, but I will keep you out of the hour of temptation which is coming; and not only so, I am quickly coming.' "Hold fast what thou hast [an earnest and important word] that no man take thy crown." In a time when there is little strength, and nothing but the promise of Christ's approbation to encourage, and the return to Jewish principles in those who profess to hold anything, it is a great thing to hold fast that that one has, the word of Christ, not denying the name of Christ, to keep the word of His patience.

347 The open door is before us, and it is a great blessing, and none can shut it. But the special exhortation is to hold fast that we have, and remember that keeping the word of Christ's patience, who now waits the day when His Father shall cause Him to rise up and take the power, is that which gives the assurance of being kept out of the hour of temptation. It will come on all the world, but we shall be out of it. This must not be confounded with the great tribulation which comes on Jerusalem especially, from which the remnant flee. It is far more general - on all the world.

The promise is very special, as is the relationship with Christ. The character of the saint's relationship, if he knew what his place was, is that of Christ's. A heavenly man in the midst of pretensions to be the people of God, which made nothing of Him, his only part personal faithfulness along with them that clung to Him, the whole weight of human traditional religiousness being against them, else all death around him, yet an open door to serve. The glory which follows on this answers to the glory Christ takes in consequence of His walk. I do not mean exactly with the Father, as in John 20, but in the time of His coming glory, walking in communion with Him. The former was the means of possessing the latter. He shall be a pillar, says Christ (yes, he who was weak), "in the temple of my God, and go no more out. I will write on him the name of my God [on the faithful one who had not denied my name on earth, when there was nought else for him], and the name of the city of my God [the place of glory and power which God had prepared, for he had looked for a city which had foundations] new Jerusalem which cometh down from heaven from my God [there his thoughts had been], and my new name." He shall be fully and openly associated with Me in the glory as he was by faith in littleness overlooked when there was nothing but Christ; but Christ for him was all. In God's day He will be all, such is the promise, so closely associated with Christ Himself in the Philadelphia state of things. I pray the reader to fix his attention on the close association with Christ all through this epistle. Let us look around and see if we cannot see elements such as these - No Jewish principles formed in Protestant countries after a name to live, but death there? No looking out for a time of trouble on all the world? No truth in there being but little strength but an open door? If there be, let the reader mark what the warnings and exhortations of Christ are.

348 The closing state of things comes next. Church, as to its place in the world, it yet is. It stands with its angel before Christ to be judged as such. He takes its works into consideration as such. But it has settled down into taking things quietly. It has not a name of excellence compared with Jezebel, but death. The living elements have been concentrated in the Philadelphia state. It would not renounce Christ, would keep up profession, would sacrifice nothing for Him, it would keep the church's place and credit, yea, claim it largely on many grounds as a body; but spiritual power, in individual association of heart with Christ or trouble for Him, was gone. Christ abhorred such a state. It was as lukewarm water, which would be spued out of His mouth. Such was the judgment unconditionally pronounced on the church of Laodicea. But, as ever till actual judgment comes, God continues to work, if any man may have cars to hear. So in Jeremiah: the plainest declaration that they would go to Babylon - yet continual calls to repentance, and a statement of God's way in this respect on repentance.

349 In Laodicea, all that they professed to have, all that man could estimate the value of, was false and human. I do not mean mere outward riches, but all that could give a large pretension to wisdom and knowledge and learning, perhaps a fuller view of Christianity itself; self-satisfaction in what was possessed: this characterised the professing church in Laodicea, but utter poverty as to Christ, nothing of Him - a name to attach to learning and human thoughts, but of Him nothing. Hence His counsel was to buy of Him gold tried in the fire, true divine righteousness in Him never separated from life, for it is His nature: and white raiment, the power of this association with Christ in what is displayed in man, living righteousness; and to have that true intelligence of the Holy Ghost which makes us see, the unction of the Holy One. In a word, the divine gifts and power of Christianity in contrast with what man possesses as man, with that of which he can say "gain to me" - man's conscious possession of that which gives importance and value to man in his own mind. The relationships of Christ to the professing church here are remarkable. The Christian is a new man, a new creation in Christ, risen into a wholly new place, on the utter rejection and proved insuperable evil of the first man - proved insuperable in the death of Christ. Man's and Satan's business are to exalt and give a place to the old. It is not here in the world, not at any rate in his own eyes. The professing church goes decidedly back here into that out of which we are taken in Christ by faith. Hence though this has still the name of the church, and professes to be Christian, it is really wholly in its own claimed moral place, though thinking itself wiser than ever, off the ground of Christianity, and on that of the world or natural man, which consequently comes on the scene in its own place; and the church closes. What was wholly wanting was what was divine and new in man. It was the first man enriched, even if Christ enriched him. That would be admitted. There was no divine righteousness, no specific christian clothing, the righteous life, according to Christ, of a new nature to be had only in Him. The teaching of the Holy Ghost was wanting. Man's intelligence was wonderfully and wholly in play. The things counselled to be got make this character of the evil clear; they are specifically divine things connected with man's rejection and acceptance in Christ alone, to be had only in Christ, and from Christ, and nowhere else; not an improvement of man, but what was divine found in and obtained from Him.

350 To this, and the fact of its being the closing state, all answers. Christ reveals Himself as the "Amen" who secures every promise of God, now man has failed even in the church. He is the faithful and true Witness in Himself. The witness of the church as a witness of Him is gone. He is the beginning of that new creation, of which indeed the church ought to have been a witness in the power of the Holy Ghost; but of which He in resurrection was the Head, the spring, and manifestation; all taking, in the new creation, its starting point of existence from Him, its place under Him. Adam had such a place in the old, the image of Him that was to come - Christ, in the new, of which the saints are the firstfruits. But here, the church, which on profession as founded on His resurrection had this character, having wholly failed and gone back in professed riches of human nature to the old, Christ comes forward as the beginning of it all, the one in whom it had its rise and its truth; all the rest being wholly dependent on and flowing from Him. The AMEN maintains the promises now to be fulfilled - the faithful and true Witness - One who had, and now would fully make good, the character of God - which man, His image, and the church, too, had failed to do - the beginning of the creation of God, one who, when God made all things new, as He was now about to do, was the beginning, the fountain and source of it all, the first in, and the first from, whom it all flowed. The position He takes, in respect of the church, shews the same relationship to it. He was practically without it, looking at it as gone, though it were not yet spued out of His mouth. It is a question, though He warned it yet, of individuals hearing His voice that they may escape - may have fellowship with Him, and He with them. He has not given it up; but it has become wholly human in its real state, as judged by Him; so that He has to come in to the individual if he has anything to say to Him, or Christ to him. "I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."

The whole body of members of the professing church were judged to be men now, not sons of God or Christians, though judgment was not publicly executed, but Christ still acting in grace; divine things (the alone true ones) recommended, human things boasted in. If the individual heard Him who still called and knocked, though as outside at the door, He would have communion with him. The promise answers to the bringing in of the new order of things, not heavenly joys, still a share with Christ. As they had listened in time, they would be on the throne in the kingdom. It was immense grace, but no more is promised; not the tree of life, no hidden manna, no white raiment spoken of to the soul, to encourage it in faithfulness within: they would not miss the kingdom. Blessed surely, and wonderful grace, but only just not shut out.

351 This, of course, necessarily closed the church's history. The reader will remark, that the instruction being moral, a state that is judged, promises ever precious, the warnings and exhortations are available to the saints at all times. The special application may be more or less seized. The words of Christ have power at all times for the heart and conscience; and this is the force of the exhortation at the end to every church: - "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches."

Thoughts on the Revelation

J. N. Darby.

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351 We now come to the government of the world. The failure of the church as a professing outward body, founded on human responsibility (for as built by Christ for His glory, it never can, but this is in heaven in purpose, and judgment certainly does come in this world), had left only this, and brought in necessarily the intervention of God in judgment.

The prophet is called up to heaven; for no government of God was yet manifested on the earth, and the church was no longer owned as witness; and the first voice which he had heard as a trumpet, the voice of the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the voice of Him who was behind him in the midst of the golden candlesticks, now called him up to where His power and activity was to display itself - the Ancient of days, whom we shall now first have to see on the throne; but whom we shall also perceive as a distinct person as the Lamb. We have a throne in heaven, instead of candlesticks upon the earth. In the "things after these," or hereafter, we find evidently the last part of the verse which gives the division of the book; and, whether translated "after these" or "hereafter," the sense is the same; as the preceding things were "the things that are." The judgment of Daniel 7 is here largely developed. The jasper is divine display. I go no farther. It is not essential nature, though this be what is displayed; but display of divine glory in government and judgment - what secures and protects from evil. I say this merely from its use, not from any notion as to the stone. (Compare Rev. 21: 18, 19, and 11.) It characterises divine display thus in the book. The rainbow is covenant with creation. The throne thus gives the government which secures from evil and blesses creation. The saints, kings and priests, are seen in glory, enthroned and crowned as kings here (in the next chapter, priests), and decked with the ornament of righteousnesses in life. The throne was one of majesty and judgment (not of grace) Sinai-like, and before it the perfection of attributive power; the seven Spirits of God were seen. And that which erst was the means of feet-washing, and cleansing before judgment came in, was now solid purity on which cleansed ones could walk and find no uncleanness to take up. The cherubim (four not two, completeness, not witness) were in the midst of the throne and around it, characterised it in its inward nature, and surrounded* it with what was their peculiar character. That character is judicial power, as I have elsewhere remarked, and as all the cases, in which they appear, shew.

{*Around and round are different in Greek. The first gives the idea of distinct objects surrounding; the other, what is round anything, not necessarily distinct, but viewed from it and connected with it as a centre. In chapter 7: 11, it is around.}

352 But the details shew other elements in their attributions here. They are heads of the four parts of created existence on the earth. They have this under their power as their attribution, so to speak; man, beasts of the field, cattle, and fowls of the air - not of the sea; every one characterised by rapidity of flight, and power of inward perception. In verse 8 their service is referred to, and the eyes are within; this characterised their intelligence, its nature: a figure easy to comprehend. We know more or less what it is to have within us a clear perception of what is, of the nature and motives of what is, around us. These were full of eyes before and behind; they saw all things on every side. The administrative knowledge of the throne was not a partial knowledge. It was not a mere outward knowledge of circumstances which governed. The eyes were within. God, in His Old Testament characters - Jehovah, Elohim, Shaddai - God, the Supreme Governor, and God once of promise, always of fulfilment, and the Great King over all the earth, the Creator who faints not, neither is weary, was unceasingly celebrated by the administration of His power in providence and creation. But they do this in a peculiar character - Holy! holy! holy - in that character, which allows no evil to be near it, but will be sanctified in all that were nigh to Him. But this is celebration, not worship. The elders fall down and worship. Nor only so; they give and that characterises in general the worship of the elders - they give motives and reasons for it. It is intelligent reasonable worship. They worship Him that sits on the throne, Him who has title over creation, by whom and for whom all things were created: "For thy will they were and have been created."

353 Redemption is not yet touched on. I have largely noticed elsewhere, but must not here pass over, the exquisitely beautiful character of the moral state and position of the elders. When the throne of judgment is set, they are on thrones. The lightnings, and thunderings, and voices left them in unmoved peace. Why should they not? Their place was the witness and result of divine righteousness in which they sat there, which had crowned them; and the exercise of this judgment left them necessarily in the peace it gave. But when He who sat on the throne was celebrated, then they were all activity. They leave their thrones, they cast down their crowns, ascribing all glory to Him who alone was worthy. He that sits on the throne is Christ, but viewed as Jehovah, and sitting as such, not as a distinct person seen apart from Godhead, nor as a Son with the Father in Godhead; but the Jehovah of the Old Testament revealed in the Son. It will be remarked, there is no manifestation of angels here.

We may remark here, that the whole scenery is taken from the temple, a remark which aids in the intelligence of the structure of the book, only it is changed in several particulars, and, though permanent, answers in some details more to the tabernacle - the shadow of heavenly things.

In the right hand of power of Him that sat on the throne was a book, the unfolding of the counsels and purposes of God, according to His power. It was filled with these, but perfectly sealed up. The personal glory of the Opener is brought into evidence by the inquiry, who could unfold and give effect to them. None anywhere could be found; but the heavenly elders have intelligence of the ways and mind of God. Christ can. He is spoken of in His Jewish character, but in the way of divine power - the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, the source of promise, and the Mighty One to prevail; but, after all, it was redemption, and suffering for the glory of God, which had given Him the title. Blessed thought! The prophet must see a Lamb as it had been slain. Full power and competency to execute it according to the perfection of God's attributes were in Him - seven horns and seven eyes. He was the centre of all that expressed divine power and its displays and results - the throne, the beasts, and the elders.

354 The beasts and elders are distinguished here. The Lamb was in the midst of the throne and the beasts; and in the midst of the elders. That is, the power of government, providence and creation, whoever instrumentally wielded it; and in the midst of the crowned and enthroned company, who were as added heirs to this, the redeemed kingdom of priests. The seven Spirits which were before the throne, part of God's glory on it, are seen in the Lamb, but as sent forth to accomplish the divine purposes in all the earth under the Lamb's authority. He comes, and takes the book. Now redemption is celebrated. I would here make some remarks, as regards the beasts and elders, not with the certainty of teaching but submitting them to inquiry, in which state they stand in my own mind, though the inquiry be based on elements settled in my own mind'.

In Revelation 4 creation and providential power were brought before us as such, and no angels. Here also redemption and the angels are seen. Further, in this whole book (indeed in all scripture), the cherubic animals hold the place of judicial power, and administer it providentially. The elders everywhere have divine intelligence of the motives for praise. This belongs to the saints as such, and indeed especially to Christians, who have an unction from the Holy One and know all things, but to the saints as such. The administration of governmental and judicial power is not exclusively theirs. They get it in consequence of redemption. Further, in chapter 4, the beasts celebrate the glory of Him that sits on the throne - announce His character - the elders only worship thereupon. The angels are not seen. I have supposed then that, redemption not being yet manifested, the administrative power is not viewed as taken out of the hands of the angels, for we know that the world to come is not subjected to them. Creation and all its glory is seen as such, the living creatures are not yet the saints; and the angels are not seen apart from that glory of which they have been the heads. When the Lamb is manifested, those associated with Him must take the first place as connected with Him, and the angels delight in it. This we have in Revelation 5. Redemption brings in the reign of man in Christ. (Compare Eph. 1: 20-23 and 1 Peter 3: 22.) The Lamb being now manifested as Redeemer, this also is manifested. The beasts* worship with the elders, are now associated, and the angels are seen, as such, apart. As we go on to the farther parts of the book, we shall see that the beasts recede, and the elders take the first place.

{*Verse 8 may very well be read as if "having harps applied to the elders only. Very competent judges so understand it but in chapter 19: 4, at any rate, the four beasts fall down and worship. Verse 9 should be "they sing."}

355 Here, the beasts and elders, the heavenly saints, I apprehend, in their double character of heads of creation, and kings and priests, exercise distinctly the office of priests, not in interceding, but in offering up the prayers of the saints. The intelligence of the elders, the saints, viewed in this character of priests brought near to God, whose lips keep knowledge, celebrate the Lamb as worthy to take the book, and open the seals, and why He is so; namely, that He has gone through death and wrought redemption - redeemed to God. I suppose the "us" is justly rejected. It is not who are redeemed that makes Him worthy; but that He has redeemed people to God out of every nation, and made them kings and priests, and that they will reign. It is His work, and its effect and character, that make Him worthy. Who should open that book of the kingdom, or the ways of God in bringing it in, but He who had brought it into existence and all in it, by sacrificing Himself? And here the angels come in with willing chorus in a beautiful way, owning the effect of this work, and standing farther off, but in the best of places since it was the one that owned and gave glory to the Lamb in His work. They stood in a circle around the throne and the beasts and the elders. So every creature joined in the chorus. And the four beasts say "Amen" to the creature. It was their place. The twenty-four elders fall down and worship. This is their own worship. It is more than the "Amen" of the beasts to the praise of the creation. This, though we have made progress as to the facts in the prophetic history (for the book has been now taken by the Lamb in order to open it), yet gives an anticipative expression to universal praise. John hears it prophetically. The twenty-four elders and beasts made part of the subsisting glory from which all was to follow - crowned and enthroned before there was any history.

356 For the history to begin, the Lamb must take the book. This is all-important as to the saint's place when the Lamb takes the book. To the prophetic eye and ear the angels fall into their natural place in the kingdom; and then his ear hears the voice (as Paul's before the groans of every creature everywhere) celebrating the glory of Him that was on the throne, and of the Lamb. Seen they could not be yet thus; but it was, so to speak, the natural result of that which was now taking effect. Many a groan would go up, and many a sorrow be felt, But the book the Lamb had taken, the elders were manifested in their redemption-place, the angels joyful in that which redemption gave them; the Lamb not yet indeed seen as having taken His kingdom on earth, but His title to it loudly proclaimed above by those who knew and were the firstfruits of it, and the ways ready to be unfolded which led to it. The voice of the result is prophetically heard, and, as heads of government and creation, the beasts say, "Amen." The voice is true and right. As elders, the saints worship Him that never fails in promise, but makes good in immutable nature what He has purposed in grace. It is not "him on the throne here; the creatures were not yet in actual relation with it but He lives to make all good.

All this is introduction; to put all in their places for the kingdom and ways of God - creation and redemption each having its due glory. And now the history itself will begin. As yet the beasts are in the foreground - providential dealings; the (to man) hidden ways of God are going on. The Lamb opened one of the seals. And one of the four beasts, these leaders of the governmental ways of God, of His judicial power, speaks with thunder. It is known that many leave out "and see." Should they remain, it is clearly a call to John; but I hardly see why it should be a voice of thunder. The idea that it is the voice of creation looking to Jesus to come seems to me wholly out of the way. The groaning creation, or longing creation, does not speak in thunder. It seems to me more naturally as the expression of God's thunder and power - a call to the horses to come forth. The reading must first be determined, of course; but if this be right, it is not without importance, as settling what I have, at the same time, never doubted, without any such ground, that the four horses have the same character. The horse is always the action of divine power, gone forth into the earth, accomplishing, whatever the agent may be, divine purpose and providence. A white horse characterises triumph, as is well known: such is the white horse here, triumphant conquest. The next is a state of war and conflict which takes peace from the earth. In the third God calls for famine on the earth; in the last, all His four sore plagues (Ezekiel 14: 21). It is not special dealings with a revealed antagonistic state, which are presented to us. It is history, history of the condition of the earth, the special scene of God's dealings, where He has been made known, but where man does not care about God, or perhaps favours His enemies, and persecutes His people. God deals with them, and, though at first all seems fair and prosperous in his hands where active power is, the judgments of God soon reach the scene. For the force of horses as a symbol see Zechariah 1 and 6, and Revelation 19. It will be seen in all these cases, that it indicates a matter of public general dealing of God, something that characterises the state of men and God's dealing with them.

357 The opening of the seal brings no longer the cry of the beasts. John sees those who had been martyred among men, had offered up their lives for God's word and for testimony which they held. Hence they were seen under the altar. They looked not for peace themselves, but for judgment on the earth. We are here not in the gospel scene or spirit of things, but of the throne of judgment and government, as we see in the Psalms, The time for executing judgment and avenging their blood was soon coming, but not yet come. Their faithfulness was owned. White robes were given them, the witness of accepted practical righteousness, the witness of its acceptance before others; but they must rest a little while. Others must yet suffer in the last days. God has begun to deal with the earth; but the last scenes are not yet come.

But another character given of God to men here comes in view, already prophetically introduced in the promise to Philadelphia - "them that dwell on earth." They are settled, and have their habitation there. It is not necessary to be of the church, in order not to have this character. It is true of the church; but in Daniel 7 also we have saints of the high places. And before Daniel Abraham "looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God." He declared plainly that he sought a country, that is, an heavenly, so that God was not ashamed to be called his God. So it was with him, who could say for himself and others, "I am a stranger and a sojourner with Thee, as all my fathers were." It may be that the very departure of the church may have stamped this character of saints of the high places on many that are left behind. At any rate those who have been slain for their testimony easily know the settled worldly character of those who had slain them, how they had the earth for their place and name.

358 Remark, that we have no time or date as yet here, only there is but a little season to follow. How long the horses have been pursuing their career in accomplishing God's will, since the book was opened, is left wholly untold; only they were, when the church was present and owned of God, future things. How the witness is given to them, the white robes, is not said. The cry is for vengeance on others, not for blessing on themselves. If it be not resurrection, there is no reason why even those of the church and all saints martyred for God's word may not be there. I apprehend it is since the church's rapture. The date of the passage is wholly forward, there is none as to the time they were martyred. There is - as to getting the white robes, and evidently confirmed by what follows - an intimation of the closing - in of God's ways. They are going to become direct, with revealed (yea evident) causes of judgment, not providential.

The next thing is a general break-up of all established authority, and general confusion; everything that seemed stable on the earth ruined and broken up, so as to produce bitter terror in the minds of men. But the end was not yet. They think it is the day of the Lamb's wrath, and of Him that sat on the throne. The martyred saints knew that others were to be slain; but men had a bad conscience, and they feared the judgment of the throne and of the Lamb. I think this marks conscious enmity to them too. It is hardly a state of superstitious service; while the character of their fear seems to intimate that it is the fear of them that dwell on the earth, when Christianity, the profession of the knowledge of the Father and the Son is gone, and is known in conscience to have been rejected. The throne they had to do with, and the Lamb, speak of wrath to them, not worship. Why so? We are here surely in another scene of things where this is on the conscience when it awakes through fear.

359 If the great day of His wrath was not come, the harbingers in rapid and terrible succession were soon to break in on the unrepentant earth; but meanwhile God must have and secure a people through them all. This securing of His people is what chapter 7 sets before us - the servants of His power holding the elements ready to devastate the earth. But another servant of God from the rising of the sun, I suppose in connection with the blessing of Messiah, the light of God in the midst of Israel (Luke 1: 77-79), who has authority over the four prepared to hurt the earth and the sea, charges them to hold back the elements of destruction, till the servants of God are sealed. I have little doubt this intimates Christ (though in a new character, and in connection with the earthly people) and the saints. He holds the sea] of the living God. Of course He alone could; but the saints are associated with Him. He says, "till we have sealed the servants of our God." He cannot now be separated, in the accomplishment of God's ways, from the heavenly saints. Not that this is yet manifested, but is here revealed for the intelligence of faith. What is preparing is the gathering of all things in one in Him, as Head, the heavenly saints at least. The church, all save those exceptionally to be killed in the last tribulation, are gathered to Him. His own proper heavenly company are there. And He intimates their association with Himself, and must now provide, according to the will of God, for the people of the saints of the Most High. He does not yet come to secure their bodies, but to mark them irrevocably for God. His elect people in Israel. Trouble of every kind might come, but they were marked for God. In general indeed even temporal security is here assured. (Compare Rev. 9: 4.)

In the special tribulations of the last day, I do not see that God's servants in Israel are slain.* At any rate, in the plagues immediately coming here, being judgments, the sealed saints are not the objects of them. (See chap. 9: 4-6 and 20, 21.) I speak here of Israel, for with that we are occupied. The woes are on the inhabitants of the earth, the opposite exactly of the sealed ones. This sealing is a usual thing from the time of Christ's coming, when righteousness existed which could be sealed. He was sealed by God, the Father. This was the Holy Spirit. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, He being our righteousness on high. But this is in association with heaven; though Christ was as yet associated with earth. It is the living God whose seal it is here; not exactly the seal or promise of the Father, but that their sure part is from the living God in connection with the dayspring rising on the earth. The elect number of the twelve tribes is sealed - the 1000 x 12 x 12.

{*Psalm 79 gives the case of terrible slaughter in and around Jerusalem by the heathen; of the application of which I am not sure. It is not, I think, certainly, the beast who is there active. Nor am I quite sure they are real saints, and not the saints, taking all in as a holy people, though as a nation they are said to be al chesed (not holy). In Daniel 7, "given into his hand" refers to times and laws, not to the saints. The beast prevails against them, but they flee as a body and are preserved.}

360 But there are others who are characterised as Gentiles. The associations and character are quite different here, and partly in connection with this point, of their going through the tribulation; and it leads to a remark, which facilitates the apprehension of the order and contents of this part of this book. We have, to the end of chapter 9, three distinct classes of persons; the sealed 144,000 of Israel, the multitude who praise God in white robes, and the dwellers on the earth, men who are not sealed. If we take out the white-robed multitude (Rev. 7: 9-17), the rest is angelic care and judgment. All is in angelic hands. We come down to providential secret care, and God's ways by outward means, of which we may have the secret here, but which are providential. Nor is anything seen of the Lamb. Indeed this is the case as regards His being in the scene, though with a very special revelation of the beast, and we are in Israel, and do not find the Lamb again, till Revelation 14 - a chapter which gives the scenes of God's ways. It is not that the dealings of Rev. 7: 1-8, and Rev. 8, and Rev. 10-12 are the same; but they are the same in this, that we are in angelic scenes, and Jerusalem and Israel is everywhere the centre, though the oppressing power might be Gentile. I do not think chapter 13 an exception to what I have said. The Lamb is not in the scene, only the names are written in His book before the foundation of the world. Those saved and spared could not be in any other way, or on any other account. But we shall see all this more clearly in following the different facts of the chapters.

361 Revelation 12: 10, 11, is a confirmation of what I mean. It is the celebration in heaven of what took place at another time.*

{*The truth is, this goes farther, when duly weighed, than at first sight appears. We have no action of the Lamb from the opening of the book.}

I return to Revelation 7: 9. It is entirely a distinct vision from what precedes. The difference, I apprehend, in their character, is this. The vision of the 144,000 sealed ones is their being marked by God, so as to secure them for Himself in grace through the coming trials. It is wholly prospective; they are there marked for this. The vision of the Gentile multitude is prospective too, but they are seen simply in the result coming out of the trial, so that no time of commencement is set. Whenever the time of tribulation began, those who were in it are found here. The slain ones have been seen (Rev. 6: 9). It may be, that this tribulation begins with the universal break-up of the end of chapter 6; but it may have gone on in the previous seals for aught that is said directly, as far as I am aware. Doubtless it continues afterwards in the following chapters. At all events those seen in the vision belong to the time of tribulation.

We have now to consider a little more closely their character. In Revelation 14 the 144,000 are with the Lamb - those of Israel, I apprehend, who have passed through circumstances analogous to those through which Christ passed in Israel, and are associated with Him in His Israelitish royalty on Mount Zion - the remnant of the Psalms. The white-robed multitude are before the throne; they have suffered for Christ more than the Jewish remnant, but are not associated with any special place of His. They have overcome. Their conduct is fully owned as righteous. Their relationship is with God who sits on the throne., and the Lamb - that is, the God of power and deliverance of the earth, the Judge after the church is gone; they stood before the throne. They are not sitting on thrones around it, nor even standing around it, making part of the heavenly circle. This the angels did, though the outer circle. They stood around the throne, the elders (who have here the first place), and the beasts; and these worship God, falling on their faces before Him. It was now in truth a new scene and display of God's working, and there must be new worship. When the Lamb was revealed, these celebrate His praise. Now they praise the God whose glory they own, and who is about to make it good on the earth. The intelligent church has now, as such, the first place. The immediate activity will be in what has the character of being creation's providential power. But another interesting element is found here. He who has the Spirit on earth is associated in intelligence with the heavenly saints, only He receives it here prophetically; that is, not by the presence of the Holy Ghost, the unction by which we know all things. That is the elders' part - the church of glory as such; but it is communicated to the prophet according to the intelligence of these, and they are interested in the christian prophet's knowing it. One of the elders says to him, "Who are these?" and the prophet says, "Thou knowest." The intelligence of the Spirit is ever found with the elders.

362 Another point is brought to light by this intercourse between the prophet and those who represent the church as such on high. The white-robed multitude are entirely another class. They are not the church on high. They are not those who, in the time of millennial peace, knew nothing but its enjoyment. They have passed through the time of trial in the time when the throne was now set; but the Lamb was in the midst of it, and had not yet come to exercise judgment on the earth, to put down oppression, and to claim His rights in power. Hence they have a special place - a place, even in the time of blessing, in connection with their faith in the time of trial; and this is, I suppose, the general order of God's ways. They are manifestly redeemed - those who belong altogether to the millennial time, yet exposed to trial; then, having gone by grace faithfully through the trial, they are manifestly, and manifested as, sheep. Their robes are white, washed in the blood of the Lamb. They are publicly owned as redeemed and approved, as in Matthew 25. This is a very great and distinctive privilege, though they are not in heaven. They serve the God to whom the throne belongs, always in full access to His presence in His temple. In heaven there is no temple; but they have association with the true temple. Christ has not come again, and received them to Himself where He is in the Father's house; but they stand in the presence of God, as on the throne, in full acknowledgement and blessing, and always. They have a fixed, and blessed, and acknowledged place, which even the saints of the millennial time have not. He that sits on the throne tabernacles over them, as over Israel once, in the revelation of His presence (not "dwells among" them), and they are for ever secured by His own care from all trial and evil. The Lamb shall feed them, and lead them to fresh springs of living waters. God shall remove every remembrance and trace of sorrow; for they have had sorrow for Him, though surely to their own blessing and gain. Still God owns it. The suffering for Christ (in whatever time or circumstance it may be, Old Testament saints or these) always implies participation in redemption and special privilege, though the peculiar relationships may be different for the various displays of God's glory, and blessing from His hand. So it is with the white-robed multitude. God's state is various.

363 The unfolding of God's ways on the earth is now prophetically proceeded with; and we return with it into angelic or providential dealing, though, as carried out by angels, of more distinct and direct judgment. The seventh seal is opened (chap. 8). There was a lull for a time. No open dealings to call men's or the prophet's attention; a short lapse of quiet. But God's ways are preparing in secret (revealed to the prophet). The seven ministers of God's power stood before him, and seven trumpets, loud announcements of the interference of God, were given to them. But this intervention follows on what goes on below. The great High Priest - still here seen as an angel - comes and stands at the altar (of incense), and gives efficacy to the cry of the saints who suffered on earth; but He was the minister of power; not here as sounding the trumpet, or as sent, but as giving the answer in judgment to the cry of suffering. He casts the fire of judgment on the earth; and the signs of God's terror and judgment, and actual convulsions on earth, follow.

But specific judgments were ready to follow; and the seven angels prepare to sound. Such is the connection of the ways and dealings of God with the saints. All is prepared for judgment; but as they, however feeble, represent God on the earth, the wickedness of the wicked, which must be judged, is directed against them, and their cry brings the judgment, being offered up by Christ according to the efficacy of the incense He can add to it.

364 Remark here, that when the saints (Rev. 5: 8) act as priests, they add no incense at all - privilege enough to have such a place, but they can add nothing. The odours are the saints' own prayers on earth. Here (Rev. 8: 3) the Angel - High Priest adds much incense to give efficacy to the cry of the saints.

I have nothing very distinct to communicate to my reader on the character of the judgments, revealed as coming on the earth in this chapter. Our best plan is to follow the symbols as a language. I apprehend it is in the western Roman earth. Revelation 9 is not, but in the east. At least the seat of the prophetic agents is there. It is not a mere state of things under God's providential ordering as in the early seals, but positive judgments inflicted in a public way by signal historical facts. On the other hand, the working of these on men is indirect; in the woe trumpets direct - on "the inhabiters of the earth." Hall is judgment, what I may call violent stormy judgment: fire is judgment in general, but in its penetrating character discovering and reaching evil. The judgment here had this double character. Both were mingled with blood. I am not quite so sure what this symbol means, but in general it seems to me to be death, not in the sense of being simply killed outwardly, but of the power of death, death in a moral way, the spirit of death in a shocking and revolting way, death as connected with sin as its character and cause. It was the power of death working as evil in man.

The outward effect of the judgment was the destruction of the great in the western earth, of what was elevated in dignity, and the universal destruction of prosperity. The second angel brings a great mountain burning with fire into the sea. A mountain is great established power. This is cast, but in the way and with the effect of heart - discriminating judgment (it burned with fire), into the mass of people, and they are filled with, brought into, a state characterised by this deathful power of evil. They become blood. All however did not die everywhere among the peoples, but it reached, in the wide expanse, to A hat answered to the extent of the seat of the evil. I suppose "dying" here to be departure from the profession of association with God, public separation from Him or apotsasy.

The next is a great star falls from heaven, a mighty though subordinate authority, which should have been the means of light and order from on high, a star (not the sun, but who loses his place, is apostate from his place of connection with God as such; and this with mighty and ardent brightness and heat, and falls on the sources of popular moral existence. It was bitterness itself, and exercised the influence of what it was upon the spirit of the people, so that they were completely animated by it. They became wormwood; and it brought death too; it was destruction and ruin to individuals from the way it worked according to its own nature in them.

365 In the fourth trumpet sovereign authority is smitten, and all dependent on or subordinate to it, which cease to regulate the order of the human course of things within the sphere assigned to these plagues, of which I have already spoken. I suppose the third part to be the Roman earth (west,, because the dragon with seven heads and ten horns sweeps the third part of the stars, and they are cast to the earth - they lose their place of connection with God, carried away by Satan's power. Not only the public course of things; - as cast into confusion and darkness - the day in sunlight darkened; but the more private and hidden life of man lost the light that guided it. There was darkness and stumbling, no perception of God's will, and no way or light to walk by, which the human understanding (faculty of seeing) could profit by.*

{*The four trumpets, remark, affect all parts of the symbolic creation - the verdure of the earth, the sea, the fountains and rivers, and the celestial bodies.}

The last trumpet or woes are to fall on the inhabiters of the earth, those attached to this world and its course, not on the state and circumstances of the Roman empire. The two first trumpets must first occupy us, as they are spoken of apart. A word on the structure of this part of the book is necessary. The course of the prophecy passes over evidence from the end of Revelation 9 to Revelation 11: 15, and this part closes at the end of verse 18. Revelation 10, 11, to the end of verse 14, form a parenthetic portion, the communication of the little book. We have, from Revelation 11: 19, the fully revealed final dealings of God, and the evil in respect of which He so deals; the resolving of the great question, whether Christ and the saints with Him, or Satan and the powers under his control, are to have the upper hand in this scene of the conflict between good and evil.

The first of the woe-trumpets brings forth a peculiar power of Satanic evil; the second, a more earthly distress, though both were woe. When the fifth angel sounds, one who rules, or should rule, on high, becomes apostate, loses his place of connection with God, as such, and becomes the instrument of letting loose the power of Satan; he has the key of the bottomless pit. Sovereign authority was obscured, and the whole atmosphere of men's mind darkened, and in confusion. Out of this the destructive activity of evil was let loose upon the earth. Its instruments were deadly and tormenting to men. Yet they did not affect the general prosperity, nor the grandeur of those that were exalted, but those who were not sealed with the sealing of Revelation 7. But the object of this judgment was not to put to death, but such, as that death would be a refuge from the torment that these instruments of Satan's malice and God's judgment inflicted on men; men who, servants of Satan and the world for their lusts, were now so to their pain and grief. Those who were not openly God's servants were subject to it.

366 We are here, I doubt not, in the East, and I suppose especially in Canaan and in Israel. This was the woe. But identifying characters are given of the instruments of torment. The general idea is warlike instruments of God's providential power in the earth - horses prepared for battle ravaging as to devouring power, but not independent (their hair was woman's hair), though in appearance they came in their own strength and intelligence. They swept with violence forward, as a rush of chariots of many horses. But whatever outward character they had, there was one definite and distinct - they were directly led by the power of darkness, the angel of the bottomless pit, the destroyer. It was God's judgment by outward means, but by Satan's power on the ungodly on the earth, who sought their portion in it. Men might persecute the saints, and would grievously, the Lord using it for blessing. But His hand would be now upon the ungodly, not yet in final judgment, but a witness of His penal anger against wickedness. The stings in the tails seem to me principles and doctrines which they disseminated and left behind them.

The second woe was of a more outward character; not devoid of Satanic power, but not so directly so. It was not so absolutely characterised by its subtlety and power. There was more brutish violence; men were killed by them. Still the men mounted on the horses were far less important than the horses themselves. Men, though instruments, did far less than the orderings of God's spirit in providence, and His ways on the earth. Fire and brimstone are, no doubt, judgment, but not by the word, nor by chastenings or actings of God in the earth on men. The lake of fire burns with fire and brimstone. It is God's judgment, inflicted but having in its own nature a consuming power of evil. Scorpion - work was poisonous, the devil's tormenting mischief, a terrible judgment too, to be exposed to it; but this had the character of human violence and hellish misery and ruin. It seems to come on members of the Roman world, though its action be from, and especially in, the East. The destructive power of judicial evil was connected with what they announced before them. They killed by that which they proclaimed, where it reached. It cost people their lives. But they had, besides, mischievous teachings, teachings concentrated in a power by which they did mischief on the earth - they had heads on their tails. Their defence was from hell and its power - their breastplates were fire and brimstone. It was hell's destructive power, as God's judgments before. It was the serpent's mischief behind, but concentrated in a head of power. But no repentance was wrought. Put men, so to speak, in hell's hands, they do not repent. Idolatry and wickedness, wrong against God and man, still characterised them.

367 I would remark, that the objects of the first woe were the unsealed ones, which carries us, in effect, eastward to Israel. The point of departure of the second was the East, its objects the inhabiters of the Roman earth. Thus the whole Roman world has been judged: the West, in general, in the first four trumpets; the East in the first two woe-trumpets, including the Jews. The final conflict, and their judgment is yet to come and the prophet must prophesy again.

This properly begins, I apprehend, in Revelation 11: 19, which is in effect a new prophecy, though it connects itself, of course, with what precedes in the chronology of the matter, and is thus interwoven. Indeed, the place of much of it, of its main historical parts, is given in the parenthesis. It is to be remarked, that the voice which calls out the second woe comes from the golden altar, is the fruit of the intercession of the Lord in favour, of course, of His saints. This gives a distinct character to the judgment, as in favour of the saints, which is indeed given as a general principle at the beginning of the trumpets; but distinguishes this from the first woe-trumpet, which was distinctly on the unfaithful, as contrasted with the sealed ones - on those who were not servants of God. The four angels give the second woe a very general and sweeping character; as we have had four seals of judgment, four angels at the four corners of the earth who hold the four winds, four trumpets of devastation on the Roman earth, so here the cry comes from the four horns of the altar, and the four angels are loosed. I suppose the Euphrates is to be looked at as the natural, and, till God so interferes, the maintained barrier of the Roman earth.

368 In Revelation 10 we come to the parenthetic communication of the little open book. It had not seals to be opened; it was given open. It was no longer mysterious and providential preparatory ways to introduce the Lamb, to unfold which redemption was needed; nor among mere Gentiles, where God had no direct government, in respect of Israel. Nor does the Lamb appear here as hidden in the throne. Christ comes to assert His own rights by His own title and power. Not that it was yet made good; but this was the ground He took, and from which the revelation that was given flowed. The hidden times were going on, before even the empire which was the subject of the course of prophecy had yet appeared. Now the question is openly raised - Is Christ to rule? And He openly lays claim to the title. On the other hand the beast, the great public subject of historical prophecy of the "times of the Gentiles," comes forward too. Along with this, Jerusalem and the Jews come upon the scene. This could not be otherwise, when the earth and the beasts and Christ are the subjects treated of. They are then the necessary centre of God's ways. But this gives a distinct character to this part of the prophecy.

The character given to Christ represented by the angel is, in covenant with creation, supreme authority, and the firmness of discriminating judgment. The source of it is heaven, and, I apprehend, as "clothed with the cloud." He still maintains this character, though He comes down. He holds in His hand now the open book of prophetic revelation, and claims the wide - flowing mass of nations, and the ordered government of earth. The perfect expression of the divine authority and power which was to make it good accompanied it, but the expressed detail of this was not to be revealed. There was now to be no longer delay. There had been long patience with failure and evil to gather men to blessing. The time to close it was come. Two angels had sounded, and in the days of the seventh or third woe-angel, when he would sound as he was about to do, the mystery of God would be finished. It would be the plain manifestation of His government and order, and blessing on the earth, and known authority, where it ought to be. John was to take the book and eat it - sweet in his mouth to receive the communications of God, but bitter for every feeling when its contents were digested. He was to prophesy again in view of peoples and kings. I should hardly think the prophecy begins with what follows. It affords the character and place in prophecy of that which is afterwards opened out in all its bearings - the internal history of the scene itself at the close, not its origin, relationships, judgments, etc., which are afterwards unfolded.

369 The language of this Revelation 11: 1-18, though sometimes figurative, is not symbolical but literal in its general character. The prophet was given a reed, and he was to measure, to put under God's care and in His acceptance, the temple of God, the true inward place of His worship where priests could come, true worshippers among the Jews and in the consciousness of it, and the altar (I suppose, of incense), and those that worshipped there - the true Jewish worshippers of that day. The court outside was not accepted; and the Gentiles trod under foot the holy city forty-two months. But as heart-worship, it would be there in the remnant, so would testimony, and for a like period. Day by day, the two witnesses, the adequate testimony of God, prophesy in the midst of trial. They bear witness to the order and blessing of the Jewish state, when Messiah shall reign, but they are not in that state; not a candlestick with two olive-trees, but two candlesticks and two olive-trees. But they are before the God of the earth. God preserves them to complete their testimony.

The very terms, "holy city" and "Gentiles," lead us at once to Jewish associations here. All is a testimony to the state of things which exists before He who could put His right foot on the sea, and His left foot on the earth, whose voice the seven thunders accompanied, makes good His power in the earth, and makes the Jerusalem which He loves the seat of His power on the earth, before the God of the earth makes His rest-giving power known there. The power of judgment proceeds out of the mouth, that is, their word brings it on their enemies, according to their testimony, to devour those who would prevent their testimony. They have great power in this way. Verse 6 ascribes to them the same order and extent of power as was possessed by Moses and Elijah. The latter shut up heaven; the former turned water to blood, and smote Egypt with plagues. To this latter there is no limit - every plague whenever they will. This is great power; but they are in sackcloth - in sorrow and suffering: only this power is in their hand in time of need. But it is only to secure and maintain their testimony, not to set aside the power of the beast itself.

370 When the witnesses have completed their testimony, the beast that is known as the one ascending* out of the bottomless pit shall make war with them, overcome and kill them. It is very likely there may be literally two witnesses; but the main point, I apprehend, in the mind of the Spirit is, that there is, during the time of the beast's power and the treading down of the Gentiles, adequate testimony to the title of the God of the earth. There was an owned worship and an owned testimony, though only narrowed up to the straitest limits which preserved it, the house and the altar of incense, and an adequate witness. What was really priest and really prophet, the little remnant, was guarded of God. The beast was in his last form, here anticipated in expression as is the whole passage (see Rev. 17: 12), when animated by, and deriving his power and being from, Satan. It does not follow from what is said, rather the contrary, that the witnesses are killed the first moment. The beast makes war against them and overcomes them, as soon as their testimony is complete, and kills them. But it does not, on the other hand, suppose any lengthened period. The triumph of evil seems complete. They were to be likened, in a great measure, to their Lord. Only their bodies are exposed in a public way in the great street of the city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. Israel is expressly called Sodom spiritually, and Egypt is the world; utter corruption on the one side; and the oppressing power of the world or Gentiles on the other - that idolatry and independence of God, out of which Israel had originally been called. The victory seemed complete, and the dwellers on earth rejoice over the witnesses slain, and make merry, for the two witnesses had tormented them.

{*"The one coming up," Rev. 11: 7, is purely characteristic, as the same form is in a multitude of cases.}

371 A God of the earth, about to take His power and claim His rights over the earth, it was no resting-place for those who dwelt there at ease defying Him. But the triumph of the wicked is short. After three days and a half the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood up to the dismay of those who saw them. They ascended up, like Christ in great measure, only with this difference, answering to the full insult heaped on them even when dead, which God could not allow as to Christ,* to whom, save in the moment of atonement, God gave ever testimony (however He suffered), namely, that their enemies beheld them. The likeness, atonement apart, of the history - of these witnesses to that of Christ is remarkable. They suffer for their testimony in Jerusalem become Sodom and Egypt. They he dead awhile, stand on the earth, and then go up to heaven. But we have the solemn truth that, on the one hand, a testimony is given to the Son of God which could not fail, that is, to His person; and on the other, He remains in His own holy power, not seen of His enemies, but giving comfort and a place of testimony to His friends. All this is fitting. Further we find, that as to outward human evil, things had ripened. There is more insolence, more joy, more open contrast, more public power of testimony; but the evil more openly unrestrained. A violent revolution on the earth accompanied the call of the witnesses to heaven; a tenth part of the city, the great city - I suppose, the city, fell; the organised system of the earth, a complete number of men** known of God, the fulness of His then purposed judgment, but not further - the rest are affrighted, and turn back in ignorance (not repentant or converted), to give glory to God in a relationship in which He no longer stood to the earth. They think to save themselves. This proves that they do not know God at all, nor His ways. But these men were not the public enemies of God. Still, a suitable outward effect is produced, as turning men outwardly towards the true God.

{*Their sufferings, of course, bore no comparison at all to His, seeing He suffered from the wrath of God, and in the spirit of love in which He had no equal.}

{**I doubt whether "names" has a particular force, save to individualize them. (See Rev. 3: 4)}

The second woe, that of the horses and riders let loose from the Euphrates, was now closed. But how serious were the events of another kind which had happened in the period allotted to it of God! The holy city trodden down, the testimony of God raised up, and for a time stopped by the power of Satan exercised by the beast. But this gives occasion to the last intervention of God, not now by instruments in mystery providentially ordered, for there has been open testimony, and open rebellious opposition. This testimony had been rejected, and the time for mercy, long displayed, now closed.

372 Judgment was come. The seventh angel sounds. We have not, as yet, any details of the closing dealings of God, by which His wrath is exercised; but it was come. "The worldly kingdom of our Lord," say the voices in heaven, "and of his Christ are come." Such is the song which sounds out of heaven. It had been announced, and heaven knew what that trumpet announced. The elders then come in, and, as usual, give the reasons for praise. God is again proclaimed as at the beginning - Jehovah, Elohim, Shaddai, the God of Israel and of the fathers, of the world, of the promise, and of power. Only now He had taken to Him His great power and the kingdom. The nations were angry, but how uselessly! Jehovah's Messiah and Son would be set up in Zion; the dead would be judged, the prophets and the God-fearing rewarded, and the destroyers of the earth destroyed. It is the general statement of the close of God's ways; of judgment and of its effects; the government of God made good in its final results.

The time of the dead seems to be taken absolutely, and is a very important element. The time of this world's activity is nor the time of the dead. There is no device or understanding there; but when God's time comes, it is the time of the dead - but to be judged (only here the Spirit turns more exclusively to what in fact will then come to pass, the case of the saints) and "give the reward unto thy servants, the prophets," and to all who have been faithful. The order of thought or revelation runs thus: "The nations have got angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead to be judged" [or that there may be judgment] "and the reward given," etc. The force, I apprehend, of the passive form of the verb "to be judged"* is, that judgment may take place. I should not exclude at all those, properly speaking, judged at the end, the wicked dead. But, save what is done at the beginning of the thousand years, all is given exceedingly abstractedly. What does happen at the beginning precisely? It is not of the dead being judged or for judging the dead, but "the nations angry and Thy wrath come." This last sentence, though general, is the way God treats the open rebellious anger of the nations. The time of mercy is now closed, and the wrath is come. "The time of the dead" is wholly general; so is "to be judged." The giving reward is definite, and so is the destroying them who destroy the earth. The objects are precisely named. The first point is the contrast of time. It is not the time of mercy and patience, but of wrath and judgment; also of reward to prophets and the just, and the putting away evil on the earth. I confess this looks little like the precise time of the setting up of Satan's great power and wrath. It closes the whole unfolding of the seven seals, and the ways of God.

{*Bengel refers it to God, as in Romans 3: 6. But I apprehend it is quite general for judgment, for people being judged.}

373 His providential dealings with the earth are now over. His direct governmental dealings now begin. Not that many other events had now to be revealed. Their place had been shewn in the little open book; but they were a new and distinct prophecy, a prophesying again, but still, and yet more clearly and openly, in connection with the Jewish people. The brief summary of the same history brought in in the trumpet period, though the direct object be clearly Jerusalem and Palestine as a centre, is so expressed, that what is called a spiritual application may be made of it. Here, unless in the vaguest generalities, it seems impossible. To this prophesying again, the special religiously viewed result of the last days, I now turn.

The temple of God was opened in heaven. The book was open. It was a direct prophetic revelation of events according to the known tenor of prophecy, when the known relationships of prophecy were renewed, and God occupied Himself according to them with the earth, though it were in judgment. The temple too was opened. Heaven was to be in relationship with the earth; not in the secret way of providence, the bearing of which was revealed as a result, not the things or agents in relationship with God, but in dealings in which the objects were owned; in which, though heaven might be and was wonderfully brought in, God, in His ways, had to say directly to the earth. But then He must, as we have said, have to do with Jews. The ark of His covenant is seen in the temple - God's infallible connection with the Jewish people, only now according to heavenly counsel, purpose, and perfection. This was accompanied by all the signs of God's power in judgment with resulting convulsions on the earth, and positive judgment falling on men on the earth.

374 The vision now begins: what precedes only characterises it. A woman is seen in heaven. All is in divine thought and counsel here, not yet manifestation on the earth. It is as it stands in the divine mind. The woman, as remarked elsewhere, is a state of things, not an agent - a subjective vessel of God's display of His purposes. Here it is the Jewish people; but they are seen as in the mind of God, clothed with supreme authority, all the mere reflected light of the previous state of Judaism under her feet, and crowned with the emblem of complete authority in man, twelve stars. Twelve is complete ordered rule in man as of God, the stars are the light and witness authority gives, that is, authority viewed in its character of light and moral order. But she was in travail to bring forth. Here was one side of the picture: on the other, the power of evil still having his place in the sphere of power, in heaven - a great red dragon. He had seven heads, completeness in an inward way, constituted completeness in a thing in itself, not in relationship to others; not compounded but constitutive completeness. Seven cannot be divided; it is the highest uncomposed number that cannot. Twelve is the most perfectly divisible of all. I attach no importance to this, save as the way scripture uniformly uses these numbers denotes their character.

The dragon had ten horns, power or kingdoms, very much of it, but not complete; there were not twelve. The heads were sovereigns, were crowned. The dragon had influence over the third part of those subordinate or lesser powers which should have given light and order from God on earth, and had cast them out of this down to a merely earthly, dark and subject condition. They ceased to lighten or govern the earth. He stood to frustrate God's purposes, and to devour the child of the woman which was in travail. Here we must, properly speaking, see all the church-saints in Christ Himself. If we seek the church in Old Testament prophecy, we shall find only Christ. (Compare Isa. 50 and the end of Romans 8.) Christ is to rule all 'nations with a rod of iron (Ps. 2). This He has imparted to us, to have it with Him (Rev. 3). Hence the catching up of the man-child is our catching up, too. There is no separating Christ and the church in God's thoughts and purposes. It would be the head without the body. This then was in the counsels of God; not to make good power in the male child at the beginning, but to have it caught up to God. Next the woman, the Jewish mother of Christ, and, in Him, of the church, has thereon her place in the wilderness. It is not what is united to Christ which has this, but what preceded Him, out of which He sprang. This closes the ordering of the scene and persons; their taking their places in God's order.

375 What follows is historical prophecy. There is war in heaven. And the dragon (called the devil and Satan), who deceives the whole world, is cast out of heaven never to return, and his angels with him. This is before the beginning of the twelve hundred and sixty days of the woman's being in the wilderness. The first dealing of the dragon, before his casting out, was seeking to devour the child; this is met, not by acting on his position or his being cast out, but by the child being caught up. All this embraces the whole time of Christ's rejection from earth, and being taken up, and our being caught up. Then the saints being with Christ, and the heavenly Man who is to rule complete and with God, after this Satan and his angels are cast out of the place of rule. When cast out (v. 13, 14) he persecutes the woman; and the date on earth begins with the commencement of her staying in the wilderness. Historically, we are only as yet at the time of his being cast out (v. 9); but this casting out of Satan (the angels have nothing to do with this, the heavenly or accusing part) calls out praise and gladness in heaven. In truth it was a great change. Satan was cast out of heaven, and all his deceit and work as in heaven was over for ever. He might raise up the earth in open war against the Lamb, or, subsequently, from all quarters the deceived nations on the earth against the Lamb and the beloved city; but his deceits connected with heaven and his accusations, his carrying on a system pretended to be heavenly, but where his power was developed, His working under the name of the true God, but against the true God, and true Mediator, and true saints - all this was closed for ever. This was the great fact, the blessed and all-important fact, full of rest to the spirit in hope.

376 But several details must be here entered into for the interpretation of the book. The loud voice which often occurs has the natural force of a great public fact, to which universal attention is called. It carries authoritative announcement from heaven. But we have further to inquire who speaks here because he says our God and our brethren; and the voice is an abstract idea, so that it does not in itself determine the person or persons who utter it. They are various in the Apocalypse. Here it is not without importance. It is a voice in heaven, yet it is naturally of many - "Our God, our brethren." It contemplates, however, others on earth who are their brethren. Those who speak have the consciousness of near relationship to God, and celebrate the setting up of the kingdom of their God, and the power of His Christ. Christ, however, is seen in other relationships than with themselves. God was setting up the power of His Christ.

Thus we have three classes or subjects: those whose voices are heard, their brethren, and the kingdom set up. Add to this, that the event they celebrate is followed by the manifestation of a distinct body of persons belonging to God on earth, before the kingdom is established there - the woman and the remnant of her seed. That is, we have those who utter the loud voice, their brethren, and the woman and her seed, subsequent to this period, but before the kingdom on earth. This is important as to the order of events too. Those who celebrate the event with a loud voice are a class already exempt from the difficulties from which the accused ones are only as a class delivered.

The saints who have part in the rapture, as it is customarily called, who form part of the man-child, who are actively associated with Christ, while that association is carried on by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven in its proper power, until the moment that this whole process of union is closed by their going to meet the Lord in the air - these who have their glorified position are corporately placed in it, united to the man-child. These it is who celebrate the deliverance of brethren, just escaped from trial upon earth, associated with heaven - for Christ was not yet manifested for earth, nor the last public trial of His title there begun. Satan had been yet on high till now, to resist before the throne of God the blessing of those whose hearts looked up there, so as to be ready to suffer anything rather than deny the truth and the Lord. Grace had given them the victory. Their victory was martyrdom. Satan accused these saints, and exercised his power from heaven over those that were not saints. He is cast down; this accusing work ceases, and he loses this place of power. Power is exercised in heaven to drive him from this seat of power. The kingdom of God and of His Christ was set up in the seat of power. The effect would follow on earth when the time was come; but the power of the kingdom of God was set up in the sovereign place of authority; for Satan was cast down.

377 The brethren were the saints who had been on earth, faithful in testimony, between the rapture and the casting-down of Satan. For the church is here looked at as a complete thing in itself (of course united to Christ) before the government part of the book begins. The brethren are the saints of the Apocalypse, whose prayers, for example, were presented (Rev. 5), who were under the altar (Rev. 6) till now that Satan is cast down. Now all that is in heaven, all who dwell there, can rejoice. There is "peace in heaven," but, as yet, terrible things on earth. For as yet the king was not yet come there in the name of Jehovah. The saints had been killed, perhaps, by him that had the power of death yet they had overcome him. So had Christ, who died too. "By the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony," does not mean their instruments in the warfare, but the cause of the victory. It is (dia to) because of, not (dia tou) through. How far they may have used both is not the question here. But they were in conflict with Satan, the accuser. They did render testimony, and that brought death, as it had the Lamb's; but His blood and the word of their testimony were the cause of their moral victory, though, as in the body, they might succumb.

There is no fixed time here till the casting-out of Satan, or rather the woman's flying into the wilderness, which begins the last half-week. Outwardly the ascension is the only point of departure as to time. So it is in Matthew 24. It goes from the ascension to the abomination of desolation as one time, because it speaks only of the remnant's testimony in Palestine, adding the fact that before the end it would go to all nations; then a precise date in the setting up the abomination of desolation. In Matthew 10, it goes from the mission of the twelve, then setting forth to the coming of the Son of man without any supposed break, leaving out the sending to all nations. For prophecy the church was a mystery. Here then we have the same order as in Matthew 24. But as the church is already gathered and on high and John sees from heaven, we have the additional element of its heavenly apprehension of the effect of the casting-down of Satan. Their brethren's toils too are closed - the victory won.

378 We now turn to the present effect on earth. The dragon, thus defeated and cast out, has the consciousness that his time is short, and has great wrath, a source of woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea - of the ordered scene of God's government and light, and of the general mass of nations. The efforts of the dragon are directed against the woman who brought forth the man-child - against the Jewish people. God grants a mighty and rapid escape from this attempt of Satan. The woman has the eagle-wings. That is, she has no power save of rapid escape, and this she does, and is nourished in the wilderness (deprived of the present resources of the civilised earth) three times and a half (forty-two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty days) from the face of the serpent. The serpent sought to overwhelm her by a flood of people under his influence, in vain. The earth, the scene of divine order in the world, opened its mouth, and swallowed it up - absorbed, in some way, the flood of people who would have overwhelmed the Jews. But the body to be preserved is removed from the scene of witness; and the dragon proceeds to make war with the remnant of the woman's seed: those Jews not hidden away with the body, but who kept the commandments of God - godly Jews - and had the testimony of Jesus Christ; that is, the Spirit of prophecy, which speaks of and reveals Jesus, and is His word. This is the Jewish aspect of the scene.

We now turn to what, in the Gentile world, is connected with it, at any rate in what regards Daniel's monarchies or the beast. The prophet sees a beast rise up out of the sea; the origin of the Roman empire, now viewed however in its end. So it was in chapter 12, where the origin of all in the exaltation of Christ to heaven, and the consequent wilderness state of the Jews as God saw them, was brought forward, but really for their history at the end. Only there the purpose of God, and object of the prophecy in the glory of Israel, is first brought into view, because they were the objects of purpose. The beast is seen as coming out of the mixed mass of peoples. But the heathenish state is not before us. The heads are not crowned, but the horns. The distinct kingdoms subsist, and are in view as such. The seven heads identify it with the Roman empire as a whole, but it took in the previous empires; not necessarily in extent of territory, but it absorbed them, and had the seats of their power in its possession - the horns with the kingdoms into which it had been divided. But now the dragon, Satan's power in the world, gave it his throne, and power, and great authority. One of the forms of the government of the beast had been slain, but it was healed - I suppose the imperial - and all the earth (not world) was in admiration. They acknowledge the dragon, the prince of the world, in his Roman form. The Latin world revived, and the new revival of it, the beast. "Who was like him? Who able to make war with him?"

379 But more, the beast, thus in scene, used great words against God. It is the beast of Daniel 7; not only oppressor of men and of saints, but one who exalts himself openly against God. He was to continue forty and two months, the same time the woman was in the wilderness, a half-week. He is then presented to us as active in blasphemy, to blaspheme God's name and His tabernacle, His heavenly church, and those who dwelt in heaven, all saints who belonged on high and were on high, even if they could not be called the tabernacle of God. The dragon could yet give him a throne upon earth; but he was out of heaven. The beast, inspired by him, could only blaspheme those out of his power and reach. This confirms greatly, its being after the dragon's being cast down, if that were needed. But earth, for a little and a measured time, was more within his power. He makes war with the saints and overcomes them. Here detail is not given. It is characteristic. From other passages, we know that there will be those slain who will go to heaven; those who, persecuted and driven out, will escape his hand on earth. He has the general dominion of the beasts over kindreds, tongues, and nations. It is remarkable how the Russian and German nationalities are ignored here.* As a general thing, in the world at large, power belonged to the West, to the beast. Finally, all that dwell on the earth will worship him, save only those written in the Lamb's book of life. Remark here, that the dwellers upon earth are not an evil class in contrast with what was to be supposed heavenly - the assembly. But the heavenly saints as such being in heaven, all who remain are held dwellers on earth, with the exception of an elect remnant. I have elsewhere remarked, that it is "written," not "slain," from the foundation of the world.

{*But not perhaps wholly in other expressions.}

380 All this is more descriptive than historical. It was what was needed. Those who have to do with him know the features of this deadly enemy, If any had an ear, he was to hear. But physical opposition by violence was not God's way. Power was left with evil till He judged. Then the beast of violence, and his followers, would be killed. Meanwhile they must possess their souls with patience. And here was where their patience and faith would be tried.

But another power, a second beast, rises up; not out of the mass of nations, but out of the ordered scene which has professedly to say to God. He had the forms of Christ's power, but his voice, to a discerning ear, displayed the dragon. He is the proper Antichrist; false prophet and king in Israel. The heavenly anti-priestly character of Satan was closed by his casting out. He gives the same proof lyingly of his power, and the beast's title, as Elijah did of the divine supremacy of Jehovah. He makes fire come down from heaven in the sight of men. He exercises all the power of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth, and those dwelling on it, to worship the renewed Roman empire. I do not say he does not deceive the nations; this I suppose 2 Thessalonians 2 proves. Still I find myself here in a specially Jewish circle. In 2 Thessalonians it is more amongst Gentiles, who have not received the love of the truth. They are given over to strong delusions, to believe a lie; and there the signs referred to by Peter, as given by Jesus to prove He was the Christ, are attributed to the man of sin, of course lying ones. Here it is the proof of Jehovah.

But I should doubt that the Gentiles trouble themselves about His being the Christ, save as a rationalist might; but they believe a lie, for they are given up to it. His testimony they will receive of course. A Jewish Christ is not for Gentiles; but in Judea he will be an Antichrist. He denies that Jesus was the Christ, and he denies the Father and the Son. Those who have hated true Christianity willingly accept this, and his other pretensions with it - of course the Jews as well: indeed both his negations and pretensions, so that he takes Antichristian and, withal, Jewish ground. But in connection with Christianity and the truth, it is negative and a lie; while, in Judea and in the world's scene of government here, we have the positive side (the historical in Daniel 11 - the king): he is a false prophet (so found at the end); and here especially, pretending to the royalty of Him that suffered, he is Messiah, the king, but linked with the Satanic power of the revived Roman empire, and setting that up. This goes so far, that he leads the dwellers upon earth to make an image to the beast, and gives breath to it; and it speaks and causes those who would not worship it to be killed.

381 Thus idolatry is set up, and Gentile power, as set up by Satan, honoured. Times and laws are given into the beast's hands, and the abomination that causes desolation set up; but the glorious empire protects Jerusalem and God is cast out. All are forced by the second beast to have the stamp, in public avowal or service of the beast, upon them. I cannot but think that the proper subject of the history of the second beast, and here we have history, not merely character, is Palestine - Jerusalem - in connection, no doubt, with the Roman empire but still, centrally, Palestine. The first beast comes up out of the sea at large; the second beast, out of the earth. He shews his power in the sight of men. But those spoken of are not merely characteristically dwellers on the earth, but those who dwell therein, where earth seems land. I see power in Palestine or Judea; deception going wider. The world, as such, was running voluntarily after the beast; but here the setter-up to be Messiah, the king, compels them to own and worship him. There was not readiness to do this where he was. Still, in general, while power was in the hands of the first beast, deception and wickedness were exercised by the second. The result would be the blasphemous renewal of the Latin empire, with general power over the world, blaspheming against God and persecuting the saints; and in Palestine, a false Messiah, denying Christianity altogether, and the claims of Jesus Christ, who deceives men by false miracles, leads them under his power, and sets up an image of the beast, and forces them to subject themselves openly and avowedly to the beast, and that with extreme governmental tyranny. He enchains men in his deceptions, and has his local character and sphere in Palestine. It is not difficult to conceive one setting up to be Messiah, having power in Palestine, and also religiously deceiving men in general.

382 Such is the last scene of the prophetic world, as far as under the original beasts' power, the times of the Gentiles. We have now the intervention of God in respect of this power, and of all evil. But first we must have the earthly saints owned, as before the heavenly ones. The prophet sees a Lamb standing on Mount Zion. He who suffered takes His royalty, and particularly the royalty on Mount Zion or of David, and with Him companions of the royal sufferer, 144,000, with His Father's name written on their foreheads. Having suffered like Him, they are associated with Him in the royal place of earthly glory. They have the place in principle, in which Christ was revealed on earth. He was Lamb, but revealed His Father's name. They, though late, had taken this place, and they had His Father's name on their foreheads. It is not said, "their Father's"; that is, they had not had the Spirit of adoption on the earth; but they had walked in the Lamb's steps, who had this relationship, viewed as born on earth. They were associated with the Lamb, who was to reign as king on the holy hill of Zion, and held His title by that word, "Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten Thee"; that Son whom all the kings and judges of the earth were to kiss, or perish.

But there is connection now with heaven. It is the Lord from heaven, who establishes the throne in Zion, where His followers are seen anticipatively; for the throne is not seen there yet. But the voice of glory and of praise sounds from heaven. They sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and before the elders. This is a remarkable statement; for who are the singers? There is a general idea (as in Rev. 5: 9), "there was sung." Still there is here added, "before the beasts and elders." So that we have another class of singers. It is in no way the song of the church-saints. Those who sing, sing before them. The church-saints are viewed apart, identified in position with the throne.

As contrasted with Revelation 5: 9, we have power, might, praise; that is the public testimony of this, but no priestly intercession, nor reason given for distinct praise. The celebration of in-coming power is in its place here. The intimacy of worship, service, and priesthood belonged to the living creatures or elders. What was heard from heaven now was the former. This the 144,000 could learn. They had gone through the tribulation on earth, and could understand the heavenly song of this kind, though not the beasts' and elders' association with the throne. It would seem to be the heavenly and earthly portions of those faithful after the rapture of the church; some in heaven who praised there; others, who having faithfully passed through the same circumstances, can learn their song though on earth. These last are the firstfruits of earth (not the church, but for the millennial earth before the harvest), firstfruits to God and the Lamb; that is, to God as known in the display of government, which is the subject of this book. They had not been mixed up with the Jezebel, or Babylon, or heathenly idolatrous systems, which had gone on; their hearts were fresh for God. Nor was there guile in their mouth; they were without fault; they had been kept pure, and pure (truthful) in heart from all by which Satan had seduced men.

383 Next, in these ways of God, the everlasting gospel is sent out into the earth and every nation before the judgment comes. Such is ever God's way. It is not the special witness of heavenly salvation and the church, but the old glad-tidings belonging to the course of God's dealings with the earth - that the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head, and the kingdom and final blessing be brought into the creation. Hence men were warned of the judgment just coming in, and called to own Him who made heaven and earth.

Next, the fall of Babylon is announced - the idolatrous fornicating system; but the beast was not yet destroyed.

Hence, in the fourth testimony of God's ways, or third angel (for the first was not the acting of God, but the manifestation to the prophet of those who had been previously faithful, and had a special place) - in the fourth testimony men are warned, that if they own the beast they will have God's wrath. Those who had rejected the beast had been exposed to his wrath; now, God's judgment was just coming in, and woe to those who owned the beast. Here was the trial of the saints' faith.

This closed the testimony of God, nor would any more now be killed for the faith, but the dead receive the public reward of their works. It is not the church's special place which is noticed here, but the condition of those who have died in the Lord, as connected with this book. I doubt not that all departed saints will come in; but the direct occasion is the closing of the time of suffering on the earth, and the public reward of labour in the appearing of Jesus.

384 Hence the Lord is immediately introduced, coming in the cloud. And the two following and closing testimonies give the double character of His judgment. The Son of man comes crowned, with a sharp reaping sickle. The earth is reaped. Here He gathers in judgment on the earth, that is, the mixed wicked ones are dealt with in judgment, the righteous are spared, and the wicked taken by the judgment.

But there was another character of judgment - that which had a special religious character. It is not the earth was reaped - the judgment of the general state of the world, the population as it stood in the earth; but that which, before God and at Jerusalem, held a religious character - had, however apostate, been the seat of religious profession and fruit-bearing in the earth - what Israel had been of old: Christ alone on the earth in truth, by a certain analogy the professing church for a length of time, and lastly Israel joined with Antichrist, and the beast (in religious matters) at the close. In this last state, it was judged; and here there was no sparing, as in harvest: all was cast into the wine-press of God's wrath.

Thus we have, with the counsel of God as to Israel, the whole history of the period from the ascension of the Lord, and of the church to be with Him, to the public destruction of His apostate enemies on the earth. The heavenly church is only seen as caught up - and the history is the history of what passes afterwards, till all is closed, essentially of the last half-week of the beast, and God's actings on the earth during the same period. This is a complete portion in itself.

Thoughts on the Revelation

J. N. Darby.

<30030E> {file section c.}

384 In chapter 15 we have another distinct revelation, complete in Revelation 15 and Revelation 16, but a part of which is developed in Revelation 17 and Revelation 18. The general subject is expressly the seven last plagues, in which the wrath of God is filled up, closing with the destruction of Babylon before the marriage of the Lamb and His public manifestation in the earth. But, before their pouring out, the spared remnant are seen secure. The 144,000 were Jews who, faithful in the time of trial, had a place with Christ in His earth by royalty. These, in chapter 15 are not Jews - "them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image." And, without excluding a Jew to whom it might apply, these having been noticed in Revelation 14, it applies essentially to Gentiles. The reader will remark another thing - Revelation 12 - 14 are of far wider extent. It reaches from the rejection and ascension of Christ, to His appearing, and executing judgment, and includes, as a period, all that is here, and far beyond. This, the special judgments of God (not of the Lamb) within that period, and towards its close.

385 God is celebrated as the King of nations. The song sung is in connection with God and the Lamb. It is again Jehovah, Elohim, Shaddai, exacting judgment in righteousness on the earth, and on the Gentile power which had oppressed His people. Hence the song of Moses; but it was withal the victory of the rejected Lamb. God's ways were shewn in it (of old, only shewn to Moses, His works to the people), but now made manifest, and that not to mere destruction, like that of Pharaoh, but to bringing the nations - all nations - to come and worship Jehovah, whose judgments have been made manifest. For the earth this is all of the last importance. It is the result of all its history.

A word as to the place where the overcomers are found. They are on the sea of glass mingled with fire. They are not sitting on thrones round the throne, nor have they suffered previous to the manifestation of the beast's power, at any rate had not been martyrs and brought to heavenly joy, before the half-week of his power came. But they had gotten the victory over him, his mark, and every form of subjection to him. They had been purified and saved - still through fire. They stood on what was the sign of purity - the sea of glass. When it was water, it was the sign of purifying; but here it is the result, and it is purity; but they had passed through the fire of God's judicial tribulation to obtain it. These are the owned ones of God, the overcomers, even to death, of the time of the beast's power, having part in the first resurrection.

After the vision of these the preparation for the execution of God's judgment comes. It is not, as in Revelation 11: 19, the ark of God's covenant, His sure relationship with Israel; yet it is immediately connected with it, and in view of that people. The "testimony" means strictly the two tables of the law. Thence even the ark, as enclosing them, was called so. It was the throne of God withal, who had this as the testimony and witness of His governmental requirements in the world. The sprinkling of blood on it made it a true propitiatory; but with that we have nothing to do here. The house is opened, not to look into it, to see covenant - relationship with Israel, but for the seven angels to come out with judgments on those who had heeded neither the throne nor the rule according to which the throne judged. It was the house of the tabernacle of the testimony. It was not Christ as Lord who was coming out, but providential ministers of God's power.

386 We can readily understand how these vials were the expression of the judgment of the throne of the Lord God Almighty - of the wrath of Him who never changes, and must, according to the testimony of what He is, put down corruption and iniquity and oppression on the earth. It was not yet giving the throne to Christ to govern as Prince of peace in righteousness, but it was providentially the righteous judgment of the throne of God; and this, though coming from heaven (for the throne was not yet established on earth), yet was associated with the whole character of the testimony given when the earthly throne was set at Jerusalem. The nations would come and fear the God revealed in the Old Testament, Jehovah, Elohim, Shaddai, for His judgments were manifested. His earthly throne had been, we know, in Jerusalem, and would be again in Christ. This judgment characterised the whole scene. God displayed His glory in this way, so that none could approach Him; as when the cloud was on the temple in Solomon's time.

The judgments fall on the same spheres of human existence (only not solely the third part, or Roman empire) as the first four trumpets, save that, instead of destroying the prosperity of society and the great of the earth, the first judgment falls on the men who had received the mark of the beast, bringing them into a wretched and distressing state. The next judgment falls on the mass of the peoples; and all who abandoned God, that is, in profession, died. Then all the sources of popular influence, which characterised peoples and nations, became deathful. What they drank in was death, the principle of alienation from God. In the fourth, the supreme power on the earth became consuming and oppressive in the highest degree. These, like the first four trumpets (as it was of the seals, too) stand apart from the last three, which have a peculiar though judicial character. Penal judgment falls on the throne of the beast. The Euphrates being dried up, the way of the kings of the East is prepared, and the kings of the world are gathered, by the threefold form of evil, for judgment; and, finally, Babylon is brought to remembrance for the cup of wrath, while convulsions rock the earth, and judgment from above provokes their rage. This last vial was poured out into the air, the whole circumambient influence that acts on men.

387 The judgment on the beast's throne (fifth vial) is felt in the extent of his empire. His enterprises are not arrested, but his kingdom is full of darkness, and "they paw their tongues for pain." And now the forces are gathered for the great final battle of good and evil. The principle of Satan's power as the enemy of Christ in the Latin empire - the renewed form of imperial power - and the false Messiah in Palestine, a prophet-king - are the sources of this gathering power. They promote and proclaim the principles that gather. It is a notable fact here that the excessively miserable state of the beast's kingdom does not hinder his pushing his war against the Lamb. Under the influence of these three spirits of evil the apostate armies are gathered to the battle of the great day of God Almighty, the final conflict of good and evil - heaven and earth. I suppose Armageddon refers to Judges 5: 19, 20. This gives occasion to the solemn warning to the world that the Lord was just coming as a thief. When the seventh vial is poured out, there was a universal subversive convulsion, such as never had been in the world. And the great city, the public confederation of the civilised earth was broken up into three parts; and Babylon came into remembrance, to give her the cup of the fierceness of God's wrath. The details of her judgment are in Revelation 18. Men were plagued with the terrible judgments of God falling on them; but they only blasphemed His name. We have three parts of the effect of this final judgment of God: the city is divided into three, the cities of the nations fall, and Babylon comes into remembrance. The great city I have alluded to is the practically unified association of European civilisation; the other centres of social life fell. Babylon is the third. It is more particularly Western civilisation viewed in connection with its corrupt religious side.

We are now arrived at the important chapters which describe the connection of Babylon with the beast, and the destruction of the former. One of the ministers of God's judgments calls the prophet to see the judgment of the great whore who sits on many waters, that is, the grand corruptress of religion, who turns away souls from the truth of God, exercising widespread influence over the masses of population. The kings of the earth had had intercourse with her, cultivated it in this prostitution of Christianity; and the inhabitants of the earth - those settled in the sphere of the civilised order where God's ways and dealings were known, had been mentally steeped, besotted with this corruption of Christianity. Rich as all was to man's eye, and pious, and religious, to the Spirit all was wilderness, desolation, and drought - anything but the garden of God. She sits on a scarlet-coloured beast, the imperial Roman power in its last blasphemous form. She herself was enriched with luxury, power, and splendour; in her hand a cup of gold, full of that with which she corrupted and made drunk the earth. To a spiritual eye her character was stamped upon her forehead, though a mystery to those who were not. She was judged, however, as a mystery by the spiritual man; that is, he was spiritual enough to judge hers - how, if unrevealed, her true character was not understood. She was the heir, as the great moral characterising capital of the world, of that great city, which first was the seat of idolatry antagonistic of the true God, the fertile source of all corruptions of primitive Christianity, and of all idolatries in the earth. She was drunk with the blood of persecution in a double character; first of saints, and then of the witnesses of Jesus. This was the character of her who rode. The riding it, or the time of that, was a distinct thing - the saints she could not bear the witnesses of Jesus she could not bear. The prophet was astonished at seeing her. This astonishment clearly intimates, I think, something special and extraordinary. And so it is, that what should call itself the church should be drunk with the blood of the saints. The foolish notion of the rationalists (and what have they taught, that is not foolishness?) that all this is the history of Pagan Rome, makes this astonishment without any sense. It is Rome, but Rome under special circumstances.

388 Here the reader will remark what aids us in the apprehension of these symbols, that the beast, now that the explanation is given to the prophet, wholly fills this scene. At the close, we find the destruction of the woman, and who she is. Her name at the beginning of the chapter had fully told what she was; her own character as such, independent of the beast, though seen sitting on the beast. Verses 5 and 6 give the proper character of the woman herself. When I come to the history of the beast, though identified with the whole Roman empire, I get the special history of its last form - of the very last days, and of the fact that, as beast it had ceased to exist, yet was found again. The woman may have been all that she was described in verses 5, 6, while the beast was not.

389 But we have now to consider the beast in its full description, as seen at the end. The beast carries her. No doubt she thus exercises influence over him, but it is not her strength. She sits on him, but he carries her; and to the beast the prophet now at once turns. It is the seven-headed ten-horned beast, known as the old Roman but now ten-horned beast. But its character is followed out more precisely. It was - is not and is going to ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into destruction. It had been, it had ceased to exist, and at the end it would ascend out of the bottomless pit - have a distinctly devilish character. In this it is we have seen him persecute and slay the witnesses; in this he goes into destruction. The deadly wound the beast had received in one of his heads was healed, but now he was in his last form going into perdition. All but the elect pay homage to him in this last form, seeing the beast, which had ceased to exist, now present again. This gives in general, the history and character of the beast.

But there are more particulars as to the heads. The seven heads have a double application: first they are seven mountains, on which the woman sits. We may learn here how, while giving much more light as to facts, a symbol cannot be literally taken. The woman was sitting on the beast. So Rome is seated on seven hills, as well as on the Roman empire by its influence. But, besides this, the heads of the beast were seven forms of power which characterised it. Five had already passed away when the angel spoke to the prophet; one was existing, the imperial form. Another was to come and subsist for only a short time (perhaps Napoleon I; in the protracted system, Charlemagne); and then an extra head, the last beast, but which is the same as one of the seven; in which form the head and beast, and all is destroyed. Seven complete the form.

But the beast that reappears after ceasing to exist, the renewed Roman empire, with its confederate vassal kingdoms, is a distinct and special existence of the beast, a resurrection form of the Roman empire come out of the bottomless pit, Satanic - a substantial devilish existence, in which, though peculiar in form, the Roman empire reappeared, that is, the Western, as the empire historically was. In this state the beast would be destroyed. The ten horns did not exist at the time the vision was given, but would subsist one same period with the beast the prophet had before his eyes, that is, the beast in his last Roman form. These ten kingdoms would give their power and influence to the beast - would exist, but play entirely into his hands.

390 But this brings us to a point of the greatest importance. The formation of this beast, the empire or imperial head of power with the ten helping kingdoms, brings evil up to the point of open war on the part of the kingdoms, with the Lamb who now appears again. Here the kings are mentioned as making war, because the object is to give the character at this time of the great body of nations which form Western Europe. In the end of Revelation 19 we find the beast who is at their head engaged in the war, but the ten kingdoms shall make war with the Lamb. But the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is King of kings and Lord of lords. Here we have, not the governmental dealings of God by angelic power, or in a providential way, but the Lamb Himself manifesting His power to the destruction of those who rise up against Him. But He is not alone. They that are with Him are called, chosen, faithful - the saints of God, not angels (though they may be too); angels are not called - with this war they have not to do. Of the waters we have already spoken. It is the influence of Rome over the populations.

Finally, the ten horns and the beast shall hate the whore, make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh and burn her with fire. I think that this statement marks that the beast and the kingdoms' dealings with her are not instantaneous destruction in an historical point of view. God's final judgment at the end may be. They hate her. It is a change of mind and feeling which takes place as to her, and makes desolate and naked. There is progress in this: they deal actively with her; next they eat her flesh. This is more - they make her contemptible, expose her first; then deprive of her wealth and possessions, what formed her personal body; finally destroy herself, burn her with fire. They join the beast in this. Their mind, what was unnatural for these kingdoms, which might have been jealous of the beast, is governed by God, to unite all of them to give their kingdom and power to the beast; but this was not giving it to the woman. And the beast, being a power on his own score, they join in destroying the whore. The prophet then states in the distinctest language that it was Rome.

391 I think, then, that the statements as to Babylon imply a human desertion and confiscation of wealth first, and then the utter destruction. To this, I judge, Revelation 18 answers. It is a distinct vision; the display of power, not Christ, God's instrumental glory, yet signally displayed - he had great power, and the earth was lightened with his glory. The second verse, I apprehend, to be, not the finally utter destruction of what had been glorious Babylon, though anticipative of it in her evidently losing her pre-eminent place and fair show. "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit." This was not yet her ceasing to exist, though to exist in power and rule it was. Yet, I apprehend, this is only the general announcement of her judgment, when she loses her place of power; just as in Revelation 12 salvation and the kingdom was announced when Satan was precipitated from heaven. She had had the supremacy, by her idolatries and fornications, over the beast and the horns; she was now a cast-off harlot, degraded and fallen; and the beast is the leading power. The details then follow, where her burning with fire is not the first and immediate thing.

But before the final judgment (but I think, applicable at all times, when the character of Babylon is spiritually seen), God's people are urgently called to come out of her, that they may not partake in her sins, and so in her plagues. Hence, I think, the absence of precision is notable here, and like all difficulties in scripture, introductory to light. The time of destruction is precise enough. It is at the close of God's judgments, and before the coming forth of the Lamb. It is when the seventh angel has poured his vial into the air, for final judgment on the part of God (Rev. 16: 17-19), and before the rising up of the beast and his armies against the Lamb coming from heaven as King of kings and Lord of lords. But the woman, as to her place and seat, could be pointed out to John then: not her state (Rev. 17: 18). And if there was spirituality enough to discern, the mystery could be left (perhaps at the expense of life - all the blood of saints was found in her) at all times; Rev. 18: 4.

392 But there is a special character and special time, the character that she rides the beast with seven heads and ten horns. A long while she contended, so to speak, with the beast, or it was wounded to death, and she took practically its place. Towards the end (having seduced the horns for years and centuries - her habitual character - and made the people drunk), she rides the beast, the beast having taken a blasphemous character, the woman drunken with the blood of saints. The beast had been, was not, and then appears again. The elements may have been there before, but when the subject of the vision is complete, you have ten horns during the same period with the beast, and at first the woman riding it, I suppose in this state, but I am not yet quite clear upon this point, when the beast has ascended out of the bottomless pit, that is, is directly under the guidance and influence of Satan. At first I have said, the woman rides the beast; but this changes, she loses her influence and power, and is deprived of her wealth and everything, and destroyed; and the beast acts, the horns having done with the woman, giving all their power to the beast in open opposition to the Lamb. The heavenly voice must be heard to get out of Babylon.

We may remark, that the saints are seen here entirely on governmental and, in this sense, Jewish grounds. Not that they are Jews; I speak of the spirit. They are called out to execute wrath. I do not at all believe any saints on earth do this work. Here the horns and the beast do it. But these judgments are the avenging of God's people, their cry has brought it. They rejoice in it as righteous judgment in their favour. Verse 6 is not, I think, an appeal to the saints to act necessarily (the "you" is left out after "rewarded"), but it is in the mind of the prophet in thinking of them. Evil comes suddenly on Babylon, though her burning is not the first thing; still I doubt not it is very rapid; famine for one literal day would not be much, but it comes in one day - "and she shall be burned with fire." The cry of this self-styled civilised world - all the classes of modern civilisation - is, however, on her burning. The ten horns are the ten kingdoms. The ten kings are the kings of those kingdoms which had committed fornication with her; these mourn, as all those interested in modern civilisation. The fall and the final ruin of this great system, of which Rome was the centre, is a grief and pain to them. The apostles and prophets rejoice: God has avenged them on her. Terrible judgment for her who had professed alone to have their teaching! Babylon would be violently thrown down, and not found any more. This is in allusion to Jeremiah 51, which I refer to as shewing that it is met by ordinary providential judgment - here perhaps, more summarily than ancient Babylon. Note the whole system of Western papal Europe is not punished for, but in, its wealth and civilisation.

393 No doubt this slighted Christianity had an apostate character - would order and moralise and embellish the world excluding Christ; but the idolatrous character of Rome was the cause of judgment. The nations, deceived by her sorceries, had turned wholly to this world, and their moral condition was met by a judgment falling on this state of civilisation and prosperity. There is no judgment on the merchants and kings and navigators; but they mourn the loss of the great city. The system is all broken up with her. The royal commercial civilised world falls with the upset of Rome, the people's power not: but it is given to the beast.

But another secret was found there by divine light: the blood of prophets and saints, and of all the slain upon the earth. She had corrupted the earth with her sorceries; this, though mysterious, was hardly a secret; but Babylon had inherited the sad place of fallen Jerusalem. The blood of saints, and prophets, was all of it found in her. Religion without God is the cruellest and most relentless enemy of all testimony to God. But she who was essentially characterised by this in the world, in whom all the blood of the slain was found, was now in her final judgment utterly and for ever destroyed.

In Revelation 19, I find, for the first time, a reason for praise given by others than the elders or body of saints, the church called up on high. But there this is intelligible because they praise for accomplished judgments, in which they are avenged. The elders and beasts only fall down, saying "Amen"; and worship. Those who praise speak of the salvation and power and glory of our God; so that they are in heaven as His heavenly saints, who are not the elders or beasts. They have suffered, and are in the place to celebrate the avenging of the blood of God's servants. Compare the souls under the altar, in chapter 6. Their joy is that Babylon is judged, and in fact, her smoke goes up continually.

394 God is here praised as on the throne, not as He that liveth for ever and ever. He is seen in government. A voice out of the throne then goes forth, but which associates him who speaks with the saints below. "Praise our God." I suppose that it is the voice of Christ; but what characterises it is that it comes out of the throne. It is a summons to praise, addressed from this centre of authority to all the servants, and whoever feared His name. We shall see the subject of it in their praise, which, on this summons, sounds forth as thunder. I should say "subjects," for there are two distinct, though connected, ones. Jehovah-Elohim-Shaddai is the subject of praise, according to the summons, "our God"; and the praisers are viewed as servants and fearers of His name, not the church or children as such. On the other hand if this thought be just, and it is the Lord, we see Christ associating Himself with the whole company of singers in heaven, not bearing the character of the church, and we get an insight into their place. The two subjects of the song are - "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, and the marriage of the Lamb is come." One is "Hallelujah"; the other, "let us be glad and rejoice." These two indeed are, as to the setting up of divine government, the great elements of its establishment, direct and accessory in God's counsels. The Lord God omnipotent, Jehovah-Elohim Shaddai, the names of the Old Testament, are revealed in power. He has set aside all that He, as God, judged of corruption, and now was actually introducing Christ as King of kings, and Lord of lords, before whom the beast's power was to disappear.

But, further, He must have His bride, His spouse. No doubt His rule goes farther, but that is not the subject here. But the church must be associated with Him when He takes the power and the rule. He could not be alone in it, though He alone has the power and the rule. We have thus, in these verses, the source, Him whose authority He represents and wields, and the associate by the counsels of God; not yet the actual ruler coming forth - the Lord God omnipotent, and the Lamb's wife. The marriage of the Lamb was come, this purpose of God now accomplished, or in the act of being so; and "His wife had made herself ready." She was arrayed in fine linen, the righteousness of saints. Note, that this individual excellency adorns the whole church. We have then, indeed, another class - assistants, those called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb - I suppose all the saints gone up, save the church.

395 This closed the revelation here. The angel talking with John declares that these were the true sayings of God, and forbids the homage he was disposed to offer. He was a fellow-servant, and of those who had the testimony of Jesus; for the angels must serve Him. And (what might have been called in question, because of its different character, from the usual manner of the Holy Ghost acting as the witness of Jesus in the church), "the Spirit of prophecy was the testimony of Jesus." The proper testimony of Jesus was that of the apostles and Paul, and the Holy Ghost, in the church; but this prophetic part was the testimony of Jesus too.

Now heaven opens again. It opened on Jesus as Son of man and Son of God in the Gospels, the object of divine delight. It was opened to Stephen when the Son of man was standing on the right hand of God in heaven, which is the Christian state. And it is now opened for Jesus to come out as King of kings, and Lord of lords, to execute judgment and justice on the earth. Triumphant power as the operation of God first appears, and characterises the vision - a white horse. But there was one that sat on it called "Faithful"; such He had ever been, at all cost, to God, in the testimony of righteousness, in glorifying Him even to death, that His name might be made good. Obedient till it was given to Him to rise up and take the power, and "true," so that the witness of God which He did render was a perfect witness of all God was, and all His thoughts. His name was "Faithful and True." "Holy and True" was His name for Philadelphia, for us. This was what was subjectively needed for us - but now rewarded, and He coming forth as the faithful and true One. He now does not serve but judges in righteousness, and makes war on the power of evil in the same righteousness. His eyes had the piercing discerning power of judgment, many crowns were on His head.

But there was an essential glory in His person - a relationship to God which none knew but Himself. A name in God is a revelation of what He is, and in general of what He is in relation to others, as Almighty, Father. A name in one who takes a place under God is what He is towards God, or for Him. We have a name on the white stone which no one knows but he who has it. It is our special place and relationship in the favour of Jesus. So has Christ here. He has public names made good in all His ways, or displayed in glory; but He has also what is the expression, in that glory, of His secret relationship with the Father which none knew but He Himself. It is not without interest to have the analogy of our associations with Christ and His own in glory.

396 But other signs of what He was and other names remained yet to be noticed. He had a vesture dipped in blood. He came as the avenger. He tramples now the wine-press of God's wrath. It is not in the lowliness of humiliation, and to be trodden down by man that He comes; He comes to tread down in power. With this is associated another name - "The 'Word of God." "Faithful and True" would make good promises. The Word of God reveals God, but now in judgment according to what He had revealed Himself to be. "The word that I have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you in the last day." He was the Word of God, the perfect expression of that nature, which must have everything subject to itself. He was it when the expression of it awakened all the hostility of the flesh which hated the light. Still He made it good in this humiliation at all cost. He was it, declared God's righteousness and truth in the great congregation, did not refrain His lips. "I am altogether what I am also saying to you" - "the Word of God": but now, in judgment, making good this in power and vengeance against rebellious men, the children of disobedience to wisdom's voice. The armies which were in heaven followed Him. These had not the signs of treading the wine-press on them, but of declared accepted practical righteousness, while partakers of the triumph. They were on white horses also, but clothed in fine linen, white and clean. Next, the sword of the word goes out of His mouth to smite the nations. This is general. He judges by His word. Further, Psalm 2 is now fulfilled. He rules them with a rod of iron. The wine-press is the unmingled fierceness and wrath of Almighty God, which He executes. Lastly, He has on that which shews His public character in the world, His clothing, the title which He now takes in the world - "King of kings and Lord of lords." I do not know what the meaning of "on his thigh" is, unless the clothing be His bearing it in peaceful government, and His thigh, His bearing when He makes Himself bare for war.

The summons of verses 17 and 18 seem to be general. The angel stands in the place of universal and supreme authority, and summons the fowls of the air to the supper of the great God. I do not see that it specifically refers to the beast here; verse 19 does. We come back in it to the history of the beast. The kings of the earth are first, the ten kings. I cannot say that it is absolutely confined to them, but, I suppose, those under the influence of Rome. They come to make war against Christ and His heavenly armies. Satan had raised up the earth, into which he had been cast, against heaven. The issue was not doubtful. Deceive he may - never conquer. Both the beasts of chapter 13 (the second, now seen as false prophet) are taken, and cast into the lake of fire - its first victims. The rest are slain with the sword of Him that sat on the horse, the direct execution of judgment was Christ's alone; this was outward present judgment. The invited guests are satiated with prey. These armies of the beast formed, at any rate, a prominent part at this great supper of God. But this was not all. This was the public judgment of men by Him who was King of kings and Lord of lords.

397 But God was dealing in power after another manner, by divine, and to us unseen, instrumentality. An angel comes down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand - figures, of course. The dragon or serpent, the devil or Satan, the power of evil is laid hold of, bound for a thousand years, and cast into the prison that belongs to his nature, whence he cannot act on the earth: not the place of divine torment and punishment. Out of that he cannot come. But he was shut up, and a seal put upon him, so that he cannot deceive the nations till the thousand years of his confinement are over. After that he will be loosed a little season.

We are thus arrived at the beginning of the thousand years, Babylon, the mother of harlots, the corrupt worldly church on the earth, judged; making way for the heavenly one fully associated with Christ in the heavens. Professing worldliness done away, Satan's seat under the garb of Christianity. The beast, the power of antagonist evil, on the earth with the false prophet who had stirred it up in Jewish and Antichristian shape, is cast into the lake of fire. Satan is bound and shut up. Thus the source, and all the forms of corruption and violence, idolatry and apostasy, were swept away. This is a great act of powerful and mighty judgment. The storm of God has passed over the earth, and laid low all that opposed itself to it.

398 The thrones can now be occupied for judgment. Previously it was judgment in the way of war; now the session of right. It is not simply the throne. In Daniel 7 the thrones were set, but the Ancient of days alone is seen sitting, and thereupon the beast is judged, the Ancient of days Himself coming to execute it as we have seen here. (Compare Rev. 19: 16 and 1 Tim. 6: 14-16.) But now there are sitters on the thrones: amongst these, two classes are mentioned who might have seemed otherwise not to have had their place there - the witnesses slain for the testimony, and those who would neither worship the beast nor own him. All reigned with Christ a thousand years. All this is very simple. This composed the first resurrection, for there was another. A general resurrection is a thing wholly unknown to scripture.

This first resurrection fixed the state of those who had part in it. The second death had no claim on them. They are priests of God and of Christ. Note here, the language is all literal, we are out of the symbolical language of the book.

This once seen, the following verses require, in this short sketch of the book, few remarks to be made. The saints reign a thousand years with Christ over the earth. Satan is again let loose, deceiving the nations on earth (he never returns to heaven), and gathering them together against the camp of the saints and the beloved city (Jerusalem). judgment from God then closes the scene on earth. The working of Satan had separated between saints and the unconverted, who had remained mixed up together when no temptation was there. The devil is now cast from earth into the lake of fire, being finally judged, as before cast out of heaven and then subsequently shut up.

After this the great white throne of judgment is set. It was not now government; though in that there might be final righteous retribution - the judgment of the quick, as indeed it was as to the living who had rejected the testimony in Matthew 25, and of the beast and false prophet. But the present judgment was that of the secrets of men's hearts, and their answering for their works. Thus the saints had no part in it. Death and hades wholly lost their power, and for ever. This is the second death. Death and hades, being the power of evil in its effects, ceased to have a provisional and separate existence. That power which they exercised is now merged in the complete judgment. Death was death; it is fixed in the second. Hades is the closing up the soul in unseen darkness and separation from the light of life. As far as its effect on the natural man went, this was done, and finally, in the lake of fire. All that was in any way associated with death as an instrument referred to living man, that is, to man in the responsibility of the first Adam; all this was cast into final condemnation and separation from God - the most terrible of punishments. The second death had absorbed the first. Those who had escaped it were in the power of life in Christ. Satan, who had had the power of death, was himself under the power of this in the lake of fire. Whoever had not life in Christ was there too.

399 This closes the scene of this busy world - closes it finally, and for ever. In the first eight verses of the next chapter (Rev. 21) we have the wholly new creation, where God is all in all: a new earth and a new heaven, and no more sea. Some remarks are called for here. And, first of all, how little is revealed! The course and judgment of the state we are in, and the glory of the heavenly city, is so largely; but of the post-millennial state scarcely anything, save some great general principles, which mainly bear upon our present condition. "Sea" bears a general notion of what remains vague and unreclaimed, unsubject to man, not reduced into any order, or regularised relationship to God or amongst men. This exists no more. I suppose fully this will be physically true, and many appropriate physical changes would be associated with it; but into this I do not venture myself. Atmosphere would cease - human life, by breathing and blood. I refrain, the rather, as it is simply negative, and, I think, meant to be so. The imperfect waste of tumultuous separation would have no existence there. All would be connected and in order. Further we get the heavenly city (the Lamb's bride, the assembly) coming down to be the tabernacle of God amongst men - not a special people, but the glorified church, the seat of His power and presence amongst men. It is not said how these are changed to be ever there, or what their peculiar state. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor corruption inherit incorruption. More we cannot say: only God "dwells with" (not "tabernacles over," as in Revelation 7) men. They are His people, and He Himself shall be with them and their God. The whole family of man, redeemed men, have this relationship, such, after all, as angels, cannot boast of; though more glorious in other respects, they are never called His people. Previous orderings of this, such as Israel and the temple, were only premonitory and preparatory to this great and blessed position. But His temple we are. The church never loses its own proper and peculiar place, but the two forms of blessing - the temple or tabernacle, the dwelling-place of God, and the people of God, positions brought out in the church and Israel - are maintained for ever. Only Israel was more figurative and passing than the assembly, because it was in flesh, the church not. All sorrow would here have ceased for ever.

400 This reproduction and connection of the two systems of Israel and the church is full of interest, and gives a great moral importance to each. In their nature they last for ever. But it is in perfect peace and joy - the former things are passed away. All, save the fact of eternal life, is provisional now. They are ways, dealings of God with what is creation and failing, an admirable occasion of the display of His grace and all He is, but not in and for itself as such, the fruit of His absolute and only work, what He has produced. Now it is - "Behold I make all things new." Sorrow He owns, and wipes away its tears. It was a right thing in the disorder of sin. Christ was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Death was there too; and Christ, in grace, underwent death. He must come divinely under all that evil had brought in, that God might be owned as forgiving it, glorified as to it, and good have the victory over all evil. This made His work so profound and glorious, so complete in itself, and for the glory of God, whence man in Him has entered into the divine glory: so He states it in John 13: 31, connecting it with previous glory in chapter 17: 4, 5.

I return to my remarks on the passage. There are a new heaven and a new earth, and no more sea. I do not look for more than the atmospheric heaven here - the connected system of heaven (not heavens) and earth, Ephesians and Colossians heavens, here heaven - the first were passed away. The second verse, I take as characteristic - the city was the true holy city, New Jerusalem; it was not human or earthly. It came down from God - out of heaven, and prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, fit for Christ as to what she was apparelled in, still characteristic, not historic. The bride was married long ago, before the heaven and earth passed away; verses 3-5 already noticed are the earthly character and state of things: God's tabernacle with men, they His people, and He their God and with them. He wipes away all tears - they belonged to the former state. Death is no more; that, too, belonged to the former state. Sorrow, crying, pain, are all gone; they were former things. Verse 8 closes the statement, and applies it to conscience now. It is the God who sat on the throne, but now His working and ways are done. He is the beginning and end of all. Two principles are thus stated as belonging to His ways: first, whoever is athirst gets of the water of Life freely; secondly, he that overcomes shall inherit all things. God will be his God, and he will be His son. The free power of life is to the comer, the blessing to the overcomer. But, if there was giving way through fear, unbelief, and sin, the lake of fire, the second death, was their portion - not death because of sin in Paradise, not terrible judgments on the earth, but the second death because of casting away and rejecting the truth when grace had come in.

401 This closes the history of the book. What follows is a description of the heavenly city when the Lamb is there; and His glory made manifest. It is the city, but the city in its millennial relationships with the earth. It is presented, too, in the character of millennial association, not of the verses 1-8, last considered. It is the bride, the Lamb's wife. It is description, not history, which, as often remarked, closes in verse 8. The description is given here as that of Babylon (Rev. 17). The prophet gets, figuratively, a vantage point of view, like Moses, and like the Lord Himself from Satan. He first describes it all from without, as it appears; then its nature - what he did not see in it, but the absence of which is of immense importance. Lastly, we have what is more prophetic declaration than vision. It has the glory of God - immense truth! "We rejoice in hope of the glory of God its display and its dwelling-place shall be in us. The light of the city was such; for He that sat on the throne was like a jasper stone; now it shines forth clear as crystal in unsullied brightness, even when displayed in the redeemed assembly. It is in perfect security, figured here according to the image of a city, a wall great and high. There is the perfection of administrative order and power in the creation, twelve gates. As we saw of the idea of people (v. 3), it had been foreshadowed in Israel, and the names of the twelve tribes are found here. The foundations, however, were not the patriarchs, but the twelve apostles of the Lamb. They were the foundation of all Christian governmental and administrative power.

402 We may remark here, that though, of course, the bride is the same, it is not in its Pauline character, the one body, but in its governmental, as founded in connection with, and an offspring of, the Jewish and earthly system, just as the child was born of the woman. It is a city, not a body. We now get its proper perfection. It is measured with its gates and its walls. It is finitely perfect. It is four square - the length as large as the breadth - its platform was perfect. It was twelve thousand furlongs, the number twelve again marking the administrative perfection in man, only largely multiplied in fact; but it was as complete as its platform was perfect. It was a cube, not merely a square - a circle or sphere has neither beginning nor end - a square and cube are equal in every dimension, but each line ends. They are finite perfection; the square in principle; the cube in completeness also. The wall has its perfection, 12 x 12. It is not divine in its nature - it is the measure of a man, though God measures it by the angel. The wall, its security, is divine glory. The jasper here, is not spoken of as clear. It were out of place. The city is divine righteousness and fixed unalterable purity; as it is said: - "after the image of him that created him," "and in righteousness and true holiness."

Next, the foundations of the wall are garnished with precious stones. Besides the general idea of every character of beauty, there is the special character, elsewhere remarked, of the stones - the variegated display of colours into which light transforms itself, when seen through a medium, when God is revealed in and by the creature, or in connection with his state - in creation, intercessional representation, and here, in glory. The names of the apostles were in the foundation which God had laid for the security of the city, as they had displayed the truth on which that rests, but the varied display of the light of God was found therein. The beauty and comeliness which delights Christ in the church,, meet the eye at once when arriving at the city. The gates were each one pearl. Within, and where one walked, was righteousness and true holiness, as the very character and nature of the city itself. There was no temple seen. God displayed His glory - the place of His worship, unclouded, unhidden. God's glory lit it up, and it was in the Lamb that glory centred and shone. This closes the direct description of the beauty and glory of the city itself. What follows is what belonged to it, in relation to others, and what was enjoyed in it.

403 Within the city, the glory of God gives light, and the Lamb is its light-giver. The nations walk in the light of the city itself. That heavenly glory now enlightened the earth. They have it, not directly; but the sight of the church in glory is a yet more fitting, more instructive sight to them. They learn what faithful ones have got, what the humiliation of Christ implies. They will know how the Father sent the Son, how those whom the world rejected were loved as Christ was loved. They will have Christ in His glory and joy in His reign, but they cannot learn the other truths in the millennial state, nor can they, therefore, learn them directly. It would not be suited. They learn them in the church, in glory. The kings bring their glory there to it (not "into it"). Its exalting is owned by them, and they honour it as the place of honour. Nothing defiled enters, no idolatry, no falsehood. It cannot be corrupted as the assembly on earth. It rests not on man's responsibility, but on God's power, and redemption, of which it is the heavenly fruit.

We now come to the descending blessings which are its blessings, but which flow down on earth. Note here, the throne of God and the Lamb are now in it. That throne, which was acting in judgment to bring about blessing, was now fixed in the heavenly city; but it is not the seat of judgment now. The river of water of life flows out of it - divine life - giving blessing. The Lamb still holds its place in the scene, and it is the throne of the Lamb as well as of God. The reader will remark that now for the first time it is called the throne of the Lamb. We had the throne of God, and the Lamb in the midst of it, but the throne distinct from the Lamb. It was He that sits on the throne. In chapter 21: 1-8 God is all in all. But here we have the throne, the Lamb's throne as well as God's and the time and the character of the time distinctly marked.

Next, we have the tree of life, the constant supply in the street., and on either side the river, ready for all to enjoy, ever fresh, the full ripe fruit of life as Christ has displayed it. The outward manifestation of this, its leaves were to heal the nations. Evil was not absolutely gone below, though its power was, but remedy was there. Curse there was none at all. This was wholly gone. The throne of God and the Lamb was there: there could not be a curse. But His servants should serve Him. Observe how God and the Lamb are thrown into unity here. His servants (God's and the Lamb's) shall serve Him and shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads, that is, they shall be evidently and avowedly His. These are the three characteristics of the waiting people in glory: they serve Him directly and perfectly; they see His face directly and fully; their connection with, and confession of, His name are complete and evident. Doubtless this is God, but we cannot at all separate the Lamb, for when it is said "His name," it is God, so known as revealed in Him. This is deeply and blessedly characteristic, and, indeed, so it is of the whole book, save the mysterious angelic part; and then the Lamb opens and introduces it, so that the same truth shines out more fully. Thus what the Lamb is, the suffering and enthroned One, shines out. Night or obscurity there is none there, nor need of artificial or even created light. Jehovah-Elohim gives them light, and they reign for ever and ever. This is not, I apprehend, their reign with Christ, but the statement of their glory and joy which will never cease. "Ye have reigned as kings without us," says the apostle. This was false. That will be true and eternal.

404 This closes the book. There are, however, concluding observations, besides what is said to the church, from verse 16, which require some notice. The angel declares the truth of all this, and adds, the Lord God has sent His angel to show to His servants things that must shortly come to pass. This last expression must be noticed. It is one of the difficulties of the book. The same expression is used in the first verse. But I do not think that the whole key to the expression is in the fact that it begins with Ephesus and is a whole. In God's mind the church had failed as a witness. The time was come for judgment to begin at the house of God. Hence whatever the patience of God, there was no more time recognised till judgment was executed, save 1260 days which belong in fact to a period marked out in Jewish chronology. Perhaps I should say, that the church which belongs to heaven having lost this character and left its first love, and Christ having hence taken a judicial character in view of its earthly testimony, the time of taking up computed time and judgment was a question of divine patience - might be at any moment there. If it were not, it was grace, working as long as love could produce blessing, while all was, in spite of mercy, ripening for judgment. But the Lord warns that He was coming quickly - "Blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book."

405 Here again, we may apply all the book, provided we see the church in its responsibility, and not in its connection with Christ as its Head. Christ is viewed as coming in reference to responsibility. To such prophecy applies - the hope of His coming to receive us up is another thing. It is hope, not responsibility and warning. His coming, in connection with responsibility, is always His appearing; and the church, though doubtless saved and coming with Him, stands on the same ground as the world, that is, of the consequences of its conduct. Hence the difference is not made here, though from chapter 4 the book be more directly prophetic. This verse applies to those who have the book. The testifying angel again rejects the proffered worship. Surely this has reference to the time the book treats of when the very position of the church as connected with the Head being out of view, holding the Head by Christians would tend to give place to excessive reverence for the higher instruments of God's government, in whom He used to reveal Himself, and above which the minds of Christians did not go. In both cases here the worship was proffered when the witness has closed, saying - "These are the true sayings of God." But the angel does more than refuse the worship: he is a fellow servant, the prophet is to worship God. Now God has ceased thus to reveal Himself angelically. Not only has God alone the title to be worshipped, but it in man He has revealed Himself. We know this by faith.

The close of this book contemplates its public manifestation. The angels have their own known place for the Christian in service, as creatures of course, not objects of worship, not the beings or form in which God reveals Himself, never mediatorial intercessors and not for the Christian those in whom God is seen; and, once Christ is glorified as man, not even administrative authorities though ever willing servants. God I worship, Christ I worship, because He is God and Lord. In Him God is perfectly revealed. He with the saints, that is, Redeemer, Ruler, will govern and inherit all things. All here, even the prophet, are servants. The sayings of this book were not to be sealed as Daniel's were. That was in place. The fulfilment was to come out in the last days. Between, all the wonderful church or heavenly system was to come in, and what was .revealed was to be sealed till this; and the decay of this on earth, which let in these earthly ways of God again, had made it timely by the speedy taking up again of these ways. Now that is exactly what we have here. The professing church got into the place of judgment and the divine preparation made, the Lamb being seen in the throne and opening the book, for the fulfilling the things which had to be sealed in Daniel's time. Hence the book was not to be sealed, for the time is at hand. The time in view in it was not that of restoring grace, of the gospel but of judgment, of man's responsibility, in which there is no change in man. Even in the churches, which is not the strictly prophetic part of the book, those who hear and are righteous in the churches, are directed and guided in the way, but supposed to be already righteous. Still, here, I doubt not the closing scenes are looked to, and the saints to whom the prophecy is addressed, as already such.

406 The Lord was coming to judge, and quickly. Verse 7 addresses itself in warning to those engaged in the circumstances of the book itself, and the things are shortly to be done. Here, in verses 10-14, all is closed. The Lord is coming to judge every one according to their works, and their state is viewed as a fixed one. Hence, in verse 13, He closes all with His own nature, as First and Last. Verses 14, 15, need not be confined, I apprehend, to those who form the city itself, but include all those who, having washed their robes (I think Codex Sinaiticus has confirmed this reading), have the right to the of life, and enter in through the gates of pearl into the city: redemption, leading to life, and fitting for a state lovely in grace in Christ's eyes, what meets the entering person at once, and for association with divine holiness and righteousness. This, even the blood of Christ and the sanctification of the Spirit, is the foundation of the blessing of all who are blessed. Without are the evil and the violent, the corrupt and the idolatrous. In Revelation 21: 8 it is final judgment; here it is exclusion.

This wholly closes the book; and Jesus presents Himself as such to the prophet, as revealing all this for the churches. He comes personally forward, still in connection of course with the subject of the book, as the Source and Heir of the promises of Israel, and as the One known to the faith of the church and none else - a heavenly One, not the day for this world, but the Bright and Morning Star for those who watch in the night. Whatever the state of the professing church might be, this remained true and bright for hope, and the brighter, the darker all seemed to be. It is no announcement of coming or warning now, but Christ's announcing Himself, "I, Jesus" announcing what He is for the Jews, and what He is for the church. When what He is for the church, her special portion in Him, is named, all the affection of the church in her own relationship is awakened: indeed what love produced in her in ever respect, as animated by the Spirit which dwells in her. Indeed He is first named. The position of the church is this: she has the Spirit, and longs for Christ. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." It is not merely affection or a wish, but the mind of the Spirit as down here on the earth.

407 The church looks for Christ, for Himself and herself, in the consciousness of her own relationship. No doubt, it will be blessing for the world. That, she enters into and delights in; but Christ Himself is before her mind. Thus her heart, or the Spirit speaking in the prophet as associated personally with her in position and testimony, turns round in love, first to him who hears; let him who has received the testimony of Jesus say "Come." That is the thing to desire. After Christ Himself, the Spirit first turns to them that are His; then to any one who has an awakened desire and need of soul, "Let him that is athirst"; then in the power of that love with which the church is filled, and with which the Spirit works, "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." The church longs for Christ, but she has the full stream of life already. She says to every soul, "Whosoever will, let him come"; not to me, as Jesus alone could. Still she possesses the water, and invites to come as freely as she has enjoyed. In a word, we get the full place of the church and her testimony while waiting for Christ, and for nothing else, and thus for Him directly. This desire the Lord meets then. "He which testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly"; and this satisfies the heart of the saints. "Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus." A solemn sanction is added to the authority of the book, and to maintain its integrity. The book of life is not life, but the presumed and apparent possession of it as inscribed among professing Christians.

I have thus attempted a sketch of the book in its structure and meaning. To complete this, something might be said of its historical application, at least as warning as to the present time, and perhaps something of a vocabulary of symbolical language.

[END OF EXPOSITORY - VOLUME 2.]

The Psalms

J. N. Darby.

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Introduction

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The five Books of Psalms are divided thus:-

First, from Psalm 1 to Psalm 41;

Second, from Psalm 42 to Psalm 72;

Third, from Psalm 73 to Psalm 89;

Fourth, from Psalm 90 to Psalm 106; and

Fifth, from Psalm 107 to the end.

The subjects of each are different, and may be thus briefly distinguished.

In the first book the Jews are not driven out, but go up to the temple, and mix with those in the land. The name of Jehovah always occurs. He is in recognised relationship with them.

In the second book they are driven out, and only a small seed is left. The Gentiles combine with the nations against the godly who flee to the mountains. It is Judah driven out. "God" is used here, except when hope is expressed.

In the third book it is not Jews in Jerusalem, or driven out, but all Israel are taken up. The ways of God with the people, as such, are found here.

The fourth book begins another range of subjects, While they own Jehovah the dwelling-place, the bringing of Christ into the world again is celebrated; the progress of His coming in glory; His sitting between the cherubim; and the nations coming to worship.

Then the concluding or fifth book is a review of all, winding up with a chorus, which consists of thanksgivings for the blessings brought in, of which Israel is the earthly centre around and under the Messiah.

BOOK 1. - PSALMS 1-41.

There are two great subjects laid hold of from one end of scripture to the other, founded on the relationships in grace: the government of God; and the church of God. When I speak of the church of God, I speak of His grace, that which stands only in grace; and when Christ reigns, the church reigns with Him, the weakest and feeblest saint is taken up, and put in the same place with Christ. Grace is conferred on those who least deserve it. There is also the government of the Father for those in the church, but this is quite different from the government of God in a general sense. It is true that gracious principles come in there; but the church is the body of Christ, members of His body, etc. To be His brethren is another relationship. God's government of this world is quite a different thing from that. It is interesting for us, because we have a personal association with the Lord Jesus in His humiliation and His glory, and there is nothing connected with Christ but should interest us.

34 The immediate government of God is brought out in connection with Israel, and the Book of Psalms has a peculiar character in relation to this. The Psalms express the feelings and thoughts of those who find themselves in the circumstances that give rise to them. When under government, the power of evil must be set aside, in order for those who are separate from it to get free of their sufferings. With us it is quite different. We leave the evil, and rise into the glory. There is also the difference of reigning and being reigned over. The government of God for earth is entirely connected with Israel - our home is elsewhere. They are on earth, and government is connected with earth.

In Israel God gives certain laws. Now grace reigns through righteousness which Another has accomplished. There will be righteousness on earth when He comes again. Now it is exactly the contrast. Righteousness is only in connection with heaven now. Christ is exalted in heaven, but rejected on earth. The principle on which all God's dealings with the Jew go is government, although you find mercy put first.

Two things are connected with the Jews in Psalms 1 and 2 God's law written on their hearts (Ps. 1), and their Messiah coming to them, God's king set up on God's throne (Ps. 2). These are two fundamental principles connected with God's people on the earth.

In Psalm 1 we have the effect of godliness, present blessing and in Psalm 2 the place Christ has as King.

In the first is the application of God's government on the earth, on the godly and the ungodly ones. There will be the cutting off of the ungodly ones like chaff, and those who remain are the godly. There is a godly remnant in the midst of the ungodly, and the ungodly are to be cut off. That is the basis of all we have in the Book of Psalms.

35 The first characteristic of the godly ones is in contrast with the ungodly. They delight in the law of Jehovah. They have tasted the sweetness of the principles in God's word, and know a Christ come down from heaven. The law characterises all the moral condition of the godly man (Ps. 119). The remnant in the latter day are associated in character and circumstances with the remnant who believed and followed Christ at His first coming. The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, which is spoken of as a present thing. The godly are in the midst of the ungodly in the presence of judgment, which brings in the day of the Lord.

Psalm 2 is the time when the judgment is ending, and government is made good by the power of the Son exercising His wrath. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings," for if the Son's wrath be kindled, all will be over with you. This has nothing to do with the gospel of God's grace. The kings of the earth are not in relationship with the Father and the Son, but in rebellion against Jehovah and His Christ. It is a direct question of judgment - the closing scene - distinctly brought to the last day, the day of Jehovah. He is setting up the king of Israel, never mind what the kings of the earth do. God's king shall laugh at them. When Christ was born into this world, God had this purpose in view; and when the King is brought in, the eye will be turned to Him who was before born into the world. He is to be set up King in Zion, and He is to have the heathen for His possession. But what does He do? He breaks their bands in sunder. I can understand this if it is government, but not if it is gospel. Matthew 10 shews the gathering out of a remnant, and passing over this time to the end, when the Son of man will be there. All connected with the gospel is left out, and the kingdom is the subject - those "worthy" (Matt. 10), not sinners. It is the witness of the kingdom that is carried on to the time when He comes.

In John 17 Christ says, "I pray not for the world" (I ask not for the heathen now), "but for those whom thou hast given me out of the world." He is gathering these now, but He will have the heathen. He is asking for those who are to be with Him, the results of redemption-work; nothing about the world, not even breaking the nations to pieces. Again, in John 20, He says to Mary Magdalene, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended," etc. The time was not come for Him to be King, but He would make His brethren know the relationship into which He brought them. He was not coming to take the kingdom yet, but He would give them the same place that He had.

36 Revelation 2: 26, 27 alludes to this psalm. Under the government of God there is law for rule (Ps. 1). Psalm 2 declares that, in spite of all the world, He will bring His Son in again, and set Him King. In the one psalm we get what are the principles of His government, and in the other what are His counsels. The godly ones are exercised amongst these ungodly ones who are in power.

Then, remark that Psalms 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 express the exercises of the godly. In these psalms we find the righteous remnant in the presence of the judgment, looking for the Lord's coming to sustain their faith, and make good His word: but they go through all sorts of trials. Christ is not yet reigning, evil not yet judged; yet the trials and exercises of the godly remnant before God's judgment on the ungodly help their faith. God is standing back, as it were.

Psalm 8 is of another character. Jehovah is to be glorified in this earth, and His glory above the heavens. He has never been so yet. The Father's name is glorified in the hearts of His children, but Jehovah is not glorified universally. 1 Corinthians 15 shews Christ as the Head of the new creation; government in the kingdom is to come in, and, as in Colossians 1, it is to be as Head of the church, He will take the kingdom as Son of man. Psalm 8 presents Him as thus coming. It is not yet fulfilled. "We see not yet all things put under him, but we see Jesus," etc. He is now gathering the church, who, when He comes, comes with Him. The only thing in which I can separate myself from Christ is, where He became sin. Looking at His glory is looking at our own.

In Luke 9: 21, 22, being rejected as the Christ, He therefore would not set Himself up as the King. Then He takes another name - "Son of man," and as such He must suffer. He drops for the time the title of Christ, as in Psalm 2, which sets Him forth as the anointed King, and takes the title of Psalm 8 - "Son of man." But He must suffer. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die," etc. As Christ they may say nothing about Him then. As Son of man He is to have all under Him, not only is He to be King in Zion. That will be accomplished too; but, according to Isaiah 49: 6, He is to have the Gentiles also. He is to be over everything; and as a man He is to take all things. God will gather together in one all things in Christ, we being in the heavenly part, and Satan under our feet, In the Psalms we get the Christ we are associated with, but not our association with Him. The scheme of the government of God has never yet begun. It has not yet been the new covenant, but the old. Christ is to be King, and this is prophetically, not historically, given in Psalm 2; He is also Son of man in Psalm 8, which is prophetic.

37 Psalm 9 looks at the wicked as not yet put out. The time is not come for righteousness to be made good. Divine righteousness is accomplished through His death, but government in righteousness not yet established. Psalm 2 is not fulfilled, only the opposition of the kings, etc. In Psalm 10 there is distress for the remnant until the interposition of God comes.

Psalms 11 to 15 disclose feelings of the remnant; but there is confidence in God in time of trial. Christ puts into their hearts just what they want in the circumstances. Psalm 12 is the extremity of their distress - a godly man scarcely to be found. Psalm 13 is deeper distress of soul because of a sense of its being from God. The faith of God's people cannot go on for ever; they cry, "How long?" "Art thou treating us as if given up? If it goes on thus, I shall faint under it!" Psalm 14 is the character of the wicked to be cut off, as Psalm 15 is the character of the remnant who stand. The practically godly remnant will have the blessing when Christ comes. There is in Psalms 9, 10, the history of the tribulation - the fact of judgment; and then in Psalms 11, 12 and 13, their condition, thoughts, and feelings; and Psalm 15, the character of those on the holy hill, in contrast with the wicked set forth in Psalm 14.

In Psalm 16 Christ is the link between Jehovah and the remnant. He is passing through this world so as to be able to speak a word in season to the remnant in the last day. He could not go and associate Himself with them in that way without the atonement being made. We have the figure in Aaron going into the holy place on the day of atonement. We are associated with Him within. Isaiah 53: "We hid as it were our faces from him" is the expression of the Jews in the latter day, linking themselves with those who rejected Christ when He was here the first time.

38 In this first book of the Psalms the godly remnant are not driven out of Jerusalem. This applied to Christ personally. He was on this side Jordan, with the poor of the flock, He was walking with them - His path in life. There is more personal association of Christ with the remnant in the latter day. There is more appeal to Jehovah in this book than to God, which characterises the second book. Jehovah is the title God has especially connected with the people of Israel, the seed of Abraham; and their relationship with Him in the land is thus acknowledged. It is better to read "Jehovah" instead of LORD, which we have very vague and undefined in our minds generally, though it is a most blessed title.

In Psalm 16 Christ, before taking His place on high, has experimentally "the tongue of the learned." "In thee do I put my trust." This is quoted in Hebrews 2 to prove Christ's humanity. There are two things make perfection in a man - dependence and obedience. They were in Christ, the contrast of what was in Adam when he sinned. His heart could be moved with compassion, and not only could He shew His power to work miracles, but He could take this place of the dependent and obedient One, and it is there the heart gets food.

God has His food in the offering, but there was the meat-offering, and part of the peace-offering, which the priests ate. He says, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." Then we feed. The Father has given us the very object He delights in for the object of our affection.

In this psalm He first definitely takes His place with the excellent of the earth. He is thus the comfort of His people in sorrow; and when we have peace, He is the food of our souls - the heart has the perfect good to feed on. He is the object before the soul - He is properly the food of our souls, not in glory, but in humiliation, as here. "I am the true bread that came down from heaven." It does not say, the bread that went up to heaven. Then His flesh is needed for life, we must know Him as dead. We cannot feed on Him as the living and glorified Christ, but as the dead Christ. What draws out our affections to Christ is, what He was down here, going through all the difficulties, making His passage through everything about which He has to intercede for us now.

39 "Thou hast said to Jehovah, Thou art my master." Now I take the place of a servant; I am my Master's - I am taking the place of dependence, leaning on Thee, looking to Thee. Christ is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, not excluding the Father and the Spirit (John 12; Isa. 6). "My goodness extendeth not to thee"; I am not taking a divine place now. He became a babe - was growing in wisdom and favour - anointed to service - has the tongue of the learned; then comes fellowship with the excellent. He takes His place as identifying Himself with them (Phil, 2); that is, "to the saints that are in the earth, and the excellent, in them is all my delight." If His soul disclaimed the one, it had joy in the other. The saints cannot have a sorrow, a difficulty, that is not mine. Proverbs 8: "My delights were with the sons of men." In the first movement of spiritual life in them, however poor and feeble they are, He goes with them; they are the excellent, it is not what they had, but what they were. During His life He was going with them - at the cross He went for them, they could not go there. If they begin to live for Him, He lives with them not one difficulty on the road but Christ has gone before in it and as to sin, that He has borne. "When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them." He met the lion on the way, and destroyed him that had the power of death. Every step that the Spirit of God in a man treads through this world, Christ has gone, I cannot get into a trouble that Christ has not been in before.

"Thou maintainest my lot." This is just what the poor saints will want in the future day. Could the Man of sorrows say that? "Thou maintainest my lot; the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places." Yes, He knew who had given Him all. "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup." Jehovah was His portion, and always He could say it. This truth of Christ's entering into all our sorrows, when the Spirit of God works, He going into it, and as to our sins, helping against them, is immense comfort. I get all the sympathies of Christ in this way.

There is not a step of the path of life that Christ has not trod, Jehovah shewing Him the path of life up to blessing. "Thou wilt shew me the path of life." There was enough in Christ, and He did draw out the affections of the Father as a Man down here (of course as the eternal Son also) in this path of life. How dependent for everything He does not say, "I will rise up," but, "Thou wilt shew me." He passes through death in dependence on His Father; there was the blessed perfectness of a Man with God; and at the close of His career, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He came from God and went to God, etc. He could go back unsullied to the throne of God, and take man back with Him into the glory out of which He came: there is manhood now in the presence of God.

40 Matthew 3 gives John's baptism. They came to him, confessing their sins - "fruits meet for repentance." The beginning of all excellence is to confess we have none; "fruit" was confessing they brought forth none. The instant the Spirit of God is working, Jesus goes to be baptised with them (not having any sin to confess, of course, but) doing His Father's will. He takes His place with them. He had come for that, and the consequence is that He takes His place after death and resurrection to praise in the midst of the congregation.

"Thou wilt shew me the path of life." It is most blessed to hear Christ saying that. It is the path of holy death in verse 10: how did He find that of life? Adam found the path of death in his folly and his self-will, but back from it never! The tree of life was never to be touched in the garden of Eden; he had taken the other path. These two trees set forth that which men are always puzzling themselves about - responsibility, and the gift of God which is life. All that man does ends in death, but it is too late to warn of this now, for he is "dead in trespasses and sins." But Christ came, bringing life into a world that drove Him away, where Satan, the prince of it, reigned, and everything was bearing the stamp of his guilty dominion. In this place of death Christ makes out a path for us. He is shewn by His Father "the path of life." He was "the Life"; but then the path of life had to be tracked through the place of death, where no one thing testifies of God - one wide waste, where there is no way. Christ has Himself gone there before. It is for the Christian I am speaking now; the gospel shews He gives it to those who believe. He had to make out the path of life through a world of sin and wretchedness, in obedience, up to God. It must be through death, if for us, because we are sinners . Now he says, "If any man serve me, let him follow me." We must take up the cross. The cross to Him was atonement; that was the path. As He came for us, it must be by the cross. He has gone through it perfectly and absolutely.

41 What is the consequence? The end is, "in thy presence is fulness of joy." He would rather die than disobey. Notice, death is gone to us, the end is gained: we have to tread this very same path that He trod, up to His presence, where there is "fulness of joy." Why ill this? It was for His Father's glory, doubtless, but it was for these "excellent of the earth." His identifying Himself with them involved this.

Psalms 17, 18, shew the results of His thus taking His place with them. Psalm 17 is the controversy with man in the path; "Let my sentence come forth from thy presence"; and the end is, "I shall behold thy face in righteousness I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness."

Psalms 16, 17, give us two great principles of divine life - trust and righteousness, or integrity; and we find them running all through the Psalms, and any godly person's life, as well as that of the Jew: but this does not give the foundation fully on which we stand., according to the New Testament. You do not find in Psalm 17 the foundation of God's righteousness at this time. Souls in the condition of having divine life, but not knowing their standing in divine righteousness, find the suitability of the Psalms to express their experience.

In Psalm 16 it is divine life in dependence, obedience, and communion. The first characteristic of divine life is trust - Christ putting His trust in Jehovah. As a man He does it. We see Him praying, the true expression of dependence; and in Luke's Gospel this is especially brought out. Then another principle of divine life is the consciousness of integrity, there may be both these - trust in God and consciousness of integrity, without peace with God. Job said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him"; and he pleaded his own righteousness against God. "Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me." He had the consciousness of sin and the sense of righteousness, integrity in himself at the same time. The soul cannot be at peace in this state. Job was wrong in making a righteousness of his integrity.

This second principle of divine life we have in Psalm 17. It is the kind of righteousness the Jews will have in the latter day - the same which they had of old. God stays up the souls that trust in Him until they see Christ. Having a promise, they trust, but cannot say, "I have the righteousness of God." Christ having taken up their condition, and borne it, they have the consciousness of integrity through him; and it is the stay of their souls, but not peace. They will find such utterances as this, "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee," suit their own experience; they will be comforted by finding the word of God giving expression to their thoughts and feelings; it will be a prop and stay to them in the midst of their exercises, but they will not get peace in it. This Psalm 17 applies to the remnant surrounded by their enemies - ours are spiritual enemies. Here is the reality of enemies pressing round Christ. The remnant will find every imperfectly formed feeling of their hearts has been perfectly gone through and expressed by Him, He having put Himself in their place. In trusting, and in the consciousness of integrity, He has been before them.

42 In the Psalms mercy always goes before righteousness, and they never meet till Christ appears at the end to the remnant. It cannot be said, "Righteousness and peace have kissed each other" until the perfectness of redemption is known. I may get hope, but I cannot get peace until I get righteousness. It may be said, "Righteousness and peace have kissed each other" for the Jew when Christ comes again. A Jew under law would put righteousness before mercy - that is the law - and Israel stood on that ground. They had made the golden calf before the law was given to them; then God retires into His own sovereignty, and, to spare any, mercy comes in. It was the resource of God when wickedness came in. They have been going about to establish their own righteousness, they would not have Christ who is the end of the law for righteousness, etc., and when they come back, it will be on the ground of mercy and hope.

We, on our proper ground, are not like those who refuse to believe until they see Him; we have the end of our faith now, even the salvation of our souls. We know that righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Christ has gone into the holy place, as the Holy Ghost has come out to us, the proof of it, and we are certain Christ is received within, the full accomplishment of divine righteousness. Romans 3: 20: "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified." But it is said, "In Jehovah shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory." It is not "shall" to us, but "being [that is, having been] justified by faith." God had been forbearing in mercy with the Old Testament saints, because He knew what He was going to bring in. Now it is declared. It was not declared then.

43 "Not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things," etc. "To declare at this time his righteousness." They could say, "being fully persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to perform." I do not simply believe that He is able, but that He has raised up His Son from the dead. I may trust He will help, but not be conscious of being helped yet; that was the patriarch's portion. Yet I do not expect Him to do it, but know that He has done it; it is the ministration of righteousness. I have the knowledge of accomplished righteousness; righteousness is declared to faith. I am not merely hoping for mercy, trusting, and having consciousness of integrity. They could not judge sin in the same way when they had not righteousness as a settled question, which it now is for ever for those who believe. The Spirit of God now demonstrates righteousness to the world by setting Christ at God's right hand. Christ said, "I have glorified thee on the earth"; God says to Him, "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool."

As regards the believer now, righteousness is on the right hand of God for him. The affections ought to be more lively now that there is the certainty of accomplished righteousness.

There is another thing connected with righteousness here; righteousness is appealed to on the ground of promises, as well as that mercy goes before it. In their state there must be alternation of feeling, in the sense of hope in His mercy - trusting in God; in the consciousness of sin - down in the depths. Yet they will find One has gone down into the depths for them. The Spirit of God in Christ going through all these things shews that not one place, from the dust of death to the highest place in glory, but He has been in - sins I and all having been gone under.

The weakest saint now knows more than the apostles could when Christ was on earth. They trembled and fled at the cross. We feed on that which frightened them - a dead Christ. When once founded on righteousness, our position is so different. It is sad to see a saint crouching down on the other side of divine righteousness, instead of having on the "helmet of salvation," having communion with Him in the efficacy of His death.

There is another thing to mark in these Psalms - the character of HOPE running all through them. Christ looked onward to being in the presence of God, where is fulness of joy; this was the reward He looked for as the end of trusting in God's love (Ps. 16).

44 The reward of righteousness is glory "I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." Christ looked to return into the same glory He had left for the path of humiliation down here; the reward for it would be glory as a crown. The reward of walking with God in communion is joy in His presence (end of Ps. 16); the reward of faithful walk is the place in glory (end of Ps. 17). It is the same difference for us. Paul looked for the crown of righteousness, but his highest hope was to win Christ.

Christ will come to set everything to rights in power; judgment will return to righteousness, and all the meek of the earth shall see. This has never been known yet. When Christ comes in power, judgment and righteousness will go together. Power will be given to the Judge, who will act in righteousness. The great hindrance to our understanding the Old Testament scriptures is our putting ourselves into them. God's faithfulness, of course, is always true; but when the Spirit of prophecy speaks of the people, and state of the people (for example God hiding His face from them), we know it does not apply to us literally. He cannot hide His face from us. His face is shining on us in Christ. Does He hide His face from Christ?

Psalm 18. Here are Christ's sufferings even unto death. The death of Christ is the ground of all Christ's dealing with the people from Egypt to glory.

Psalm 19 is the witness of creation and witness of the law (v. 7, etc.). Whatever man touches he defiles; but the heavens maintain the glory of God - they are what man cannot reach. Law is broken. Man cannot change it, but he has broken it.

The Psalms that follow, namely, Psalms 20, 21, and 22, are all connected, and shew the result of the position Christ takes in Psalm 16, where He takes the place of caring for "the excellent of the earth," etc.; as though saying, The old world, the people in the flesh, I have done with, and now all My delight is with the excellent. These are they who have received Him. The connection of that, as we have seen, is that He must go through death, He must be the resurrection Man. There must be atonement. Peter was reproved for desiring this to be avoided. Flesh cannot go there; Christ alone can and does. "Whither I go thou canst not follow me now." The moment He has to do with us, it must be Hades, or death. He cannot bless man with union with Himself in the flesh. In the millennium He governs; and we are blest now, but it is all in virtue of this - He has died and risen; therefore we are told to reckon ourselves dead. The life has come into the world that had power to go through death; the life has gone through death, and risen out of it.

45 Psalm 20. The remnant sympathise; and, looking on Him in His trouble, pray for Him.

In Psalm 22 the excellent of the earth come to this terrible conclusion - that they must give their Messiah up as to the flesh. They never could understand how it was to be. In the history we know the result of this when He was on earth; they all forsook Him, and fled. Then mark, we have the character of His sufferings brought out sufferings from man. They hated Him. "Their soul abhorred me," as Zechariah says. The history of the Gospels is that they would not have Him. They sent a message after Him, "We will not have this man to reign over us." All this was from the hand and heart of man. One betrayed Him, another denied Him in the hour of trial, even of His disciples. Then look at the priests: what heartless indifference and unrighteousness in Pilate, who was afraid of the Jews, and washed his hands to be clean of His death! Christ looks round for companions, but finds none, for righteousness, none! for sympathy, none! for intercession, none! Mary at Bethany was a single exception; a gleam of light was there in the midst of the darkness. She, spending her heart on Him, was an appropriate witness to the Son of man - the Son of God! All except that was darkness. The more perfect His feelings, the more He suffered. It was a deep mire in which He was standing. He had to prove the wickedness of the human heart, that it is open and complete enmity to what is good. Such is flesh. Christ experienced what it is on His own person. The result of all that suffering from the hand of man is judgment on man. See Ps. 16.) "Thou hast given him what he asked of thee." See Heb. 5 (also "He was heard for his piety.") "Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies."

There are two very distinct characters in Christ's sufferings, There was His suffering in the world, and especially in connection with Israel; and there was this other - He came to give His life a ransom. "This is my blood of the new covenant, shed for many": and it is outside all dispensation. We "were by nature children of wrath"; ALL are one as to that condition. There was a ministration "of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises," etc., and the Gentiles were the objects of mercy; but through Christ's coming into the world there was the end of promise. There are blessed promises made good to us as Christians, and God will fulfil all He has said for earth, but this will be in the world to come. Christ came as the vessel of promise. He came into the world, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. Then there was a third party: "As many as received him," etc. The world knew Him not; His own received Him not. But some did receive Him; these were born of God. It was a new thing, not from the first Adam. Every Christian knows we are born anew. It is no modification of the first Adam, but a new life. "The life was manifested, and we have seen it," etc.; and in chapter 2 of John's epistle it is said, "which thing is true in him, and in you." In chapter 1 of the Gospel he had said, "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." John the Baptist drew attention to the "Light"; the Light comes into the world, and the world knows Him not. Then, again, He comes among the Jews with everything to attract; but they saw nothing in Him to desire Him. This gives a double character to Christ's coming into the world. lie was connected with all who came of Adam, being born into the world. He was the Life and the Light of men. He did not receive life - He was it. He was the Life from heaven. God has given to us life, and that life is in His Son; not life in ourselves, This divine Person comes into the world, "God manifest in the flesh." This is the first thing - He tries human nature, that is, the world and the Jews. He was a minister of the circumcision, bound to come because of the promises.

46 Christ's coming as God manifested in the flesh tests man. Then, secondly, He became the last Adam (I am not now speaking of Him as Head of His body, the church, but as risen man) the Head of everything, the First-born from the dead. In the last Adam - Christ - we have the Man of God's counsels; as Zechariah has it, "the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts." This is a different thing from His merely testing the old thing, which, even in Him, ends in death. True, He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Even then He could speak of resurrection, and in that resurrection He becomes the Head of a new thing, and He will be that for ever. This new position He never took on the earth. It was in resurrection. We could not have had it with Him without death - "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone," etc. Such is the essence and centre of all our relationships with God. If man could have had connection with God in the flesh, on this side death, it would prove flesh good for something. It is the best thing it could be if it could delight in God; but all testimony shews us this is impossible.

47 Christ was here in perfect graciousness, speaking as never man spake, bringing out all His resources to meet the need of men; but the result of all this is entire and utter rejection. The history gives us Him presenting divine grace and graciousness, but His rejection in consequence. Not only has man broken God's law - that he had done already, made a calf, etc. - but now the question was raised between the display of God's heart and man's heart. He says, For my love I have hatred "they hated me without a cause." That is the whole history of the flesh - God was reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. It is this gives the true character to the world now. Christ has been here, and has been rejected. The people were prepared by prophecy, promise, etc. Messiah came in by the door, was feeding the hungry with bread, doing all things well, as some were constrained to acknowledge; but they would not have Him.

John begins with His rejection; there is no genealogy given by him. The other Gospels give us the history of His rejection, but in these three verses of John 1 we have the results of what is told in the rest. The Jews are treated as a reprobate people; Christ is taken up as the rejected One. This is the starting-point with John, but grace is brought out, The result of man's treatment of Christ will result in judgment on man.

The result of His atoning work is exactly the opposite. Why did He suffer from man? It was for righteousness. When He suffers from God, is it for righteousness? Just the opposite. He suffers for sin under the wrath of God. He was made sin! Ave, and He suffers for sin. The moment He was made sin, He had to do with God about it. He was absolutely alone in this; there were none to look on, man could not contemplate. We have not such an expression as that we have in Psalm 20, "Jehovah hear thee," in this Psalm 22. The disciples were even as the world - they could not go there. The ark must stand in the midst of Jordan until the people are over. There was Satan's power, God's wages against sin. When He appeals to God for deliverance, He is not heard on the cross. He tasted death for every man. He must drink the cup of wrath - it is between God and Himself. If He had had the least comfort from God, He would not have drunk the cup. Man had nothing to do with it. If man had been there, it would have been damnation; He must be alone when suffering from God. In the thought of this suffering from sin He prayed against it. Could He say of that, "My meat is to do the will"? etc. No! not on the cross. This was the power of death, and in prospect of it, in the garden of Gethsemane, He said to His disciples, "Tarry ye here and watch"; and to God, "If it be possible, let this cup pass," etc. Then He takes the cup from His Father's hands. When on the cross He cries "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He is forsaken of God. His soul drinks the cup of wrath due to Him when He is made sin. We have His thoughts and feelings expressed where the facts are going on. In the Psalms we have the privilege thus of knowing how He felt when under them. Psalm 22 gives, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" His feelings - the fact was atonement.

48 All that was closed in the death of Christ, and now it is another thing, a new thing. He comes out free, discharged, clear of all He bore on the cross, and is the resurrection chief, the heavenly Man according to the counsels of God. It is into union with Him we are brought by faith - a place of unmingled and perfect grace is the result. Verse 19 shews what was the peculiar character of Christ's sufferings through the place He took in this world, and then the place before God which results in this full blessing to us.

"Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns." He was transpierced, not saved from it, so as not to be on it; when on the horns of the unicorns (a figure expressing the awful suffering of that moment), He was heard. "Thou hast heard me from the horns," etc. "He hath appeared once in the end of the age to put away sin," etc. All is judged, and this new resurrection Man is now in the presence of God, instead of the sinful man cast out of the presence of God; the risen man heard from the horns of the unicorns. Then He came to give testimony of the place into which we are brought as delivered. Angels had never seen such a thing as this I God had now a new character as Saviour - the Saviour - God. Christ had thus manifestly revealed it. It is not now responsible man; which has been gone through and settled in the death of Christ. Man would not have Him; then there must be judgment on enemies (not only wicked people): this is the result. Now God says, "I am going to do something in the second Adam." "What is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead," etc. "And you who were dead in trespasses and sins" hath he quickened, etc. "Not of works," etc. "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." There is the responsibility of Christians.

49 This new name of God, Saviour, so often mentioned in Timothy, is made known by that Man who is set at His right hand by divine power, giving new life. God came down in the person of Christ, who went into death and rose again. He is the Saviour. What is the first thing He does after His resurrection? He comes and tells His brethren of the full deliverance He has wrought. He comes to tell them, You are saved - you are brought before God - by virtue of this that I have done. Then He says to Mary Magdalene, Touch me not; I am not here among you as a King, but "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father." He puts them into the same relationship as Himself. "I will declare thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." When He has told them of the blessedness of being saved, the full joy of the deliverance, He is not going to let them praise alone. The first thing is to reveal the new relationship, and then to praise in the midst of them. What is the character of His praise? Can a single note jar in His praise? If He praises, it must be in the power of a full redemption, a finished complete deliverance; and everything not founded on this does not answer to His note of praise.

50 Speaking of our answering to God on the ground of this redemption, what position are we to take? We can take none but what He has taken. He comes and declares His name to His brethren, and He leads the praise Himself, so that we must in worship acknowledge the full blessing into which He has brought us. We have to follow Him in His praise in this new relationship, not in flesh but in risen life. People say, But I must be humble! Nothing is so humble as following Christ, and He has left sin behind - death behind; and, blessed be God for it! there is no other position for us.

"Ye that fear Jehovah, praise him." This goes on to the end of verse 24. But we come in verse 25 and following verses to millennial time - "in the great congregation," when all Israel shall be satisfied. Not only they are meek, but they praise Him, "They shall praise Jehovah that seek him." People now are often sorrowful and unhappy in seeking, but not then. Verse 27. All Israel will not do, but "all the ends of the world shall remember, and turn to Jehovah." Verse 31. "They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness, etc., that he hath done this" (borne their sins).

All this latter part (v. 25-31) as we have seen refers to millennial blessing on earth; but we know our position is spoken of as "sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." He has suffered from God, and there is not a word of judgment afterwards; He has suffered for sin, and exhausted it. He is the exalted Man, and as such He will execute judgment as the result of His being rejected of man. As to the saints - "the excellent" - His connection with them is the key to all the blessing for us. Two things are connected with this: first, unbounded grace; and, secondly, the place we are practically set in - a new footing. We have new life from God; we are not of the world, and should be nothing in the spirit of grace, because not of it.

Psalm 23. Jehovah is the Shepherd, going before the sheep in the path. We cannot say Christ was a sheep: He is Jehovah; but He emptied Himself - went before them - passed through every difficulty and trial yet more than the sheep.

Psalm 24. The consequence is that He is found to be the very Jehovah; the One who in humiliation was trusting is received on high, and owned in His glory.

Psalm 25. Here another point comes in. Up to this there is no mention of sins; they are a tried remnant, but there are no sins confessed till now. This is what makes the great difference for any soul. That they are sinners is a farther part of the history. But atonement and grace come out in Psalm 22. The remnant, before they trust in Christ, cry to Jehovah. There is not integrity lost, but sins are confessed. Christ has combined the expression of confession and trust together. They can look for mercy, expect mercy, and confess their sins. They will be trusting, and yet not knowing how they can trust. The soul is brought into the thorough and deep consciousness of what God is - despairing and hoping (we are the same when under law) alternately. The state of the Jews will be this - not having the application in the conscience of what the cross reaches. All needed is brought out in the cross; but what the cross has done in bringing out to light righteousness and love is not seen all at once. With us it is often by little and little that the blessed picture seen in Christ makes its way into the soul. Then it is all light; but darkness may come in afterwards. At first there is only reckoning on the blessedness of Christ. When that reaches the conscience it brings bitterness: what at first attracted the heart did not reach the elements of good and evil. When it reaches these, it does not minister peace, because the man has not learned the thing to which it applies in his own soul. It is a wonderful thing to see Christ coming, and saying, "My sins." Christ made Himself one with me, taking all my debts upon Him - my Surety! He has gone down into the depths. "My iniquities"; any one of the remnant might say that. There is the remnant's voice in it, but there is Christ's first. He has taken them. They suffer from them, never for them - it would be eternal condemnation if they did. "He was wounded for our transgressions," etc.

51 In this psalm there is confession of sins, and sense of integrity (v. 5). "On thee do I wait all the day," etc. Integrity, coming back with the consciousness of sins, but confidence of pardon: "Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." God brings in the question of living righteousness, and therefore gives the consciousness of sins: "For thy name's sake pardon mine iniquity, FOR it is great." This is strange reasoning, according to man's thought: men say it is a little sin, but when taught of God we see how great it is.

Another thing is, truth is in the man, because he feels the sin is great; he has given up any thought of justifying himself, "My iniquity is great." If God does not forgive me for His own glory's sake, He cannot do it at all; and not one spot of sin will He leave, for the comfort of my own heart, or the glory of His name. So we see for Israel by-and-by in Isaiah 44: 22, etc. They are made to rest in absolute mercy, in sovereign grace. Grace is perfect in getting rid of the sins.

52 The psalms following Psalm 25 give details of these experiences, as they are going through this time of trial. Psalm 26 gives the other side of the repentant soul, not confidence in grace, but integrity. In Psalm 27 Jehovah is the desire and refuge, as He had bid them seek. In Psalm 28 evil is felt, judgment looked for, in separation of heart to the Lord. In Psalm 29 the mighty are reminded of the Mightiest. In Psalm 30 trust in prosperity is contrasted with Jehovah, who is above the power of death. From Psalm 31 Christ could quote the words of departing confidence in His Father (not Jehovah only), though it be about the godly and redeemed remnant. Psalm 32 is the answer to Psalm 25. "Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." "Covered" is an allusion to the mercy-seat covering. Sins are put away, no more to be remembered. This is held out before them as hope. They will have the consciousness of forgiveness when they see Him. "In whose spirit there is no guile"; in the forgiveness the guile is all gone.

Psalm 33 follows this up with the joy of full deliverance by Jehovah's intervention, and Psalm 34 shews the soul praising at all times because of the unchanging God who governs all. Psalm 35 appeals to His judgment against cruel crafty persecutors, as Psalm 36 sees good and evil in His light, followed up by Psalm 37, which exhorts the godly to wait on Jehovah in meekness, undisturbed by the passing prosperity of the wicked. Psalms 38, and 39 own Jehovah's chastening because of their sins but they are open before Himself, and silent with man, but cry for His help. The latter goes farther and more deeply than the former, the vanity of man being realised rather than their personal feelings.

Then we have the introduction of One who changes all in Psalm 40. "I waited patiently," etc. Here is the reason why the remnant should trust Jehovah. HE has been delivered from the horrible pit and the miry clay (shewing resurrection). There are some special psalms connected with Christ round which others seem clustered; this is one of them. Here is Christ's actual connection with the people on earth, not only in their sorrows, but bearing their sins, so that all who looked to Him might be blessed with Him. "I, poor and needy, the Lord thinketh upon me." "Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee."

53 Christ did not take one step to save Himself. He might have had twelve legions of angels, but He was waiting upon God. He appeals to God as Jehovah, not Father, because that relationship had not been brought out as now it is. The Jew did not know the Father as He is now revealed, and Christ was taking the place of a godly Jew among them, therefore He takes up the relationship known to them. One or two verses often bring out the subject of the psalm, and the rest are the development of that. What He did in the position He was in is the great point here - what He went through - what He felt. The grand principle is that He waited on Jehovah. He is undertaking the cause of the poor remnant, goes through all their sorrows, and bears their sin. In the last it is FOR them, not with them; and He gives them the comfort of being taken up to the same position of praising with Himself. "Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Jehovah."

Then there is the great central truth: "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire": "Mine ears hast thou digged!" "He taketh away the first that he may establish the second." Christ came to do God's will. Everything centres in Christ. All blessing is connected with relationship to Christ, whether outcast reprobates (Gentiles), or God's people who had broken the covenant. All is set aside; and Christ, who says "Lo, I come to do thy will," becomes everything.

"Mine ears hast thou digged" is not the same thing as is spoken of in Isaiah 50, "He wakeneth mine ear." It has a peculiar character. He is offering Himself before He came. In Philippians 2 we read that He becomes a man, taking the form of a servant, having ears, doing nothing but what He was told, listening to every word that came out of God's mouth. "By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live." He had ears to receive it. Christ had no desire to do anything different from God's will. God's will was His motive. Never to stir but as another will guide you is perfectness as a man. Christ waited for the expression of His Father's will before doing anything. Christ on earth was in the form of a servant. How did He get there? By putting off all the glory of having a will - offering Himself before He came. It was His will to come: His love brought Him. "Lo, I come to do thy will." This was will, but it was the Father's will, He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. He told His disciples, in going forth, to say, "Peace, and if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it; if not, it shall turn to you again." So it was with Him. He was obedient, because He offered Himself to obey. There was nothing but obedience (power, of course, in Him); He is in the place of perfect obedience. The first word is not from God, "Do you go," but from Christ, "Lo, I come." In the counsels of God it was written in the book. This gives us a knowledge of Christ, His intercourse with God, before He came. Here is Christ, the divine person, the source of all the blessing, taking the place of obedience. He is the Servant now! What is He doing for us? Bringing out God to us, to our eye. He has brought God right down to our heart.

54 "I have preached righteousness in the great congregation." He made perfectly good God's character in the world, and this cost Him His life. He went out to all the people, declared God's faithfulness, was not hindered, did not hide and got into "miry clay" in consequence, under all that could press a man down. Christ has not failed to bring all that God is to us. How we want it in a world that has got away as far as it can from God, with its artifices, etc., like Cain! Others talked about the thing, but Christ was the thing. In every word and act they might have seen the Father, if they had had eyes to see. Christ can say, I know the world, what it is; I have gone through it all, like Noah's dove, and never found an echo: now you come to Me! I will give you rest. There is never any rest for a human soul, but in Him. One then learns of Him in the meekness and submission of His soul.

Psalm 41 closes the book with the blessedness of him who considers the poor, not the proud but poor, of the flock, as having God's mind. This Christ understood fully, as He was it perfectly, and availed Himself of a sentence in it about one who was as far from this mind as could be. But as the wicked do not triumph in the end, so Jehovah favours, even upon the earth, the despised for whom plots are laid, upholds them in integrity, and sets them before His face for ever.

Psalm 4

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David, the instrument that God employed to give us the Psalms, as also the other Psalmists, passed through the circumstances of which they speak. Hence there are found in them more experiences than prophecies. They are all prophetic no doubt, but at the same time characteristically give us experiences. It is the Spirit of Christ which by means of the prophet thinks and speaks of these experiences. The prophet meets with like circumstances, and the Holy Spirit gives him to express his feelings. One knows the circumstances which occasioned several of the psalms; but the Spirit of God has an object to which the circumstances correspond. The first verses of the psalm contain ordinarily the summary.

David, seeing his glory defamed, figures the Messiah here. The circumstances are like those of Jesus before Herod. David is in a strait. The proofs of the power of God with respect to Israel fail him; he was also according to man in despair. All the authorities were against him. He had lost all with those who followed him. The Amalekites had swept everything away. David had nothing left but the Eternal. The soul and the church find themselves in like circumstances.

The latter half of verse 6 is the answer to the demand, "Who will shew us any good? Jehovah, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." When the soul rests entirely on the Eternal and has nothing but God, it enters into peace and joy. It is easy to bless God when the circumstances are as we wish. But if God leaves us there, He leaves us far from Him, preoccupied with the things that perish. Eden is now impossible. If man is content with what he finds here below, he is content with death, with that which passes away. The soul is ever pushed to the point of saving, "Who will shew us any good?" There is nothing that abides as the stay of the soul. One finds oneself outside Eden; God seems not for us; Satan is against us. One must be driven there to understand that all around is far from God, without seeing any good in self or any resource outside it.

If God reveals Himself to the soul, it feels its condition, and that, instead of escaping from God, it must find Him. Outside Him is no rest. It is then the soul can say, "Lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." If the soul withdraws from God, it occupies itself with things here below as its object. God exercises discipline to recall from such a state. Faith finds in Him the same answer. When the soul gets back to God, it no more has other resources or other desires. It says, LORD, lift thou up, etc. It is entirely satisfied with being in the light of God's countenance. When in the midst of hankerings and difficult circumstances the soul turns to God, a great work is already done in the heart. Sin is come into the world, and there is nothing that is not infected with it. God can find nothing in the world to enrich us with, nothing that does not fill the hand of death which seizes all. He gives and makes known Christ, and thus sets apart the godly for Himself with the confidence that He hears us (v. 3). Thus by Him we learn the truth as to all.

56 The moment Christ is thus recognised by virtue of the Holy Spirit, the heart attaches itself to Him, and finds its treasure in Him, seeing that there is nothing good in itself. The more one sees in man the ignorance of spiritual things, the more also one feels the necessity of knowing what we are. This discovery of the state of our souls makes us understand that all is vanity by the revelation of that which fixes and attaches us to God in His unchanging goodness. For as Christ has been judged for all that was evil and vain in us, so God discovers to us all that He is in our favour. We have always the assurance, founded on Christ, that God will lift on us the light of His countenance. There is in Him no variableness nor shadow of turning; and we know that He has before Him the Beloved, and has chosen us in Him, and we cannot seek peace in vanity.

After creating all, God rested from His work; but sin has spoiled it all and turned it into vanity, so that God cannot any longer rest there. There is one only man, Jesus, in whom He finds His good pleasure. He does not change the world, but chooses the Beloved before His face. There is the rock of our assurance - Christ and His work on our behalf. Faith finds its rest and peace in God, whatever be the difficulties. To enjoy the favour of God and the light of His countenance is our sole good. This goes deep into the heart - whether we are content with all if God lifts upon us the light of His face. There is what gives uprightness.

If I look to the countenance of God, the opinions of men do not shake me. If we think there is any good thing in us, we are still in rebellion against God. The world is content to receive good things from God; but the moment they cease, the heart's rebellion and ingratitude are manifest. It is in Christ alone that God has all His complacency, because the world is all alienated from Him. He is also our Beloved, for He has reconciled us to God. The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me. The Beloved of God is my Beloved.

57 Am I content whatever the circumstances provided that God lifts upon me the light of His face? If we are not, there is still in us something which the Holy Spirit condemns. If the heart acts on the circumstances, happiness is lost when they change, and one cannot say, LORD, lift Thou upon me the light of Thy countenance. When the heart is attached to Christ, we find in Him all that can be conceived, Yea, all that God can reveal of blessedness. A Christian ought not day by day to desire any other thing than Christ. Then we enjoy the light of God's countenance shining on us and reject all that is inconsistent with Him and His glory.

Psalm 8

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In Psalm 1 we saw the righteous man, delighting in the law and the normal results of the earthly government of God as to just and unjust. Then Psalm 2 declared that, spite of all the world, He will bring in His incarnate Son, and set Him as king on the holy hill of Zion; the latter exhibiting the counsels, as the former did the governmental principles, of God. Psalms 3-7 express the exercises of the godly amongst the ungodly who are in power. In these psalms, consequently, we hear the righteous remnant looking for the Lord's coming in judgment to sustain their faith and make good His word; but they pass through every sort of trial, for the circumstances suppose that Christ is not reigning over the earth, and that evil is not yet judged. God is standing back as it were; nevertheless He turns these trials of circumstances and exercises of heart of the godly to their profit, a blessing much deeper than if the judgment fell at once on the ungodly.

Psalm 8 is of another character. Jehovah is to be glorified in the earth, as well as His glory to be set above the heavens. As a whole, we know this has not been yet. The Father's name has been declared, and is now, to the hearts of the children. The Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. But never yet has the name of Jehovah become excellent in all the earth. Our psalm announces that it is to be universally glorified here below. It will be when Christ takes the government of the universe. But this depends on His coming (1 Cor. 15), when the dead saints rise, and the living saints are changed. He is head over all things to the church, which is His body (Eph. 1). This we do not yet see with our eyes; but we do by faith see Jesus already crowned, the witness and pledge of all the rest (Heb. 2). The church meanwhile is being gathered. When He enters on the kingdom, we shall come and reign with Him. The only thing in which, as a Christian, I can separate myself from Christ, is where He was made sin. To look at His glory is to look at our own; and He, the glorified man, is exalted above all creatures, and has dominion over all the works of God's hand.

From Luke 9 we learn, that, being morally rejected as the Christ or Messiah, Jesus would not set Himself up as king. Then He takes another title - "Son of man," and as such, He must suffer. He does not permit that He should be proclaimed any more as the Christ of Psalm 2, but falls back on the name of "Son of man," as in Psalm 8. He must suffer before the glory, and be exalted in heaven, before He takes the earthly crowns. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." As Son of man, He is to have all things under Him, and not merely the throne of Zion. That is to be accomplished too; but, according to Isaiah 49, He is to have the Gentiles also. Yea, God will gather together in one all things in Christ, whether things on earth or things in heaven; and we shall be the heavenly Eve of the last Adam - the Lord from heaven. In the Psalms we find the Christ we are associated with, but not our association with Him. The scheme of divine government there supposed has not yet begun. Christ is to be king, and this over the earth. Psalms 2 and 8 are prophetic. He has not yet broken the nations with a rod of iron. His anger is to fall on the rebellious kings before the predicted reign of blessing commences. We are now, as it were, associated with Aaron in the sanctuary, before He comes out to the deliverance and salvation of His earthly people.